Where does this all end up.

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botnb said:
Too bad we don't hear from any people WITH brains on this subject. All we seem to hear is the drones voices and we all know what their opinions are worth --- NOTHING !!!!
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Sorry we can't be as smart as you Botnb. And why do you think your opinion is any greater than anyone else's? Geez. SMH Have yourself a blessed, smarter than everyone else day. HAHA
 
airford1 said:
BTW they just passed a bill in CA that you can only use 55 gallons of water a day. This means you get a shower or do laundry - can't do both, forget watering your lawn.

I missed that one and would like to know the bill #
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Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 606 and Assembly Bill 1668 into law, both of which set new standards for “water management planning.” The restrictions will fully take effect by 2022, limiting residents to 55 gallons of water per person, per day. That number will decrease to 50 gallons per person, per day, by 2030.

I missed this one, must of been when I had turned off the Senators feeds. Well being in California they have to do something. I dont know why they are waiting until 2025
 
Waterbaby said:
Californian's voted for this. They have to live with it. Now they want rid of all fossil fuels including cars and boats unless electric... again you get who and what you vote for.. now they want to come over here and to the same to Az with Prop 127 which is leaving a flyer in my mailbox on a daily basis. I left California because of the insanity - they need to keep it over there and not import into Arizona. I choose to have solar power as a personal choice - I also choose to drive a gas-guzzling truck. BTW they just passed a bill in CA that you can only use 55 gallons of water a day. This means you get a shower or do laundry - can't do both, forget watering your lawn.
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I just replaced my front Lawn with Artificial Turf and now that I'm getting Older I can forget to take a shower and were the same clothes for days. I got this covered.
 
The use of logic and pragmatism by government officials is apparently a thing of the past. The average politician at the state and federal level is more concerned with getting reelected and is therefore keying on issues that evoke an emotional response to be used in next years campaign. At some point some hard decisions are going to have to be made(probably in California first i.e. austerity measures).
 
John P Funk said:
The use of logic and pragmatism by government officials is apparently a thing of the past. The average politician at the state and federal level is more concerned with getting reelected and is therefore keying on issues that evoke an emotional response to be used in next years campaign. At some point some hard decisions are going to have to be made(probably in California first i.e. austerity measures).
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California and Colorado are allowed equal amounts of the Colorado River. The problem in California is lack of storage to keep up with a growing population. Colorado has storage and a smaller population [for now]. The problem with the Colorado is a long-standing drought. There is all sorts of options, but people in each State stop the options, not that I blame them
 
LP1 said:
Most of the Colorado is used for ag and a big part of the Colorado water supply issue can be solved by reforming water right laws, which still are based on "use it or lose it." There is no incentive for most farmers along the Colorado to use less water, in fact, the opposite in generally true. I believe about half the Colorado is used for ag in the Imperial Valley. All the water is technically owned by the irrigation district, but periodically farmers can fallow their field and the water will be leased for a year or so to one of the metros. Farmers are paid for their water based upon their historical use, i.e., the farmers who use the most water make the most money under the lease program. This same formula will likely be used for any future water right acquisition, should it come to that. The numbers are very large and farmers are not dumb. For example, a relative of mine had 70 acres of marginal farmland they lease out for ag production at about $15,000 per year. For the years the land is fallowed and only the water is leased to San Diego or LA, they receive roughly $70,000 per year. If they cut their water use by 10%, they lose $7,000 the next time they lease the water, and thats just for 70 acres. This is solvable and significant water savings can be achieved just by bringing water right laws into the current century. I live in New Mexico, which has "use or lose it" water right laws. You are forced to irrigate your full acreage every year or lose your water rights. You cannot conserve water over the long term, even if you wanted to. Meanwhile the Rio Grande and all our reservoirs are nearly dry.
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The water used for Ag goes back into the groundwater. This is why they measure how much we use indoors vs outdoors here in AZ. Our water usage and the amount we will pay for 12 months is based on our winter usage when very little water is going into the soil to run up our daily/monthly usage here in AZ. They measure us from November to April. One thing it does is makes everyone very cognizant if they have any kind of leaks, since those leaks can drive up your bill for an entire year. They do it this way because indoor goes into the sewer system and is considered lost water, the water to irrigate our plants perculates back into the ground water.
 
