California Drought

The Rocky Mountains get in the way. The Roman aqueducts and the other pipe lines you mentioned are all essentially down hill.

If I recall correctly, excess rain is not historically a problem for Texas. The water pipelines would have to be built between areas of long term water excess and areas of long term water shortage.

The PaloDuro canyon is the second largest canyon in the United States.

It is in the panhandle of Texas,north of the drought area.

It does not have a river running through it,but a small stream.

However, due to the very flat geology,when it rains anywhere

within many miles from there,it turns into a flash flood and the stream becomes a

raging river.

No good for power generation but good for storage.

Excess rain only has been a problem here recently. Last year it was not so.

pipelines are too slow and all the electricity to pump it 1000 miles is crazy, just FEDEX

Do the math on the 'rising oceans' once. Unless you can sequester dozens of cubic miles of water per day for years on end it's a fruitless human effort.

Unfortunately one navy ships desal systems is likely only good for a few hundred to a few thousand GPM output at best whereas to do any good a single city or area needs a million plus GPM source.

Why don't they just get all those desalination plants on line.

And as far as taking water from up north, who are they taking water from down stream?

In california such concerns like that are not their problem. That's something happening in another state.

I bet all the money their sinking into that high speed rail they're building (money pit), I bet they're going to wish it was another desalination plant.

as long as I have enough water to wash the BMW why should I care about the next gallon?

There have been several sayings developed during past droughts when water restrictions were imposed that I like:

Save water, shower with a "friend" (of the opposite sex preferably)

On saving toilet flush water: If it is yellow, let it mellow. If it is brown, flush it down.

Humorous but wise sayings.

Good Luck, Old Salt

when I shower with a "friend" my sole intention is always water conservation

That might be an option if it wasn't so polluted...

http://www.socalsmc.org/

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/stormwater/industrial.shtml

I have a pretty strong background in water treatment. it always struck me as funny if not downright ignorant some people are on the general topic of water. many people think the water out of their tap is "new water", most of them are shocked and disgusted to hear me say that a portion of that very water came from the effluent of a sewage treatment plant...then went through an RO process and was then injected back into the ground where it could be ultimately connected to the main aquifer that their water was drawn from. in Irvine California they have TWO water systems underground. one carries drinking water, the other is straight from the sewage treatment plant for watering of golf courses, beltways etc. don't drink from the lavender colored pipes!

^scratch beltway opps

Well to those with even half a proper education most of california's problems do look pretty much to be stupidity induced.

I would say ignorance induced but ignorance is a rational treatable condition.

Californians aren't that dumb, most can get your fast food order correct assuming you habla in espanol

I agree with you on that most people think their drinking water is "new".

They do not realize that the water upstream of the pumping station is the effulent

from someone else's waste plant.

EPA has a dilution ratio of 1 million to one limit,supposedly,and records are kept for

posterity.

As population has increased,the amount of water taken in has increased,waste plants

have become closer together,and the water is becoming more polluted

downstream.

They do not recognize that their downstream is someone else's upstream.

It is a continous loop.

A partial solution,and logical method is to use the effluent,that would normally go to

the river, as a source of fresh potable water.

It could be easily treated to meet potable water standards,at at a reduced cost

because a large part of the dissolved solids and other contaminates have already

been removed by the waste treatment process.

Only a fraction of make up water would be required to make up for losses.

I think that more money should be spent on finding common sense answers to water

shortages.(This eliminates most government agencies).

The first trickle of smoke is beginning to rise from the beginning of the Water Wars.

It will get much worse before it gets better.

And nothing spurs innovation like a war.

Lake Bakail in Siberia holds 20% of the world's fresh water.

More than all of the great lakes combined.

It may eventually be the world-controlling asset of the next 50 years,as OPEC once was.

With the world population increasing at the current rate,stop-gap measures are sure

to fail.

We must find answers by copying Mother Nature:Use,Recycle,Use,Recycle.....

Texas is not historically a flood prone area.

That's the problem with "flood prone areas". They are unpredictable and don't stay put.

I guess if we did build such a pipeline from "flood prone areas" to California, we could harness the power of tornados to pump the water to the land of fruits and nuts.

Where is Pecos Bill when you need him?

