In a First, U.S. Puts Limits on California's Thirst

[FaDeThEBuTcHeR]

Cheer up! There is always a brightside to the invasion and economic bad news. For example the dwindling water supply is creating another economic catastrophe in the making as California's farming sector comes under attack by the hordes of Third World masses and their desire for water. That will only reduce revenues even more, taxes, and the ability to sustain the populaton. Hey what do you say we continue to import millions of aliens annually to coincide with with California's population doubling in size in less than 25 years. Regardless, I have to give California's neighbors a high five on this one. Also those of you in Northern California should push to secede from the State of California to become the 51st State of Jefferson.

The New York Times ^ | January 5, 2003 | DEAN E. MURPHY

LAKE HAVASU CITY, Ariz., Jan. 4 — Three of the eight pumps that tap into the glistening reservoir of Colorado River water near here are sitting idle, by order of the federal government.

With the pumps switched off since 8 a.m. New Year's Day, less water is churning down the 242-mile aqueduct toward coastal Southern California, where 17 million people rely on snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains for washing dishes, flushing toilets and watering lawns.

This is a pivotal moment in the contentious history of water in the arid West, which more often than not has pitted California's unquenchable thirst against that of its smaller but equally parched neighbors.

For the first time since it was given the authority four decades ago, the United States Department of the Interior has said no to California's dipping into the Colorado River for more than its allotted share.

Nudged on by six other states that draw from the river, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton described the enforcement last month as "a turning point in the history of the Colorado River."

The circumstances that led to the crackdown involved a failed deal to move water from farms to cities in Southern California, a requirement of a federally brokered armistice along the Colorado two years ago. Though the farms-to-city provision was overshadowed by the consequences for California, it reflected an epic shift in the jostling for water that some water experts say could someday eclipse the rivalries among states.

Already as cities across the West look to agriculture to help meet growing water needs, demarcation lines are more likely to have swimming pools on one side and irrigation ditches on the other. Competing statehouses and cross-border agencies figure less into the calculation.

"Water has to move to the cities, and the only real issue now is under what terms," said Thomas J. Graff, regional director of the advocacy group Environmental Defense in Oakland, Calif., and a former member of the Colorado River Board of California.

The population in the West swelled by nearly one-fifth in the 1990's. California alone added 4.1 million people. The city of Phoenix grew by 350,000. At 66 percent, Nevada posted the fastest growth rate of any state.

Desperate to get water from a river whose every drop is spoken for, the booming urban centers that ring the Colorado River are looking inside their own states to entice farmers to break their century-old grip on irrigated water. While no one suggests agriculture will disappear, many farmers are likely to switch to crops that yield higher profits with less water. To make it happen, the rich urban areas are offering big sums of money and, when necessary, are exerting heavy political pressure.

That was demonstrated in striking fashion this week in the crackdown on California's water use, which was not limited to the idling of pumps here at Lake Havasu. The Interior Department, in another historic first, punished the most water-rich agricultural district in the West for not selling some water to San Diego County, where nearly three million people live with virtually no local water supplies.

Farmers in the district, the Imperial Irrigation District, pay $15.50 in delivery fees for each acre-foot of water they use. (An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, enough to fill an acre to a depth of one foot.) San Diego offered to buy up to 200,000 acre-feet a year — about 7 percent of Imperial's supplies — for $250 per acre-foot. Though in the end the district's board approved the sale, it loaded the deal down with conditions the Interior Department and other water districts would not accept.

With no deal, Ms. Norton ordered that the Imperial Irrigation District lose about the same amount of water from its annual Colorado River allotment, in this case without compensation. Separately, she directed cutbacks on surplus water to the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. It complied by turning off the pumps near here on Wednesday morning.

Together, the penalties mean cities and farms in Southern California could be denied nearly 650,000 acre-feet of water from the river this year, enough to meet the needs of about 3.8 million people or a city roughly the size of Los Angeles.

Even if the water cuts are restored, as the Interior Department has pledged they will be if a belated deal on the San Diego sale is struck, water experts from across the West predicted "a new era of limits" for the Colorado River basin.

