$687 mil. drought relief proposal for Calif.
By Laurel Rosenhall, Sacramento Bee
Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders on Wednesday unveiled a proposal to spend roughly $687 million to alleviate the impacts of California’s drought, including efforts to clean and recycle water, improve conservation, capture rain, and give emergency food and housing assistance to farmworkers who will be out of work because their fields are fallow.
“The best way to make our communities more resilient to drought is to invest in projects that get the most out of every drop of water,” said Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, who joined the governor and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez in announcing the plan at the state’s Office of Emergency Services at Mather Field.
Money for the proposal would largely come from water and flood-prevention bonds voters approved in 2006, which means lawmakers don’t have to wait for the annual budget process to approve spending the money. Steinberg and Pérez said they thought the legislation could go through in the next couple of weeks.
Typical Democrats – throw money at a problem instead of addressing the root of the issue. There hasn’t been a new reservoir built in California in 35 years, and the water system was designed for a population of 12,000,000. Solve the problem by building more water storage instead of tossing taxpayer money around.
Yes, lets build more reservoirs that can sit dry. You need water to fill reservoirs and thats a fact. No snow pack, no water in streams equals no water in reservoirs. But of course there will be no issue about who pays to build these empty reservoirs, the tax payers cuz no private guy will use his precious money if uncle sam will do it for him. Building more reservoirs is certainly not the answer to the problem.
Again Bitter. We have over 2700 dams and reservoirs in California now; they are going dry. The largest river in the Southwest, the Colorado River, is going down and it has six (6) dams. Where do you propose to build more? For how much money? Who will pay for them?
Most water in California is used by Agri-Business.
There are alternatives that actually reduce the need for fresh water and produce fresh water. Eliminate water hungry Agri-Business, recycle Agri-Business water, conservation & desalination.
Seems to me that money…either the lack of it, or the refusal to share it…IS the root of most problems in this country.
The agencies have mismanaged our water storage for the last 30 years. Essentially, they no longer STORE water. They use the dams as flood control instead. We have no plan for low water years. None. You can thank your government for that.
Dog. Dam, “dams have two main functions. The first is to store water to compensate for fluctuations in river flow or in demand for water and energy. The second to raise the level of the water upstream to enable water to be diverted.” Guess who built most of the 2700 water storage devices our state… our government.
“They use the dams as flood control instead.”
That statement is fundamentally false.