Free Republic

The other forty-nine states do not fully comprehend how the Golden State has engineered the demolition of a positive job environment. The only thing most hear about today is the drought and our government-enhanced water shortage. The way most Americans become familiar with the anti-employer environment is if another one of our companies moves to their area or one of our residents moves to their area, telling horror stories of how their business was killed by the force of the accumulated regulations. The only businesses that seem to be impervious are located in Silicon Valley or the new Silicon Beach...

There's a serious drought in California, largely the result of government action in saving fish species rather than building additional infrastructure.  Now government in that state has ordered severe restrictions on the use of outdoor sprinkling, causing most of the lawns and gardens in California to shrivel and die. But many of California's wealthy citizens don't think those restrictions apply to them.  They can afford the $800-a-month water bills and don't see a need to stop the sprinklers. One such community is Rancho Sante Fe, where residents increased their water usage by 9% following the announcement by Governor Jerry...

Farmers with rights to California water dating back more than a century will face sharp cutbacks, the first reduction in their water use since 1977, state officials announced Friday. The officials said that rights dating to 1903 would be restricted, and that such restrictions would grow as the summer months go on, with the state facing a prolonged drought that shows few signs of easing. “Demand in our key rivers systems are outstripping supply,” said Caren Trgovcich, the State Water Resources Control Board’s chief deputy director. “Other cuts may be imminent.” It is too early to know the practical impact...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) —It's a television ad that runs just 30 seconds, but its implication that immigrants are draining resources during the California drought has critics contending its message is divisive and untrue. "I think those ads are disingenuous," said Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat from Bell Gardens. "They serve to further divide us as Californians."

<p>I offer another chronicle, a 14-hour tour of the skeleton I once knew as California.</p> <p>An acquaintance had also emailed and reminded me that not far away there was a mound of used drip hose on the roadside. That mess proved to be quite large, maybe 1,000 feet of corroded and ripped up plastic hose. I suppose no scavenger thinks it can be recycled. I promise to haul it away this week. One must be prompt: even a small pile attracts dumpers like honey to bees. They are an ingenious and industrious lot (sort of like the cunning and work ethic of those who planted IEDs during the Iraq War). My cousin’s pile across the road has grown to Mt. Rushmore proportions. Do freelance dumpers make good money promising to take away their neighborhood’s mattresses and trash without paying the $20 or so county dumping fee? And does their success depend on fools like me, who are expected to keep roadsides tidy by cleaning up past trash to make room for future refuse?</p>

Drought-stricken California is not the only place draining underground aquifers in the hunt for fresh water. It’s happening across the world, according to two new studies by U.S. researchers released Tuesday. Twenty-one of the world’s 37 largest aquifers – in locations from India and China to the United States and France -- have passed their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water is being removed than replaced from these vital underground reservoirs. Thirteen of 37 aquifers fell at rates that put them into the most troubled category. “The situation is quite critical,” said Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet...

MOUNTAIN HOUSE (CBS13) — The community of Mountain House is days away from having no water at all after the state cut off its only water source. Anthony Gordon saves drinking water just in case, even though he never thought it would come to this. “My wife thinks I’m nuts. I have like 500 gallons of drinking water stored in my home,” he said. The upscale community of Mountain House, west of Tracy, is days away from having no water. It’s not just about lawns—there may not be a drop for the 15,000 residents to drink. “We’re out there looking...

In the summer of 2002, shortly before I was elected to Congress, I sat through an eye-opening meeting with representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council and several local environmental activist groups. Hoping to convince me to support various water restrictions, they argued that San Joaquin Valley farmers should stop growing alfalfa and cotton in order to save water — though they allowed that the planting of high-value crops such as almonds could continue. Then, as our discussion turned to the groups' overall vision for the San Joaquin Valley, they told me something astonishing:

"... Clues to Causes It's clear that the pups' main problem is a lack of food, rather than disease, but it's less certain what's wiping out food supplies from year to year, and whether the problem will persist. This year, the most likely culprit is that warm water blob, which has disrupted food webs and might also be killing masses of seabirds. But that blob wasn’t there during the earlier strandings, when oceanographic conditions looked much more normal..."

