Calif. Water Shortage To Be Bad

[Ron61]

This is just a short excerpt from the Bureaus report as it is way to long and boring to type, so I will just put in the high spots.

Dry California's Water shortage Reaches North.:

The North state is the Saudi Arabia of water, but even our pipes can cough and sputter in a dry year and 2008 is turning out parched.
Lake Shasta won't even reach 2/3rds of capacity. water deliveries are being slashed to farmers and Municipal Users. The Bureau cut supplies of city water to 75% of normal. More cuts may and most likely will follow when the hot weather gets here. Shasta county is now considering declaring water shortages in 4 areas already.
We have had 4 small fires already but none of them managed to get into the canyons and trees, so everyone is holding their breaths about that. This looks as if it could be a devastating Summer for the North State as well as several other areas. Will anyone that plans to visit Northern Calif. this year please bring along a barrel of water?

Ron

[Jamo]

Old news, actually. Thousands of acres on the Westside were taken out of production last year because of a "perfect storm." 1) Low snowpack; 2) north-to-south water transfer cutoff through the Delta due to bait (smelt) gaining a higher ranking than humans; and 3) high cost of pumping water out of the ground due to diesel prices.

We actaully are doing better than expected in this el nino period in the Southern Sierra, and our higher ranges can hold the water (snow) longer into the summer. We need new dams...kocksuckers along the coast (Marin et al) need to STFU and get off the planet.

Expect higher food prices...less acreage, and diversion to growing for biofuel. The rice eaters are already feeling it.

[Ron61]

From what I can remember when I lived down there the snow packs seemed to last longer. Remember we just have Shasta Dam up here which is used to try and feed everything South of here. Already Mt Lassen and Mt. Shasta are showing bare places.
Higher food prices are here and have been for some time and are just going up more. I am not sure just how far they can extend the water intakes for the cities into the lake, but a couple of years ago they just about reached the end of it. Time to go to Dunsmuir and buy stock in the bottled water companies.
How are the fruit orchards doing down there with their irrigation? That is another thing they are going to shut off up here soon. We used to have huge strawberry fields and now they don't even have any for the Strawberry Festival unless they import them.

Ron

[Jamo]

The trees on mostly on the eastside and depend more heavily on ground water anyway...lots of drip irrigation has been installed in the last few decades. Trees can sustain stretched out irrigastion better than row crops on the westside (lettuce, tomatos, etc.).

[wtm442]

The DPW yard in my town sells special rain barrels with the necessary stuff to divert drainpipe water from your roof into the series of barrels. Then you can pump the water on to your lawn or garden. I may try this, because I have a 4 foot wide strip of land behind my garage. I can store at least 6 barrels back there.

[Cobrabill]

Well,Ron-looks like it's time to start peeing in your garden-eh?We just shelled out 6K to re-do our well.Yeeee-ow.

[Excaliber]

I assume if your on city water you get billed a certain amount. Do you expect the water bill's to rise significantly in California as a result of this drought?

One BIG problem I'm having with trying to figure out where to retire is comparing costs of various items. Take milk for example, I've been paying $5 a gallon for so long when I hear it's $3 a gallon and Californians are outraged I'm like, "What? Thats cheap." Insurance will cost a 1/3 of what I'm paying here. Housing costs can't even be compared there so ridiculously low in Calif (certain areas are an exception, San Fran comes to mind). It's tough to get a handle on realistic values.

[Ron61]

Ernie,

The one thing that you can be assured of is that all rates on everything are going to keep going up. We cut back on water and electric usage and they raise the rates because they aren't making as much profit as they did. Use more and you still pay the higher rates plus a fine if you go over a set amount in some areas.

Bill,

No garden. Don't even water the lawn, just let it die. I could do what some people do and disconnect the water meter, but that would seem to look suspicious to me when you see people with nice green lawns in the Summer and their water bill is less than in the Winter. Wells around here aren't to good as they tend to dry up about the time the temperature gets into the 115/118 degree range. We have even had houses with grounding problems as the ground gets so hot the ground rods they used don't do any good. I put in copper water line and used that and have never had a problem.

