This is just one post in the Conservation Category

When will Los Angeles run out of water? Sooner than you think.

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 4, 2008 at 6:07 am

From AlterNet:

Los Angeles has been sleeping far too long. But the question is not when will it wake, but rather what it will do once it does wake and realize the water is gone.

“We are way better than Third-World countries with no water supply,” explains California Department of Water Resources drought coordinator Wendy Martin, “but it will take a significant change to keep ours.”

Martin is speaking of California at large, but the science is in and the climate crisis isn’t hard to figure out. Water isn’t a renewable resource, so that makes Los Angeles the state’s parched yet still bloated problem.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the state’s water reserves are nearly finished, which leaves California with two options: Pray for rain, or suck off Northern California’s supply. Guess which one it’s going to try first?

If you guessed both, you’re right. Indeed, California will revive a decades-old plan for a statewide water bank that will flow water to where it is needed most. Right now that means it flows from Northern California farmers and others to agencies in Southern California, whose citizens have lately been engaging in Option Two rather than studying up on reality — specifically, the geographical and environmental kind.

“We as a state entity looking out for the broader good,” Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow told the Times, “are not going to allow somebody to have 100 percent supplies and be hosing off sidewalks while a community has no fire protection and poor-quality water to drink.”

He may not have mentioned Los Angeles by name, but anyone who has ever read Day of the Locust or seen “Chinatown” could tell you that Los Angeles has always been a managed fantasy. Like its redheaded stepchild Las Vegas, it’s a consumption and recreation oasis in the desert running on Hollywood simulations and immigrant labor, which is to say distractions from its more geographical reality.

Read more from AlterNet by clicking here.

October 4, 2008 · Filed Under Conservation

Comments

One Response to “When will Los Angeles run out of water? Sooner than you think.”

Ray Walker on October 4th, 2008 3:14 pm

“Californication” … “preying” for a water solution, but rolling over and playing dead when a Source of million acre feet of fresh water a year is offered for investigation.

“Wreckthenation” … failure to cooperate when the offer is made to lease the unused space in Lake Mead to store a million acre feet of non-tributary water a year to maintain the generation of 2000 megawatts of renewable energy for those already suffering from Californication.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention…provided you can overcome Californication.

Ray Walker (Retired Water Rights Analyst) waterrdw@yahoo.com

Leave a Reply