[pct-l] The Bad News????

[AsABat]

Nope, So Cal isn't getting any more of the Sacramento River water this
year either. Right now we're only going to get 15% of our contract. Yes,
some are getting zero, that's what their contract says. Imperial Valley
gets NO water from the Sacramento, only from the Colorado. Their water
rights were set before the cities even looked at the Colorado for water,
and they won't give them up. Our farmers down here already had their
water allocation cut 30% in January 2008, and are facing even bigger
cuts this summer. Many have already bulldozed their trees and given up.
Everyone else, houses, swimming pools, movie stars, will probably face
mandatory water cuts this summer as well, possibly 20%. We are expecting
total water use where I am to drop over 40% overall from two years ago,
in spite of hotter drier weather.

The weather drought is just part of the problem. The regulatory and
environmental drought is a bigger problem. Right now water that could be
going to the aqueducts to fill reservoirs is instead flowing out to the
ocean because of the need to save the Delta smelt and it's cousin the
longfin smelt - cute little guppy-sized fish. California has refused to
fix its water systems to help both No Cal and So Cal store and move
water when it's available, and now we are going to pay the price. 

Look to see farmers give up, businesses go under, at a time when our
economy already stinks. A large clothing manufacturer wanted to build a
distribution facility in Riverside County, with 100s of jobs, but was
told they could get no water, so they didn't build a plant, didn't
create no jobs, didn't pay taxes. No more jobs, lower tax revenue,
especially from the industrial areas, and a continuing spiral downward
until the floods come at the start of the next ice age.