Pretty good cataloguing of the water issues facing Californians and the author’s blog site is pretty good also.
A time to deliver water solutions
By Tom Philp -
Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, January 14, 2007
There is a Spanish proverb about procrastination: "Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week." It could have just as easily been written by a California water official. The scale of the state's water projects -- hundreds of miles of aqueducts and more than 2,000 dams -- is only matched by the scale of the side effects. A dam and two aqueducts on the San Joaquin River, for example, diverted water to Central Valley farms and dried up the river downstream. The dam was built during World War II, but the solution didn't take shape until recently. Why? Waiting until tomorrow is a tempting alternative when the safest option is to do absolutely nothing.
The politics of procrastination, however, may finally be reaching its limit for several California water fights. Lawsuits, legal deadlines and acts of Mother Nature are changing the political landscape. At some point, doing something becomes the only option. Is it now? If so, things are about to get interesting, and expensive. Major problems tend to get solved with somebody else's money, namely yours. This isn't a proverb, but it might as well be.
For those working to fix some of the complex problems facing California's water needs, this is a year decisions are supposed to be made that would break through decades of gridlock and lead to historic changes in the state's plumbing system. Four dams in Northern California might come down. A controversial canal in the Delta might be built. A strange, dying sea in Southern California might undergo a resuscitation and reconfiguration. And stretches of the San Joaquin River, which have run dry since the Truman administration, might flow with water once again.
"It is no coincidence that these are all teed up at the same time," said Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which quenches the thirst of 18 million people and is one of the dominant water players at the table in the state's quest to divvy up water.
