Rich Californians balk at limits: ‘We’re not all equal when it comes to water’

Posted by $ nickursis 9 years, 10 months ago to Culture
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And so it gets worse. They will be using this to exert control over people all over the place down there. Hopefully the Climate Changers are right and they get rains like they did in 97 and can end this.
SOURCE URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rich-californians-youll-have-to-pry-the-hoses-from-our-cold-dead-hands/2015/06/13/fac6f998-0e39-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html


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  • Posted by SaltyDog 9 years, 10 months ago
    I think the well-to-do should be able to use all the water for lawns, golf courses, pools, etc. that they can pay for. Simply hire tanker trucks and drivers to haul the water in from states that have a surplus. Problem solved.
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    • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 10 months ago
      Excellent point. I believe this is the solution. Let money and the free market determine the allocation of scarce resources. Lettings prices rise will increase local revenue, enabling local suppliers to find alternate sources or improved methods for obtaining water. Or trucking it in will help out-of-state suppliers, which will increase their demand and so their prices, which will help distribute the cost of the drought to other states. Either way, rationing (cutting supply without reducing demand) always causes and exasperates shortages.
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 10 months ago
      Not so many years ago while in Dana Point I ran across a booth gathering signatures for El Toro Marine Base - slated to become the town of El Toro - to build three to five golf courses. Plenty of jobs for illegals for sure but the main question I asked who is going to pay for the water and where is it coming from?

      The answer from ricoville was Goverrnment Grants and the Sacramento watershed. Looters and Moochers and that is exactly what has and is happening.

      Bringing in water by tanker truck means from the Colorado or Sacramento watershed. Southern California has enough for maybe 300,000 people on a good day and imports everything else. Currently they are building two rather huge tunnels to pipeline it from the Sacramento Delta area - without regard to anybody else but there golf courses and swimming pools.

      Maybe they are using obama bucks?
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      • Posted by SaltyDog 9 years, 10 months ago
        This seems to be the inherent flaw in big government, in that the lawmakers have no skin in the game, therefor have nothing to lose when the Grand Scheme blows up.

        It's one thing to give advice from a position of cover; it's something else entirely to risk it's merit at the point of attack.
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    • Posted by DrZarkov99 9 years, 10 months ago
      This follows the same logic as tacking a hefty tariff on gas-guzzling luxury vehicles. If the wealthy can afford it, let them pay and be happy. Class envy is pathetic.
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    • Posted by $ 9 years, 10 months ago
      Dog, Iit appeared to me they did not want to have to be "bothered" with such trivial things as that, they just wanted to have their stuff given to them and pay whatever was demanded, I guess they have lots of people they can squeeze to get more money. Usually they work for large companies and get huge salaries that the company then lays off 100 or so employees to compensate for. Then the companies go bust and need a government bail out. Hopefully El Nino willl really deliver aall the water they can ever ask for this winter and then they can start over.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 10 months ago
    What astounds me is that they have a huge problem and won't even consider desalinization plants to address the needs.
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    • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 9 years, 10 months ago
      Because, in the view of the environmentalists, the solution to the problem is always making sure that people have less. The people that don't matter, that is, the enlightened ones can then consume more with a good conscience because they are working toward "saving the Earth".

      Note it is always "working toward" because the plans never actually would achieve the goal.
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      • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 10 months ago
        If they ever solved the problem, they couldn't use it to bash taxpayers over the head with continually. The goal is to extend the crisis as long as possible without solving the problem!
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  • Posted by broskjold22 9 years, 10 months ago
    Since when did water become a right? It's not a right, it's a value. Without it we cannot survive. But even so, because we cannot survive without it does not mean we are entitled to it without earning it. The "collective" water need is not even about water, but the collective asserting itself over the individual in an ideological battle for supremacy. Jerry Brown and the California legislature were given numerous warnings about this issue many years ago and took no action. Nuclear desalination plants, or reverse osmosis, or new pipelines. Were these implemented? No. Why? "Special interests." Special, indeed.
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    • Posted by $ 9 years, 10 months ago
      I agree. Indded I have a well, and if I do not have a source of electricity to power my pump, and a working pump with no leaks in lines, I have no water "right". No one will come deliver it unless I pay for it, and my horses will soon die if I do not do something. These people think that because it has always come from a tap, that is is some sort of magic, like electricity, that can be obtained by money. No work, no effort needed. I have lots of water, but I work for it.
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  • Posted by Sunjock13 9 years, 10 months ago
    Droughts come AND Droughts go!!!!! Take away the politicians hysteria and the media hype and you have a weather cycle. That is not to deminish the seriousness of it, but the pols see it as an opportunity to raise more money and take control of the water. Texas ended there State of Emergency for drought by issuing a State of Emergency for flooding when the State was covered with 33 Trillion gallons of rain... CA drought is an 11 Trillion gallon deficit. It is stupid public policy coming from Sacramento that is making the effects much more severe.
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 10 months ago
      Well maybe if we ran a garden hose from Texas to California and they inhaled as well as they exhale ...? Ought to work.
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      • Posted by $ 9 years, 10 months ago
        Need a lot of garden hoses, then we threaten the garden hose plant with extinction...they wouldn't go for that, would have to make it an endangered species...
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        • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 10 months ago
          i should explain if you replace inhale and exhale with two other words.....it's an old joke but fit this thread rather well.
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          • Posted by $ 9 years, 10 months ago
            I undersdtood, I just wanted to take the manipulation scheme a little further, being that no idea will ever fix the problem they are vested in it continuing, if you control vital resources and servces, you can squeeze more from the ones who have it, and screw those that don't. There are stories posted in here from last summer when peoples wells dried up because the megalopolisis pumped the water table down. That was what fed the people in this article. I am all for free market, but I am against the gov't manipulating it for those that they need for donations. I have yet to see anyone address the people who have been left high and dry for golf courses. If they want to pay for it fine, but jack the rates up to cover all the costs. I am sure some brilliant producer is in the background working on something to fix this mess, but will they be allowed? They already have plenty of options and have refused to use them, as it sabotages the whole premise of control by the authority. IMHO of course.
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  • Posted by $ Susanne 9 years, 10 months ago
    The title of the article is correct - we're not equal... WE have the water, you do not. If you want water like those of us in the north state, develop your own resources. I know a good well driller or 2, and I'm sure that Lockheed Martin would be HAPPY to develop and build Desal plants that would give you ALL the water you think you're entitled to loot from everyone else...