The new water purification technologies will solve most of the energy input into desalinization, but will require harnessing waste heat or low grade heat in the 50-80 C range for driving the energy intensive part of FO that breaks the draw solute out of the product water side of the membrane current.

Another potential emerging technology is much improved electrodialysis (supposedly, the primary issues related to failures in the past have been dealt with).

To California I say: "Dam it!"

They need to grab a number of flat bergs that calve of Antarctica quite often. Pick one with no penguin crap on it. Wrap it underwater with a layer of foam and spray 6 inches of latex foam on top. Tow it to offshore California and waste the first salty underwater melt and them pump the rest on shore.

The idea is valid, but might require shaping the berg yo be long and narrow. The correct shape will prevent the 90% underwater from rising as it flips over = engineer no flips.

A body like that could be moved at 1-2 knots = 30-60 miles per day, depending on what advantage can be taken of wind and wave currents.

Since areas that might be 10 KM long and 2 KM wide might be encountered = 20,000,000 square meters 50 meters deep = 1,000,000,000 cubic meters =~~ 800,000 acre feet.

Here is what the deal wih now

Water in California

That also equals 1,000,000,000 Metric tons.

That is equivalent to the dispalcement of over 18000 of the largest cargo ships

currently made,or over 10,000 Nimitz class aircraft carriers.

I wont even mention the amount of fuel required.

And icebergs create their own currents and weather.

How do you propose to tow this little ice cube?

Just curious.

This will take some study. How to insulate or run bare = lower cost. underwater insulated shroud?
work has been done on the idea

I have no idea why this block beneath here crops up. I am unable to remove it

Text-to-speech function is limited to 100 charactersOptions : History : Help : Feedback

CR4 ADMIN - image removed

The image posted was too wide for the screen so has been removed.

why did that happen? reported

Text-to-speech function is limited to 100 charactersOptions : History : Help : Feedback

CR4 ADMIN - image removed

The image posted was too wide for the screen so has been removed.

same problem?? this text block appeared after submission. Prior page had no text block and this text submission had not link submittal?

Text-to-speech function is limited to 100 charactersOptions : History : Help : Feedback

CR4 ADMIN - image removed

The image posted was too wide for the screen so has been removed.

you hosed my screen up.... now I have to <unsubscribe>.

I reported the problem, they might have seen it before and know WTF

Text-to-speech function is limited to 100 characters

Options : History : Help : Feedback

Whatever you did, also ruined the horizontal page scrolling of text. I hate it when that happens.

<unsubscribe me>

Strap a sail to it, silly man! When you get going, it melts faster, and the lighter it gets, the faster it goes....literally. They are all just drops in the bucket anyway.

I say let Californica drink wine. As much as they whine, there should be an inexhaustible supply.

By the way, the rains will come, and they will be late as usual.

You have obviously not kept up with the fast rate both north and south pole ice caps are melting due to the warming of the planet. Don't worry about moving ice. It will melt and be at your doorstep as water before long. Don't worry about not having enough water, when about half the population of the humans in the world die off then we will have barely enough water.

Sounds like very valid reasons not to build a pipeline, but I was thinking about buildind it along the U.S./Mexico border that is relatively flat. We could use Mexicans to build it. When they cross the border (illegally), we grab them, put them to work in exchange for fast track residency.

Or, California could charge each Mexican that crosses the border (1) bucket of water to cross.

the size of your house isn't important..the humidity in it is, and run time

How many tires a day do you burn to run the AC?

None! But that doesn't stop me from burning them anyway.

I just got new rear tires on my backhoe tractor so.......

Keep burning those tires and Emperor Barry's EPA will come a-knocking on your back door.

Knocking????

They no longer have to knock.

door knocker

Why not build a desalinization plant right there on the ocean powered by a combination of wave, wind, and solar, and backed up by the grid when there isn't enough of all three to do the job?

For the same reason, that 'anything' that you or I could propose, would immediately be protested as environmentally unfriendly, (even if it isn't), by the 'environmental whackos'!

water to drink by desalination is doable, but for rice the cost would be a killer.

All those high water use crops neeed to go.

Inatead we have these ancient water rights that create the shortage.

I see the future of farming as hydroponics.

Natural resources are conserved,pesticides are eliminated or minimized,operations

can be highly automated and controlled.