"The secretary has bit the bullet, something that everybody had said was coming for 40 years but nobody believed would really happen," said Joseph L. Sax, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who served as counselor to former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and is a consultant to the United States Bureau of Reclamation.

"This is a historic moment," Professor Sax said. "California must live within its allotment. In particular, cutting back agricultural users by this administration will be remembered as quite an extraordinary thing."

The tilt toward cities, though still resisted by many water interests, has been acknowledged even in places like the Imperial Valley, where farmers have siphoned water from the Colorado for a century and where people speak openly of their disdain for coastal California.

The Imperial Irrigation District has transferred more than 100,000 acre-feet of water each year over the last decade to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the biggest urban water district in the West. The water came from savings realized from conservation measures in the farm district that the urban district paid for.

This week, in voting in favor of the failed plan to sell 200,000 acre-feet a year to San Diego County, one of the Imperial district's directors said he felt the hand of history at his back. The director, Bruce Kuhn, said giving up the water had been the hardest decision of his life.

"History will be our judge," Mr. Kuhn said. "This decision will be talked about for at least 100 years."

Stella Mendoza, the board's president, voiced the fears of the farmers who turned up to oppose the sale. "I don't trust that San Diego will not come back for more," she said. "Once you take out the first pickle from the jar, the rest come easy."

Professor Sax said the consternation in the Imperial Valley was understandable, but was unlikely to change the eventual outcome in a material way.

"This is probably one of the more painful and more pathological versions of what is going to happen," he said. "But water has to move from agricultural to municipal use. There is no significant doubt about that."

The trick in the coming years will be striking a balance so that agriculture, which retains control of the vast majority of the water from the Colorado and is the biggest industry even in California, considers the transfers something farmers want to do.

Dennis B. Underwood, a former commissioner at the Bureau of Reclamation who is now a vice president of the Metropolitan Water District, said deals between farms and urban water districts were being fashioned so that the best farmland is preserved and farmers profit without forfeiting the future.

The Metropolitan district and the Palo Verde Irrigation District have agreed to a plan that would leave up to 29 percent of the district's farmland fallow in certain years to free water for Metropolitan's urban customers. "You take lands out for a year or two, they become more productive and then you bring them back into production," Mr. Underwood said. "It shores up the urban economy with water and also helps agriculture."

The greatest resistance, however, is likely to come when pressure grows for farmers in some districts to give up on water-guzzling crops like alfalfa and cotton.

"There is still going to be a lot of agriculture, but it is going to get by with less water used more efficiently and probably on higher value crops," Mr. Graff of Environmental Defense said. "Just throwing water on fields to grow grass or to grow cotton is increasingly inefficient and uneconomic."

In California, the urban sharing of farm water has become particularly urgent because of the enforcement of the Colorado River limit of 4.4 million acre-feet. More than three-quarters of that water is allotted to farms like those in the Imperial Valley and Palo Verde. With no new big reclamation projects like the Hoover Dam on the horizon — more dams are being destroyed than built — California has been compelled to find ways to redistribute its finite supply.

Mr. Underwood said urban water districts were also looking increasingly to "nonhydrological sources" like desalting seawater, recycling poor quality water and reducing demand through conservation. But some environmental groups fear the shift to agricultural water has actually lulled some districts into complacency about conservation.

"It has been a source of frustration of many on the environmental and agricultural sides that the U.S. government has not been strictly enforcing the conservation requirements in the urban sector," said Hal Candee, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Environmentalists also say they must be vigilant in ensuring that some of the water directed away from farms also goes to environmental projects, like restoring wetlands and water flows in depleted rivers.

In the past, California was able to sidestep its chronic water problems by dipping deeper into Lake Havasu, which gets its water from releases upstream at the Hoover Dam. Some years, the state took as much as 5.2 million acre-feet, an action that irritated the other six Colorado River basin states but that was of no great consequence because those states did not need the water.

