Donald Trump is in town (i.e., California) today to kvetch some more about how we need to "open the spigot" and let more water flow from north to south. I gather that yesterday he even talked about "the snow caps and Canada," whatever that means. Canada is a thousand miles away and we certainly don't get any water from there.
But we do get water from the Sierra Nevada snow melt, some of which is diverted south through the San Joaquin Valley and then to Los Angeles. Would you like to see how? If you're not from California it might surprise you a little bit:
The original pumps, built 50 years ago, suck in water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and then route it south through a labyrinthine network of levees and rivers. Eventually it gets to a couple of pumping stations near Tracy, where local canals deliver it to the California Aqueduct.
Needless to say, this massive pumping does nothing good for the environment of the delta, and that's been at the core of the water wars in California ever since it started. This has taken two forms. First, the original pumping plan also called for the construction of a peripheral canal, which got killed by an initiative in 1982; followed by a proposal for two giant tunnels; followed yet again by a proposal for a single tunnel. The tunnel would take water directly from the Sacramento River before it ever gets to the delta and shunt it directly to the aqueducts. This effort to build something has been going on for about 40 years—or 80 depending on how you count.
Second, there's the ecology of the delta. Generally speaking, the tunnel wouldn't increase water deliveries. However, the delta pumps are shut down periodically when environmental conditions in the delta deteriorate.¹ The idea behind the tunnel is that it can be used during pump shutdowns to keep water flowing south. Environmentalists aren't happy about this since it's not clear if it's any better to take the water before or after it gets to the delta. Either way, the delta gets starved of freshwater.
In any case, it will take upwards of 20 years to build the tunnel, so it's a moot point for now. For now, we have pumps; we have farmers in the delta who want to keep their water; and we have farmers in the Central Valley who want water and don't care about the health of the delta.
Trump's opinion appears to be fuck the delta, just keep the water flowing. Why? Beats me. The whole thing is purely an irrigation and drinking water issue and has nothing to do with fighting fires. We have plenty of water for that and always have.
It's all genuinely complicated. We really do need to keep the delta healthy and we really do need irrigation water farther south. It's not clear what the right balance is.
¹This is where the infamous delta smelt comes into the picture. Central Valley interests have been pretty successful in framing pump shutdowns as merely a way of saving the tiny delta smelt, an endangered species. It's just a stupid little fish! This is true but misleading. The smelt is basically used as a canary in the coal mine: when smelt populations dwindle it's a sign that the delta ecology is failing. That's the real reason for focusing on the smelt.
I don't see why you're giving all that water to fish. What are they going to do with it? It's not like they have lawns to water.
Nope, they don’t. And as the CA HSR crawls forward to open the Central Valley to SF and LA bedroom communities we will have lots more lawns….
I'm pumped!! My home town, is smack dab in the middle of Kevin's map. As Kevin points out, that tunnel to divert water from the Sacramento River will spell the end of the Delta as we know it. And once it ruined there's no coming back. Sadly, Newsome is all on board for the tunnel.
"Trump's opinion appears to be fuck the delta, just keep the water flowing. Why? Beats me."
Posturing. That's all.
Yeah, posturing. But unfortunately, all that "posturing" is reported as "news" to the whole country, complete with video of Trump lying about it. Saw this on NBC TV news tonight. Not a word about whether the fish story is true or not, just presenting it without comment. Next he's going to North Carolina where, according to the talking head, he "has been critical of Biden's FEMA response." No matter that "critical" meant "making shit up." All that matters is that it's "news." And don't forget about the clip of some random NC lady saying "FEMA is too slow!" No mention of the FEMA personnel that were being threatened with death when the tried to bring help to Asheville residents following Helene.
I know you said this was a "A (very) brief primer on California water" and you achieved that for most people. However for Trump to understand, you have to get it down to 14 Words or less.
It is a pity some billionaires’ salmon fishing isn’t at risk if the delta ecology is further irrevocably altered.
14 small words. Cartoons are also helpful.
And three or four of the words have to be ‘Trump’.
Chinatown with Jack Nicholson. Learned about California water rights fights from a class taught by a man who would later become the state's Librarian.
