I was saddened when the sharp-tongued, insight-rich On The Public Record blog ceased to be; the anonymous writer offered up some of the most-intelligent words written on California’s water scene.
Well, he’s back.
And yes, I’m all tingly.
His latest post concerns California’s looming drought (still no water in the forecast), and in typically insightful fashion, he wonders why — when things go bad and people start talking “emergency powers” — it’s always the environment that gets shot in the ass:
I am reading a fair amount of talk about the governor’s emergency powers. Messrs Peltier and Santoyo keep bringing them up. After an emergency is declared, they say, the governor could use his emergency powers to weaken environmental laws. I haven’t yet heard anyone speculate about any other emergency powers. Could the governor use emergency powers to choose a couple million acres of land to fallow, allowing the water we do have to go further on the remaining irrigated acreage? Could the governor decide that with what little water we have available, we can’t afford to be irrigating crops that don’t directly provide calories to Californians? Maybe the governor’s emergency powers could rule out irrigating alfalfa or almonds*. Maybe the governor should decide that in these crucial dry years, we must protect what’s left of the Central Valley aquifers by banning groundwater pumping. Maybe the discussion of what the governor’s emergency powers could do shouldn’t begin and end with ‘gut the Endangered Species Act’.
California’s water landscape proves that money has a gravity all its own; water always flows towards it. And yes, barring a February/March Miracle, we’re going to see more whining, posturing, pouting and backstabbing than the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Don’t miss it.
See you watching the skies (and the political landscape), Tom Chandler.