But by the late 1990's, that had changed. Two neighboring states on the river's lower basin, Arizona and Nevada, were experiencing phenomenal growth and a greater thirst for the water California was monopolizing. And the basin that feeds the Colorado River was undergoing the worst drought on record.

That combination led to stepped-up demands by the six states — which also include New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah — for the Interior Department to force California to live within the allotment dictated in a Supreme Court ruling in 1963. In a complex set of negotiations, the states, along with the Department of the Interior, agreed to give California until 2016 to break its habit. But when the Southern California water agencies missed the deadline for the San Diego sale, the cutoff became immediate.

Though California's neighbors played tough, some water officials inside and outside California said that finally bringing the simmering issue to a head helped to cool tempers among the seven basin states. Kay Brothers, the assistant general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said a decade of increased cooperation among the states on things like storing water underground across state boundaries had also helped.

"I think we are at a pivotal moment in the West, and with cooperation so much better over the past 10 years, no one wants to lose the momentum," Ms. Brothers said. "It is a mind-set change that has developed among the states."

In one indication of possibly changed times, Mr. Underwood said he started calling colleagues in the six other states when it became apparent on Dec. 31 that the San Diego deal had fallen apart. He said there were no angry shouts, just offers of assistance.

"We all realize they have to enforce the law of the river," Mr. Underwood said. "But if you tear at the fabric, at the common thread, then everything unravels and you end up in the 1920's. That would be in nobody's best interest."

[Sulla the Dictator]

This is a big deal out here. We give away a lot of both our power and water to California and neighboring states.

[FaDeThEBuTcHeR]

Yes the environment in that area is pretty fragile. How California is going to double in population size given how bad it currently strains the water supply in the area remains inexplicable to me. Anyway, good news I suppose. The water is being cut off as the spigot. The welfare is being cut off too. Energy prices are about to go way up and Davis is slashing the budget to the bone and talking about raising taxes there. Now for two years I have been saying that Japan and California were places to watch. It is finally about to all go down. I can barely contain my excitement. Hopefully Davis will start releasing all the criminals out of the jail now, surely this will drive more upper income Californian's out of the state, while demographic replacement soars at the other end exacerbating fiscal problems on all levels.

Damn we really have to get the forum fixed. So much to talk about lately! The upcoming Waterloo of the IMF in Brazil is going to be spectacular.

[NJ Refugee]

Hmmm ...

California has shrinking water supplies, rolling blackouts (or "brown outs), the threat of a major earthquake at any moment, one of the highest costs of living of any state in the Union, some of the highest taxes of any state in the union, and a growing population of illegal aliens that hate America (and Americans) and bring in diseases that used to be wiped out but are now back ... sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

All it takes is for one good transportation strike to slow down food shipments to the balkanized major cities and *whammy* ... instant war-zone. Guns. Violence. Disease. Gang-Bangers. The whole F'ing works.


All those Sci-fi flicks that talk about the coming of the "breakdown of society" ... hmmm ... do you think that they KNEW something like this was in the works ?

[BTW, I'm glad I got out of there when I did. I'd go NUTS living there now]

[QtrHrsmn]

My wife and I agree... This has been coming for a while. We have friends in the Seal Beach area. They feel it is their RIGHT to have their swimming pool drained and fresh water put in weekly. Wait a minute... that's 10,000 gallons or more. Add washing 6-7 vehicles weekly, and showers for 4 people twice to three times daily, and that's a HUGE drain on water resources. Now, if all their neighbors do it, and the next neighborhood, etc... Then GUESS WHAT CALIFORNIA: TIME TO PUT THE BRAKES ON. Washington State has put a limit on how much they'll sell this next decade, and it has been reduced because of drought conditions there. Now, the Colorado River Basin has finally needed their OWN water... NOT California's water, THEIR water. Want to keep so many illegals? Want to have a swimming pool and green lawn in the DESERT? Well, I guess you'll need to do without DRINKING water, to do that. I predict some emergency rationing legislation coming. I know MY own state occasionally has NO car washing times, and swimming pool closures. My wife's family has actually had notices sent out to tell them how many gallons per month they can use. Time California faced up to the fact that when you live in a desert, you either need to build DESALINAZATION Plants, to use ocean water, or do without swimming pools. (That, I've never understood... you live within 5 minutes of the ocean, yet "need" a swimming pool.)

