It’s been raining in California this winter. A lot.

An estimated 32 trillion gallons of rainwater have fallen on the state so far.^[i]

It’s enough to supply the state’s agricultural, industrial and residential water needs for at least 10 years.^[ii]

Having lived in California for 70 years – and having witnessed the rain in both the coastal areas and in the mountains – one thing I’ve learned is that California has massive rainstorms one year, followed by drought for one or more years.

Massive rains and then drought. Massive rains and then drought.

It’s a cycle. Sometimes the massive rains are huge, causing flooding, mudslides and destruction.

For example, in 1862, California had more rainfall than this year, which created a massive inland sea in the state’s central valley.

It was called the Great Flood of 1862.

In spite of the huge amount of rain in California this year, the drought that has plagued the state for the past three years still isn’t over.

That’s because the water is being wasted.

Instead of being pumped into existing reservoirs – or stored in newly-built local reservoirs – roughly 95% of the rainwater is washing out into the Pacific Ocean through storm drains.

Meanwhile, it’s illegal for a California restaurant to serve drinking water unless customers ask for it. And state-sponsored billboards urge residents to capture water from their showers in buckets to water their gardens.

Because of gross mismanagement of the water supplied by rainfall in California, many local jurisdictions have placed restrictions on the amount of water residents are allowed to use for watering lawns and gardens, washing cars, filling swimming pools, and other recreational activities.

In addition, because of water shortages manufactured by government mismanagement, the costs that businesses and residents have to pay for water are among the highest in the nation.

When reporters asked California’s state climatologist, Michael Anderson, if the rain this season had ended the drought, he answered, “In short, no.”^[iii]

This is in spite of these facts:

• Total rainfall in the San Francisco Bay area is six times normal for this time of year
• Snowpack in the Sierra mountains is 200 percent of normal

So why isn’t the drought over?

One word: POLITICS.

The problem has always been the politicians, the bureaucrats and the radical environmentalists.

California has massive reservoirs that could supply the state’s water needs during drought years, but state water management “experts” won’t allow them to fill up with rainwater in January due to worries about possible flooding in downstream communities if spring storm runoff combines with runoff from melting mountain snowpack.

While downstream flooding is a valid concern, there are known solutions, such as constructing new dams upstream from existing flood control dams.

The lower dam would remain a half-filled flood-control dam as it always has been, while the upper dam would be allowed to fill.

Another solution is to build off-stream reservoirs in arid valleys that have little runoff and no major rivers, and to pump water into them from California’s rivers and aqueducts during storms.

Specific proposals have been made to create new reservoirs to implement both of these solutions, but they have been delayed, postponed, or canceled due to:

• Environmentalist-inspired regulations preventing the withdrawal of water from rivers to protect fish and the ecosystem
• Endless environmentalist litigation to prevent construction of new dams
• Legislative indecision
• Government bureaucracies hostile to any new water collection systems
• Powerful business and financial interests that profit from water shortages

In just the first two weeks of January this year, more than 3 million acre-feet of fresh water has passed through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and has flowed into the San Francisco Bay.^[iv]

Of that, only 260,000 acre-feet has been diverted by state and federal pumps into the aqueducts that deliver water to reservoirs in central and southern California.^[v]

This amount of water diversion is far short of the capacity of even the outdated pumps which haven’t been upgraded in over 50 years!

To add insult to injury, California has one of the highest per capita tax rates in the nation, yet it refuses to use taxpayer dollars to build the water storage capacity and the desalination plants necessary to supply the water needs of the farmers, businesses and residents in the state.

In addition, Bond after Bond after Bond multimillion-dollar ballot measures have been passed by California voters to solve the state’s water crisis, yet nothing has been produced, and the crisis worsens every year.

It’s not that the state doesn’t have the money.

It’s that the unelected bureaucrats on the California Coastal Commission and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife – and the radical environmentalist activists – value animals and fish more than people.

As an example, last May, the 12-member California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to deny approval of a major new desalination plant in Southern California that would have provided 56,000 acre-feet of fresh water per year.^[vi]

In the voluminous report denying the project was this statement: “The Regional Water Quality Control Board determined that Poseidon’s ongoing impacts to marine life would be equal to a loss of productivity from 423 acres of nearshore and estuarine waters.”

“This is more than an ideology,” says Edward Ring, author of ‘California’s Mega Water Wasters.’ “It is the official state religion of California. It requires its practitioners to worship the earth and the animals and place these creatures above themselves. It is the animist antithesis of Christianity, which enjoins humanity to worship God and to steward the earth.”^[vii]

Ring continues, “Water for salmon, salmon for bass, trophy bass for anglers, a dustbowl for farmers, rationing for residents… This is life in California under its chic green alternative religion. Animals are sacred, while humans are toxic and must be restricted and rationed.”

He believes that reforming the bureaucracies that are imposing water scarcity on millions of Californians will require more than just replacing the directors of the water management agencies.

Ring says that nearly every bureaucrat staffing those regulatory agencies “is a product of a deep green, faith-based educational system that preached animism.”

He concludes by saying that until millions of Californians stand up to the thousands of activist bureaucrats who exert power over their water and energy – and demand balanced policies for both – nothing will change.

What do you think? Email me at [email protected]

 

[i] https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/01/20/strongly-worded-letters-fly-as-95-of-rainwater-washes-to-ocean-in-california/

[ii] Ibid

[iii] https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/17/californias-mega-water-wasters/

[iv] Ibid

[v] Ibid

[vi] Ibid

[vii] Ibid