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The drought itself is not unusual. Historically decadal droughts and even megadroughts are normal for the west/southwestern US. What point are you trying to make exactly?
California's 1-Percenters Are Flush With Water as the Rest of the State Remains Parched
While most of California worries, cuts back, and braces for the worst of this epic drought, the Golden State's 1-percenters are staying flush with water. While some are obeying public water restrictions and having it shipped in by the truckload to their mansions in the tony exurbs of Santa Barbara County, others are just breaking the rules and paying hefty fines for not obeying local water restrictions.
Politico reports that tanker trucks filled with water make routine deliveries to the grand manors of the rich and famous, carting up to 5,000 gallons of water to the regions wealthiest residences. The beltway newspaper reports that Oprah Winfrey, one of Montecito's richest and most noteworthy residents, gets one of these water deliveries on a regular basis. This has helped the talk show queen keep things flowing at her 40-acre estate. Oprah, whose water bill from the Montecito Water District was almost $125,000 last year, has cut her municipal water use in half this year, but she still needs massive deliveries of H2O to make it work.
Montecito Journal columnist Bob Hazard, says he would not be surprised if some of the town's wealthiest are "paying as much as $15,000 a month for trucked-in water." Still, not all Montecito residents are relying on water shipments to make up the difference. They are just ignoring the restrictions.
More than 800 consumers in the water district have already been hit with penalties totaling more than $500,000 altogether, which means they wasted some 13 million gallons of public water. One homeowner was reportedly hit with a $30,000 fine. And it's not only homeowners who are pirating the trickle of water the area gets from its aquifer; the Biltmore Four Seasons Hotel was hit with a hefty fine of nearly $50,000. According to Politico, there will be about $4 million in fines levied to Montecito Water District users this year.
http://www.alternet.org/rich-people-...ter1017040&t=3
The drought itself is not unusual. Historically decadal droughts and even megadroughts are normal for the west/southwestern US. What point are you trying to make exactly?
ing 1977 drought was crazy. Tioga Pass Road in Yosemite that goes up to 9900 feet or so was opened in February; it usually opens around Memorial Day and now they do all kinds of blasting and spreading charcoal on the snow to melt it more quickly, which I doubt they did then. , I wonder if they even plowed the road that year.Folsom Lake 8/24/14:
"The worst in the history of the state" is not unusual to you? These aren't desert areas. They're arable land that produce more cash crop than anywhere else in the United States.
"The drought itself is not unusual."
they're talking about this being the worst in at least 500 years.
Well it's the worst since keeping records which isn't very long.
Eventually we'll see levels of drought that causes an eastward migration. Maybe it's starting now, maybe not, who really knows.
http://endoftheamericandream.com/arc...ning-right-now
Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century in the western half of the United States in 1000 years, and that extremely dry conditions are normally what we should expect for most areas from the Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi River. If long-term conditions truly are “returning to normal”, then the state of California could be heading for a water crisis of unprecedented magnitude.
So you clarified a "normal" drought by saying that it hasn't happened since at least 1475. Cool story.Well it's the worst since keeping records which isn't very long.
Eventually we'll see levels of drought that causes an eastward migration. Maybe it's starting now, maybe not, who really knows.
History can be a cool story. Again, exactly what point are you trying to make. If it's just that drought sucks, then welcome to the party Cali.
Routinely in the Earth's history meteors and/or volcanic eruptions have devastated civilization. Do you have a shelter for those? Why not? According to the historical timeline they're common occurrences.
What point are you trying to make in regards to the Cali drought?
It's all those damn celebrity ice bucket challenges.
It's rare enough that it hasn't happened in the history of modern Western civilization, and could have drastic impacts on the state and the country? No one is saying this has never happened in Earth's history before. They're worried about the crops and preserving the resource. That means taking action to attend to the water supply. This thread is a discussion based around the impact it will have on humans living in California. What point are you trying to make by saying it's a common thing, referencing centuries in the past? If an 8.0 earthquake hits San Francisco tomorrow, will you also shrug it off because it's a relatively common occurrence in the history of the planet?
Thanks for finally answering my original question. It was not at all clear to me that was the point you were trying to make.
I'm not shrugging off anything. We've been in a drought for almost a decade, my well is almost dry and I've had to have water trucked in this summer. Drought sucks.
My point was just what I posted. The entire recorded history of Cali is the unusual period. As the article I linked said, "If long-term conditions truly are “returning to normal”, then the state of California could be heading for a water crisis of unprecedented magnitude. "
Corporate Greed Forces First City In California To Run Out Of Water
For the past year meteorological experts, NASA, and hydrologists have been warning that the exceptionally severe mega-drought plaguing California would dry up the state’s water supply within two years. One California town began running out of water in May and is now bone dry and many more are following suit. In an area with the most fertile soil in America’s most productive agricultural region, the city of East Portersville is without water, and over 500 wells supplying the life-sustaining necessity for residents and farmers have completely dried up. Residents now have to drive to the local fire station, hand-pump water into barrels, and take it back home to drink, bathe, and flush the toilet; this in an area near what was at one time the largest freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes.
In fact, dozens of communities report they are “on the verge of running out of water,” and many say their water supply will be exhausted within 60 days; if they are lucky.
There are also 14 communities on California’s “critical list” that have started trucking in water and expect that what precious little they have will not last much longer.