[FaDeThEBuTcHeR]

I think the consensus here is that California is screwed. I say we get rid of Gray Davis and put igofast and Criminal in charge of California. That is all it will take. After all, money grows on trees remember. Give or take six months to two years we will have a refugee crisis not in Haitians washing up in South Florida but Californian's heading for the hills!

Davis to focus on economy as he is sworn in

SJ Mercury News ^ | 01/05/03 | Mark Gladstone
Posted on 01/05/2003 6:18 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Davis to focus on economy as he is sworn in
By Mark Gladstone
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau


SACRAMENTO - In the afterglow of the technology boom, Sacramento was the land of plenty. The state could slice sales taxes on farm machinery $40 million a year while providing hundreds of millions extra to expand health care for poor children.

But as Gov. Gray Davis prepares to be sworn into office tomorrow, the glow is long gone and Davis is facing the prospect of dismantling the health and education initiatives he hoped would establish his place in state history.

``It's not like he's announcing a lot of happy news,'' said Nancy McFadden, a senior Davis adviser, speaking today on a conference call with reporters.

To fight back, McFadden said the governor plans to accelerate the release of $20 billion in voter-approved bonds to finance new schools, housing, parks and water projects to create thousands of new jobs in a state where manufacturing jobs have plunged 230,000 since their peak two years ago.

With the start of Davis' second term, McFadden described the governor as very determined and resolute as he stares at the biggest challenge since the energy crisis two years ago sent his popularity plummeting. The path Davis charts to extricate the state from a record $35 billion budget deficit is likely to redefine his legacy.

In a series of high-profile appearances in the coming week, Davis, who narrowly won re-election without talking much about the economy, is expected to urge the White House to push a short-term economic stimulus package and press the Bush administration to send California $350 million for additional homeland security costs since 9/11.

It's also anticipated he'll sketch out a series of painful cuts that will reach into every corner of California. High among them are politically scrosanct public education programs, transportation projects and services for the poor.

Even state prisons -- until now a sacred cow -- are expected to feel the budget knife as the governor weighs whether to scale back on the parole supervision of felons.

[QtrHrsmn]

Actually, I'd say they need to just plain STOP wasting time, effort, and money on social services for illegal immigrants, trying to strip away the legal right of AMERICANS to keep and bear arms, and OTHER such drivel, and ENFORCE some GOOD laws, like deportation of illegals BEFORE they can pump out three or four babies, STOP free healthcare for NON citizens, put a CAP on the Kw of power per months, gallons per month, and other things designed to ACTUALLY do something for themselves, rather than beg, plead, and steal from OTHER Americans those things that they don't have enough of. California is NOT the center of the universe, despite SOME natives opinions. I have never seen such (AND THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE EVERYONE THERE) a shallow, irresponsible group of people in the world.

[Kyle Gridley]

ATTENTION CALIFORNIA: The party is over. Time to get back to reality!

[FaDeThEBuTcHeR]

QtrHrsmn I am not sure you have yet reached the point of epiphany that the difference between many U.S. citizens and Illegal Aliens and Mexican foreigners happens to be a piece of paper many of them do not take seriously at all. The U.S. citizen with the right to import hundreds if not thousands of these individuals through Family Reunification Law is much more dangerous. The problem here is the equivocation of nation with state. I would say that "U.S. citizens" and "Americans" are two different things at this point. But hey, thats just an opinion, I could be wrong.

[GHOST 13]

The report of California's demise is over-rated. We are the 6th largest economy in the world, so yes we can run up some world class debts.

Prop 187 cut off all social services to illegal immigrants years ago.

Water has always been an issue here, it did not rain for years about ten years ago. Coupled with farmers who grew rice in the desert with an abundance of water that would make Vietnamese farmers jealous. Including city dwellers that use copious amounts of water on their lawns and washing cars and a whole slew of wasteful practices.