Lighting will be artificial or solar tubes\fiber optics.

1 Acre of land can become 50 acres or more in a multi-story structure.

Yields per acre will be greatly increased.

The open land farming of today will eventually become obsolete.

As for golfers,Astro-Turf may be an option,or some specially designed substitute for

grass.

Golf is not a major worry for me.

I have only hit 2 balls in my life,and that was when I stepped on a yard rake.

not to mentioned dairy herds.

The economic impact will be cgreat, if they all turned to low water use crops such as ???? I see the price for that commodity of the price dropping out.

California as a economical power house when it comes to raising crops.... its not going to happen.

And their is going to be a strain with the neighboring states.

I is believed that the wars will eventually be fought over, not for oil,..... but water.

I know the Great Lakes Compact is constantly being strained,..... Coca Cola is continue trying trying to gain access to the water. But they are just waiting and then put pressure on a state with an poor economic forecast.

The war over water has already started.

Many states have passed "water rights adjudication" legislation giving the state and federal governments the absolute right to control all water use.

Currently many small farmers in Arizona are being approached by government agents and asked to sell their water rights then sign an agreement that the farm land will not be ever used for farming purposes.

There are several areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada that I am aware of which do not allow any outside use of water and I would be surprised if there are not other states with the same regulations.

There are also several areas where the government has installed water meters on all wells and they are collecting taxes for the water being pumped from private wells.

In Arizona the current fad is for the Indian reservations to bring suit against farmers to destroy their irrigation systems and allow the water to flow unimpeded.

In the 80's over 30% of the world's rice supply was destroyed when California removed five dams in the delta basin around Bakersfield.

I have no sympathy for California being in a drought because they are indeed victims of their own stupidity. The dams that are being destroyed were built to protect people and provide a stable water supply to sustain life in an otherwise arid region. Without adequate water storage facilities to sustain them through drought the state will cease to function. Desalination will somewhat work for those heavily populated coastal areas but it will not help the rest of the state. There is no reason that dams cannot be installed that can facilitate salmon and other aquatic species migration patterns while at the same time providing adequate water storage for the residents and farmers.

The questions are: Do we protect small quantities of wildlife and destroy our civilization or vice versa? Which is more important? Why can we not sustain our population's needs and still protect both?

In addition to the above; exactly where are people going to get their food from if we continue to destroy all of the farm land?

Food is a necessity, not an option and we have far too many people to continue allowing wanton destruction of farm land and farming in this country.

Federal had control of water rights for a long time.

"Currently many small farmers in Arizona are being approached by government agents and asked to sell their water rights then sign an agreement that the farm land will not be ever used for farming purposes."

This I'm not surprised. It comes down to politicians looking to make a buck themselves or family.

Even though it can now be debunked, and it can claim to be. Yet at one time Harry Reid was the facilitator on the Bundy Ranch with it was initially active.

are you a farmer?

No. But I would be proud to be one.

Farming's a good life,.... but a poor living.

"Farming's a good life,.... but a poor living."

It would depend on "what" you are growing and, how scarce food is. Farmers who had viable farms (not located in the Mid-West dust bowl) during the Great Depression survived and lived better than city dwellers. I'm no where old enough to have experienced the Great Depression, but I had many rural farming relatives on the East Coast that did.

If you have read the book or seen the movie "Grapes of Wrath", it told about the Okies (sharecroppers) dust bowl, and the Oklahoma farmer's migration to California. Ironically, this present day situation may create the reverse of that 1930's migration... from California, to Oklahoma.

A good life mean experiences

A poor Living is that even though you produce, does not mean you can make a profit.

With this being said, there were times where we made a killing with the commodities we raised..... at other times, we didn't receive anything for a bumper crop. (We contracted peas with the cannery, that's the only we any one can grow them. They Plant it and Harvested for you, so they can schedule harvest times)

Well, they filled their orders before the season ended (half over), and combined the fields, with the heads raised....

How many people do you know that have half a dozen or more vehicles sitting in a garage worth $80K - $200K+ and an estate worth a few million or better that they own outright? And how many of those people who do have that are the types you could walk up to in an average store or restaurant and have a conversation with without them making it clear they consider themselve to be way way better than you.

Not too many I suppose?