Ron

[Wes Tausend]

...

Hmmm. The situation is starting to look a little bit like South America. I heard a rumor that one country did not allow citizens (until the revolt) to collect rainwater off their own roof without paying for it. "In Bolivia, the government responded to protests against an agreement which went so far as to privatize rainwater in the province of Cochabamba with brute force and a martial lockdown." See 3rd paragraph ( http://www.50years.org/cms/ejn/story/85 ). All the water rights were bought up by a multi-national corporation. Well I guess they are all multi-national nowadays. In some cases, huge, greedy stockholder unions with crooked union leaders, even if they politely call themselves a corporation .

It has been said that the new oil will be water, water rights that is... "water is the oil of the 21 century", 2nd paragraph ( http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/general/ ). There is a corporate rush to lock in.

Before we know it, we'll be privatizing the air we breathe. Oh, yeah, corporate "carbon credits".

Next, private corporate armies to enforce it all. Oh, yeah, Blackwater.

"Still wet behind the ears, son? That'll be an extra 25 cents, please... NOW."

Pure privatization is somewhat losing its allure with me. Governments suck. Like Jamo says, "We're doomed!".

Well ...it would be OK if I owned it all. Bein' the man and all.
Kinda like that first private take-over of the public berry patch back in the caveman days.
Roscoe, where's your caveman pic?


...

[bomelia]

To paraphrase the late great Sam Kinison [modifications by me]:

You want to help world hunger [Californian thirst]? Stop sending them food [water]. Don't send them another bite [drop], send them U-Hauls. Send them a guy that says, "You know, we've been coming here giving you food [water] for about 35 [75] years now and we were driving through the desert, and we realized there wouldn't BE world hunger [California thirst] if you people would live where the FOOD [WATER] IS! YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A [PH]UCKING DESERT!! NOTHING GROWS HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW HERE! Come here, you see this? This is sand. You know what it's gonna be 100 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAND!! YOU LIVE IN A [PH]UCKING DESERT! We have deserts in America, we [well, most of us] just don't live in them, a$$holes!"

Mike

[Cobrabill]

On the ranch here we have about a 1000 ft of pipe that feeds the main house,guest house.barns & so on.I've almost got it all replaced.The last thing i did was replace the line from the street to the "T" (300 ft run)that splits from the main house and the rest of the property.
So to verify no leaks, i switched over to the well, shut the valve off(input to the "T")and watched the meter.No movement!!Great- i got all the leaks.At that point i said,screw it and left the city water off.We get a water bill for 1700.00 saying that the meter stuck and this is a ESTIMATED bill based on past consumtion.
Now i get to go argue with the city a$$holes and explain what i did.And there have been articles in the paper saying the water dept. is crying the blues because people have been conserving and they aren't making enough money.Co-incidence?Har-dee,har-har-har.


Mike-Sam was the friggin' geatest.

[Wayne Maybury]

I visited the Hoover dam 6 weeks ago and the water level must have been close to 100' lower than normal. They had most of the turbines shut down to conserve what was there. They were only operating a few turbines to keep some flow downstream from the dam.

I have been told that California has been allowed to get much more water from the Colorado River over the years than they are supposed to get. With increased demand in Arizona and Colorado, there is now not that much extra water left for CA.

The level of the Great Lakes has been quite a bit below normal for years but we had a good amount of snow this winter so hopefully the levels will increase. The St. Lawrence River was so low last year that ships had to limit their draft or else run the risk of running aground.

I have also heard that there eventually could be a war in North Africa over the water in the Nile.

Sooner or later the human race is going to have to understand that the world population cannot continue to increase as it has done in the past century. Many of the world's problems can be traced to over population.

Wayne

[Ron61]

Wayne,

Headlines in the Redding Paper this morning. Group's Water To Fill Needs.

