Green Justice Policies Could Cause Desertification of California
California scraps plans for a desalination plant and intends to tear down four dams.
I periodically write about California’s water restrictions to bring more revenue to public water systems and virtue signal that they are battling “climate change.”
This week, California is reinstating a new set of restrictions and water-use mandates.
Watering restrictions throughout parts of Southern California go into effect Wednesday, June 1.
In Los Angeles, the water conservation measures approved by LA City Council earlier this month restrict outdoor watering to two days per week based on street address.
The restrictions for LADWP customers are more lenient than the one-day limit ordered earlier by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California for areas that are dependent on water from the State Water Project.
Watering will be cut down from the current three, with watering permitted at odd-numbered street addresses on Mondays and Fridays, and at even-numbered addresses on Thursdays and Sundays.
Watering with sprinklers will be limited to eight minutes per station.
Of course, there is no attempt to expand the infrastructure required to support the current population of California, its industries, or its agricultural needs. A few short weeks ago, the state’s coastline protection unanimously rejected the development of a $1.4 billion desalination plant in Huntington Beach that would have converted ocean water into municipal water for Orange County residents.
Eleven members of the California Coastal Commission voted against the facility, which water treatment developer Poseidon Water has been trying to build for decades.
Poseidon said the plant would be capable of producing up to 50 million gallons of drinking water a day, helping to make the region more drought resilient.The commission, which is charged with “protecting and enhancing” the state’s extensive coastline, heard public comments on the project throughout the day Thursday, with a majority of speakers opposing it. Others who expressed concern about a lack of water resources in the future argued that, whenever possible, additional water resources should be developed.
Poseidon released a statement following the vote thanking Gov. Gavin Newsom for his support and reiterating its belief that the plant would be an important tool in maintaining the state’s water supply.
“This was not the decision we were hoping for today,” said Poseidon Director of Communications Jessica Jones. “California continues to face a punishing drought, with no end in sight. … Every day, we see new calls for conservation as reservoir levels drop to dangerous lows. We firmly believe that this desalination project would have created a sustainable, drought-tolerant source of water for Orange County, just as it has for San Diego County.”
Not content with simply rejecting new infrastructure proposals, California officials are also now tearing down essential public water supply assets.
Four PacifiCorps dams — the J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1 and No. 2, and Iron Gate — are scheduled to be removed as part of a controversial effort that advocates have said will restore the health of the river, fish and communities along the river, including several in the Upper Klamath Basin.
Dam removal is something that has drawn heated discussion for and against for decades, highlighted in 2001 when decisions to not release water to Klamath Basin irrigators resulted in protests and demonstrations that drew national attention. This year only minimal amounts of irrigation water are scheduled to be released but the Klamath Tribes, citing concerns for two endangered sucker fish, have filed suit to prevent any release of water from Upper Klamath Lake.
And while green justice activists tout all the great things dam removal will do for wildlife, bureaucrats will be surprised about how little tax fish, birds, and frogs pay.
Between the rising gasoline costs and escalating water bills, taxpayers will seek their own refuge…in states who are willing to spend money and develop public resources that support them.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Everywhere you turn America is committing suicide. I only wish CA godspeed. The majority of voters in CA are on board with this suicidal nonsense. Let them eat sand.
Eggggggsactly. And when the assholes do move, keep your shitty voting record behind. And don’t come to Louisiana. We may have a low standard of living, good food, and parks, but you will be in a RUDE surprise that, outside of BR and NO, everybody votes predominately Republican, are pro-2A (even talk of permitless carry, which I don’t agree with), and are pro-life.
Legitimate question – which other constitutional rights do you believe should require a permit issued by the govt in order to exercise?
The underlying principle is the same; privileges, such as driving, may require a permit but individual rights do not because they are exercised without the approval or permission of the State. Otherwise these rights would be transformed into mere privileges for which the govt then decides who may and may not exercise them at the discretion of a bureaucrat.
I assume you mean low cost of living.
As for good food, I’ve been enjoying the culinary delights of Lafayette recently.
Mmmm-hmmm.
How long before they start watering their fields with Energy Drinks a la IDIOCRACY?
Instead, we’re jabbing tots with a vaccine that stops their hearts,
to protect them from a virus that doesn’t hurt them.