    Of course, that would rely on INDUSTRY, which I am sure would really not sit well with your hyperlib constituents down there...

    What pisses me off... to no end... is while we are asked, pleaded, demanded, and legislated to do with less of the resources we have, and even some locales up here will fine those with green lawns, they feel it's their RIGHT as Southern Californians to pump water into their lawns, run it down their drains, and wash their cars, and then tell us how dare we ask them to --their-- part...
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 10 months ago
      Once upon a time back in the eighties the State of Oregon was in the normal drought years of a standard weather cycle. Using less water was a big issue.

      One town decided to allow watering for the west side on even days and the right side of town on odd numbered days. thus cutting the number of lawns in half. It worked too. The water system could handle it - but the total use went up. City Council said it was the best move available as the water flowed within 90 percent of capacity instead of the usual 60% and the income from water bills gave the town more money. The other plan was watering only between ten pm and four am. My friends house was on the dividing line and I had timers and pop up sprinkler heads. He watered every day. but used less water because he set the timers from 10PM to four AM West side midnight to four then 10 to midnight next say the reverse. Each side got watered twice every day and the water soaked in before the sun came up.

      Not all were that smart.The Oregon National Guard sent out a directive letting all the lawns at the armories ''brown'' except the State Guard HQ which was "watered every day to represent the Guard state wide." State government bought into that so guess where all the Willamette River watershed water went? If there was a way to cheat on a law and look stupid at the same time the doer probably worked for state government.
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  • Posted by $ sjatkins 9 years, 10 months ago
    In the 21st century it is actually a travesty that the richest state in the US can't manage to produce adequate fresh water for its needs regardless of vagaries of nature such as drought. This is especially so for one with a large ocean front. Using cheap enough energy we could use desalination to meet any shortfall. Look at the Earth from space. It is covered in water. Yes it is only 3% or so fresh water and yes most of that is tied up in ice at the poles, but still.

    What energy could do this? Nuclear power. But of course the land of fruits and nuts (hey I live here and probably qualify for at least one of those) can't seem to abide that. The entire world is anti-nuclear power with few exceptions. This despite it having a three orders of magnitude better safety rating in terms of death/GwH than coal and two orders of magnitude better than oil and gas.

    And that is with designs you can actually get licensed in the West restricted to designs previously in operation. We know how to build nuclear plants that are extremely safe and would have sailed through even a Fukushima class confluence of disasters with ease. They would also produce 5% or less as much nuclear "waste".

