The Dec. 2008 ruling to allegedly protect the California Delta Smelt could in some years cut state (California) water deliveries by half...."On Dec. 15, 2008, the Bush administration's Fish and Wildlife Service chose fish, a decision driven by a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2006."...
============================
"Desalination in Israel began in 1973."
1/24/14, "Over and drought: Why the end of Israel's water shortage is a secret," Haaretz, Yuval Elizur
"Remember all the years of being told to conserve 'every drop?' Well, times have changed: Today, Israel has so much affordable water, it can offer to export it....The public learns about this success only incidentally....
There is now a surplus of water in Israel, thanks largely to the opening of several new desalination plants - and the development of natural-gas fields that can power them cheaply....
Desalination in Israel began in 1973, when Mekorot built facilities that operated by reverse osmosis; these supplied the Dead Sea, Eilat and communities not served by the National Water Carrier. It was only 35 years later, in 2008, that the government decided to establish five large desalination plants along the Mediterranean coast, with the aim of providing 505 million cubic meters of water a year by 2013 (a forecast met in full) and 750 million cubic meters a year by 2020. However, since 2008, two technological revolutions – both of which also have far-reaching political implications - have radically altered the water situation in Israel.
The first revolution is the immense decrease in the cost of desalination- from $1 per cubic meter to 40 cents, and even less than that in desalination plants built in Hadera, Palmahim, Ashkelon and at Sorek. The savings will grow further thanks to the use of Israeli natural gas instead of electricity to power the plants. The second revolution is the success of the plants used to purify sewage water that were built adjacent to Israel’s cities and towns. Thanks to efficient usage, this water now irrigates most of the country’s field crops....
Israel is already sending large amounts of water to Gaza and Jordan. Under Article 6 of the peace treaty with Jordan, the two countries are obliged to cooperate in developing water sources.
Thus, Israel supplies Jordan with 50 million cubic meters of water a year from the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers, while Jordan pumps water in the region opposite the Israeli Arava for the irrigation of crops there. Recently, and again almost in secret, Israel decided to increase the supply of Jordan River water to Jordan by 20 million cubic meters a year.
There were also other efforts to help out in the water realm. For example, a Mekorot delegation suggested that Jordan, with its help, build a desalination plant 50 kilometers north of Aqaba, to be fed by water from the Red Sea. Amman eventually decided to forgo practical cooperation with Israel on this project and to avail itself of other experts and World Bank funding. All that’s left to Israel from this project, some of whose water will flow into the Dead Sea, was the participation of Energy and Water Resources Minister Silvan Shalom in the signing ceremony last month in Washington.
Despite the veil of silence and the political situation, which is still making it difficult for Israel to become a regional water power, there is no longer any doubt that, like the natural gas that is now available from the Mediterranean, the expected bounty of water will also effect a change in Israel’s economic and political situation. That change is likely to have a beneficial effect on everyone in Israel....
Having grown up in Jerusalem in the early 1930s, I remember the shortage of water there in rain-poor years. The Ein Fara spring in the east and “Solomon’s Pools” south of Bethlehem did not provide the minimum amount of drinking water that was needed. Jerusalemites had to dig cisterns to store rainwater. It was not until the late 1930s, when water began to be pumped from the coastal plain, that relief arrived for the city’s chronic water shortage. Still, the problem persisted to some degree and became acute during the siege of 1948. ...
In the 1950s, the war over water resulted in bloodshed between Israel and Syria. In September 1965, the Third Arab Summit meeting decided upon the diversion of the Jordan River’s tributaries by force. Although that decision was not implemented, the conflict over water was a key cause for the eruption of the Six-Day War less than two years later.
Since 1967, the conflict over water between Israel and the Arab states has dried up. In the peace treaty with Jordan, signed in 1994, Israel undertook to transfer 50 million cubic meters of water to Jordan every year from the Kinneret tributaries. The amount was increased in 2013, when it emerged that Israel’s water supply exceeded expectations....
Almost secretly, Israel’s decision makers, including the Knesset’s Finance Committee, which was heavily influenced by the farm lobby, decided to build seawater desalination plants in Israel. There were strong arguments made in public discussions against desalination: the enormous costs involved; the problem of choosing which method to use; and accompanying environmental problems. With the technologies available in the late 20th century, desalinating a cubic meter of water cost more than $1. No farming industry could bear that expense, so urban consumers would be saddled with the cost.."..
==============================
The "richest" must be punished:
"The San Joaquin Valley is the single richest agricultural region in the world." EPA.gov, 2/16/14.
It's not fair to be the 'richest in the world' so Americans must be punished: "The pain people felt this year may continue into the future." (Obama official Salazar, 2009)...Endless federal taxpayer dollars must be diverted from real problems and instead paid for punishment. And blamed on global warming too. Desalination must be rejected for punishment to continue.
EPA statement source: "Pacific Southwest Region 9, State Agricultural Profiles," EPA.gov.region9
=============================
"The pain people felt this year may continue into the future."...Obama Interior Sec., 11/29/09 report
11/29/2009, "Congressional Water Report," KMPH (Fresno, Ca.), By: Rich Rodriguez
"Four Valley Congressmen have raised their voices in Washington about the Valley's water crisis.