Bill Sampson said:
In Southern California our rain measurement begins in June of every year. So far this year the weather people say we have had 1/4" of rain. I would like to know where that fell. Even last year we were in he 3 inch range, when normal is over 13 inches. Down here they keep building homes, apartments, an condominiums. I have no idea where the water will come from. The guy with the water rights will have a lot of clout here in the future.
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I've been watching closely and every storm this year has tracked west - almost as if we were still in a La Nina rather than Enso Neutral year. There seems to be a perpetual high pressure system lodged over us that pushes them west instead of NW... We desperately need our summer monsoons. not happening this year.
 
bw56 said:
I guess I don't see any leadership on this issue anywhere, least of all California. New dams in Northern California, underground storage, desal plants.
You cant just keep charging more and more.
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They do have groundwater storage. I don't know if it is still used for such, but for a long time they had a big storage between Needles and Barstow -

The following from California Water Blog:

Water storage capacity is an important tool in California’s water system for capturing lower-value water for higher-value uses later. Such storage aids water supply, flood protection, hydropower, and recreational uses and helps regulate downstream water quality and supply cold water flows for fish. California has about 42 million acre-feet(maf) of surface reservoir storage capacity and much more storage capacity in underground aquifers (150 million to 1.45 billion acre-feet, depending on how you count it).

  • Seasonal water storage: In normal years, about 8-14 million acre-ft of water is stored in the wet season and used in the dry season. This compares to roughly 34 maf/yr of average net agricultural and urban water use. Human water use is highest in California’s dry summer, so crops and landscapes must be watered from stored winter and spring flows. Roughly 5-8 maf is held in surface reservoirs and 3-6 maf is held in groundwater basins.

  • Drought water storage: Water also is stored from wet years for use in dry years. The amount stored varies with the drought’s intensity and length. Stored surface water is mostly used in the initial drought years, while stored groundwater plays a larger role in prolonged droughts. I’m unaware of anyone with data on statewide drought storage use, but from our modeling results, about 35-43 maf is ideally carried over from wet to dry years for droughts lasting 3-6 years. Of this total, some 15-18 maf is held in surface reservoirs and 20-25 maf in aquifers.
 
As a matter of fact, thanks to this administration - California is going to finally receive new water storage they've been wanting since 1979 - and where it is needed the most for California, but also the rest of us since the bread basket of the country is in the California Central Valley.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article218276215.html
More critical water storage is finally coming to California. It took nearly 40 years.
BY KATE IRBY
[email protected]

September 13, 2018 02:04 PM
Updated September 13, 2018 02:13 PM
WASHINGTON

California officials have been pushing for more natural water storage since the last large-scale facility was built in 1979. Now they’re finally going to get it, thanks to political pressure, President Donald Trump and some congressional creativity.

The House approved several provisions Thursday that help fund water storage projects. The Senate is expected to concur shortly, and Trump is expected to sign the legislation into law next week.

Republican Rep. Jeff Denham and Democrat Rep. Jim Costa have been pushing for additional water storage for the state for years in constantly-at-risk-of-drought California. Since 1979, California’s population has grown 70 percent.

Trump has been pushing infrastructure project funding since he came into office and spoken publicly in support of more water for the Central Valley — though some of his statements have showed a misunderstanding of the issue, such as when a Tweet suggested lack of water was to blame for wildfires in California.

Be the first to know.

This is also the year Republicans are most worried about defending Denham’s seat. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won his district by three points in 2016 and the GOP frets about a blue wave taking the House in 2018.

But water — and getting more of it — is the most important issue in the district. If Denham can get some concrete wins on the water issue before November, he has a much better chance of keeping his seat.

“All Valley incumbents are at least somewhat at-risk right now,” said Carl Fogliani, a political strategist who once worked for San Joaquin Valley Republicans. “They’re showing that they’re doing their job, and water is absolutely the way to do that in these districts.”
“This has been on our agenda for ages, before I even started here in 1991,” said Bruce Blodgett, executive director of the San Joaquin Farm Bureau, which has endorsed Denham. “It’s even more important now because the changing weather patterns have been more severe in recent years.”
Denham denied politics has anything to do with the water storage action, lamenting in an interview with McClatchy that “politics is the excuse for everything I do every other year.

“This is Congress, I think most people would say getting this done in eight years is expedited,” Denham said.
He and Costa instead credit some common sense thinking on the issue, creating a new way of funding water storage instead of relying on the same federal process.

Sal Russo, a Republican political strategist based in Sacramento, said Trump probably deserved more credit than the political atmosphere.
“That probably moved it way up on the priority list — what the president wants always matters,” Russo said. “There’s politics in everything, but it’s more than that, too.”

Denham’s proposal allows local irrigation districts to apply for low-interest federal loans from the Environmental Protection Agency to build new reservoirs, below ground storage projects, recycling and desalination projects. Those are desperately needed in parts of California to capture rains and runoff from the mountains so water can be stored and used in drier seasons and in years of drought.
Theoretically, the irrigation districts could eventually easily repay low-interest loans through control of the new water sources, and having a larger supply of water would drive down demand and cost of fresh water throughout the state. Several water storage projects in the state have already been authorized by legislation and are awaiting funding.

Costa’s proposal would allow dams and other water facilities regulated by the Army Corps of Engineers but owned by local entities to use non-federal funds.

Currently, if reports indicate more water will flow to an area in a certain season, local entities that own dams cannot provide money to the Army Corps to prepare more storage, for example. Those have to be federal funds, even though the dams are not federally owned. And water storage tends to fall low on a long list of federal priorities.

Play Video

Duration 1:41
California’s rise from the drought as told through satellite images

Not so long ago, California was in the middle of a deep drought but in June its snow water equivalent rose to a heaping 170 percent of normal. NASA shows in its latest video that satellites were capturing that change.
By McClatchy


Interested parties in the San Joaquin Valley and in Washington, D.C. aren’t so concerned with assigning praise to politics or the president, saying they’re just glad it’s finally happening.

“Some people may think (Denham) is pandering to the district, but he’s been consistent as long as I’ve known him,” said Tom Orvis, governmental affairs Director for the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau, one of the largest in California.

“If you want to be a cynic and believe it was all politics, you can do that,” Costa said. “But I don’t think that’s accurate.”
“Timing sometimes has to do with politics, but this is good policy and we’re proud of it,” he added.
Kate Irby: 202-383-6071; @KateIrby
IMG_perdue_denham_costa_2_1_FAE6VV7R_L408115680

Sonny Perdue, US Ag Secretary, center, with Reps. Jeff Denham, left, and Jim Costa, answers a question during a press conferences after Perdue’s town hall meeting at the World Ag Expo. JOHN WALKER [email protected]
 
The central Valley ground water table has drop more than 5 feet. meaning the GROUND has collapsed from pumping the water out and I dont think you can just pump the water back in and it fills up like a waterbed. I ask where will they store this water and where are they going to get this water. Hope for Snow and Rain? Once again without the run off to the Ocean what other problems will we create? The existing river beds could become permeant Camps for the Homeless. Just might be a win win
 
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airford1 said:
The central Valley ground water table has drop more than 5 feet. meaning the GROUND has collapsed from pumping the water out and I dont think you can just pump the water back in and it fills up like a waterbed. I ask where will they store this water and where are they going to get this water. Hope for Snow and Rain? Once again without the run off to the Ocean what other problems will we create? The existing river beds could not become permeant Camps for the Homeless. Just might be a win win
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Likely store it in the Sierra's which run parallel to the Central Valley, increase the storage on existing dams - like they've done here in AZ with Roosevelt Dam, for instance. Not sure what you mean by "without the run off to the ocean"..... plenty of water runs into the oceans and always will.
 
"without the run off to the ocean"..... plenty of water runs into the oceans and always will. Whole new debate, Water is not an Infinite resource. Then again I'm not the smart one.
 
airford1 said:
"without the run off to the ocean"..... plenty of water runs into the oceans and always will. Whole new debate, Water is not an Infinite resource. Then again I'm not the smart one.
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Tell that to the people in North Carolina right now or Houston last year. Neither suffered from the hurricane, they are and did suffer because they became tropical storms and sloooooooooowwwwwwww moving dumping tons of water. We've had the same here, just been a while.

In fact do you know what led to building Parker Dam on Havasu?

Have you ever watched in rainy season as water rushes in the basins of the Los Angeles and Santa Ana Rivers into the sea?

Do you realize when there is drought in one part of the world it is likely the opposite in other parts? Or that at one time the entire planet was one sheet of ice?

We need water storage to handle a growing population - perhaps you missed the part where California has increased 70% since the last water storage was constructed? Even the Great Lakes rise and fall. The upper mid-west regularly floods when the snow melts, I've lost track of the floods on the Mississippi river [if only we could pipe it west]. The least of our ocean issues is us keeping some water for irrigation for food. And, speaking of the oceans - desalination which people keep referring to had an issue where to put the residue [ie the salt], but Saudi Arabia thinks they may have solved this problem [ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/desalination-breakthrough-saving-the-sea-from-salt/ ]

A few rain events like we had in 82/83 will refill Lake Powell and Mead, and then drought will return and they will draw down again. It's nature, ebbs and flows..... in the meantime we have growing population and a growing population needs water - and food, and they grow [or grew] a lot of our food in the Central and Imperial Valley's of California.]
 
I guess I had it all wrong. I am aware that the Colorado river system water is used by Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and California. California has grown from 20 million in 1970 to 40 million today and the other states have more than doubled in the same time. The Agriculture in the region has exploded too.Yes I have seen the LA river and Rio Hondo river flowing near the top, but only TWICE in my 65 years, but I do know there was a 3rd time in the 60's. The Voter in California just passed a bond measure to "INSURE THE FURTURE WATER" for California, but they didn't state HOW they were going to INSURE the water supply. I guess they are going to fast track the building of the Dams to solve the problem. Ya we got plenty of water to support the region, my Bad.
 
SEALEGS said:
Well said WB. This is why the left is so hell bent on revising or compeletly removing history from our education system. If history was a priority in our schools we would not be talking about this right now.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ex...100-reasons-why-climate-change-is-natural/amp
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But what I'm stating is the Farming and population growth has over ran the water supply. The region needs the water NOW and will not be able to wait for RAIN or New construction of the systems to deliver the water.
 
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