Thread: Study:California will need 40 percent more water in 25 years

Bottom line is there are too many people in the state. How many more illegals do we need. I figure the day is coming when you will not be allowed to use any water in your yard for irrigation.

www.sacbee.com

Study: California will need 40 percent more water in 25 years
By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Published 3:00 am PDT Wednesday, July 27, 2005

SACRAMENTO (AP) - California's thirst for water will jump by 40 percent over the next 25 years at current rates, with much of the water going for landscaping in the hot, dry inland valleys that will see the bulk of the population growth, a new study warns.

The nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California plotted future use from current water consumption, population growth estimates and demographic projections in the study released Wednesday. Fourteen million more people will each be using 232 gallons each day by 2030, at the current pace.

But the institute says conservation, water planning and recycling can help meet the demand as the West struggles with continuous water shortages.

The institute found that a 2001 state law is working well, requiring that housing developers demonstrate in advance that they have lined up enough water for new residents before they start building homes.

Yet one-sixth of large municipal water utilities failed to submit water plans when last required five years ago, and other plans lacked adequate supply and demand projections. A Senate-approved bill pending in the Assembly would increase reporting requirements.

California already has made strides in cutting indoor water use with more stringent plumbing codes and requiring water-efficient appliances.

Outside, however, a lot of water goes to keep suburban lawns green.

And with half of all the state's projected new residents moving to Sacramento, San Joaquin and western San Bernardino and Riverside counties east of Los Angeles, that use will increase dramatically. Half of all the water used by inland homeowners goes to irrigating yards, compared to one third or less on the cooler coast.

More efficiently using water is key to meeting the growing demand, said report author Ellen Hanak, an economist and researcher at the institute.

"A lot of people put too much water on their lawns. There's a potential for cutting way back and still having a nice green lawn," she said. Education helps, but new technology should actually monitor the weather and lawn needs and adjust accordingly, she said.

Also, California cities can follow the example of Las Vegas, promoting the use of native plants while maintaining much smaller lawns, Hanak said. New developments and golf courses, parks and roadway medians can be designed to use recycled water, as some cities are doing already, said Hanak and Yvonne Hunter, a legislative representative for the League of California Cities.

But there are no easy answers, warned Hunter.

"We need to build more housing," Hunter said. "As more and more housing is built to meet the state's population growth ... we're stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place."

More water storage could help, including innovative ideas like storing water underground as well as in traditional reservoirs, said Hanak. And more exotic ideas, like desalination and cloud-seeding could play a role in some areas.

Regulatory hurdles for recycling and desalination projects should be lowered, said Jennifer Persike of the Association of California Water Agencies, and both groundwater and surface water projects should move quickly.

"We think all of these things have to be done, not just cherry-picking," said Persike. "It's a total package."

"We need to build more housing," Hunter said. "As more and more housing is built to meet the state's population growth ... we're stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place."

WHY DO YOU NEED TO BUILD MORE HOUSING?

More water storage could help, including innovative ideas like storing water underground as well as in traditional reservoirs, said Hanak. And more exotic ideas, like desalination and cloud-seeding could play a role in some areas.

CLOUD-SEEDING? What is that?

[quote:25pmqkao]Regulatory hurdles for recycling and desalination projects should be lowered, said Jennifer Persike of the Association of California Water Agencies, and both groundwater and surface water projects should move quickly.

[/quote:25pmqkao]

Recycling? Does this mean what I think it means?

This is their solution to over-population that has exceeded our nation's ability to sustain life? We do not have the land, we do not have the air, and we do not have the water for the present population. So, instead of controlling the borders, enforcing US Immigration Law, they are willing to drink "recycled water"? If these people aren't Sicko-Wacko-Evil-Parasites-From-Hell...I don't know who would be.

I am certain that God is crying as he looks down and sees the Mess these people have made of things on his Beautiful Blue Planet.

Recycling? Does this mean what I think it means?

Do the following articles answer your question?

www.signonsandiego.com

Perceptions of purity still cloud city's push to reuse wastewater

By Mike Lee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 12, 2005


Pearce, a city water engineer, doesn't hesitate to take a swig of sewage that's been treated and re-treated to the point where he says government-regulated contaminants are undetectable.
Pearce's pilot project could be a taste of things to come if San Diego becomes the first city in California to store purified wastewater in a local reservoir for use as drinking water. Nationwide, only one region – northern Virginia – has a comparable system.

