California has become a third-world country…
…according to Victor Davis Hanson:
By many criteria, 21st-century California is both the poorest and the richest state in the union…
…[B]y some indicators, the California middle class is shrinking — because of massive regulation, high taxation, green zoning, and accompanying high housing prices. Out-migration from the state remains largely a phenomenon of the middle and upper-middle classes. Millions have left California in the past 30 years, replaced by indigent and often illegal immigrants, often along with the young, affluent, and single.
If someone predicted half a century ago that a Los Angeles police station or indeed L.A. City Hall would be in danger of periodic, flea-borne infectious typhus outbreaks he would have been considered unhinged…Yet typhus, along with outbreaks of infectious hepatitis A, are in the news on California streets. The sidewalks of the state’s major cities are homes to piles of used needles, feces, and refuse…
California’s transportation system, to be honest, remains in near ruins…
California’s cycles of wet boom years and dry bust years continue because the state refuses to build three or four additional large reservoirs that have been planned for more than a half-century, and that would store enough water to keep California functional through even the worst drought. The rationale is either that it is more sophisticated to allow millions of acre-feet of melted snow to run into the sea, or it is better to have a high-speed-rail line from Merced to Bakersfield than an additional 10 million acre-feet of water storage, or droughts ensure more state control through rationing and green social-policy remedies.
Much more at the link.
However, on the issue of building more reservoirs, there’s this, which contends that the picture is far more complex than ordinarily painted (and more complex than what VDH has written in that article). It seems like a no-brainer to build them, doesn’t it? But maybe not.
However, now I’m getting into one of my many fields of non-expertise. But I’ll give it a try. VDH speaks of building reservoirs, and the link in the paragraph above talks about building dams, but I am under the impression that the two are ordinarily linked and that the dam is constructed to form and control the reservoir which is the result of the dam (I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong on this).
At any rate, here’s an excerpt:
Think California should build a lot more dams to catch these deluges? Forget it.
Yes, the next severe drought is inevitable. And after California dries out and becomes parched again, we’ll wish we’d saved more of the current torrents. Instead, the precious water is washing out to sea.
There’s one dam being planned north of Sacramento in Colusa County that makes sense: Sites. There are also some dam expansion projects that could work.
But California is already dammed to the brim. Every river worth damming has been. And some that weren’t worth it were dammed anyway….
In total, California dams can store 43 million acre-feet. We’re nearing the practical limit for what water geeks call “surface storage.”
We’ve about used all the good dam sites.
And dams have become almost unaffordable, like a lot of other things in California. People may like the idea of a brand new reservoir — until they realize who’s going to pay for most of it. They are, through higher water bills…
“Right now everybody thinks all this water is rolling out to San Francisco Bay and there are missed opportunities,” Mount says. “That’s the traditional ‘wasting into the ocean’ argument. But then ask yourself, how much of the time does that happen in California?…
“If you use these reservoirs only about every 10 years, if they don’t fill often enough, then they’re not paying for themselves.”
Water sales are how the dams mostly get paid for.
Dams also get silted up, and that reduces their capacity. De-silting them is a big project that costs a lot of money, too.
The article ends abruptly with this sentence: “the future for California water storage is underground.” What does that involve? And how much does that cost? Probably plenty, as well.
I tend to think any solutions to the California water problem aren’t so very simple. California is a place that supports a much larger population than can be easily sustained, and providing water has always been one of the biggest issues. It will almost certainly remain so.
But as VDH describes, California has many many more problems than that, and some of them are indeed of California residents’ and government’s own creation. The waste of money and effort involved in the high-speed rail fiasco is an excellent example.
The people leaving California is a decidedly bad thing as many of these fools just go to other states and start voting the same types into office.
In my state of Washington we went from a blue leaning state to one of the most deeply blue states in large part because of the first wave of Californians moving here in the 1990s.
And beyond policy they have killed so much local history which they know nothing of and are often hostile to.