I am a westerner being born in Idaho, though I have lived most of my life here in California. There have always been Mexicans here, comes with the territory. But much of our growth comes from back east (ie east of the Rockies), these back easters bring back east problems with them. Way more wasteful than us Californians or Mexicans. It has always been this way.

[FaDeThEBuTcHeR]

The report of California's demise is over-rated.

The reports of California's demise are entirely accurate and correspond to all facts. California has the largest budget deficit this year of any state in American history. Millions of White Californians have left the state in the 1990s and continue to do so as it deteriorates. Taxes are going up and so is crime. Prisoners are leaving the jails. Water is becoming scarce and the education system has fallen to one of the lowest levels amongst all the states in just 20 years.

We are the 6th largest economy in the world, so yes we can run up some world class debts.

ROFL those things change m8.

Prop 187 cut off all social services to illegal immigrants years ago.

LOL I seem to recall the courts screwing over proposition 187.

Water has always been an issue here, it did not rain for years about ten years ago.

California's population doubling within 25 years, almost entirely amongst its enormously poor and illiterate population which pays hardly any taxes at all will be great.

Coupled with farmers who grew rice in the desert with an abundance of water that would make Vietnamese farmers jealous.

There is a fight over water going on between the Third World masses and the farmers who provide revenues. It looks like the Third World masses are winning out, that is great news for California's budget.

Including city dwellers that use copious amounts of water on their lawns and washing cars and a whole slew of wasteful practices.

The more the merrier IMO. I hope other states continue to fight Southern California which is overusing their water supply as well. Nevada and Arizona are growing in population too btw.

I am a westerner being born in Idaho, though I have lived most of my life here in California. There have always been Mexicans here, comes with the territory.

How old are you?

But much of our growth comes from back east (ie east of the Rockies), these back easters bring back east problems with them.

What the hell. There has been a net outmigration of native White Californians for years now.

Way more wasteful than us Californians or Mexicans. It has always been this way.

ROFL you mean the Mexicans that take in so much in social services and pay so little out in taxes they cost every California taxpayer over a $1,000 annually?

[GHOST 13]

The $1000 dollar thing is BS.

Even if you came and lived here for 9 years you would not have the right to call yourself a Californian. We'll let you after 10 but only if you ask on bended knee.

Most probably older than you, My Great great grandfather came to California in 1864.

There is a big difference between SoCal and NoCal.

Actually the fight is more about the suburbs, who lives in the suburbs?

Prop 187 was passed, the Feds can overide us at any time.

The fact of California's economy ain't changing soon, we will continue to be the leaders in technology and growth.

Trust me I live here, I know whats going on. Where do you live, bumpus nowhere? Dread Kali is as strong as ever.

[FaDeThEBuTcHeR]

The $1000 dollar thing is BS.

Actually I have documented this before. You are simply wrong.

In California, where many new immigrants live, each native household is paying about $1,178 a year in state and local taxes to cover services used by immigrant households, the panel said.

http://www.discussanything.com/forum...ia+immigration

Even if you came and lived here for 9 years you would not have the right to call yourself a Californian.

According to the Urban Institute, seventeen percent of all K-12 students in California are illegal aliens, costing the state reportedly $1.6 billion annually. (Urban Institute, 1992)

http://www.altenforst.de/faecher/eng...mi/illegal.htm

As non-whites continue to pour into California- 450,000 more people are expected to have moved in by the end of 1990-- whites are leaving. After decades during which people moved to California from other states, the balance for whites has reversed. Most of those leaving California head for Oregon and Washington, which still have solid racial and cultural majorities. So many have escaped to the Pacific Northwest that locals have come up with a new bumper sticker: Don’t Californicate Oregon (or Washington). Recent polls show that for the first time in California’s history a majority of the population has considered leaving.

http://www.commonsenseclub.com/nations.html

We'll let you after 10 but only if you ask on bended knee.

