To: Joe Btfsplk who wrote (816372 ) 11/8/2014 3:09:04 PM From: tejek Respond to Your observations about the blue states and areas are largely correct. I've been meaning to formulate a reply, but Message 29798347 contains the essence of what's wrong with your apparent beliefs -- if you can understand the message therein. So why am I ultra-hydrating here in Los Angeles to avoid kidney stones, while farmers just a few hundred miles away have parched fields? Because, counter-intuitively, California’s cities spent the past several decades planning for droughts and severe water shortages, and the farmers did not . For now, the only cities likely to impose water rationing are in Sonoma, Mendocino, and Fresno counties, where super-thirsty commercial users are soaking up regional water allocations. Astonishingly, Angelenos consume less water than when I lived here in the late 1970s. And there are a million more of them . Which is not to say that they are water sippers. A Cohasset resident (64 gallons a day, as of 2011) consumes about half as much water as the average Los Angeleno (123 gallons a day in 2012).The drought is statewide, but the emergency is not,” according to Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. The previous droughts “scared the major metropolitan areas into making some smart investments in their water supply systems. They diversified their sources, and they make terrific use of ground water basins to catch and retain storm water when it rains.” Mount is speaking to me from San Francisco. “There’s no sign of drought here,” he says. bostonglobe.com