Now your average farmer has that and then some but his half dozen or so high end vehicles are tractors, combines sprayers and other such machines and his garage they sit in is one of several buildings that has a footprint bigger than most standard city lots and his estate farm land takes up more acreage than many small towns and if you met them in a store or restaurant the odds are you would never guess what their net worth and annual gross cash flow was because they would likely be the last person to inform you of it.

Yea thats a pretty poor miserable life to have and I am grateful to be surrounded by a whole huge state packed full of those poor miserable bastards I call my community and friends.

Oh yea and never ask them for a cup or two of beans so you can make a stew. Them poor SOB's will probably give you a few five gallon buckets full even if you don't want them just so that they will have a clear mind that they were not responsible for you starving to death due to their lack of generosity.

Although they will likely ask for the buckets back even though they have a shed the size of a small house with 500+ of them at home. (Its a farmer thing.)

You have reminded me of a time that I lived in Iowa (1994), and you are correct. Wish I had remembered these Iowan farmers' tendencies before I ranted about the Ironies of the migrating Okies and Californians.

Many Iowan farmers were paid NOT to grow crops in order to help keep the market prices up. Those whom needed more money than government subsidies provided, and had to actually produce in order to pay for their large fleets of farm equipment, depended on bumper crops to pay back their bank loans (or lose their farms).

Then their were the silver-spoon, hand-me-down working farms that have existed for several generations, with >1000 acre tracks, paid for/owned, and also government subsidized to minimize harvest yields. Many of these farmers also profited by leasing large tracks of their land to Pioneer Seed to test GMO soy bean and corn crops. You could find these guys sitting in the local town pubs, getting drunk, and complaining that it was either too dry or too wet to plant crops.

Politics and greed abound in farming, whether it is in California or Iowa; especially when the Government and Corporate Farm conglomerates have their subsidizing hands in the mix, manipulating prices.

In the 80's over 30% of the world's rice supply was destroyed when California removed five dams in the delta basin.

World production figures for rice in the 1980's are all estimated because China did not publish it's own production at that time, but it is reasonable to assume that while all the figures would have been lower, the relative proportion contributed to world rice production by each country would be roughly the same as today. Based on today's figures America is the world's 11^th largest producer of rice contributing just over 7million tones (or 1.48%) of the 475million tons produced worldwide (US Dept. of Agriculture 2014 statistic based on milled rice. Rice loses about ¹/₃ of it's weight in milling) Growing 30% of world rice production would take about 53million hectares, an area slightly larger than the Bakersfield delta basin. I think that you may have overstated the impact removing 5 dams had on world rice production.

The numbers came from the impact study performed by the USDA and are available from their website.

My point is that there is already steps being taken to eliminate high water usage crops in California and in this particular case the reduction was very significant.

If you only grow 1.5% of the worlds rice then you cannot have reduced world output by 30% even if it says you did on the USDA web site. Some government clown uploaded rubbish and you blithely quoted it without considering if the numbers made sense. A 30% reduction in world rice supply would have caused mass starvation and probably WW3, even a backwoods isolationist American would have noticed that.

California had water storage, 5 dams. California removed that water storage. Thirty years later California is in the middle of a drought that would be helped by still having the water storage that it took away. And you're saying that was the correct thing to do. Leaving the dams in place and still converting to less water dependent crops, now that would have been a good thing to do.

Since when do we seriously expect the facts to matter, let alone be applied logically to the problems at hand, when a governmental decision is required?

ESPECIALLY in California !!!

"California had water storage, 5 dams. California removed that water storage."

Yes, I do recall that these dams were removed; in some cases to prevent the extinction of certain species of spawning fish. The drought will not only cause these protected fish to perish, but will also kill the tree-huggers' forest regions.
What really concerns me is the large population in California. According to the 2014 Census, there were almost 39-million "registered" people living in California (and this number didn't included "undocumented immigrants"[sic].

As many have pointed out, there are many wealthy people living in California who could afford the expense of having a 10,000 gallon tanker of water dropped-off at their house once a week. But these elitists only make up a small percentage of the people who can afford this luxury.

In the past I pondered the Agenda 21 and Eminent Domain land grabs being perpetrated by our Government BLM, in which much of the land they are seizing was sanctioned as collateral to secure our loans received from China. I wondered how the BLM could "force" ranchers, home owners, or even entire towns to sell their properties. But with California's current drought, even if you own your home or ranch, what good is it if you don't have a local stream, ground well, or utility water?