Across California, all 154 of its reservoirs are below 50% of their historic average and that estimate is being extremely generous according to images of the state’s lakes and reservoirs.
To make matters worse, as if that is possible, what little water the state has available is being poisoned by the oil industry due to fracking; particularly in the Central Valley where East Porterville is located. This past July state regulators shut downeleven fracking wastewater injection wells because they were suspected of being responsible for contaminating water wells and shrinking aquifers with toxins and carcinogens; particularly in highly productive agricultural areas.
After the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) ordered a report to assess potential damage to groundwater supplies, they revealed that the oil industry did poison the dwindling water supply for agriculture and human consumption with no regard for the health and well-being of the people; or financial devastation to agriculture. Agriculture, by the way, that is responsible for providing food for a large portion of America and the world’s population, and as their water supply dries up, food costs are going to rise exponentially.
Adding to the loss of water due to oil industry greed and pollution, is the corporate greed driving Nestlé’s extraction and bottling of Californians’ water; water they sell back to parched consumers and the state to distribute to Californians in poorer rural regions. It is tantamount to water-theft because unlike farmers, individual Californians, and every municipality in the state, Nestle is exempt from complying with state water-saving efforts or regulations because they are pumping water on Native American reservations. Nestlé’s disregard for Californians’ water needs was expressed by the former CEO and current Chairman who exhibited the mindset driving corporate greed.
According to Nestlé Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, water is not a basic human right, and that if human beings get thirsty they have to pay Nestlé for bottled water. It takes the term corporate greed to a new level to, on the one hand, pump California’s water supply dry, bottle it, and then sell it back to thirsty Californians. Nestlé has a history of going into rural areas and extracting groundwater to sell in bottles “completely destroying the water supply without any compensation.”
In one rural area of California suffering from the drought, Corporate Watch do ented that Nestle “actually makes rural areas foot the bill” for taking the water and selling it back to consumers; most likely in the California towns where the wells are drying up.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/10/...iticus+USA+%29
The Decline of California Agriculture Has Begun
http://www.slate.com/articles/techno...ge_photos.html
And the *EPA*s fine to the oil pigs was, let me guess, 50 cents? That was later suspended?
2. Nestle dude Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is on the board of directors of Credit Suisse Group, L'Oréal, and ExxonMobil.
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philp...ia-middle-east"California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 cubic kilometers of total water per year since 2011," he writes. That's "more water than all 38 million Californians use for domestic and municipal supplies annually — over half of which is due to groundwater pumping in the Central Valley."
Famiglietti uses satellite data to measure how much water people are sucking out of the globe's aquifers, and his summarized his research in his new paper.
More than two billion people rely on water pumped from aquifers as their primary water source, Famiglietti writes. Known as groundwater (as opposed to "surface water," the stuff that settles in lakes and flows in streams and rivers), it's also the source of at least half the irrigation water we rely on to grow our food. When drought hits, of course, farmers rely on groundwater even more, because less rain and snow means less water flowing above ground.
The lesson Famiglietti draws from satellite data is chilling: "Groundwater is being pumped at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished, so that many of the largest aquifers on most continents are being mined, their precious contents never to be returned."
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journ...imate2425.html
Confirmed: California Aquifers Contaminated With Billions Of Gallons of Fracking Wastewater
After California state regulators shut down 11 fracking wastewater injection wells last July over concerns that the wastewater might have contaminated aquifers used for drinking water and farm irrigation, the EPA ordered a report within 60 days.
It was revealed yesterday that the California State Water Resources Board has sent a letter to the EPA confirming that at least nine of those sites were in fact dumping wastewater contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants into aquifers protected by state law and the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity, reveals that nearly 3 billion gallons of wastewater were illegally injected into central California aquifers and that half of the water samples collected at the 8 water supply wells tested near the injection sites have high levels of dangerous chemicals such as arsenic, a known carcinogen that can also weaken the human immune system, and thallium, a toxin used in rat poison.
Timothy Krantz, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Redlands, says these chemicals could pose a serious risk to public health: “The fact that high concentrations are showing up in multiple water wells close to wastewater injection sites raises major concerns about the health and safety of nearby residents.”
The full extent of the contamination is not yet known. Regulators at the State Water Resources Board said that as many as 19 other injection wells could have been contaminating protected aquifers, and the Central Valley Water Board has so far only tested 8 of the nearly 100 nearby water wells.
Fracking has been accused of exacerbating California's epic state-wide drought, but the Central Valley region, which has some of the worst air and water pollution in the state, has borne a disproportionate amount of the impacts from oil companies' increasing use of the controversial oil extraction technique.
News of billions of gallons of fracking wastewater contaminating protected aquifers relied on by residents of the Central Valley for drinking water could not have come at a worse time.
Adding insult to injury, fracking is a water-intensive process, using as much as 140,000 to 150,000 gallons per frack job every day, permanently removing it from the water cycle.
Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, says these new revelations prove state regulators have failed to protect Californians and the environment from fracking and called on Governor Jerry Brown to take action now to prevent an even bigger water emergency in drought-stricken California.
“Much more testing is needed to gauge the full extent of water pollution and the threat to public health,” Krezmann says. “But Governor Brown should move quickly to halt fracking to ward off a surge in oil industry wastewater that California simply isn’t prepared to dispose of safely.”
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/10/07...ref_map=%5B%5D
Hang'em by their fraking balls!
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