The Scorching of California: How Green extremists made a bad drought worse

[mountaineer]

VDH from 2015, but worth a look now:

The Scorching of California
How Green extremists made a bad drought worse
Victor Davis Hanson
Winter 2015

In mid-December, the first large storms in three years drenched California. No one knows whether the rain and snow will continue—only that it must last for weeks if a record three-year drought, both natural and man-made, is to end. In the 1970s, coastal elites squelched California’s near-century-long commitment to building dams, reservoirs, and canals, even as the Golden State’s population ballooned. Court-ordered drainage of man-made lakes, meant to restore fish to the 1,100-square-mile Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, partly caused central California’s reservoir water to dry up. Not content with preventing construction of new water infrastructure, environmentalists reverse-engineered existing projects to divert precious water away from agriculture, privileging the needs of fish over the needs of people. Then they alleged that global warming, not their own foolish policies, had caused the current crisis.

Even as a fourth year of drought threatens the state, canal water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park keeps Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area a verdant oasis. This parched coastal mountain range would have depopulated long ago without the infrastructure that an earlier, wiser generation built and that latter-day regulators and environmentalists so casually deprecated. (See “California’s Promethean Past,” Summer 2013.) Gardens and lawns remain green in Palo Alto, San Mateo, Cupertino, and San Francisco, where residents continue to benefit from past investments in huge water transfers from inland mountains to the coast. They will be the last to go dry.  ...

For 50 years, the state transferred surface water from northern California to the Central Valley through the California State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Given these vast and ambitious initiatives, Californians didn’t worry much about the occasional one- or two-year drought or the steady growth in population.   ...

 Many assumed that the state would finish planned additions to the California State Water Project and its ancillaries. But in the 1960s and early 1970s, no one anticipated that the then-nascent environmental movement would one day go to court to stop most new dam construction ...

Water is to California as coal is to Kentucky—yet its use is being curtailed by those least affected, if affected at all, by the consequences of their advocacy. But environmentalists, who for 40 years worked to undermine the prudent expansion of the state’s water infrastructure, have a rendezvous with those consequences soon. ...

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-scorching-of-california

[PeteS in CA]

More accurately:

Federal Court-ordered drainage of man-made lakes ...

Much as I generally respect VDH, he has his California geography wrong in this:

For 50 years, the state transferred surface water from northern California to the Central Valley through the California State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. ...

If you ignore the southern part of California that is south of the Tehachapi Mountains, half of the Central Valley is in Northern California. IOW, no "transfer" was necessary for that part of the Central Valley was necessary, because the Sacramento River and its tributaries flow naturally through the northern half of the Central Valley.

However, if one considers the full north-south length of California, most of the Central Valley is in the northern half of California. Further, that additional part of the Central Valley is watered by the San Joaquin River and its tributaries that flow naturally through that part of the Central Valley. So, again, water does not need to be "transferred" to that part of the Central Valley from Northern California because it is in Northern California.

How VDH has lived so long in California without learning the basic California geography that is taught in the 4th Grade in public schools (a legally required subject for both public and private schools), I do not understand.

2015 and 2016 were drought years. But then came winter 2016-2017, when the rain was so plentiful that moronic maintenance almost led to the Oroville dam collapsing (e.g. https://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,438079.0.html ).

While Hetch Hetchy does provide water to SF and some of the SF Peninsula, a glance at the East Bay and South Bay will show there are reservoirs on quite a few creeks that store considerable water (e.g. Anderson Reservoir on Coyote Creek in Santa Clara County has a capacity of ~91,000 acre-feet), and where suitable, these creeks also have parallel percolation ponds that are used to store far more water in the aquifers (e.g. Los Gatos Creek, which has two reservoirs and a series of percolation ponds, as does Coyote Creek). Putting it kindly, VDH very over-simplified the water situation in the SF Bay Area. Also, had VDH actually toured South and East Bay neighborhoods he would have found that many homes had (and still have, for that matter) brown lawns, including Appletino (aka Cupertino).

[IsailedawayfromFR]

As I read VDH's piece, it seems California is hanging by a thread in its water access for a good portion of the Agricultural CentrL Valley and Southern population Centers.

Seems the key is whether the envirowackos prevail as, if they do, California will spiral downward to approach Sudan-like status where the most agricultural portion of country has no livelihood sustained.