Looking at the map of Federally-owned Public Land (below) shows that the worst drought-stricken regions in California are State-owned--not Federal-owned. However, East of California, all the way to the Texas panhandle is primarily Federal-owned Public Land with interspersed, small pockets of State-owned properties.

IMHO, I see this drought expanding East of California into the Midwest "red" regions shown on this map. After the land becomes uninhabitable and people migrate East to live, the FED will buy-up any privately-owned land for pennies on the dollar. Shortly after this transaction is complete, this land will be forfeited to China after we default on own loans, and the rains will "miraculously" return.

The bigger question is: How and where will we house everyone living West of the Mississippi, if they have to relocate?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's a frightening thought, if it's remotely accurate.

I forgot to include my disclaimer for lyn: My humble opinion would be categorized as a scientific hypothesis (theory) based on limited, circumstantial evidence, the purview of Agenda 21 Legislated Laws, and previous unlawful actions of the Bureau of Land Management.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just because I have paranoid theories, doesn't mean that everyone isn't out to get me.

JB- Another map for consideration; courtesy of the Wall Street Journal (to support post #128). Please note the "green" area that is designated as China's territory.

www.wsj.com/articles/SB123051100709638419

From my post # 69: "There is no reason that dams cannot be installed that can facilitate salmon and other aquatic species migration patterns while at the same time providing adequate water storage for the residents and farmers."

No, not by any stretch of imagination do I favor wanton destruction of dams, water reservoirs, shipping locks, or irrigation systems nor have I ever stated that it is the correct thing to do.

In fact quite the contrary is true.

The reason those 5 dams as well as all of other dams and water control/retention structures exist is because our ancestors suffered dearly though drought-after-drought and flood-after-flood with the rest of this country's population paying for it in food shortages and extremely high prices for food.

We have a significant amount of politically correct groups in the USA that are running around destroying our critical infrastructure without any sound reasoning and without any viable solutions to replace what they are destroying.

What is happening in California is just the most glaringly obvious result of their irresponsible actions to date.

There will soon be even more severe results displayed not only in California but in every state that the wanton destruction has been and will be executed in.

If gone unchecked, there will be severe food shortages and the price will be out of reach for many retirees and our poor people. (Soon to be one in the same.)

It will make the depression in the 30's look like a cake walk because unlike that period of time the largest concentration of the USA population is in the cities and there are very few small farms today and even fewer people that have access to enough land to grow their own food much less even know how to do so.

The way things are headed individuals will soon not have legal access to, nor the right to use water from their own property to grow food.

From my personal experience: There is nothing more unstable nor more dangerous than a hungry human being so if you think things are getting "hot" now in the poor side of our large cities, wait a few years or maybe even months.

One more thing: The USDA facts & figures are much more accurate than you give them credit for and certainly more creditable than my or your personal opinion.

"What is happening in California is just the most glaringly obvious result of their irresponsible actions to date."

"Irresponsible" would indicate that the Authorities who ordered the destruction of the dams were foolhardy or harebrained, that they had honorable intentions of saving a species of fish from extinction, and that they were innocently ignorant of the repercussions their actions would cause.

However, you already pointed out that the Authorities had foreknowledge of WHY the dams were created in the first place:

"The reason those 5 dams as well as all of other dams and water control/retention structures exist is because our ancestors suffered dearly though drought-after-drought and flood-after-flood with the rest of this country's population paying for it in food shortages and extremely high prices for food."

The Authorities knew EXACTLY what they were doing and, WHY they were doing it!
Tearing-down the dams was not an accident committed by irresponsible, ignorant Authorities; it was an intentional, reprehensible act to destroy California, and using wildlife preservation as an excuse (guise) for their actions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If you control the food supply, you control the people." - Henry Kissinger

So destroying California and engineering want is a dark policy?

Who benefits?

"Who benefits?" (Cui bono?)

I think I already covered that question in my comments: #128 & #130.

Pretty grim bit of paranoia there.

California isn't much use to China without consumers.

"California isn't much use to China without consumers."

