Native Intelligence: The Drought, Deficits And A Failure Of Leadership

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By Jack D. Forbes, Ph.D.

The governor, the legislature, and California’s people face far more than budget problems. Mother Nature, in her rebellion against our many years of exploitation and waste, is giving us a shock. In spite of recent rains, we in California are facing a serious drought that is likely to last for many years, perhaps decades.

This drought, which we are apparently well into, will require a complete rethinking of our priorities. Republican demands for tax cuts must give way to a willingness on our part – all of us – to pay more taxes in order to create the means for our very survival.

It is reported that the drought is becoming a long-term reality for the entire Southwest, and it is even extending up into Oregon and Idaho. The “wet” coast, extending down into northwestern California, is way below normal in annual rainfall. That is bad for a region totally dependent upon rain, as is the California coast. Streams dry up very fast, fisheries are wiped out, and forests become prey to disease and fire.

Here are the facts, as I see them: perhaps we should give up any ideas of a “peripheral canal” around the Sacramento Delta. There will not be enough water to continue to send any water to southern California before very long. Instead of a canal, or new dams (what good are dams with little rainfall or snow melt?) we must do the following: stop stealing water from one watershed to take it to another.

In other words, no more Klamath-Trinity water to the Sacramento Valley; no more Eel River water to the Russian River basin; no more Owens River water to Los Angeles; no more Sacramento River water to south of Bakersfield; and, I suspect, no more Colorado River water to coastal Southern California. Wow! The latter is because I believe that the entire Colorado River system is in drought condition and I give doubt that Los Angeles can depend on that water.

To my Republican and Democratic friends I say: drop your notions that you do not have to pay for a modern society, especially one facing huge issues of growth, pollution, unmet educational needs, slow and inferior transportation, decaying infrastructure, fire dangers, and all of the other effects of an uncontrolled suburbanization.

In short, we need to find billions to begin immediately to build desalinization facilities along the coast from at least Marin south to San Diego. Fortunately, several governments are already into this task. More billions are needed to get every city and county to begin recycling all wastewater, for both agriculture and urban use. This is serious! The state’s deficit is actually tens of billions higher than what we are told, because of what we will have to spend to have water to drink and to raise crops.

The legislature should plan that the California aqueduct will be reduced by, say, 10% each year until finally no water will cross the Tehachapi’s. What we might do is to use some of the water savings to restore Buenavista Lake and Tulare Lake in the San Joaquin Valley so as to control disease-bearing dust, and recharge the water table in that region (to whatever possible degree given the collapse of the earth due to overuse of underground resources). We will also want to restore the Klamath and Trinity, and the Eel, so that the fisheries have a chance of surviving.
In the meantime, no water from the California Aqueduct should be used to spawn the development of new suburbs in the Mohave Desert or other dry areas.

Of course, the restoration of wildlife and the recovery of our water tables and fisheries will be one possible positive benefit from restoring watersheds and lakes. But right now it is our very survival as a premier agricultural, educational, and scientific powerhouse that is at stake.

The Palisade Glacier has been slowly disappearing from the Sierras for many years. We are in a long-term drought folks!

Professor Forbes has been writing about growth issues since the early 1960s

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3 thoughts on “Native Intelligence: The Drought, Deficits And A Failure Of Leadership”

  1. Phil

    2nd Paragraph “to pay more taxes in order to create the means for our very survival.” This statement takes away any credibility that you may have.

  2. nancy

    As a matter of survival we need to implement much better systems for wastewater treatment, management and use. Take a look at what my friend Lou Hammond has designed and accomplished at Hundredfold Farm outside of Gettysburg, PA. Go to this page of the Alliance for Democracy website: http://afd-headlines.blogspot.com/2008/02/lving-new-vision-for-future.html

    and you may also want to check out the Alliance for Democracy’s Defending Water for Life Campaign at the homepage http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org

    Nancy Price

  3. Nancy Price

    Asserting Community and Ecological Rights
    Jack introduces desal as a way to meet the CA water and environmental crisis, and, to be sure, many desal plants are in operation world-wide, particularly in the thirsty Middle East. But, this is not a technology without some drawbacks that I’d like to raise here, briefly, even though desalination of ocean water seems like the silver bullet…taping the seemingly limitless “free supply” of liquid “blue gold.”

    In CA alone, there are at least 18 proposals for desal plants at different stages – from proposal to feasibility study, to pilot study, environmental review, to final approval and operation. A $300 million plant in last years’ dollars at Carlsbad..the largest project in the Western Hemisphere, is slated to be built north of San Diego, next to the Encina power plant. The builder is the for-profit Poseidon Resources of Stamford, CT.

    However, in my recent reading on this matter, the plant will only produce about 9% of water to meet the needs of 300,000 San Diego people. By contrast, in “Waste Not, Want Not,” the Pacific Institute concludes: “fully implementing existing conservation technologies in the urban sector can eliminate the need for new urban water supplies for the next three decades.” Many groups say that the environmental,economic and social justice costs far outweigh the Carlsbad project.

    Mark Massara, Director of the Sierra Club Coastal Programs said: this plant is a giant step backwards..and will ultimately make the San Diego water ratepayers slaves to the most expensive fresh water ever produced in the United States.”

    Briefly here are some of the problems:
    1.The [u]environmental costs [/u]are: first of all, there has been no “price” fixed to the hundreds of million of gallons of sea water – our – the public’s – ocean commons – that will be taken/used to produce the fresh water. What should private for-profit corporations pay for this water? Should they pay anything? How should getting this “free or cheap” resource be reflected in rate structure and ratepayer fees and private profits?

    In addition, 100% of marine life, critical to the marine food chain, is killed when sucked in to the powerful intake pipes.

    Finally, huge quantities of concentrated brine are dumped back into the ocean with little scientific understanding of the cumulative impact on near-shore marine ecosystems.

    2. [u]Economic costs[/u] are high for construction, maintenance, and huge amounts of energy are needed to generate the pressure to force seawater through reverse osmosis filters. That’s why desal plants are sited next to now-old polluting coal-fired and nuclear plants, the later with their own waste disposal problems. Costs could eventually skyrocket with increasing energy costs, even with green technology.

    3. In regard to [u]social justice[/u], the argument can be made that public subsidies to private corporations for desal construction could be better spent providing much needed safe drinking water and sanitation to underserved communities. Furthermore, low income and communities of color are often near proposed sites and will suffer if construction and operation increase air pollution.

    Finally, there is the matter of [u]Community and Ecological rights.[/u] The process that led to approval of the Carlsbad plant, did not recognize the rights of residents in the service area to participate in an inclusive collaborative and transparent process to consider the Carlsbad proposal and alternatives – to choose between comprehensive conservation measures, a smaller plant, and a costly mega-project. The agreement does not make sure that [u]all[/u] residents, including low-income and communities of color, will have [u]clean, affordable, and sufficient water for personal and family needs. [/u]

    Furthermore, the current framework of limiting environmental impacts to some acceptable level of harm does not consider whether [u]marine life itself has rights that should be protected[/u].

    Some sources on desal are: “With a Grain of Salt: A California Perspective” (2005) and “Waste Not, Want Not: The Potential for Urban Water Conservation in California (2003) by the Pacific Institute, Oakland, CA (just google).

    Nancy Price

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