San Diego's decision promises to be driven more by the perception of the city's 1.2 million water users than what national, state and local water experts say is the clear reality: that super-scrubbed wastewater is just as good or better than water taken from the Colorado River.

If San Diego officials overcome the "toilet to tap" stigma that derailed their original "water repurification" strategy in the late 1990s, they could become national leaders for a technology that some say will be necessary for water development in the arid West.

Yesterday, an advisory panel of about 30 residents began discussing San Diego's six major scenarios for using wastewater to help meet water-supply needs for a rapidly growing region. The group will continue meeting today and Thursday as part of the city's $900,000 analysis of strategies for recycling water.
By year's end, the panel's conclusions will be presented to the City Council, which halted its first repurification project in 1999 after public outcry.

At the time, opponents dubbed the effort "toilet to tap." The phrase made national headlines and helped seal the project's doom. Objections included health, safety and operational concerns, along with the perception that lower-income neighborhoods in the southern part of the city would become guinea pigs for untested technology.

Backers hope the time is right for a novel project.

"This is really a very safe and conservative approach," said James Peugh, coastal conservation chairman for the for San Diego Audubon Society.

In the last few years, there's been near-constant publicity about drought and possible water shortages in the Colorado River Basin. Also, San Diego has gained battle-tested experience with large-scale wastewater recycling. And environmentalists continue to push the city to do more.

On the equipment side, the latest water filtration systems are more reliable than previous models, said George Tchobanoglous, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering for the University of California Davis. He is chairman of San Diego's independent scientific advisory panel for water reuse.

Still, city officials are taking a cautious and low-key approach. They are trying to avoid another political firestorm.

Their study, launched in May 2004, was praised as balanced by the National Water Research Institute in Fountain Valley. Four of the report's six main options for treating wastewater involve what technicians call "indirect potable reuse," also known as "reservoir augmentation."

The process includes pumping highly treated wastewater into reservoirs, where it would mix with "raw" water from the Colorado River or Northern California before being treated again for home delivery.
As a whole, the study shows no solution that meets all of San Diego's competing priorities.

For instance, if minimizing costs is the highest goal, the city likely would emphasize the completion of a South Bay project to use partly treated wastewater for irrigation and industrial processes. That project would cost about $1 million.

However, if city leaders aim to maximize overall water reuse, the study shows that storing "purified" water in the San Vicente Reservoir would bring the highest returns. That option is expected to cost more than $200 million.

Many forum participants said the city needs to focus on educating the public about the safety of recycling wastewater for household use.

"We are going to have water that is as clean as any water you can get," said Lois Fong-Sakai, a civil engineer representing the Asian Business Association.

Proponents say recycling wastewater is an unavoidable necessity. They point to San Diego's projection that it will need 25 percent more water in 2030 than it uses today.

The city remains roughly 90 percent dependent on outside water sources, something that business leaders and environmentalists agree is untenable. It has two plants that treat and recycle wastewater, both of them running far below their capacity. Each day, the city releases an estimated 175 million gallons of partly treated wastewater into the ocean.

Opponents are still not convinced about the merits of turning wastewater into tap water.

"You think Dracula died, but in the movies Dracula always comes back for a repeat appearance, and that is where we are right now," said Howard Wayne, a former Democratic state assemblyman from San Diego and one of the people who made the "toilet to tap" moniker stick.

Wayne and other opponents worry about scientists not being able to detect all possible contaminants and the possibility of malfunctions at the treatment plants.

Detractors favor looking at additional water purchases and using recycled water only for irrigation and industry.

Many residents remain uneasy about drinking treated wastewater.

Only 28 percent of them supported the concept in a phone survey of 710 adults conducted last year for the San Diego County Water Authority.

Going into yesterday's meeting, many participants and interest groups said they were taking an open-minded approach.

For instance, the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce supports water reuse but is waiting to see what the city panel recommends before it considers specific ideas.

"We want to do it in a way that the community is going to accept," said Craig Benedetto, chairman of the chamber's infrastructure committee.

Environmentalists generally support reuse projects, including reservoir augmentation.

"We cannot continue to use . . . the Pacific Ocean as our dumping ground" for sewage, said Marco Gonzalez, a lawyer for several environmental groups. "We are wasting water and we are harming the environment and we don't need to."

Water agencies in San Diego County are exploring ways to increase the supply aside from treating wastewater for residential consumption. They want to further conserve water, desalinate seawater and importer water.

