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Energy is a non-factor. California receives on average, over 70% of all possible sunshine. California is one of the prime locations for solar power in the Northern Hemisphere. But...but...but.... why aren't they utilizing it?
Expense?
Ha! The Federal government is monetarily sovereign. It issues every dollar it could ever need. If the oil lobbyists would get out of the way, Congress could fund infrastructure projects such as desalination. Instead, they issue subsidies to oil companies. Thank your corporate overlords. They are hard at work flushing your future down the drain.
It will snow again, a wise investment would be dams to catch said snow melt. I don't know why you are acting like it is never going to snow again.
It doesn't matter who signed the bills that are not being used to their original intent at this point. The dems in Sacramento are all willing to give a pass on various regulations to speed up other pet projects, why not this? I am sure in the hundreds of thousands of square miles that compromise this state we can find 50-100 areas to support more water storage.
How about piping the water in from wet areas? Sure makes more sense than building a train no one is going to take or giving free health care to illegals.
The point you don't get is that when you build more dams, it's not going to make it snow more. We had plenty of dams to capture the snowpack. There's a dam on every major river. But we don't have the snow. Therefore, the dams get depleted. If you had more dams right now, you'd have the same snowpack or lack thereof spread across more capacity. We have a supply and utilization problem, not a capacity problem.
There is a drought. There is no water to dam.
Liberals are against water conservation?
You do realize, don't you, that damming rivers allows a "resevoir" (that is why they call it that) of water for future use, rather than letting excess water empty into the ocean.
I don't see where the government telling you how much water you can use when you shower or wash your clothes will endear itself with the people. The people will want the government to fix the problem and the government won't have any ideas or ways to do it. So the government in California is looking to lose big over this.
But here's an idea. Has anybody tried PRAYING FOR RAIN?
The point you don't get is that when you build more dams, it's not going to make it snow more. We had plenty of dams to capture the snowpack. There's a dam on every major river. But we don't have the snow. Therefore, the dams get depleted. If you had more dams right now, you'd have the same snowpack or lack thereof spread across more capacity. We have a supply and utilization problem, not a capacity problem.
If we had more dams we would have more water in storage.
Since we have no control over the supply, it is best to mitigate the ups and downs with a large buffer. This is how every other fluctuating resource is delt with. Why do you think water is different?
I don't see where the government telling you how much water you can use when you shower or wash your clothes will endear itself with the people. The people will want the government to fix the problem and the government won't have any ideas or ways to do it. So the government in California is looking to lose big over this.
But here's an idea. Has anybody tried PRAYING FOR RAIN?
So you state you are not willing to curtail your use of the almighty water grail..which has been a growing problem for decades..and the present Govt. is attempting to deal with it..NOW you deem them @ fault for Draught..and yet hear NO answers to the problem nor how you individually would curtail wasteful water usage...
Me thinks the monitoring of water usage would be a God Send..IF for no other reason than proving you don't waste H2O...But use it only when necessary...Pray for Rain?? Maybe hiring some Native "Rain Dancers" may help LOL
If we had more dams we would have more water in storage.
Since we have no control over the supply, it is best to mitigate the ups and downs with a large buffer. This is how every other fluctuating resource is delt with. Why do you think water is different?
Like I say, and like many geologists and water energy experts quote in the media regularly if you read it, we are at the point of diminishing returns from increased capacity. The good sites are picked and built.
You're not gonna work your way out of this with some mega pipeline or dam projects. The primary viable strategy is a thorough re-architecture of society to make conservation and efficiency a way of life. The secondary follow-up will likely involve desalination plants.
Quote:
Despite this enthusiasm, some experts now question the notion that more reservoirs are the answer to water scarcity. One reason is that most of the good dam sites in California are already occupied by thousands of existing reservoirs.
The remaining sites would require much larger dams. This drives up construction costs – as well as the cost of the water ultimately delivered.
More importantly, most of the available natural runoff in California already has been claimed. The State Water Resources Control Board estimated in 2008 that it already has allocated eight times more water rights in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed, the state’s largest, than the watershed produces in natural runoff in an average year.
“I think we’re seeing definite diminishing returns on investments in storage,” said Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis and a professor of civil and environmental engineering.
State and federal water officials currently are studying five major reservoir projects in California, none of which promises a lot of “new” water supply for cities and farms.
Building new dams increases capacity but doesn’t create more rivers to fill them. There is a natural limit to how much water will flow through California in an average year, and there’s not much point to building dams that can collect and hold more than that, because the marginal increase in the total holding capacity only counts when it is filled. We will have wet years again, but not so wet that we’ll be able to fill every new dam every year.
Besides, many water engineers argue, the geologically and geographically viable places to build dams are pretty much taken. Some can be enlarged – but at a cost that may not be worth the marginally larger storage capacity.
Id it gets like the 1950's draught in west this is nothing. Scary part is the added numbers of people since then. Had a family friend who talked about their ranch in Texas hill country. She said she and husband had to burn off needles on cactus so cattle could chew them for water. That is with 450 foot wells.
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