Putting aside the fact that there are currently >2-billion Chinese people (consumers), and then there are Brazil, Russia, and India's consumers, which make-up the BRIC Nations... what other consumers does China require?

The first order of Business for China will be to reconstruct California's water collection/dam infrastructure (before the rains return). If any Nation has the money, resources, and manpower to take-on this arduous task, it's China.

Furthermore, when you look at our outstanding loan debts with China (>$2-trillion), they effectively own us, and they don't need American consumers... because we are economically broken.

IMHO, California is not being purchased by China, it is seized collateral to cover our secured loans when we default.

I accurately quoted figures compiled by the USDA for world rice production, and the US contribution. I extrapolated the 53million acres from the USAD figure from total world acreage for growing rice. I made and stated a logical assumption about comparing current figures with those from 1980's. No personal opinions involved. I am totally prepared to agree that current USAD statistics are accurate and are generally in line with those produced by UNWFP. I have already said why 1980's figures were only estimated given that figures were unavailable from the world's largest rice producer. You claim to have quoted figures from the USDA. The figures massively conflict. So either you misquoted or the USDA have produced two sets of conflicting data. Given that the 30% of world production figure is not credible I am prepared to give the USAD benefit of doubt and go with you having misquoted. Occasionally I come across people who have a problem admitting their mistakes, and you appear to fall into that category.

youre on target in many ways

The Australian Eastern Goldfields (inland on the west) pumps water 1000ft high and 370 miles inland, completed 1903 with 8 pumping stations.

On the coast, yes desal is the way of the future supported with aquifer harvesting. Low energy reverse osmosis of grey water (in those lavender pipes) is another way to go with less salt removal issues.

De Sal plants powered by nature not oil powered electricity is the only sustainable method.

Pity our governments are to dumb to appreciate this.

I was thinking coal myself .... that market is on the downturn!
But not in Australian PM eyes ... renewable wind turbines should be banned and solar panels highly restricted ... and all those hydro dams will have to go .... bombing practice for the F-35's when/if they get here.

It's the drugs in the water that is the problem for grey water use....All those dangerous drugs we use end up in the water supply...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-half-of-drugs-removed-by-sewage-treatment/

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/

So what are the typical concentration levels as in how many gallons of recycled grey water do I need to drink to get my daily 50mg Prozac dose?

Or my 10,000 mg Nomolestol dose?

Before you get there your voice with have elevated an octave higher.... ..and you might notice a few other changes too....

http://www.livescience.com/20532-birth-control-water-pollution.html

Waving a rainbow flag and marching as if he's leading a parade....

Stop repopulating California. Every disaster movie I see shows that area swamped with something or other. Next time it all happens there, move the poor survivors to another area.

Problem solvered............

Not a comment , a genuine question to which I don't know the answer. Is capturing and cleaning up contaminated winter rain water cheaper than desalinating sea water?

The golfers are going to be reluctant to give up their greens,but they may have no

choice.

In Australia,(Coober Pedy), in some areas,the golfers carry a small patch of turf around with them

used to tee off from.

The rest of the course is red dirt.

Ceduna was the same.

The hole greens were red oiled sand and mowed with a rake. The rest of the course looked like Maralinga.

I was just in Chico, CA for a few weeks this month. The rivers are running full, the reservoirs were not that low, even the ponds in the mountains were full. It rained twice, hard, two of the days I was in Chico. the people in Chico, think the drought is more of a political thing. Sacramento River was running full.

Perhaps some people need to be educated about the water problems in their state. These people could certainly AFFORD a bit more schooling:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/17/1393538/-Wealthy-Americans-learn-money-does-not-change-rainfall-patterns-outrage-ensues

And perhaps corporate interests might be able to help my NOT shipping California water out of state:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-drought-walmart-water-bottle-companies-criticized-for-water-usage/

There was another plan, years ago, about connecting Lake Michigal to a pipeline to supply water to California, based on some 'you have it, we need it, you give it' hew and cry, and on the thinking that lake Michican could be 'tapped' without having to deal with any water conservation treaties with Canada, as would be cas case with all the other Great Lakes. That idea thankfully died when exposed to logic, and the multi-state Great Lakes Water Conservation Agreement. Lake Michigan, by the way was suffering from water depletion issues back in 2013, the lake level was down three feet. That may not sound like a huge concern, but remember, these are the Great Lakes, as in Flipping Huge, That would be like Wisconsin turning into sandy desert overnight. Besides, The great lakes are connected, Lake Michigan may be entirely within US borders, but changes to it affect the other Great lakes, so piping Lake Michican water to drought-stricken California to grow more dates and pistashios (since the large-scale nut farming is the largest user or water within the state) and to sell to water bottlers for pennies a gallon, when they turn around and sell it back for $3 a pint, WOULD become a US/Canada issue, since draining Michigan would cause Superior, Erie, Huron and Ontario to drop as well.