Recycling wastewater for use on highway medians and golf courses also plays a role. Such efforts have yielded limited success in the city of San Diego because they rely on an expensive system of pipes to carry nonpotable recycled water. Those pipes are painted purple to distinguish them from pipes that transport drinking water.

In contrast, reservoir augmentation would require expansion of a treatment plant and laying a pipeline to the reservoir. Because the rest of the delivery system is in place, it is viewed as a much less cumbersome approach than laying purple pipes all over the city.

A few large agencies in Los Angeles and Orange counties use treated wastewater to recharge drinking-water aquifers – not above-ground reservoirs – and protect them from seawater intrusion.

San Diego doesn't have a substantial aquifer like Orange County, a national leader in water recycling, so it has been forced to look at other options. The water-purification process is basically the same regardless of where water is stored, scientists say.

G. Wade Miller, executive director of the WateReuse Association in Alexandria, Va., said San Diego's proposal faces a formidable hurdle: "The simple answer is public perception . . . that this water . . . is from a highly contaminated source."

The association, which supports a variety of reuse methods, went so far as to consult psychologists last year in an attempt to understand public fears. One key finding was that people are much more accepting of "natural" water sources such as the Colorado River, even if those sources include wastewater.

Most of the nation's major rivers, including the Colorado, serve as both dumping grounds for treated effluent and water sources for cities downstream.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which provides water to the Las Vegas region, has for decades been pumping treated wastewater back into its massive reservoir, Lake Mead.

"It's happening all over . . . the world," said water authority spokesman Vince Alberta. "It's just that it's happening way upstream from where you are (in San Diego), so you are not thinking about it."


www.signonsandiego.com


'Repurified' wastewater backed for home use


Citizens panel forwards proposal to S.D. council
By Mike Lee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 15, 2005

A diverse panel of San Diegans yesterday embraced a plan to recycle highly treated wastewater by piping it to the San Vicente Reservoir and eventually to customers citywide.

If adopted by the City Council, the costly and controversial project would be the only one of its kind in California. Forum participants said they want San Diego to become a national model for water recycling.

"We hope it will be a historic step," said Judy Swink, a panelist who lives near Point Loma.

The $210 million proposal – dubbed "toilet to tap" by opponents in the late 1990s – was one of the options considered in a $900,000 study that the council commissioned last year. It now moves to the council's natural resources committee.

Securing a local water supply was a top priority for the panelists because San Diego is almost entirely dependent on imports from the Colorado River and Northern California. The city's water demand is expected to grow 25 percent by 2030.

"For my grandchildren's sake, we need a sustainable water supply, and it's right here," said Gerald Handler, a panel member and dental surgeon from La Jolla. The panel consists of participants from different ethnic backgrounds and professions as varied as environmental activist and small-business owner.

Handler initially was skeptical about turning wastewater into drinking water, he said, but learning about the science of water reclamation and San Diego's water needs made him an advocate.

"The more you know, the more you are convinced that this is the way of the future," he said.

Not everyone sees it that way.

Former Councilman Bruce Henderson of Pacific Beach was a leading opponent of a similar water recycling project that the council spiked in the late 1990s after public outcry.

He contends that San Diego should focus on water conservation, which he said is cheaper and less risky than treating wastewater. He opposes drinking "repurified" wastewater because of the possibility of human error in the treatment process.

Though Henderson isn't on the citizens panel, he promised to register his concerns publicly as the city's recycling strategies move forward.

"There is a simple solution," he said. "Ask the voters, 'Do you want toilet to tap or do you want conservation?' "

The prospect of drinking highly treated wastewater makes many residents uneasy, according to a phone survey of 406 San Diegans sponsored by the city in 2004. Respondents heavily supported a wide range of applications for recycled water – for irrigating golf courses and use in industrial processes and toilets – but only about a quarter of them backed its use for drinking water.

The results showed that public support improved from 28 percent to about 50 percent when respondents were given more information about safeguards and water testing standards.

Yesterday, panel members said they want to maximize the city's use of recycled water and the best way to do that is to use a mix of strategies. Their final statement was unanimously supported by the group of roughly 30 people, though one individual said he wanted to see even more aggressive water recycling goals.

The statement called for getting new customers for nonpotable water from the city's South Bay Water Reclamation Plant. That plan's projected cost of $1 million is the cheapest of the six options scrutinized by the panel.

For San Diego's North City Water Reclamation Plant, the panel wants to see highly treated wastewater piped to the San Vicente Reservoir, where it would mix with raw river water and eventually be distributed to faucets citywide.