It has been a trend for a while in California to actually remove dams. For environmental reasons that may or may not be sound. Nobody seems to make the connection to the water problem. Googling to find an example, the first thing that comes up is this chart; it makes the point: https://water.ca.gov/LegacyFiles/fishpassage/docs/dams/dam_removal_5_09.pdf
The environmental lobby is very strong in California, politically, and very weak when it comes to caring about or understanding science. That leads to some very bad decisions.
Reading VDH’s writings over the years, about what he has to put up with—living in a visibly deteriorating California as the fifth generation of his family to work and live on the family farm—is both infuriating and heartbreaking, and I really feel for the guy.
As for me if, as VDH describes, I had to live with illegal alien neighbors all around me—far too many people crammed into their small, run down houses, with trash and junk cars littering their front yards—with thieves routinely coming on to my property to vandalize and steal things, with the prospect, every year or so, of some drunk uninsured driver without a license leaving the road and plowing into my vineyards, then abandoning their jalopy and running away, with people dumping their abandoned vehicles and large bags of garbage and used diapers on my property on practically a daily basis, with having to deal with the myriad of rules, regulations, and the officials of an administrative state gone wild, with having to fight to get enough irrigation water for my crops when the state is restricting the water supply, supposedly to save some obscure minnow, with copper thieves stealing everything in sight—including the light fixtures, and the copper covers the utility company had put in the roadways to cover their water and gas lines, in the local town—plus having to travel on long un-repaired roads that are visibly deteriorating by the day, I think I’d just get so disgusted with it all I’d sell my place, and move somewhere much more congenial.
But there he stays; obviously he’s stubborn, and he won’t be forced from his family farm.
No, but your clue in it all has to do with math, and the census, and what the influx means..
ok… the ‘theory’ currant, is that these people will turn elections because they will illegally vote… Its 90% wrong. the number of illegals are not enough (yet) to overturn elections in any meaningful way directly voting…
the key word in that sentence? directly
anyone whose light came on want to point out what this game does?
if the light isn’t on yet, maybe reading this helps:
in Hadley v. Junior College District held that, whenever a state chooses to vest “governmental functions” in a body and to elect the members of that body from districts, the districts must have substantially equal populations.
Now play general population equality against vote-able populations and you can do what?
Well, which is it?
“the state refuses to build three or four additional large reservoirs that have been planned for more than a half-century,”
Or,
“California is already dammed to the brim. Every river worth damming has been.”
Guys like Yvon Chouinard has ranted for decades, not just about not building dams, but also about removing the existing ones. I’m sure he has lots of reasons, other than the fact that he and his pals like to kayak in the whitewater. Our reservoir and dam was removed recently, and they’ve talked about desalinization plants for about 20 years. Of course, no cares about burning fossil fuels (and huge amounts of money) to power the desal plant.
I’ve heard the complaint that reservoirs just silt up, so why build them? Well, one could maintain the surrounding vegetation to reduce silt runoff, and then dredge and de-silt as necessary. De-silting is so expensive they claim. I’ve never seen it costed out, and I don’t care if they kill a few wood rats in the process. How does it compare to desal?
Dams are built across rivers, and are often used as reservoirs (storage). Sometimes just for flood control.
Reservoirs can be built anywhere, and are just an area for storage.
An example of increasing the reservoir capacity in Ca, would be increasing the height of the Shasta Dam.
A bond issue was passed that was supposed to increase water storage, but that has not happened yet.
LA DWP I believe is increasing their underground storage.
The ultimate future of water in California is desalinization plants up and down the coast powered by type IV nukeplants.
I was all prepared for my city audit today, but she didn’t show. “Oh, I guess I made a mistake with my calendar.” No apology, the new date is Monday. A lot of our work has been in Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, so I guess Los Angeles is looking for more. I have a picture window view of the results of the mismanagement and incompetence that has so affected the San Fernando Valley. The influx of foreigners that are on the taxpayer dime and have brought over their filthy habits is hard to take. Sorry to be so uncharitable, but the facts are ugly.