We’re already well into Idiocracy, brother.
Not true, there are millions of us that are fighting the leftist running the state. Please do not throw us all into the same basket. For those that take sport at denigrating the good people of the state, why don’t you help us fight back? As you know, what goes in CA eventually spreads to other states. As the fight goes, many of the lefties are leaving the state and will settle in your state, bringing their mindset with them. Better to stop the problem in CA than have your state change to blue.
I first read that as deCertification… In this context, I ay be right.
Yeah, I had the same thinko. Then I thought, “Well, deserts are green, too. Sometimes a bluish or even a brownish green, but there’s green. With lots and lots of nice, sharp spines and thorns.”
You can paint the rocks green.
California is hell-bent on self-destruction. Unfortunately, it’s voters will vote with their feet when they migrate to other states only to bring their suicidal policies to those other states.
Jack: I am a Californian who now resides in the hills of eastern Tennessee. Every time I see a California or New York license plate in town, I cringe, but then remember: I left California in my rear view mirror in 2005. I also made sure that within 48 hours of getting to Tennessee, I had Tennessee plates and driver license. Clean break and all that sort of thing.
Not all of us are out to spoil our new places. I daresay far from the majority. Decades ago, i moved to Oregon, and did the same thing. I also grew to understand that most of the “Californication” of Oregon was being done by the native-born Oregonians in the Ashland-to-Portland corridor. It wasn’t us.
The model I had in mind was the NJ experience. At one time it was a low tax state next to NY, a high tax state. Some New Yorkers took notice and voted with their feet by moving to NJ. Now, they are both high tax states.
The Massholes and Vermongetarians are tearing up Noo Haahmpshah as well.
I left for Utah a year ago. Like Griz, I got UT plates and DL right away. I see unrestrained development here, with the desert and lava flows being chewed up for housing. All the “natives” bemoan the CA refugees, but I remind them that the boards and commissions that have opened the floodgates to developers are populated by people who are many generations Utah residents. The refugees have seen the results of this in days past, and know how it will end. The locals are blind to it.
Water? Major drought here also…..
History may not repeat, but it rhymes. Noo Yawkuhz, Massholes, and others with collectivist mentalities tore the heart out of California.
I am old enough to recall when California smelted aluminum, made steel, had car manufacturing plants all over the Los Angeles Basin and in the Bay Area; tire-making plants; made airplanes; and was an amazing place to live despite the smog. We even grew food in such prodigious quantities that we were almost the nation’s breadbasket except for grains.
Then, we got the crowd who have never seen a program or idea they didn’t like as long as others were compelled to pay for it. We got the crowd who voted for tyrants in black dresses who shut off the irrigation to save a fish not even native to the watershed they were trying to preserve.
California is further left because of younger generations (like every state)) but it moved to the left before that due to immigration.
It is a warning to anyone who doesn’t want to cut immigration what the result is.
The younger generations are also politically the way they are due to education which is a field Republicans abandoned during the 21st century to very predictable results.
Can we please get the wall up around California before it becomes desert? Keep all those people there instead of here?
How much resources could be conserved buy expelling all illegals?
Around 50%
California is a desert naturally though.
That is one of those things that never comes up in conversation for some reason. Another is the Los Angeles Basin inversion layer. It has always been there, regardless of the existence of ICE-propelled vehicles. The local Indians used to call the L.A. Basin “the valley of the smokes” because they saw camp fire smoke rise only so much, then flatten out and spread sideways.
“Between the rising gasoline costs and escalating water bills, taxpayers will seek their own refuge…in states who are willing to spend money and develop public resources that support them.”
The new catchword: “California in my rearview mirror.”
I left for good in 2005. I put it in my rear view mirror not so much for the gas and water bills, but for three rent increases in 14 months; an employer not willing to pay a wage that would let me live decently (much less “well”), the crowding, the traffic, and the seemingly endless list of rules, regulations, and taxes/fees.
The only thing I really miss? Real bagels, and a decent pastrami sandwich.
“Real bagels, and a decent pastrami sandwich.”
I can identify with that.
I local bagel shop I used to go to THINKS he makes bagels. He makes [pieces of toroid-shaped bread.
(I stopped going not because the bagels aren’t bagels. The place has become a cop hangout because the owner and his father are ex-cops. I am afraid I’d say something about current police inaction, and suffer consequences.)
