California Water

Looks like Arnold, the Chamber of Commerce yahoos, and the building trades unions are teaming up to push the peripheral canal and a spate of new dams. This is in wake of the first low rainfall winter in the past ten years. For the purposes of their campaign this is referred to as a drought.

It isn't any such thing of course, it's simply a below average rainy season, but there are clearly some powerful interests that would like to leverage it into more cheap water for agriculture, another quarter century of suburban sprawl, and a bunch of high paying union jobs.

A short history lesson here, the peripheral canal was to be built around the Bay in order to convey high quality water from the California Water Project to the southern part of the state. As it sits now, that water goes into the Bay to replace water of lower quality pumped out for shipment south. The canal is actually a good idea in terms of providing higher quality water for the masses who take it into their bodies. It was on the ballot in the 70s and was expected to routinely pass as a fairly non-controversial item. But, in fact, the nascent environmental movement was able to convince people like me that it was actually a water grab. Nothing surer to arouse a Northern Californian than the idea that the south will steal our water again. Bottom line was 5% approval in the Bay Area and the project was rejected. It must be said that the environmentalists' campaign was very misleading.

But now it's back and Arnold is burning political capital pushing it. It's the other part of the campaign, the push for more dams and an expansion of water storage that's the real interest here. The C of C types and the unions are predictably in favor for reasons not entirely altruistic but the ones who stand to benefit the most are the corporate agricultural interests who are the ones getting squeezed by the increasing demand for an essentially fixed supply of water. It's fascinating to watch this industry at work politically. They are almost exclusively Republican and mouth all the rhetoric of free market wonders. Now that the free market is running them out of business, however, they are crying for massive government intervention.

Such frauds the Republicans can be.

This is somewhat of a watershed event, if they don't sell this slightly tainted bill of goods to the voters, you will probably see the end of the California agriculture industry within 50 years. And this is why I oppose this measure, corporate agriculture should die here, it's wasteful and outmoded. The Southwestern states and Mexico are already taking the lead as it should be. Corporate agriculture can longer afford the land and, absent the short term reprieve, the water to continue.