California is a beautiful state, with a wide range of habitats. But much of Southern California is a desert without stealing water from the Colorado River. My give a damn for CA evaporated many moons ago. When CA, CN, IL, and NJ go belly up, they need to revert to territory status. This will happen, sooner or later.
Desalination of ocean waters may be the perfect application of wind and photovoltaic technology, where mission critical availability is not a requirement.
Less efficient but less bird-killing wind turbines for desalination should be used in CA. Also more dams and more water storage.
“Once every 10 years” — doesn’t pay for itself? How expensive was the huge fire last year? Most insurance for most people doesn’t pay for itself, but it still remains a pretty good deal to be protected from the unusual bad events.
I don’t believe in global warming — but I do believe in climate change. More wet wet seasons & floods, more dry dry seasons and droughts. Preparing for them with engineering of water control is what the US should be doing, and leading the world on doing.
Care, and spend, on water control, not carbon control. But that should also mean putting flood control in the farm states as a higher priority than environmental non-change issues.
The LA Times is an unreliable source for almost any topic. The Oroville dam was not maintained and I wonder how it will deal with the runoff the next month or two?
Israel knows more about desalination plants but the CA Governor was not interested and I doubt the new one is.
I left the state after 60 years. My wife is third generation.
My water rights class in college (in California) many years ago taught that the water of the Colorado River was allocated at 110% (if memory serves) of the most recent flood year’s output. So Mexico, which had a claim on the water too because the Colorado flows into Mexico, virtually never gets any water once all the upstream claimants have taken their volumes – the river is reduced to either nothing or a literal trickle before it hits the border. (Do the satellite layer on Google Earth and you can see where a river BED exists; flowing water is probably in existence only during flash floods, I’m guessing.) Western water rights law is something else.
That only works if you can keep the eff-ups out of your new environs.
But they will follow eventually. They must. They need what you have. Which is you.
If you leave all behind, they will – eventually – follow you to get more; once the squalor they have made of what you have left behind is rendered wrecked enough, barren enough, and morally lunatic enough to make life of any kind virtually impossible.
Then they trudge off in pursuit in order to sleep on your doorstep, shit in your swimming pool, and molest your children. You can see the lunacy in their eyes. Something is seriously off. Just look at Occasio Cortez for whatever proof you need of it.
Why do you think unconditional “inclusion” and acceptance are the primary values of the leftist?
It’s because they that know that whether poor or rich, or somewhere in between, the real problem of their life-world lies within themselves: in their inherent psychological and moral disorders and deficits, which money does only so much, and often enough nothing, to alleviate.
The richer of the kind differentiate themselves from the less affluent of the same, primarily by ultimately self-destructing under more luxurious conditions and by leaving behind a more diffusely spreading kind of harm.
They depart for Hell from more comfortable digs, is about what it amounts to.
Think of all the famous and wealthy liberals and how they actually act in relation to others. Think of all those of the kind who have basically killed themselves either intentionally or through nihilistic recklessness; or, driven their family members to suicide or an early grave. Kennedy family, anyone? Can you live optimally and long term with such people, even if there is a strip of lawn between you?
There is no way for them to escape the morally debilitating burdens which they themselves generate. The problem is in them. They, are baked into their cake. They can only seek to offload the problems which they themselves generate onto others.
They call this sensibility and process “altrusim”.
In its contemporary use, the term “liberal” is nothing more than a word for that kind of person.
California is a beautiful state, with a wide range of habitats. But much of Southern California is a desert without stealing water from the Colorado River. My give a damn for CA evaporated many moons ago. When CA, CN, IL, and NJ go belly up, they need to revert to territory status. This will happen, sooner or later.
We might benefit from a constitutional amendment which annuls extant water rights in the western United States (and provides for an indemnity for current holders of water rights). In lieu of that, the federal government sets a seasonal water budget and then has periodic multiple price auctions for tranches, also supervising a secondary market in water tranches.