You need to hop in the car and drive across the border to Ashville:
1. Ziggy’s Bakery
2. Bruegger’s Bagels
Peabody: wanna meet for lunch?
The argument for Green justice through overturning human development, mirrors the argument to normalize the wicked solution (“elective abortion”) for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
Now that the California courts have define bees (and by extension other insects) as “fish” who knows what Pandora’s Box will unleash. Bring forth the pale horses!
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/05/a-bumblebee-needs-fins-like-a-fish-needs-a.php
To be fair, it’s not clear whether the “courts defined” bumblebees as fish, or whether the legislature in its own stupidity got there first, and the court is just fairly reporting it.
Killing a pony is said to be a violation of the Small Birds Act. It takes a good legal education to be able to understand these things. See, e.g., Regina v. Ojibway.
Instead of creating more available stored water CA instead rejects a desalination plant and will destroy reservoirs by removing four dams. Genius.
How much additional water will CA seek to withdraw from other States in light of these decisions? This is analogous to refusing to pay your electric bill but running an extension cord to your neighbors and demanding they provide the electricity you disdained.
At a certain point CA will be forced into very real conversations regarding the carrying capacity of the State. If there is x amount of water available for residential, agricultural and commercial use then the population and enterprises within the State must be reduced to conform to those self imposed constraints. Good luck with immigration lobby! Greens v Immigration will be a fun d/prog civil war to observe.
The water supply of Nevada will be eliminated before Democrats are willing to fight Democrats. Nevada is trending right (just compare how close it was 2016 vs 2020) so they won’t even feel guilt about giving it a gut punch.
We could effectively help the situation by cutting off immigration ending the ability of California to replace people moving out (which will also in time reduce the states power) but the Dems never fight one another over anything but petty desires to be in charge (note the complete lack of any political differences between Pelosi and Cortez).
That said California is over carrying capacity for the infrastructure it already had let alone destroying parts of it so you are right about that but the Dems are too united.
Maybe you’re correct and d/prog party discipline will prevail. I still contend that scarcity, particularly artificially induced scarcity, tends to create conflict as no one wants to be left without a chair when the music stops.
If you are not going to be a good steward of your people you will soon not be a good steward of your environment. For when you do not take care of your people they will quickly start not caring about your other causes du jour.
The Dumb-o-crats are not “progressives,” “liberals” or whatever other narcissistic, self-congratulatory and inapposite moniker they choose to describe themselves.
Dumb-o-crats are obnoxious, regressive and totalitarian narcissists. They are obstacles to progress and are callously indifferent to human needs and suffering.
Leslie’s headline is, “Green Justice Policies Could Cause Desertification of California”.
A reminder: southern California is already mostly desert and semi-desert. It’s been that way long before America, long before Spain, and long before the Bering Straits bridge. The region is dry. The American genius was bringing water in from Northern California (which at the time had plenty) and from the mountains and Colorado River.
Those sources are all pretty much tapped out. New reservoirs would help but California actually wants to tear those out. Desalinization would help but think about what dumping salt back into the ocean would mean.
So Southern California is going to go back to be desert, and mostly desert. Then people will complain and move out. To Arizona, another desert.
A reminder: southern California is already mostly desert and semi-desert.
Read the descriptions of the Central Valley and of the Los Angeles region as they existed in the mid-19th century. It was NOT mostly desert, but more like the Garden of Eden.
How many more illegal immigrants can California take in? Each additional person is that much more burden on all infrastructure–including water resources.
well…as far as I am concerned their policies have already DECERTIFIED them….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsrBlKpbBS8
California is nice to to the homeless.
spare some change???
I was stationed in San Diego, Camp Pendleton and at MWTC Bridgeport In the Sierras. This was in the mid/late seventies. I can tell you how the greenies have destroyed California. Not one new water project in over 40 years. Yet the population has almost doubled. California west of the Sierras is desert then coastal range and then desert again. It was never meant to support that many people. You get what you vote for. And boy have they gotten it! The only piece that is even worth visiting is the Sierras and even that is going downhill. What a waste 😟
You can always tell when the percentage of Progressive Liberals in a local area has exceeded 50%: you see the speed limit signs on a formerly 50 mph parkway lowered to 25 mph – two reasons: increased town income and because we can
Or when they implement the ‘road diet’ reducing 4 lane roads to 2 lanes so they can add a bicycle lane in each direction.