That effort, called "indirect potable reuse," includes building water treatment systems using technology such as reverse osmosis. This project was one of the most expensive strategies examined in the city's study.

However, it would maximize the North City treatment plant's recycling capacity and provide the most recycled water of any option reviewed by the citizens panel.

Northern Virginia has the only comparable program in the nation, though water agencies as close as Orange County have long been using highly treated wastewater to augment and protect drinking water aquifers. Proponents of recycling wastewater point out that virtually all major river systems in the United States, including the Colorado River, are heavily used as dumping grounds for treated sewage.

"The assembly considers (purified) water to be superior in quality to other sources," said the panel's statement. "Indirect potable use broadens the possible uses of this resource and is the most flexible approach to maximize . . . the city's water resources."

Such remarks surprised some backers of water recycling.

"I didn't foresee that there would be this strong of support for indirect potable reuse," said Fred Zuckerman of Tierrasanta, who was consulted on the city's water supply study.

Is the rest of San Diego ready for an injection of such water?

"I think so," Zuckerman said, "but who can foresee what the politicians will do?"

Several panelists said during and after yesterday's meeting that they were committed to lobbying for the San Vicente project despite San Diego's troubled past with wastewater reuse proposals. They've already started discussing how to persuade council members to accept wastewater recycling.

"I am hopeful (the council) will keep an open mind . . . and not just come out against it so that it becomes impossible for them to come on board later," said Phil Pryde, a panelist and former board member of the San Diego County Water Authority.

The panel also acknowledges the barrier of public perception in the San Vicente plan. A major section of its final document outlines a "communication strategy" that includes working with schools and "engaging well-known local leaders as spokespersons."


www.pe.com


Wastewater will sell, city says
SAN BERNARDINO: As demand grows, the cleansed effluent will look like a bargain.

12:42 AM PDT on Sunday, June 26, 2005


By CHRIS RICHARD / The Press-Enterprise

Scientists say there's no new water under the sun.

Humans today use the same recycled water once consumed by dinosaurs.

Building on that theory, San Bernardino wants to sell its treated wastewater for up to $1.4 million.


But by setting a value on the water that flows from its treatment plant, San Bernardino also is tiptoeing in the eddies of that public relations whirlpool, the phrase "toilet to tap."

The venture also could transform the search for drinking water as Southern California's population grows.

"The San Bernardino case could be a blueprint for all water-scarce areas in California," said City Councilwoman Susan Lien Longville, who also is associate director of the Water Resources Institute at Cal State San Bernardino. "We're saying, 'Listen, we have a valuable resource here. It's clean. If we can sell it, should we not be able to do that?' "

Under a plan approved by the city water department board recently, up to 18,000 acre-feet of treated wastewater could be sold per year. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons, a two-year supply for a family of four.

The sales plan goes beyond the common usage of so-called "gray water" to cool industrial machinery or irrigate roadway medians. Cities are glad to get rid of that water, and users pay little or nothing.

While San Bernardino has no purchasers for the treated wastewater, "We're just waiting for the commitments from potential buyers," said Stacey Aldstadt, the water department's deputy general manager.

Well Situated

Officials say the city is well situated to create a paying market. Its 78-acre Rapid Infiltration and Extraction plant sits just south of Interstate 10, uphill from most neighboring water districts. That means the city can use gravity to get water to its customers and avoid pumping costs.

The cleaning process at the plant, which is jointly operated by San Bernardino and Colton, also could help sales. The plant drives wastewater through layers of sand in the ground, and then sucks it up again with pumps.

Next, the water is disinfected using ultraviolet light. City officials chose this technology a decade ago because it's cheaper than conventional chemical treatment. It also gets the water cleaner, Aldstadt said.

The plant pours some 40 million gallons of water a day into the Santa Ana River. San Bernardino plans to sell part of its 80 percent share to agencies that want a high-quality source for replenishing underground aquifers.

To meet state standards, agencies use the best quality water possible in their spreading basins, where stored water percolates underground. Usually that is Sacramento River Delta water brought in through the California Aqueduct, which costs as much as $500 per acre-foot.

San Bernardino's wastewater will sell for about $75 per acre-foot, Aldstadt said.

Such sales would make waves throughout the state, said Randy Van Gelder, assistant general manager of the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, which oversees groundwater storage in a 325-square-mile region stretching from Bloomington to Yucaipa.

"If the city of San Bernardino is successful in this, why is Colton not going to want to sell off their portion?" he said. "Why is Rialto not going to want to sell theirs, and why wouldn't Riverside look at the same thing? All the sudden, everybody would be doing it."