Two Democrats have the ear of the Obama Administration, but change has been slow in coming. Republican Congressman Devin Nunes of Tulare has been very vocal about the federal pumps and the Endangered Species Act.
In early June the pumps were reduced to a trickle due to the decline of the Delta Smelt, a protected fish. Nunes said, "it's hard to give anyone hope if the House of Representatives won't pass a bill to let the pumps run.
Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar has visited the Valley twice to see how the drought and environmental regulations are impacting the westside. His second trip left farmers and farm workers feeling helpless when he announced that environmental rules in the Delta would not be relaxed. Salazar said, "the reality of this is we do not have those solutions at hand. The pain people felt this year may continue into the future.""...
===========================
12/28/2010, "Fresno, Zimbabwe," IBD Editorial
"A victim of a famine machine that is entirely man-made...by greens."...
"...Fresno, Calif., stands as the de facto capital of California's mighty Central Valley, the breadbasket of America." But
- 24.1% of Fresno's families are going hungry.
==============================
Aug. 14, 2009, WSJ op-ed by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Ca., Central Valley Dist. 21, on how the federal gov. ordered California water to flow into the Pacific Ocean rather than to farmland:
"The water is now flowing underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and out into the Pacific Ocean." Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Ca. Dist. 21, 2009 WSJ op-ed. Good history of California water since 1931 but as Republican congressman Nunes mentions, the Bush admin. is responsible for the Dec. 2008 decision to allegedly save the Delta Smelt. The only way the Calif. water situation was going to change was if GOP "leadership" used microphones at their disposal every single day and multiple times on Sundays to alert Americans to the political problem. Nunes didn't suggest this in the op-ed and of course it hasn't happened:
8/14/2009, "It's Fish Versus Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley," WSJ op-ed, Rep. Devin Nunes
"Crops rot and people stand in line for food while the EPA engineers a drought."
"In 1931, a severe drought began that within a few years engulfed the Oklahoma panhandle and a third of the Great Plains in a "Dust Bowl." Tens of thousands of people fled the region—many traveling to California along Route 66, which John Steinbeck called "the mother road, the road of flight" in "The Grapes of Wrath."
A lot of the "Okies" settled in the San Joaquin Valley. In the decades that followed, state and federal officials built dams and other irrigation projects that helped turn the valley into some of the world's richest farmland.
But today the San Joaquin Valley is being transformed into a dust bowl. Hundreds of thousands of acres are fallow, while almond and plum trees are being left to die in the scorching sun. Tens of thousands of people have been tossed out of work—the town of Mendota alone has an unemployment rate of about 40%—and the lines for food donations stretch down streets. The reason? There isn't enough water to go around this year, and the Obama administration is drawing up new reasons to divert more of it from farms and people and into the San Francisco Bay....
California has the largest water storage and transportation system in the world. With 1,200 miles of canals and nearly 50 reservoirs, the system captures enough water to irrigate about four million acres and provide water to 23 million people. In many cases, as with the San Joaquin Valley, water in this system is sold to communities by the federal government.
Some claim that California is facing a three-year-old drought. But, according to the state's Department of Water Resources, California reservoirs have received 80% of their normal amount of water and precipitation in the northern Sierras has been 95% of its yearly average this year.
So why isn't there more water for farms?
Because theirs is a regulatory-mandated drought. The 1973 Endangered Species Act requires that the government take steps to save endangered species. In California, that's meant diverting vast sums of water into rivers and streams to protect fish. Those diversions this year have forced federal authorities to decide who to serve—fish or farmers.
Of course, the Delta smelt isn't a particularly attractive species to protect when it means throwing Americans out of work. On June 4 (2009), the National Marine Fisheries Service declared that delivering water to farms in the San Joaquin Valley would harm killer whales in the Pacific. And to save the whales, the Obama administration is now demanding even greater water restrictions beyond what has been diverted for the smelt.
===================================
10/9/2009, "Environmental lawsuits rake in billions for lawyers," maninnature.com, by Jake Putnam
"She wanted to know how much money the Federal Government had paid out in lawsuit legal fees over the past decade and what she found is astounding.
In just six years non-profit environmental groups filed more than 15-hundred lawsuits and in turn the Federal Government paid out more than $4.7 billion in taxpayer dollars in settlements and legal fees in cases against the U.S. government....
"Nonprofit, tax exempt groups are making billions of dollars in funding," said Falen. She says the majority of this legal fee money is not going into programs to protect people, jobs, wildlife, or endangered species but to fund more lawsuits from non-profit environmental groups. Farmers and ranchers that struggle to make a living off the land are forced to spend money out of their pocket to defend themselves."...