If states would regulate employee compensation at local water authorities (say, prohibiting mean compensation per worker of a local authority from exceeding 1.9x mean compensation per worker within a given commuter belt and prohibiting any one employee from receiving a compensation package more than 3.6x mean compensation per worker in a given commuter belt absent a public hearing and an explicit vote of the board), require that local water authorities let out contracts through competitive bidding, require that recruitment and promotion at local water authorities be via competitive examination, and require that retained income in excess of a certain share of local personal income be rebated to customers at the end of a fiscal year (one share to a customer), one might be able to remove price regulations on water. The local local water board could then raise prices in response to auction values on (say) 30 days notice. Droughts would be manifest in increased water prices to which producers and consumers would adjust by reducing consumption.
As Ray mentioned, reservoirs can be built anywhere. It’s easier to build dams and impound water where it already flows, but the Toyon Tanks, which replace the Hollywood reservoirs in Los Angeles, are a pair of 60 million gallon tanks. A new reservoir near Griffith Park is almost complete. It’s possible, though not cheap, to build larger reservoirs, though a large cluster of smaller reservoirs is probably better since regulations are increasingly harder to comply with unless the reservoir is covered to prevent contamination from the environment. This is a good reason for building new storage facilities underground.
There are efforts underway to replenish the water table, especially in wet years.
Where Does the Water Here Come From?
I’ve been in Palm Springs two hours and already I know where to sing karaoke as near as I can tell it’s all one big shopping mall set at the foot of mountains so ruggedly immediate it looks like Beverly Hills transported to the moon complete with golf courses and swimming pools as I drive through the absurd intersection of Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra boulevards and wonder where does the water here come from it’s a desert and the Starbuck’s on Indian Canyon Avenue has sprinklers in the awnings that lightly mist the clientele sipping espressos caffe lattes and the new iced frappuccinos in the dry dry desert air so I have to ask while registering at the Vacation Inn where does the water here come from and the receptionist stares blankly at my question but the Hispanic bellboy knows and tells me the Colorado River
According to the most recent statistics I have been able to find, in 2018 Travel & Tourism contributed an estimated $1.57 trillion dollars towards the U.S. GDP of $19 Trillion plus dollars.
More specifically, in 2016 L.A. had 47.3 million visitors, who spent $21.9 billion dollars there.
What kind of impact do we think that the increasingly deteriorating conditions on the streets of the major cities on the West Coast—LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland—will have on how many tourists want to travel to those cities, and how much tourist money is spent in those areas?
From the article:”And dams have become almost unaffordable, like a lot of other things in California. ”
This is rich and is the same argument that enviros use against nuclear power. The reason behind the cost is that enviros sue multiple times and compliant Leftist judges and government bureaucrats grant them injunctions, delays, and expensive design requirements.
Same with nukes. A little known factoids is that Harry Reid was so desperate to block the Yucca Flats waste storage site that he was blocking legislation that W wanted. W capitulated and appointed an anti-nuke activist to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Obama then raised that by appointing the activist to head the NRC. The NRC is the single biggest impediment to nuclear power adoption in the US.
Humanity has been in a stage of spiritual decay in this Iron Age for awhile now: Far worse than “3rd world countries”.
This is rich and is the same argument that enviros use against nuclear power. The reason behind the cost is that enviros sue multiple times and compliant Leftist judges and government bureaucrats grant them injunctions, delays, and expensive design requirements.
Lawfare rules supreme in the USA. Not the “rule of law”, a myth and legend. Not the peons and slave livestock that call themselves taxpaying citizens.
The lawyers win if the lawsuit fails and the lawyers win if the lawsuit wins, because judges are lawyers too.
Think of all the famous and wealthy liberals and how they actually act in relation to others
I think about all the people here who are better than average yet react about the same when triggered by their sacred cows being cooked. How they actually act in relation to others and how they think/say they act in relation to others, there is a gap.
Humans aren’t all that different, even if their tribes say every other tribe is the problem.