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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DOUG H who wrote (256544)	5/18/2002 2:09:13 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

Doug, Re: Have they put the logos back on the DWP trucks in the Owens Valley? LOL! I hadn't heard of that one. How many rounds did they take before they figured out that anonymity was preferred? What is this? Water as a 'black ops'? <g> ************************************ Re: So. Cal can easily put measures into place that would dramatically reduce it's water requirements and I'd bet it could be done with minimal economic impact. You just need the right people in place but it could be done. I've looked into this a bit. About 85% of California's developed water is used by agriculture. Not the mom & pop operations that produce produce or monetize milk, mind you. But rather the biggest users of water are the cotton and rice farmers. Now, rice farming up near Chico makes a great deal of sense, since they have abundant supplies of Sierra water, and the crop has some benefit to more than a small handful of corporations. OTOH, the development of cotton farming down in the southern end of the San Joachin Valley is a completely ridiculous mis-application of a precious natural resource. California agri-business has successfully competed with the Mississippi Delta and other cotton growing regions precisely because of the extraordinary gift of corporate welfare that the cotton growers receive. I find it obscene and offensive that these subsidized growers can work the system in so many ways. First, they dramatically underpay for the water they get from the state and federal systems, and then they get subsidized by Congress in the anti-free-market bill that just passed into law. It's welfare for the rich and screw the little guy. I think that you will find that if this gross abuse of the public's water by a handful of corporations was rationalized and ended, that there would be absolutely no necessity for urban Southern Californians to conserve. The surpluses would be extraordinary. I laugh about the silliness of "low flow" toilets being touted as a means of saving water. The numbers just don't add up. The gross mis-allocation of water to corporate agri-business is kind of like the "third rail" in politics. No one wants to tell the truth about water politics. There's too many on the take in our plutocracy to tell the truth. For those interested in the subject, an absolutely fascinating study of Western water policy was written by Marc Reisner called "Cadillac Desert". Highly recommended. amazon.com