On Friday, the California State Assembly outdid itself. You can always count on the leftist leaders of what is supposed to be the “people’s house” never lets a crisis go to waste. With the passage of AB 1739 (Dickinson-D), SB 1168 (Pavley-D), and SB 1319 (Pavley-D), 100 years of history was reversed. The authors painted a grim picture of California’s groundwater future. Most of what they said is true. The only problem they didn’t bother to tell you two key truths: 1.It was these same so-called leaders who give up our seat—the property owner and the farmer’s place at the table—to the enviro-extremists. The fish now have more water rights than do the farmers and ranchers who by making a living off the land, feed this state and this country. 2.By wasting surface water and letting 800,000 acre-feet go out to sea instead of capturing and storing it for the bad years, California’s dysfunctional policies combined with uber-restrictive Federal endangered species protections have created over-dependency on groundwater. These bills, which obliterate private property rights and local control, are being sold as a port in a storm, when the reality is that they are the recipe for the perfect storm. By granting the State Water Resources Control Board, the last vestige of control over all our water, the farmers and ranchers who were denied their allocation of water from the State Water Project, will be at the mercy of a merciless government. The tactics of the left never vary. They use a government created crisis such as the drought, which is the culmination of years of their own mismanagement and corruption, to consolidate power. Now, the basic right of a citizen to draw water for support of himself or his family is non-existent. Once a state agency gets control over something, they are like a great white shark. They never let go. Now a board that sits just a few blocks away from the State Capitol will have more say than your local governing body over how much groundwater you can use. Don’t be fooled by the proponents of this bill who are doing this to “help recharge the groundwater.” There is nothing in this bill that will address the groundwater crisis facing California. Almost every one of the provisions of these bills will not be in force for years to come. This is about power and government control. Whoever controls the water, controls the people. Every time the government takes more control over a natural resource, the price goes up. In this case, the cost of food and energy will be inflated by government, not the marketplace. When government is the source of inflation, it is only a matter of time until cheaper sources make their way to market from less-regulated states or nations. California has long been known as the “bread basket of the world.” If Governor Jerry Brown signs into law this evil trifecta, the government that created a dust bowl out of the once-fertile Central Valley, will preside over the death of agriculture as the number one industry in our state.
800,000 acre feet flushed to sea by Pelosi and friends. it really seems that the CA democrats have been trying to create a crisis.
I watched an interesting interview on FOX with the man who created the EPA. This was back in 1969 or somewhere. He was very proud of the original EPA laws which cleaned up the air and cleaned up the water and prohibited dumping of waste. Something I know I approve of. Then he said, "Everything the EPA has done since 1980 is just a waste. It's now a totally useless department. Every law they have passed since 1980 should be repealed." And this is the guy who created the department.
Breitbart and Fox, well my, my, my. Why don't we look at this from a different viewpoint? Drought-Stricken California Makes Historic Move To Regulate Underground Water For The First Time At least one in four Californians get their water from underground aquifers, and up until now, use of this water has been totally unregulated, with disputes about overuse settled in court. California is one of the few where it’s “pump as you please” with groundwater. That is about to change. As the California State Legislature wrapped up their session, they passed the state’s first-ever plan to regulate underground water supplies. Urban Democrats, water district managers, and environmental advocates gave the measure enough support to pass it over the opposition of Republicans and farm-area legislators. The legislation now goes to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature. Clean Water Action’s Jennifer Clary said, “the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management legislation takes an historic first step towards ensuring that our groundwater will remain a resource for future Californians.” Three bills make up the groundwater regulatory plan: one tells local agencies to come up with water management programs, another establishes parameters for state intervention, and the third delays that intervention in areas where groundwater pumping has affected surface water. Some agricultural interests fear regulation of the groundwater reserves that many farmers have turned to in the midst of the worst drought in a generation. State Senator Fran Pavley, author of two of the bills, said she worked with farmers to draft them, gaining the support of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. “The state cannot manage water in California until we manage groundwater,” said Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego. “You cannot have reliability with no plan to manage water.” If you are eating a fruit, vegetable, or nut grown in the U.S., there’s an almost 50-50 chancethat it came from California. At the same time, it’s the only western state that does not exercise some sort of control over its groundwater. Groundwater has become even more crucial as surface water supplies have dwindled. In fact, according to a study released last week, while only 70 million acre-feet of water flow through the state during a good year, 370 million acre-feet worth of water rights have been given out in the last hundred years. Yet even adding groundwater supplies to the equationstill leaves the state with a water deficit, according to a recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pacific Institute. In fact, the Central Valley is consuming twice as much groundwater as can be replaced through normal precipitation. The Valley is the center of gravity to the state’s $36.9 billion agricultural industry because it contains the world’s largest mass of ultra-fertile Class 1 soil. “It’s our savings account, and we’re draining it,” Phil Isenberg of the Public Policy Institute of California, told the San Jose Mercury News. The former Sacramento mayor and assemblyman continued: “at some point, there will be none left.” In a normal year for precipitation, California receives about 40 percent of its total water from under the ground — in a dry year, that jumps above 60 percent. It’s gotten even worse this year, with wells drying, fields lying fallow, and most dramatically, the land actually sinking up to a foot a year as the water underneath it gets sucked dry. Over 95 percent of the state is in a “severe drought” according to the latest data from the U.S. Drought Monitor — and 100 percent of the state has been in at least a “moderate” drought for the last three months. In the rural San Joaquin Valley, hundreds of residents ran out of tap water as the drought dried up the flow of the Tule River which normally provides the area with water. Wells dried up and the county had to deliver bottled water supplies to affected residents last week — supplies that are meant to last only three weeks. RYAN KORONOWSKI
Note the fact that your entire article conveniently glosses over the reality that the only reason they are dipping into ground water to begin with is because these environmentalist loons let 800,000 acre feet of pure pristine mountain run off water go straight into the ocean. If not for that move, there would be plenty of water, but instead, radical liberals dumped half of the naturally recurring water supply, and now want to ration the only water that remains. You guys are fucking insane. This is pure orwellian government control. Government causes water supply shortage, then idiotic people are convinced that we need more government to control the situation, that the government created to begin with.
Its sad that we dont have a speaker on the right like Milton Friedman, who was so good at connecting with people anymore. The problem is that reality comes across as harsh to most people. Most people want to live in a fantasy land where we can make everyone happy and there are never any consequences for anyones actions.