That could upset financial calculations throughout the state, because treated wastewater traditionally has been free, said Robert Reiter, the district's general manager.

No Sure Thing

But the product may be a tough sell.

The last time any consumer saw it, this water was gurgling down the plumbing. A single skeptical phrase from opponents -- such as "toilet to tap" -- could be a deal-killer.

Those words did in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's East Valley Water Recycling Project four years ago. East Valley would have sent 3.2 billion gallons of water to Los Angeles' spreading grounds.

Opponents stressed that the water came from sewers. Politicians balked, and Mayor James Hahn killed the project in 2001.

The Orange County Water District learned from that debacle before it launched its own recycling program in 2004. Officials wooed the public with seminars and purification plant tours, and the district started construction on a $487 million recycling project in October.

Both projects relied on free water, waste that upstream agencies had discarded.

Recycled-water advocates correctly point out that their technologies merely speed up nature's own recycling processes -- but they can't brush aside perceptions, Longville said.

"If I could get Oprah to do for recycled water what she did for mad cow disease, to somehow turn the public mind, I would," she said. "Because that's the single most difficult problem, the yuck factor."

Undaunted, Aldstadt sticks to her own market facts.

She says agencies have to consider several factors in choosing water to use in recharging: cleanliness, availability and price. By all three, San Bernardino's purified wastewater is the best bargain, she said.

Water War

It could be valuable enough to trigger a new sort of water war.

According to a 1969 court decision known as the Orange County Judgment, agencies below Prado Dam have rights to 42,000 acre-feet of upstream water annually.

But Orange County faces a projected population increase of 700,000 people in the next 15 years. Under an application now before the State Water Board, the Orange County Water District is seeking to expand its rights to include all of the water that reaches Prado Dam on the Santa Ana River near Corona. During dry periods, it's almost all treated waste.

That, Aldstadt said, gives San Bernardino an added incentive: to maintain its property rights to the potentially valuable wastewater.

There is no level of low that these people will go to in order to over-populate the United States and the WORLD.

How do you super-scrub disease out of waste-waster?

No one in Northern Virginia drinks the water.

Almost everyone spends a fortune on bottled water.

Creating a trash nightmare.

There is no end to this until you stop the cause of the spiral.

When food becomes short, what will we be eating then?

Scrubbed Cadavers?



At some point mature intelligent adults have to come to the realization that there are more people than acceptable resources to sustain life on this planet. We have exceeded that. It has to be reversed.

While we don't control what happens in other countries, WE DO CONTROL WHAT HAPPENS IN THE UNITED STATES.

If you like the spiral to drinking your own scrubbed feces and the highly probable solution of lack of burial grounds; lack of land to grow enough food; and cadaver cure to hunger---You Better Wake Up; Kill CAFTA; and GET THESE SICKO-WACKO-EVIL-PARASITES-FROM-HELL-TRAITORS OUT OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AND INTO JAIL CELLS!!

When food becomes short, what will we be eating then?

Scrubbed Cadavers?

Soylent Green! I'd rather eat bathtub cheese.

One of my idols, Isaac Asimov, said way back in 1983 that the wars of the future will not be over oil--they will be over fresh water. Our present day problems with illegal immigration are a symptom of Third World overpopulation and lack of family planning. The entire time I worked in California I was struck by a feeling that that entire region was on the verge of collapse--the evidence was everywhere--from rolling black outs to taxes on everything imaginable to poltical instability and now water shortages. California is the most beautiful place on the earth but things are going so, so wrong. You'd have to be a fool not to see it.

The line from the illiterate Third World never ends, folks.

And BobC...it has gone nationwide.

The plan of the Elite in the United States including Academia is to increase our population to 700,000,000 with immigration and open borders.

For many this might seem like a "wow"...but it is more than a "wow".

The amount of development required to more than double the United States population will take our farms; remove any possibility whatsoever that we could feed our nation; and will be completely reliant upon other nations for food.

The temperature of our communities due to the additional paving; asphalt and structures will increase to intolerable levels.

The plan underway is more than "wow"....it is Hell on Earth.

No one can imagine without studying the affects of growth by development for human habitation....the consequences on the food and water supplies; the increased poverty; the increased crime; the repulsive things that will be necessary...for just some to survive.

The amount of state police needed to control the population will be akin to Nazi Germany.