You want to fight the drought properly, get some politicians in place who will choke off the 'rich idiots who use HUNDREDS of gallons a day per estate maintaining a green lawn in the middle of a desert, and change the water policy about 'private wells' that corporations use to suck the state dry. Did you know that in California, if you drill a well on your own property, you can take whatever water you want out of it without reporting it to Water management? Even during a record level drought?

But this is going into politics, and I don't want to angry anybody up here, Californians are free to elect whoever they want as Mayor, Governor, etc., but when you elect people who have only seen the world as a series of movie sets or concert halls, can you truly expect them to be well grounded in the reality the rest of the world experiences?

Those of us in Texas would rather keep our water (at these those of us here in the Llano Estacado). There is a slight elevation problem in sending the surging river water west to California - a little thing known as the Sierra Nevada Range. Elon Musk could build it if you design it though, just need a few more nuke plants along the way to power the pump stations (which would be legion).

A better solution would be for the current weather pattern to shift and bless CA with all this rain. It is amazingly cool here in Lubbock for this time of year - really starting to bug me. Perhaps things are this way right now for some higher purpose, I do not know.

It would almost make more sense to latch onto a few ice bergs and tow them from Antarctica to the coast off California and send water in that way.

Who knows? Maybe the Chinese and former Soviets have figured out real weather makers, and they are punishing us (God knows why). We have tried to love them better all the time. Maybe Californians should have been nicer to the native Americans there, so they would keep doing the rain ceremony.

I like to think of it as being more that nature is once again teaching some people that they are not anywhere near as almighty high and powerful or influencing in nature as they think they are.

So it isn't my imagination that the majority of the country and continent is putting in safeguards to protect themselves from california.

Why yes,..... because they love spending other peoples money.

Yes! California deserves what I has. Now, If we all can wait long enough, the worst part of the state will no longer be part of North America, and will be, thankfully, flushed under the Aleutian islands.

Long before that, those nasty Californicators will arrive in your home town, and start changing the law so that the spotted gecko (the one you saw on the porch wall last night) will be protected from evil humanity threatening its environmental habitat (where it lives).

I say to California: "Dam it, Jerry!"

Water aside. They are still a very large (Largest) producer of this nations agricultural commodities.

And have a GNP greater than a lot of countries.

Factor what they produce on a per capita ratio and they aren't so great or by money spent per capita to produce what they do and they are even worse.

I say take the top ~500,000 farmers and ranchers they have and transplant them to other parts of the country and leave the rest to fend for themselves.

And don't worry about having to fence off the state to keep the rest in. Most of them are of similar mentalities of my wife and if public transportation won't carry them they'll die before they walk a few miles on their own.

I almost ripped a gut laughing!

I certainly appreciate what is produced in California. I watch old movies quite a bit.

Well, California is the 'Granola Bar' of the USA: Take away the Nuts and Fruits, and all you have left are the Flakes.

(With apologies to the Mentally Challenged and the LGBT community. No offense is intended to either group.)

Remember, we're talking about the state that came up with the 'scary but vague warning label' law, aka Prop 65 (1986), or just Prop 65. And didn't they almost try to ban Dihydrogen Monoxide⁽¹⁾ based on its scary name? We NEED to protect our selves from all the Ca-Ca ideas that come out of CA.

Notes:

1. H₂O, aka WATER. They already slap a Prop 65 warning on Silica Dioxide, aka SAND, that thing that makes up 95-99% of the state.
   

The big problem is: Whatever affects California affects the rest of the country in higher produce prices.

This came out in the 50's or 60's. I'm sure it is still a viable project (creating jobs), could be improved on somewhat and would help out more than just California. Surprised no one has mentioned it yet.

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html