Henri Reynard Speaks Out

Water, Water Everywhere, but What is There to Drink?

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Marie Antoinette, is most famous for her comment made when she was told the peasants have no bread, she replied, "let then eat cake". Californians will possibly have a lot to concern them in the next two years, budget deficits not unlike those of a large European nation for example. The current number for the next two years appears to be around thirty four billion dollars in the red. Of course California has the fifth largest economy in the world, so when it has a tax shortfall it is bound to be as big as those countries the same size suffer in down economic times. To add to that problem there is another issue in California that needs to be addressed, water for the teeming millions of desert dwellers in Southern California. Of course southern California doesn't look like a desert, but that is due to the massive quantities of imported water applied to the landscape. The urban forest in Southern California is green and lush, largely due to water transported from Northern California watersheds and the Colorado river.

Water is a issue that has obsessed Californians since before the Golden State became a state. Nothing could be more important to a place where ten annual inches of rainfall, all in three months of the winter, most on mountains and at the coast, is all you can expect. The population has long ago outgrown the natural water supply. The California water transportation system is so vast that is one of the only man-made artifacts that can be discerned from orbit with the naked eye. It is a marvelous piece of engineering, an exceptionally valuable piece of infrastructure, and it is unlikely to keep up with population growth. One piece of that artifact depends on water from the Colorado River to fill it's reservoirs. Due to some political folly too arcane to discuss the water from the Colorado will not flow in quantities delivered in prior years.

Californians are a creative breed, they are the intellectual property champions of our continent. They maintain a flow of engineers, programmers and scientists through a massive university system and into what may be the best, concentrated technical workforce, in the world. They do this with the second or third worst lower grade school system in the country, based on results. Southern California is an enigma wrapped in the arms of a natural climate that could never support one-tenth the population that lives there today. Projected population growth in that area will add ten million additional souls over the next twenty-five years, to the current total. This water shortage may be a challenge, even for them.

Now just off the coast there is a large body of water called the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately it is a little too salty to be of much use as an urban water supply. It is technically possible to desalinate that water and use it as an urban water supply, but that would be expensive compared to the water out of the Colorado. That of course, can be done, if it becomes necessary, but the lead-time to build the necessary plants might be ten years. It seems likely that solving the political problems associated with the Colorado River might be cheaper and easier. Unfortunately the River is under the jurisdiction of an international treaty, which means the Federal Government of the United States is involved.

Now, there's the rub, Good old Democratic California, has few friends in the Federal Government right now. You may have noticed that the Republicans own Washington, even more than during the last two years since the recent elections. They were unsympathetic to the problems raised by the purported theft of 27 billion dollars from California's businesses and people. Remember when Enron and others had California by the short hairs during the energy crisis that never was? How much more sympathetic will they be to problems brought on by California's internal squabbling over water that doesn't even belong to it? Not very is the indication.

Now of course there are always people interested in the water issue in California, including some who would like to control a piece of the water supply. Privatization is the word they use to create the idea that someone owning public water and selling it back to that public at what usually turns out to be whatever the traffic will bear is a good thing. It seems that some of the same good old boys who run with the crowd in the White House are buying up land so they can control the water underneath that land. That water and any water that might come down from the sky in the future. One group even came into California and tried to run their game here, so far without success. Marie was a piker, wait till Californians are really dry. Those good old boys from Texas probably can't wait for the chance to say, "let them drink wine".