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California’s flawed water system can’t track usage
Associated Press ^ | May 27, 2014 12:02 AM EDT | Jason Dearen and Garance Burke

Posted on 05/26/2014 9:51:02 PM PDT by Olog-hai

Call them the fortunate ones: Nearly 4,000 California companies, farms and others are allowed to use free water with little oversight when the state is so bone dry that deliveries to nearly everyone else have been severely slashed.

Their special status dates back to claims made more than a century ago when water was plentiful. But in the third year of a drought that has ravaged California, these “senior rights holders” dominated by corporations and agricultural concerns are not obliged to conserve water.

Nobody knows how much water they actually use, though it amounts to trillions of gallons each year, according to a review of their own reports by The Associated Press. Together, they hold more than half the rights to rivers and streams in California.

But the AP found the state’s system is based on self-reported, incomplete records riddled with errors and years out of date. …

(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: drought; freewater; lofan; rightsholders; watersystem

1 posted on 05/26/2014 9:51:02 PM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: Olog-hai
are not obliged to conserve water.

sheesh, you'd think they were pouring it on the ground or something... wait, nevermind

2 posted on 05/26/2014 10:07:18 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: Olog-hai
Their special status dates back to claims made more than a century ago when water was plentiful.

Wrong. The problem is not just the availability of water, but the increase in the number of people that want it.

3 posted on 05/26/2014 10:12:47 PM PDT by smokingfrog ( sleep with one eye open (<o> ---)
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To: Olog-hai

tough potatoes - rights is rights and the envirowackos and the alphabet agencies can go pound sand


4 posted on 05/26/2014 10:17:50 PM PDT by blueplum
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To: Olog-hai

The farmers who irrigate in our state of New Mexico get told what they are going to get every year even though they own the rights to 3 acre feet per year.

This year they are getting 1/2 acre foot, one sixth of their allotment. They can still pump water from shallow wells up to the 3 acre feet but many of the shallow wells have gone dry.

Wells are metered but I can tell you that they aren’t accurate and no one checks them. With that said, if you are pumping from a deep well you don’t want to use a drop more than needed because of the costs.

The part about reporting more than they used to keep from losing water right is because they probably make farmers prove up, sort of like “use it or lose it”. Which is ridiculous but they do that in our state too.


5 posted on 05/26/2014 10:19:31 PM PDT by tiki
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To: smokingfrog; Grampa Dave
As in "Supply & Demand!"

Grampa Dave, fly fisher extraordinaire knows a thing or two about how flows are measured and monitored in CA. Step up to the FR microphone Dave and pour out your wisdom on the matter...

6 posted on 05/26/2014 11:42:23 PM PDT by SierraWasp (Obama is mad! He's getting madder with each crisis and now he's a real MADMAN with no temper left!!!)
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To: Olog-hai
Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown.


7 posted on 05/26/2014 11:45:55 PM PDT by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
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To: Olog-hai

The article does not say from where this so-called “free water” is diverted: from the Sacramento Delta, from free flowing rivers, or from groundwater. So all the article is, is an attempt to criminalize farmers in the eyes of the public for exercising their prior water rights.

Moreover, river water or groundwater can’t typically be put back into the canals or pipelines or reservoirs of either the State or Federal water systems in California. So who is being robbed of water?

Sure, senior water rights holders that have water rights prior to 1913 (?) in California are entitled to use as much of their water as they can. Sure, that makes water availability and costs unequal. But inequality isn’t a crime is it? Somebody led the reporters on this story by the nose to slant their article against farmers.


8 posted on 05/27/2014 12:15:01 AM PDT by WayneLusvardi (It's more complex than it might seem)
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To: Chode

is it bad that the government cannot track something?


9 posted on 05/27/2014 12:35:17 AM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: Olog-hai
From the article, "Obviously, senior water rights holders have the most to benefit from the current system," said Peter Gleick, a water scientist ..."

It's hard for me to have much respect for somebody who reputes to be a "water scientist", when the art is practiced by Hydrologists, which is a branch of Civil Engineering.

Even in the 70s, when socialist progressives in academia, sought to gain control of future Civil Engineering work by creating Environmental Engineering curricula, duplicating many utility related Civil Engineering functions, the state laws still recognized Civil Engineers as the professionals working in these fields.

Even the Wizard of Oz, as a political allegory, recognized water rights were the solution to topple evil empires of the US West, when water was made available as a utility.

The problems begin when property rights are seized by the State and the common man isn't allowed to work the resources available to him by Providence.

10 posted on 05/27/2014 12:47:10 AM PDT by Cvengr (Adversity in life and death is inevitable. Thru faith in Christ, stress is optional.)
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To: WayneLusvardi
From the Article:

At the top of the state's ranking of water users was Louis Chacon, who state records show in 2010 consumed 12 billion acre-feet - enough to cover 12 billion acres with a foot of water. (One acre-foot is 326,000 gallons.) All of this for a 15-acre plot in Trinity County where his retirement home sits and a few cattle graze.....Chacon told the AP he did not know how many acre-feet the family actually used, but called the state's numbers "crazy." He had previously raised concerns that the state's software was altering his reported usage.

12 billion AcFt is a lake 1000miles x 1000miles, 18.75ft deep.

The Mississippi River only flows about 1/2 that volume if it were flooded every day for a year.

Discharge from the Colorado River just below the Hoover Dam has ranged from 3.8 to 22 million Acft between 1984(high) and 2002(low).

Who in their right mind gives respect to a regulatory agency with these types of numbers charged to the common man?

11 posted on 05/27/2014 1:12:05 AM PDT by Cvengr (Adversity in life and death is inevitable. Thru faith in Christ, stress is optional.)
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To: Olog-hai

Good.


12 posted on 05/27/2014 4:20:10 AM PDT by lowbridge
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To: ModelBreaker
to the govt it is...
13 posted on 05/27/2014 4:41:45 AM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: Cvengr

The reporter probably screwed up and wrote billion instead of million, which would mean he actually used enough water to cover his property to a depth of only 152 miles, which is much more reasonable.


14 posted on 05/27/2014 5:37:00 AM PDT by Darth Reardon (Is it any wonder I'm not the president?)
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To: Cvengr

Do you suppose any of their other numbers are suspect?


15 posted on 05/27/2014 5:51:30 AM PDT by Western Phil
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To: Olog-hai

California has a flawed water tracking system? Goes along with the state’s flawed welfare benefit, unemployment compensation, public employee pension, disability, public housing, voter registration, and illegal immigration tracking systems.


16 posted on 05/27/2014 6:04:36 AM PDT by artichokegrower
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To: Olog-hai

Ahh, look, the media’s again attacking someone’s RIGHTS that weren’t enumerated by the liberal agenda...

But that’s not what this is about. This is about destroying the farmland in California, about having complete control over that farmland, and about rewarding those farmers who worship at the altar of liberal policies and utterly destroy those who do not.

Drive up the 5 or the 99, you can tell exactly who those water rights holders are, or those who pay appropriate bribes to the liberals. Pretty much everything else is dead.


17 posted on 05/27/2014 6:51:56 AM PDT by kingu (Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)
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