Government will start making choices as to who has the right to live; who should die at what age; who can have children; who can't; how many those who can can have; who is worth education; who isn't; who gets to eat normal meals; who doesn't; who gets fresh water; who doesn't; where you work; what you do; what you earn; where you live; who has a car; who doesn't.

And there will be wars between peoples because they will have no other choice.

STOP THIS NONSENSE!!

GET the people behind this behind bars and out of our government.

We are still having threats of blackouts again this year in the state. I don't understand why we keep building when the utilities are struggling to keep up with the demand.


www.ocregister.com

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Summer's balancing act


By ANDREW GALVIN
The Orange County Register


Four years after a power deficit prompted California's grid manager to impose "rotating outages," the improvement in the state's power situation is just barely keeping pace with new demand in fast-growing Southern California.

Southern California "is the worst electricity-supply situation in the entire country," Joseph Kelliher, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said in June.

This year, we probably have enough power to get through normal summer weather without resorting to blackouts. But if the heat turns extreme, supplies could become severely strained. A regional heat wave across the West would divert power we import from other states, leaving Southern California to depend on its own, barely adequate generating resources.

Combine a heat wave with another crisis such as a wildfire that takes down a major transmission line, and we could be plunged into darkness.

If you're wondering why we're in this situation, here are some reasons:

Growth

During the 2000-2001 energy crisis, Northern California was worse off than Southern California. That's changed, partly because economic and population gains have been faster here. And much of the growth is coming in areas such as the Inland Empire, where summer temperatures are hotter and demand for electricity to run air conditioning is higher.

Meanwhile, most of the new power plants to come online since the last crisis are in Northern California, and most of the plants that have been shuttered or mothballed are in Southern California.

In 2001, transmission bottlenecks limited the amount of power that could be shipped up and down the state, contributing to two extra days of blackouts in the north. Those bottlenecks have been eased through major upgrade projects.

UNCERTAINTY

Even though there is a clear need for new power plants, obstacles to getting them built remain.

The 2000-2001 crisis resulted in part from the state's failed experiment with a deregulated wholesale market for electricity. That failure left the state's regulatory system in shambles. Since then, state agencies such as the California Public Utilities Commission have been working to build a new framework, but they aren't finished. That leaves banks and other financiers uncertain about how they would be allowed to recoup and profit from investments in new power plants.

Even amid that uncertainty, some new-generation plants are getting built, such as Calpine Corp.'s Pastoria Energy Facility near Bakersfield, a 750-megawatt plant that began operation this year. One megawatt is enough to power 650 typical homes during summer.

HEAT

August is the touch-and-go month, when demand for power is typically highest. A forecast prepared by the state's grid manager, the California Independent System Operator, shows Southern California could come up short if the region experiences the type of pan-Western heat wave that typically occurs in one out of 10 summers.

"It's a bit disheartening, quite frankly, to see that we're looking again at ... a potentially tight summer, maybe another two," Pat Wood, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said at a conference in San Francisco in June.

"It's a bit disheartening, quite frankly, to see that we're looking again at ... a potentially tight summer, maybe another two," Pat Wood, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said at a conference in San Francisco in June.

"It's a bit disheartening"...."IT'S A BIT DISHEARTENING"

This is all a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has to say????

What do you expect when the Greater Los Angeles Area should legally be about 12 million and it's over 25 million?

Where do you think the other 12,000,000 came from?

Where are they supposed to get water, food, housing, jobs?

It's not there, any of of it. Drinking recycled water is the best answer they can come up with? Building nuclear plants is the best answer they can come up with?

The best answer Pat Wood can give is: "It's a bit disheartening, quite frankly"??

WHO IN THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE?

I just have one question: Did Americans pay this person to be Chairman of the United States Energy Regulatory Comission? If so, Americans should demand their money back...all of it.

Brian--that's exactly what I was trying to say about California--it was just bizzare to me that the obvious problems like overpopulation and illegal immigration were being completely ignored as they tried to dream up new taxes on everything as a "solution." The solution to everything was tax something new! I live in Texas where we don't even have a state tax, so this went against my grain bigtime. You can only throw so much pain killer at a disease before you wake up and realize you have to get rid of the disease, not the symptoms!

If you look at the nations worldwide with the highest "quality of life" ratings, you will see that most of them are Scandanvian countries with stable populations. Here in America all we give a damn about is increasing "growth"--it's the solution for everything. If you look at the worst rated nations, you will find Third World militant breeding and populations that the land cannot support. Now we are getting stampeded by them and trust me--we cannot solve their problems. They will only drag us down to their level.