California Gov. Jerry Brown said he is doing his part by cutting back on showering and drinking water as the state continues to battle extreme drought. “I didn’t take a shower this morning,” the 77-year-old Democrat told reporters Friday after a meeting with Silicon Valley mayors in San Jose, Bloomberg reported. “We’ve installed a low-flow system and we’re using it quite carefully and quite sparingly.” Mr. Brown said he continues drinking coffee and wine but has reduced his water consumption.

California Gov. Jerry Brown is attempting to implement the state’s first-ever mandatory water cutbacks, among voluntary measures, and he is leading by example: “I didn’t take a shower this morning,” he told reporters in San Jose last week. Brown also said that he has cut back on drinking water, though he continues to enjoy coffee.

WASHINGTON -- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said Sunday that he supports a constitutional amendment that would bar the Supreme Court from granting marriage equality rights nationwide. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision this month that could grant, for once and for all, same-sex couples the right to wed across the country. But Walker said on ABC's "This Week" that he would support amending the constitution to protect states that still want to ban same-sex marriage. "I personally believe that marriage is between one man and one woman," Walker, a prospective GOP presidential candidate, said. "If the...

After years of unfounded hysteria from so-called environmentalists, the media and Hollywood that fracking causes drinking water contamination, the Environmental Protection Agency just issued a major blow to anti-fracking activists. A new report from the EPA, based on a study sanctioned by Congress, shows drinking water contamination only results if fracking wells aren't built or maintained properly, which is a rarity. "We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. Of the potential mechanisms identified in this report, we found specific instances where one or more of these mechanisms...

An unusual schism has opened up on California’s politically dominant left flank, where Gov. Jerry Brown, a longtime favorite of the state’s environmentalists, has refused to give in to the climate change movement’s demand for a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing. His stance comes despite the growing clamor in the aftermath of fellow Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision in December to allow a similar statewide ban of the revolutionary oil and gas drilling technique in New York. Hollywood stars and environmental activists badly want California to be next. The irony, of course, is that there may be no greener governor...

California Gov. Jerry Brown had some sharp words for environmentalist critics of his proposed Sacramento River water tunnels. On Wednesday, Brown told critics of his $15 billion plan to “shut up, because you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” according to the AP. Brown’s office told Sacramento Bee blog Capitol Alert that the governor’s remarks were made in “jest.” But the sharp rebuke highlights the tension surrounding the pricey project, which would send water from the northern part of the state south by using a pair of underground water tunnels to divert water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River...

“You know, I believe people knew this was likely in the 1970s, but enviros stopped the necessary water projects,” Glenn Reynolds wrote as an aside in September while linking to an article titled “American Southwest has 80% chance of decade-long drought this century.” Today at City Journal, Victor Davis Hanson flashes back to when California enviro-leftists began the countdown on the state’s existence: Brown and other Democratic leaders will never concede that their own opposition in the 1970s (when California had about half its present population) to the completion of state and federal water projects, along with their more recent...

Joel Kotkin, the noted liberal critic of California’s far-left government, says that Gov. Jerry Brown is leading California to ruin–and that the state’s business leaders share the blame by failing to speak out. In a new essay at the Daily Beast that summarizes much of his recent criticism, Kotkin says that while Brown’s father Pat brought the state progress and prosperity as governor (1959-1967), Jerry Brown “has waged a kind of Oedipal struggle against his father’s legacy.”

California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work. As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises. As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes. The water situation reflects this breakdown in the starkest way. Everyone who follows California knew it was inevitable we would suffer a long-term drought. Most of the...

People will gather in San Francisco this weekend to mark the 109th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake. SNIP The only survivors are believed to be 113-year-old Ruth Newman and 109-year-old William Del Monte. It was not known Friday if they would attend the early-morning ceremony Saturday. Mayor Ed Lee, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr and Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White will attend.

One water district manager says the plan fails to account for water-saving measures already in effect in some California communitiesCalifornia cities are pushing back against Gov. Jerry Brown's order for mandatory water use reductions, but it's not likely that regulators will retreat with the state in its fourth year of drought. The State Water Resources Control Board's proposal to meet Brown's order has some cities slashing water use by more than a third, and it will be updated in the coming days. Dozens of affected agencies say the expected reduction targets are overreaching, unrealistic and unfair. Calif. Sets Water Use...