To be a Californian is to be live in California and have a piece of paper that says citizen. No wait, what am I saying. There are many Californians who do not even have such documentation so such as standard is pretty silly is it not?

Most probably older than you, My Great great grandfather came to California in 1864.

My ancestors came to the “United States” in the 1640s. I would like to point out that was well over a hundred years before “United States of America” ever existed. My ancestors fought against the French in the French-Indian War. Come to think of it, my ancestors left the United States at one point in history. So from my point of view my roots here are older than America itself.

There is a big difference between SoCal and NoCal.

Yes I know this. When I refer to California I am implicitly referring to Southern California and the coast. I have pointed out before I do not consider most of Northern California to be part of California at all, but simply as a population whose wealth is fleeced by the State, a milk cow. I have talked before about Northern California seceding from California to become the 51st State of Jefferson.

Actually the fight is more about the suburbs, who lives in the suburbs?

Prop 187 was passed, the Feds can overide us at any time.

November 22, 1995
Web posted at: 12:40 a.m. EST

From Correspondent Jim Hill and news service reports

LOS ANGELES (CNN) --California Gov. Pete Wilson exhorted Congress to make Proposition 187 law after a federal judge Monday ruled that portions of the voter-approved measure to discourage illegal immigration are unconstitutional.

http://www2.cnn.com/US/9511/prop_187/

The fact of California's economy ain't changing soon, we will continue to be the leaders in technology and growth.

ROFL California’s economy is going into the gutter m8. LOL leaders in technology and growth, Death Valley, otherwise known as Silicon Valley. Those jobs are going overseas, to China and India. The so-called New Economy has always been a pipedream. Manafacturing is crashing in California and Agriculture is being hit by increased competition over water.

Trust me I live here, I know whats going on. Where do you live, bumpus nowhere? Dread Kali is as strong as ever.

What the hell is “Dread Kali”

[Hermann Cheruscan]

[quoteProp 187 cut off all social services to illegal immigrants years ago.
[/quote]

Not true. Pregnant illegal aliens are "entitled" to all welfare benefits that any American brood mare is "entitled" to.

[Hermann Cheruscan]

Lets try that again:

Prop 187 cut off all social services to illegal immigrants years ago.

Not true. Pregnant illegal aliens are "entitled" to all welfare benefits that any American brood mare is "entitled" to.

[Hermann Cheruscan]

There have always been Mexicans here, comes with the territory. But much of our growth comes from back east (ie east of the Rockies), these back easters bring back east problems with them.

Wrong. NONE of Mexifornias growth is from Whites, no matter where they hail from. For the last 10 years, at least, Hispanics, mostly from Mexico, have been responsible for ALL of Mexifornias population growth.

[GHOST 13]

Originally posted by Hermann Cheruscan


Wrong. NONE of Mexifornias growth is from Whites, no matter where they hail from. For the last 10 years, at least, Hispanics, mostly from Mexico, have been responsible for ALL of Mexifornias population growth.

Our second largest immigrant group is Russians, considering that Latinos are basically white also would seem to say most of our immigrants are white anyways.

Though the Tech boom brought many Americans from other states also.

Who are not welcome here also.

[GHOST 13]

Obviously neither of you know anything about my home.

[Hermann Cheruscan]

You first say that most immigration to Mexifornia is from "back east". We shot that down right away. Nearly all immigration to Mexifornia is from Mexico.

Our second largest immigrant group is Russians, considering that Latinos are basically white also would seem to say most of our immigrants are white anyways.

Please describe, in your own words, what a "latino" is.

The fact is, most of Mexifornias growth is because of Mexican Immigration. Perhaps Russia contributes 5%, which may make it second place.

Also, most Mexicans are not White. Most Mexicans are mestistos, a combination of American Indian and White. Most of the Mexican immigration I've seen lately however, has been American Indian. They look like Mayans Indians.

[Hermann Cheruscan]

Obviously neither of you know anything about my home

Really? I've lived out here since 1984. When I first moved here, it was a White State with a few Mexican areas. Now, it is a Mexican State with a few White areas.