==========================
2/14/14, "California's Drought Isn't Due To Global Warming, But Politics," IBD Editorial
========================
In 2009 the US Senate had no interest in turning the water back on in California. 61-36 against:
9/22/2009, "Senate rejects measure to turn California water on," Washington Times, Amanda Carpenter
"The Senate rejected an amendment proposed by Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, to send more water to struggling farming area of California’s Central Valley through pumps that were shut down earlier this year to save a three-inch fish. [Enacted by George Bush in Dec. 2008]
This is the latest in a series of efforts in recent weeks to undo a biological opinion from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that required water to be cut off to the valley to protect the Delta Smelt, a small fish that resembles a large minnow.
Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, who represents some of the valley, has been trying to reverse the measure but has been unable to convince Democrats in the House to hold the floor vote necessary to do so. For their part, many Democrats attribute the area’s farming woes to recent droughts and say giving the valley more water isn’t the right solution.
Fox News personality Sean Hannity took his highly-rated prime time television program there earlier this month to interview the farmers who were asking the government to get the water back. This brought national attention to a problem that had only been covered by a few outlets, like the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Hannity called his program “The Valley that Hope Forgot” and slammed the Democrats in power for protecting fish at the expense of suffering farmers."...
[Ed. note: The law "protecting fish" referenced in this article was not enacted by Democrats, it was enacted by George Bush in Dec. 2008.]
(continuing): "Mr. DeMint put the question to a test on Tuesday evening by proposing adding a measure to the Senate’s Interior spending bill to prohibit any federal funds from being used to restrict the water supply in that area.
It was voted down 61-36.
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein voted against it and likened Mr. DeMint’s amendment to let more water flow in her state to the sneak attack the Japanese made on Pearl Harbor. “I don’t quite understand what is going on here,” she said on the floor of the Senate. “And that is the reason for my objection. I’m not going to put the state of California and the Bay Delta in the threat of another lawsuit. We have enough already and water is a huge, difficult and complicated issue…in a way this a kind of Pearl Harbor, when everything we are trying to do, to work together, to put Interior in the lead, not to handcuff Interior and that is the reason I object to the amendment.”
A video of her statement, posted by Mr. DeMint’s office can be viewed HERE.
Mr. DeMint seemed to think she was making it too complicated. “Unlike most of the big government solutions coming out of Washington that cost taxpayers billions, this amendment doesn’t cost a single penny,” said Mr. DeMint in statement. “We can turn the water on so thousands of Central Valley farmers can get back to work without creating another federal program or bailing out another industry.”"
==========================
10/21/2005, "Report: Saving the Delta Smelt to be costly," RedOrbit.com
. ===========================
Sept. 2007, Fed. judge orders Calif. and US gov. to turn off water pumps in California to allegedly protect a fish:
9/1/2007, "Judge Orders State and Federal Governments to Reduce Delta Pumping," indybay.org, by Dan Bacher
"U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger on Friday ruled to restrict water deliveries from the California Delta’s massive export pumps to the Bay Area, Central Valley and Southern California to protect the threatened delta smelt, an indicator species."...
Report: Saving Delta Smelt to Be Costly
Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/279628/report_saving_delta_smelt_to_be_costly/#DRMfOBvCBUdeXt8B.99
Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/279628/report_saving_delta_smelt_to_be_costly/#DRMfOBvCBUdeXt8B.99
=============================
12/15/2008 Delta Smelt decision could in some years cut state water deliveries by half:
12/16/2008, "U.S. tightens tap on water from N. Calif.," LA Times, Bettina Boxall, "Restrictions seek to protect river delta and its fish species."
"Federal wildlife officials on Monday released new restrictions on pumping water from Northern California, further tightening the spigot on flows to Southern California cities and San Joaquin Valley farms.
The
curbs, intended to keep the tiny delta smelt from extinction and stem
the ecological collapse of California's water crossroads, could in some
years cut state water deliveries by half....
Federal scientists say pumping has altered the hydrology and salinity of the delta and as a result, its suitability as a wildlife habitat. The pumps are so powerful that they reverse delta water flows, carrying fish to the pumps."...
Federal scientists say pumping has altered the hydrology and salinity of the delta and as a result, its suitability as a wildlife habitat. The pumps are so powerful that they reverse delta water flows, carrying fish to the pumps."...
===================
More on the Dec. 2008 decision to allegedly protect the Delta smelt:
12/15/2008, "Federal Agency Releases New Biological Opinion for Delta Smelt," Indybay.org, by Dan Bacher
"Continued operation of the projects' pumps, dams, and canals will likely lead to the extinction
of the smelt;"...
It was suggested the nation's breadbasket switch to "crops more appropriate for an arid climate." (end of article)
============================
Comment: The GOP has had control of the House for 3 years. Now in Jan. 2014 GOP House personnel come up with a proposal for 'legislative action.' When democrats had the House GOP Rep. Devin Nunes said they were the reason this issue couldn't be fixed. Rep. Nunes should think of a better excuse next time. He might remember what led to there being almost no Republicans left in the House after Nov. 2008.
=====================
Added: The Endangered Species Act was signed into law in 1973 by Pres. Richard Nixon. Nixon created the EPA and NOAA in 1970.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment