Thread: A food fight over water CA.

San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial

A food fight over water

Such a big problem, so little time

2:00 a.m. August 11, 2009

The California Legislature is about to take on the state's water problems again. This news is both good, and scary.

It's good because no issue is more important than water to the economic health of the state and to our environmentally oriented quality of life. With leadership and balance, the Legislature could do much to assure a plentiful and reliable supply of water while also encouraging conservation and protecting the environment.

It's scary because probably no issue is more complex than water, with so many potential consequences, and because the Legislature is, well, the Legislature. Which is to say it is prone to enacting major legislation on big, complicated problems in in the last days of a session, with only a handful of leaders involved in the drafting of bills.

Early this year, legislative leaders directed the key policy committees that deal with water issues to conduct hearings on recommendations made by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision Blue-Ribbon Task Force. Specific legislative proposals were supposed to have been ready in May. Democratic lawmakers finally unveiled a package of five bills last week.

The legislative recess doesn't end until Monday, leaving four weeks before the scheduled Sept. 11 end of the session in which to bring together constituencies that have battled each other for decades ” agricultural interests vs. environmentalists, urban interests vs. rural, Northern California vs. Southern California.

If we sound skeptical, we are. Democratic leaders say the water bills won't even be the top priority. First will come an effort to restore cuts to health and human service programs vetoed by the governor in the most recent last-minute budget crisis.

The water bills are intended to fix the environmentally threatened Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and its rickety system of levees and pumps that provide water for some 25 million Californians and for the agricultural marvel that is the great Central Valley. A key provision would create the Delta Stewardship Council, a politically appointed body with the power to pursue massive projects such as a highly controversial canal around, through or under the delta to direct water to the south.

Schwarzenegger said in a statement following the legislators' release of the bills that he favors a comprehensive plan.

www.utsandiego.com/news/2009/aug/11/food-fight-water/

Water is NOT the problem. The planet is covered in water . They have access to a whole coastline of it. Its money thats the problem. They throw so much money away on illegals and corrupt pols they have nothing left for projects such as desalinization plants (or most any infrastructure projects really)

They could irrigate all of CA if they hadnt stolen all the taxpayer funds.

I also thought that it was survival of the fitist and people out-wiegh the smelt. There have been life forms through out time that have become extinct for one reason or the other and the smelt should be no different.

From what I have heard, CA is in a drought lasting about 10 years, having to buy water from other states.
It IS all about water, and years ago Florida, Alabama and Georgia got into a tussle. Sarasota homeowners on wells were rioting when developers came in and built golf courses, pumping groundwater onto the greens.