Vanishing Sea

[Sharroll Celby]

Originally Posted by Gunner

Well, when you fly over the LA area and see the vast stretches of green lawns and pools in what is naturally scrub desert, you begin to understand why Northern Californians have battled the Delta bypass for decades. Looks like we're about to lose - they've snuck the major legislation and stuff around the watchdogs and avoided the well-known hot-button term "Peripheral Canal" even though that's exactly what's up.

They're only going to take a little when they need it. Honest. Promise. Riiiiight.

I say shut off the taps and let LA survive as a desert community... if it can.

Actually, most of the Los Angeles area of Southern California is best described as a "Mediterranean" climate, NOT, as you incorrectly posted, a "scrub desert."

[VRM]

Well, maybe the solution is for all of us in the northeast who have waaaay more water than we can use (due to record rainfalls the last few years) to send it out to CA.

We have folks here with so much water that they could probably email each of you a few gallons every minute and not even miss it.

Steve

[Ron61]

Hey Steve,

How did you fare in the heavy rains? No flooding of the house I hope. I have seen pictures of some of the towns back through some of the flood areas and it was a mess. And it will take a long time to get the homes and other things back to normal.

Ron

[Sharroll Celby]

Originally Posted by VRM

Well, maybe the solution is for all of us in the northeast who have waaaay more water than we can use (due to record rainfalls the last few years) to send it out to CA.

We have folks here with so much water that they could probably email each of you a few gallons every minute and not even miss it.

Steve

It WOULD be a HUGE financial undertaking, but an East/West canal could be built to alleviate all the "flood-stage" rivers back East, and pump it to the water-starved West. With a natural bed, it could even help to replenish the Ogallala Aquifier, which is under the eastern edge of the Rockies, running thru eight states, from west Texas to South Dakota.

[Jamo]

Originally Posted by Sharroll Celby

It WOULD be a HUGE financial undertaking, but an East/West canal could be built to alleviate all the "flood-stage" rivers back East, and pump it to the water-starved West. With a natural bed, it could even help to replenish the Ogallala Aquifier, which is under the eastern edge of the Rockies, running thru eight states, from west Texas to South Dakota.

Dam the Arkansas!

[Gunner]

Originally Posted by Sharroll Celby

Actually, most of the Los Angeles area of Southern California is best described as a "Mediterranean" climate, NOT, as you incorrectly posted, a "scrub desert."

Mediterranean is more a description of climate than geography. You'll note that most areas of the Med are scrubby, sandy territory that's not terribly arable or fertile. Cultivation in Italy and Greece is largely olive trees because they're extremely hardy and don't require irrigation in most years. Also consider the entire top of Africa, which is "Mediterranean." Most of the area is not some lush resort jungle, or anything like it.

A map of underlying geography and ecology shows that the LA Basin has a few arable regions, but can fairly be described as a scrub desert, chaparral or similar low-water, hardy-growth zone. It doesn't have one tenth the water it needs for its population and never did; IMVHO squatter's rights don't entitle it to half the water in the Western US.

Those vast stretches of desert north of the Grapevine - you know, the ones posted with b*tch signs every mile or so - are even less naturally arable and have an even lesser right to someone else's water.

I might change my mind the next time I fly over and see a lot more native-plant landscaping and a lot fewer pools.

[Jamo]

Originally Posted by Gunner

Mediterranean is more a description of climate than geography. You'll note that most areas of the Med are scrubby, sandy territory that's not terribly arable or fertile. Cultivation in Italy and Greece is largely olive trees because they're extremely hardy and don't require irrigation in most years. Also consider the entire top of Africa, which is "Mediterranean." Most of the area is not some lush resort jungle, or anything like it.

A map of underlying geography and ecology shows that the LA Basin has a few arable regions, but can fairly be described as a scrub desert, chaparral or similar low-water, hardy-growth zone. It doesn't have one tenth the water it needs for its population and never did; IMVHO squatter's rights don't entitle it to half the water in the Western US.

Those vast stretches of desert north of the Grapevine - you know, the ones posted with b*tch signs every mile or so - are even less naturally arable and have an even lesser right to someone else's water.

I might change my mind the next time I fly over and see a lot more native-plant landscaping and a lot fewer pools.

You really do just grab bullsh!t out of the air and type it up don't you.

The area north of the Grapevine does not receive water from anywhere else...they draw from aquifers below ground. The area west of Bakersfield was the Tulare Lake basin, where water from the Kings and Kern Rivers reached their terminus. The Kern, like the Mojave, is generally an underground river once it leaves the mountains. The ground in these areas are far more productive than the Sacramento Valley, which is why fruits and vegetables are grown around Bakersfield while rice for Korea is grown around Sacramento. As for LA, the San Fernando Valley always a had enough water for agriculture...ever since the original Spanish land grants. Same for the Beverly Hills, Riverside and Orange County areas. The need for more water came from urban growth...due to Mulholland and his pack grabbing the streams in the Owens Valley and inviting folks in cheap. That labor supply drove the industrial machine in the 30s, 40s and since that created the economic power that California generally has been. The areas you note are full of water...only a moron would judge the presence of water based upon the appearance of the land. Only a bigger moron would dismiss arid land as being non-productive.

As for those "b!tch" signs...I represent most of the folks you're talking about and that you allege take water from elsewhere...in this case, you're way off track. The end point for ag water from Shasta ends about a 100 miles north. This is what screws up everything...morons who know little about the subject giving opinions from their city addresses.

I really haven't enjoyed your presence here since day one...you've started sh!t repeatedly, told Ron and me how to do our job, and generally have grown into an absolute PITA. You've gotten a few suspensions already. And now I caught you in a lie based on arrogance or stupidity or both while you tell other folks off.

Had enough...we no longer have patience around here. Don't like it...suck eggs.

[Ron61]

Maybe this statement that I cut from a history of the Sacramento River will help people understand that the water here doesn't go to Los Angles or any other area past the San Francisco Bay. We even have people here that have moved up here from Orange County claiming that they got their water from here. I never intended to start a big argument about water when I started this thread. Just trying to point out that if we keep building and demanding more and more of it, there is going to one of these days be a serious shortage of fresh water. The high usage of water from the Sacramento is what is letting the salt water creep farther and farther into the Delta Area. I believe that Jamo mentioned in an earlier post that the farmers there told him that it wasn't the amount so much as the quality of water that was going to hurt them.

San Francisco Bay is also the spot at which California’s two greatest river systems, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, first mingle with salt water before reaching the Pacific at the Golden Gate.

Ron