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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (184055)	5/27/2014 1:47:22 PM
From: JimisJim	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206175

More California water insanity... in-depth look into the issue is on-going by local paper... today they reported that over half of all water rights in the state are owned by 4,000 corporations and agricultural entities, tracing their water rights "ownership" back to the early 1800s and have never been changed. The thing is that these water rights holders, aka "senior rights holders", get their water for free; are only bound by honor system to self-report how much water they use (though none of them actually meter or otherwise measure how much water they use). Now couple the above with the fact that effectively half the state (from SF north) don't even have water meters in their municipal water systems for commercial and residential users? How in the hell is the state supposed to enforce water use regulations? Locally, I'm not as concerned about the water supply (though I pay extremely high rates for the 6 units of water we use in an ave. month). Both Oceanside to our north and now Carlsbad have built (and/or are doubling/tripling capacity) desalinization plants. Now these are not typical desal plants because they are not using sea water, they are using groundwater/wells taping into a natural source of brackish water about 1,000 feet down. The thing is that this water only takes half as much energy, etc. to turn into fresh water compared to sea water. When the last expansion is complete, about 75% of my water will be from local sources and not the Colorado River. But the statewide situation doesn't seem tenable to me, and quite loonie tunes. People talk about crazy regulations and such in California, but this time it's all about NOT changing the loonie water rights system from 150 or more years ago and allowing a small number of water rights holders unlimited, unmeasured amounts of free water while the rest of us are charged ever increasing amounts even as we conserve more and more.