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17 California communities could run out of water

January 29, 2014

lake1As California’s drought intensifies, 17 communities in 10 counties across the state are in danger of running out of water within 60 to 120 days, state officials announced Tuesday. [MercuryNews]

The 17 water districts are all in small rural communities from Kern County to Mendocino County. In some of these communities wells are running dry and reservoirs are nearly empty.

While San Luis Obispo County is not one of the 10 counties, it is one of 27 counties in the state to be declared a natural disaster area by the U.S. Department of Agriculture because of the drought.

Even though rain is slated for Thursday, major storms are desperately needed to replenish the snowpack and reservoirs.

“This is a statewide drought. This is a serious drought,” said Bill Croyle, director of the state Drought Task Force.

“On the Central Coast, they have in the past looked at desalination,” Croyle added. “So if we lose our groundwater and surface water, we are going to go to the ocean. It is going to be expensive, but you bring in mobile plants and fire them up.”

Several years ago, the $176 million dollar controversial Nacimiento Water Project pipeline was completed. While promoted by some San Luis Obispo County staffers and officials, opponents of the pipeline argued for a desalination plant contending that during a serious drought water levels at the lake would be miniscule. Water levels at Nacimiento Lake are currently at about 5 percent.

 


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The $176 million dollar pipeline to no-where or the pipeline to a mud-hole. What a fiasco and true reflection of the utter, utter incompetence of local government officials and management. For the past 30 years, every time there has been a drought, lake nacimiento has been depleted of water. But, have no fear, despite this fact and other critical issues, county inept officials and managers ramrodded the pipeline to no-where down our throats. It was marketed as the solution to droughts to the five communities. City managers, the county administrator and local officials lapped it up like it was the sacred fruit of Eden. They ran around patted each other on the back, stroked each others egos and discounted and pissed all over anyone who questioned the viability of the plan. And now the first drought after the completion of pipeline there is no water. Let me repeat that, no water at the beginning of the first drought. The pipeline cost $176 million without financing, with financing it is roughly $350 million dollars. People should be outraged in this county. We should demand accountability – fire the architects of this financial debacle.


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yeah but look at all the jobs it created, look at all the pensions that got padded


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Now that we’re stuck with the pipeline and State water maybe the solution would be to put in dams of our own to take the water from each and be able to store it.

If I remember the years correctly back in the 80’s Morro Bay had a permit to build a dam in the San Bernardo Creek canyon,it would have been large enough to supply MB,I can’t remember the acre footage but I’m sure those reports are still around, the draw back to it was putting it in a canyon where people have lived and farmed for generations they would have been bought out and relocated,but city and county leaders at the time didn’t want a dam they wanted to buy into the state water project,we see where that got us.


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FYI,


The feds and state in the infinite wisdom have been decommissioning dams nationally in order to protect various fish – in fact a recent white paper by the BLR denotes that these fish will go extinct anyways.


My point, is simple why don’t we hold the idiot architects who have led us down this path accountable – fire them. Lets bring in people with private sector experience who know what they are talking about and about the concept of deliverables. Local government keeps promoting people because of their looks or who they know. The county just hired an idiot to be a program manager in utilities without any related experience. In fact this idiot was simply a secretary before. So she was hired because, and I quote “any idiot can do this job, so we might as well hire a pair of $#%#, thus we will have something good to look at and maybe one of us will get lucky.” Yes, this was the criteria for the hiring process.


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Not to mention, Naci water is tainted with poison Mercury-Stupidos …


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