    But I digress. The real point is that the real problem is government interference in the free market and anti-technological progress memetic warfare.
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    • Posted by $ 9 years, 10 months ago
      Well, sj, the only real successful govt project was the Manhattan one and they even screwed that up so that the russians had the plans before the 1st bomb fell. The Left coasts fetish for authority, in a place that whines about "free this and that" is amazing. Govt is predictable unstable and full of contradicitons. If they get their collective heads out of their A@@ then they could have enough storage set up for the theoretical drowning coming this winter from El Nino. But instead, they will dither and just slide away in a sea of mud.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 9 years, 10 months ago
    The problem of letting the free market determine the price of scarce resources is that the scarceness of the resources in question was created by govern(mental) and environ(mental) stupidities and cronyism's. However a free market solution [if allowed] might end up creating value for everyone.
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  • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 9 years, 10 months ago
    So, California has had money for recent grandiose plans for high speed rail, infrastructure, and free healthcare and education for more illegal immigrants as well as having a large number of global warming alarmists warning of rising sea levels, but they can't drain some from the ocean and desalinate?!?!? Nuts!
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    • Posted by $ 9 years, 10 months ago
      Now that is an excellent point. And very true, but it is illustrative of the whole system failure we are watching. Politicians program the masses to believe that X is a problem, and "Oh my gosh!". Then they manipulate it for money and power. Never does solving the problem come into, their self interest is to keep the problem, and let it perpetuate. Voters take 20 years or so to burn out on a special interest, and some have never died off.
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      • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 9 years, 10 months ago
        Yes. I find many politicians and bureaucrats create problems, yet never take responsibility, then capitalize on them. Job security...
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        • Posted by $ 9 years, 10 months ago
          Exactly. I pointed that out somewhere else in here. They have a vested interest in making problems and ensuring they do not get solved, which is the heart of that cesspool called "DC". The more problems, the more agitated and fearful people get the more they contribute to "fix" it. I bet there is some math and a PHd buried in this idea. If you could gather dta a showing the level of problems and donations I bet they correlate.
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          • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 9 years, 10 months ago
            They might as well work for the road commission here in Mi. They have to rebuild and re-pave every few years because if they fix or build the roads properly and to last, they would be out of those over-bloated contracts paid for and courtesy of the taxpayer... I swear they only fill the potholes on the odd years to avoid giving too much money back to taxpayers with damaged vehicles.
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          • Posted by $ 9 years, 10 months ago
            In point of fact, it goes to the local level. My county had a business blow up here that laid off 500 people, and they all screamed and moaned. A company wants to buy 255 acres, build a plant here and employ 500 people. The county refused them saying "it doesn't fit in with the county's character". yet they had to ram a special levy down our throats with fear mongering about how the criminal will all kill us because they have no sheriffs left because they have no money. And this is a 5 member Republicrat commission. Stupidity and special interests will trump common sense every time.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 10 months ago
    Given all our technology, there must be a way to get water to these people who want it and are willing to pay for it.
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    • Posted by $ 9 years, 10 months ago
      Problem is, they expect the govt to deliver it and solve the problem and bill them. Wasting their valuable time on such miniscule issue interferes with important things. They just say "fix it" and then donate to whoever will say they will.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 10 months ago
    I've been to Rancho Santa Fe. It should be called Rancho Santa Claus. Unfortunately, in this case, the bastard is right. If water was managed by a private firm, it would raise the price in order to ration it in that manner. However, if it were a private concern, I doubt if the drought would be affecting residents or farmers. There are many ways to conserve water in anticipation of a drought, but it would require foresight, investment, and incentive, none of which the state has.
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  • Posted by $ winterwind 9 years, 10 months ago
    This cracked me up: [re CA]
    “It’s slowly becoming the land of one group telling everybody else how they think everybody should live their lives.”
    someone hasn't been paying attention, has he?
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  • Posted by walkabout 9 years, 10 months ago
    Parts of the Central Valley are at or near sea level and less than 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean. Start near Sacramento and tunnel at a depth of 50 feet below sea level to the Ocean. Meanwhile purchase land and have it excavated down to the -50' level in an area to be determined (a couple of miles wide, 30 to 50 miles long for e.g.). At the end of a year you have a Great Inland Sea from which vast quantities of water evaporate, move to the Rocky Mountains, condense and precipitate out. Restoring the rivers and waterways "changed" in the 20th Century. The tunnel could continue South under higher areas which could be lined with industrial windmills to lift the water to a second basin. It could then continue to Death Valley to irrigate the farmlands (after that evaporation, condensation, precipitation cycle). As a side benefit mineralogical industry could thrive, salt could be farmed, aquaculture could thrive and recreation could be created. All for a reasonable sum of taxpayer money.
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 10 months ago
      Now there is an argument for global warming! Oregon gets too much rain so it evaporates follows the wind patterns east and refills the Ogalla aquifer while producing acid rain for the supporters of Al Bores bituminous coal investments.
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      • Posted by walkabout 9 years, 10 months ago
        I'm all for Global Warming. It is when we have global cooling that humans don't do so well. History shows (as does pre-history) we, as a species do well when things warm up.
        As to water, it is not a supply problem, but a distribution problem. So we need some pipelines and canals and tunnels.
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        • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 10 months ago
          Trouble is and it is real trouble you can't take water from a wetlands area it's against the law. I can just see those California tunnels being finished then padlocked by judicial order.

          The next move will be forced resettlement to protect the wild and scenic desert lands and some endangered species or another.

          The whole thing will have to be rebuilt of course so it looks prehistorically natural.

          That should take care of Southern California.
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