This sad vista looking east out my bedroom window is of an 80 acre, 3rd generation Valencia orange orchard that grows some of the most delicious oranges I've ever tasted. Perfect for orange juice, just delectable. This family that owns this orchard is one of the founding families of the city of San Marcos, California that founded the city in the 1870's. It breaks my heart that they have been forced out of business due to the cost of water. It makes me just sick to think all that tender loving care passed on from generation to generation is going to end up in a subdivision. Another little piece of historic California agriculture on the chopping block because the idiots in Sacremento can't figure this out, and the bureaucracies of the myriad of water districts have become behemoths, losing sight of their focus, which is to provide reasonably priced water to its clients.

Time someone up in Sacramento comes to their senses. Thanks again, Barb. Very timely article. Will be passing this on to the few commercial growers and nursery folk here in North County.

Patty S.

Gee ... sorry, for the rant .... probably preaching to the already converted ....sigh

Likely when water is finally priced properly, this will redistribute human population as well. California does not have the natural resources to support 40M people, let alone 20M, as we are seeing now. You can only move water around for so long, as it takes a lot of energy to move and maintain the infrastructure, and we're running out of cheap energy.

Dan

Patty S.

...SNIP.... If current immigration and fertility trends continue, the U.S.A.'s population will double to over 560 million in about the next 60 years, and reach one billion by 2100. Each year 3 million people are added to the U.S. population.

Fertility rates have remained at about 2.1 children per woman (replacement level) since 1974, thus fertility is increasingly a non-factor in U.S. population growth.

Over 70% of the U.S.A's 3.2 million annual population growth in the 1990's resulted from mass immigration. Legal immigration accounted for over two-thirds of that 70%.

Over 92% of California's population growth in the 1990's resulted from mass immigration.

There are, simply, not enough resources in CA (and on the planet, for that matter) to support that many people in CA, at current consumption levels. CA is a microcosm of how we deal with problems.

[/ecologist hat]

Dan

The water subsidies for agriculture have paid for themselves many time over. Without them the coast of agriculture in many parts of California would be cost prohibitive. Additionally, water for residential use in Southern California would be several times more than it is now.

I don't know what to say about the politicians other than voters get what they deserve. The water issues in California has, for many years, been more about who can demonstrate greater political power than common sense. The refusal to build desalination plants in Southern California is puzzling. The insistence that higher water rates and water meters for communities in parts of California which don't have problems with water shortages is somehow going to accomplish something is another.

You would think by now that there would have been some attempt to retain urban runoff into basins so it can recharge the ground water supply instead of flushing it out to see every time it rains.