From the morning paper, some thoughts (sub/ad req) from my recent trip on the west-wide linkages, and the institutional problems those linkages have created:
“We’ve got a system that is not sustainable,” said Curt Schmutte, Met’s top official working on the Delta problem.
Given the political rancor that surrounds California’s Delta discussions, it is unclear what a solution might look like. Can Californians engineer a solution that could allow high rates of pumping to continue while at the same time moving water less destructively through the Delta ecosystem? Will California farmers and Southern California cities simply have to learn to live with less? Will the system crash completely, leaving Southern California dry?
And, if the answer is the latter, will that increase pressure on the Colorado River, which has its own overuse problems, and on which Albuquerque now depends for its drinking water supply?
“Will California farmers and Southern California cities simply have to learn to live with less?”
Jeez, John, still with this false paradigm?
People keep asserting that the interests of the SoCal megalopolis and the farmers are somehow conjoined, but I have yet to see a speck of evidence for that.
Repeat after me: The votes are in the cities, by a margin so vast as to be determinative of the ultimate solution.
Steve – See the implementation of the Colorado River Interim Surplus Guidelines as one of many, many cases in which farmers in California (and throughout the West) have shown the ability to hang onto their majority share of the water, contrary to your assertion of a voting margin so vast as to be determinative of the ultimate solution.
The paradigm may change, but that voting margin has not yet proven determinative.