Hope leaving Californians don’t turn other states blue.
Even idiot liberal Californians will understand that doing the right thing is the right option. When the water spigot costs get too high and/or the spigot dries up. You got 3 days to live without water! Put that in your book!
Why can’t we kick them out of the union?
Articles like this one make me thank God one more time I live in a “backward” Southern state, one so “backward” that the sophisticates turn their noses up at the mere thought of moving here. I can be thankful for that as well.
.
Eleven members of the California Coastal Commission voted against the facility, which water treatment developer Poseidon Water has been trying to build for decades.
The CCC was the Left’s triumph from the 1970s. It was elected to ‘protect’ (legally, seize control of) all real estate within half a mile of the Pacific Ocean, and its unelected Commission is the exact equivalent of nobility in its hilltop castle, laying un-apealable mandates and prohibitions on the peasants who merely own the land in that half-mile.
Its ghastly veto of a desalination plant is simply greed, on stilts, for power over the plebes who would have benefited from its fresh water. Where are the tumbrils?
The California coast is actually a desert, so the greenie policies of returning it to that status are consistent with their view of humans. And the 40-million people living there – suck it, peasants.
Actually, the description should be “Redesertification” since Mother Gaia had eons ago made significant portions of Newsome Land a desert, unable to support huge populations, Hollywood and Democrats.
Here is southern Oregon people have been trying to block the irresponsible efforts to remove of the J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1 and No. 2, and Iron Gate dams for many years. The entire premise of restoring fish migration is an outright lie. Historically there were 2 natural dams high enough to have prevented any fish from getting past the area where Boyle eventually built the dams. .
The dams destruction will alter and destroy portions of a long established thriving ecosystem and deprive southern Oregonians of our natural resources as per the Klamath Dams Compact.
These fools intend to dump 45 billion gallons of fresh water reserves into the sea in spite of us living in times of drought with wildfires of greater intensity and frequency due to the same degree of mindless mismanagement..
Here are but a few of the many referenced articles showing how these idiot agents are willing to
“Proposed Klamath Dams Removal: Governors of California and Oregon and American Taxpayers Are Being Deceived” Published on Jun 25, 2021
https://world.einnews.com/pr_news/544688608/proposed-klamath-dams-removal-governors-of-california-and-oregon-and-american-taxpayers-are-being-deceived
“Klamath River Dam Removal: Real Costs to the Environment, Wildlife, Socioeconomic Impacts and $-Billions in Tax Dollars”
https://world.einnews.com/pr_news/548893386/klamath-river-dam-removal-real-costs-to-the-environment-wildlife-socioeconomic-impacts-and-billions-in-tax-dollars
“Klamath River Dams: Fish Migration Debunked – It’s About Money, not Salmon! Natural Wonders and Water At Risk”
News Provided By Wild Horse Ranch Productions August 05, 2021,
https://world.einnews.com/pr_news/546614530/compelling-facts-condemn-krrc-s-proposed-klamath-river-dam-removal-plan
“Klamath River Dams Removal Project Defies Logic And Common
Sense – Major Flaws And Misrepresentations In Plan Revealed”
News Provided By Wild Horse Ranch Productions July 15, 2021, 07:53
https://world.einnews.com/pr_news/546308904/klamath-river-dams-removal-project-defies-logic-and-common-sense-major-flaws-and-misrepresentations-in-plan-revealed
“Klamath Dams Removal In The Midst Of ‘Water Crisis’ – Antithesis Of Water And Wildlife” Published on Jun 21, 2021 https://world.einnews.com/pr_news/544283346/klamath-dams-removal-in-the-midst-of-water-crisis-antithesis-of-water-and-wildlife-conservation
Anyone who remains in Cali will ultimately be killed or seriously injured by the rampant criminals that provide the backbone of the organized crime syndicate that runs the state. When you leave you take your contribution to society and your taxes with you. Stay in Cali and you are aiding and abetting the crime syndicates that masquerade as Commiecrats. I assure you as a former Californian who left in the 90’s it’s not going to get any better but only become far worse. Cali can only be fixed with fire and brimstone and you do not want to be there when that arrives.