Water customers in 4 Shasta County service areas won't face fines this summer after all. The McConnell Foundation will sell them enough to supply them. Of course that is County owned and it is the County that has already cut water supplies to many places by 25%. The lake is very low and will be much lower, but the county has no say about that. Just seems odd that they have already cut the County supplies by 25%, but have plenty to sell them at a premium price. They will most likely go pump it out of the lake.

Ron

[Excaliber]

Rock garden! Some cactus and hardy survivor type plants for landscaping. No lawn, I'll add that to my list of things to look for in a property search in California.

My friend in Happy Valley was complaining about his well, the pump use's a lot of electricity and thats the primary reason he's trying to cut back on water use.

[Ron61]

Ernie,

My friend in Happy Valley moved there from Redding and he said his utilities are a lot more than they were in Redding. And they keep going up, but that is happening everywhere that I know of. I bought 10 Rubber Buckets so I can store some unused electricity.

Ron

[imagine2frolic]

Wind generators, and solar panels will solve a lot of problems. Especially if you use 12V pumps. We live on 12volts on the boat for months at a time with 4 solar panels, and one wind generator. They run the fridge, lights, navigation lights, radar, autopilot, anchor windlass, watermaker, and numerous other articles with 2 8D batteries.

The boat's interior is about 600sq. ft. When I move to the South Pacific I will build a house that lives on the same system doubled. It is kind of like fancy camping.......LOL

[Ron61]

The problem with solar panels here is the six months a year there is no sun or very little of it. Several businesses and homes have tried them and they just don't work out plus I won't live another 276 years for them to break even. Oh, and the occasional hail that we get in the Winter doesn't help them much either. Wind generated power would afford everything we need if they would just build the windmills in front of the city council chambers. Or find a way to convert hot air mixed with Sh** to energy.

Ron

[Wes Tausend]

Originally Posted by Ron61

Ernie,

My friend in Happy Valley moved there from Redding and he said his utilities are a lot more than they were in Redding. And they keep going up, but that is happening everywhere that I know of. I bought 10 Rubber Buckets so I can store some unused electricity.

Ron

Ron,

I stored some electricity in rubber buckets last week, but two of them leaked. So now I'm going to store the next batch in condoms. There is a number of advantages here. For one thing, they are free at high schools, although I've gotten some weird looks in the past while standing in line. But the best part is they are absolutely guaranteed not to leak or the government has to pay dearly for the inconvenience until the amps are 18 years old, as usual.

I did think what might happen if I accidentally put one on without thinking it through, but then I realized that dead is dead ...and probably nothing would happen. And if it did ...I could share the miracle. "Guess what, honey!"

Of course if a young man with good ...um ...conductivity ...were to swipe one and put it on it could be disastrous. It would serve the dirty rotten thief right though, falling under the protection as justified penicide as long as I don't move or tamper with it, which I wouldn't of course.

I have a photo of that sort of damage. Posting here might be frowned upon but, anyway, I have a link. It has been incorrectly circulating the net as an electric fence burn but the truth is it was a stolen condom that was full of watts ...stolen watts.
Link: ( http://www.snopes.com/photos/medical/electricfence.asp )

And that's the gospel truth. I hope snopes finally gets it right.


...

[imagine2frolic]

Ron, I am talking in general across the USA. I can understand the problem with solar panels for you, but in many cases they work all year. The wind generator puts out an amp per knot of wind after 5 knots. That unit is $995.00, and works up to 35 knots of wind generating 35 amps.

There was a man on the news the other night. He installed $20,000 dollars in solar panels, and is now selling electrcity back to the grid. Plus he no longer gets an electric bill. My point being that every little bit helps. Especially if the house is built around a system like this, such as my boat was built around it's system......it's RV living on the water

[bomelia]

I recognize that picture. Its Ron. Distracted by a tooth ache, and trying to keep his post count up, Ron accidently peed on his power strip. Asside from the obvious trauma to his, uh, tallywacker, the town of Shasta Lake suffered a two day power outage. Ron's key to the city was quietly repossesed and his photograph in the town hall was secretly replaced with a copy of the "Mona Lisa".

Mike