Water is for fighting and whiskey is for drink'n. I did a number of "South tower" races with a water lawyer from Tracy. He had some good lawyer jokes.
Question: What happens when sea levels rise 1 to 2 feet? Raise the levees? Infrastructure around the bay would also be affected.
California Water Law:
California's water law is based on the doctrine of prior appropriation, which states that the first person to use water has the right to use it in the future. This is also known as the "first in time, first in right" rule.
And Federal Water Law is the same. The Law of the River applies to the Colorado River and water behind Hoover Dam, too.
My recollection is that water law in the water rich areas of the east coast are different.
Levees!!!!!!
https://californiawaterblog.com/2011/03/09/sea-level-rise-and-delta-subsidence—the-demise-of-subsided-delta-islands/
Donald Trump is a six-year-old. Donald Trump looks at a map, sees that the north part of the map is higher than the south part of the map. He knows that water flows downhill. And something must be stopping all that beautiful water from flowing south, from Eureka, to Los Angeles. It MUST be some kind of giant faucet!
This is the same guy who thinks you have to "push the button" on your dishwasher ten times to get your dishes clean. Who thinks that windmills cause cancer. Who thinks you can divert a hurricane with a sharpie.
I'm pretty sure Trump doesn't know that there are aqueducts in California that actually DO bring the water from somewhat north (and east) of Los Angeles, and he'd *really* be steamed if he knew that the whole shebang was the brainchild of Jerry Brown's dad. I'm also pretty sure Trump wouldn't eat a salmon if you paid him, so preservation of that particular dietary staple is of no concern to him.
Even worse, Pat Brown tried to do the same for education: In the 1950s, the significant population growth in California created a need to expand accessible higher education within the state. In response, Clark Kerr, President of the University of California at the time, and then-Governor Pat Brown created the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California. Rather than a single written document or piece of legislation, it was a set of key higher education policy goals.
Then came Ronnie!!!
https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/13/ronald-reagans-legacy-the-rise-of-student-loan-debt-in-america/
All very true. He once proposed that the reactors on an aircraft carrier should be shut down when the ship is in port to save fuel. He thinks a carrier is a bigger version of his yacht.
I am sure that people who have contempt for "the stupid little fish" (the delta smelt) don't care much about that stupid little bird (the canary in the coal mine) either.
Well, there is NorCal water (which you pictured), SoCal (where you live) water from the Owens Valley, and LoCal water, which comes from the Colorado river out of Yuma.
My approach is that it's really best to think of trump as being a kind of LLM-based generative AI simulacrum, engineered to produce human-sounding output without having the capacity for signifying.
Now this isn't strictly true because on the one hand he often does understand meanings, and on the other he operates with intention, very much unlike a generative AI application.
His intention, though, is almost always is to dominate the attention space and is therefore radically unconnected to meaning. When he's doing this, he'll pick out topics and use terms that engage others, and he'll babble using them in a way that simulates human discourse.
Semantic content doesn't matter in this mode because his intention is so fundamentally divorced from meaning. In fact he can achieve *more* of his intention by obscuring semantic sense. That's because the effort people put into extracting sense from what he says will absorb even more of their attention than normal human speech will. This is the generative AI simulation aspect of his discourse, and it works very well for him. It's a major basis of media sanewashing, for example. (What he does is kind of like doubletalk, except I think doubletalk has a more focused intention.)
The problem I see with this approach to trumpspeak is that it can fall down in those few cases where he actually intends specific meaning. I can't think of any good tells for those times, though, so I tend to think the best approach is to assume he's doing attention-absorbing LLM-generative-like blather unless and until shown otherwise.
I think you connected a lot of their bullshit together in a logical sequence when their brains aren't wrinkly enough to think those thoughts. I grew up in the capitol of that, Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Last two exits on I-75 before you fall into the Tennessee hole.
Each of those are independent thoughts without any connections. It isn't anything that qualifies as an argument. It is a bunch of disconnected moments when the immediate context is filtered through the bronze age superstition machine and out pops an opinion. Change the immediate context and the opinion changes.
It's more like an old can of chicken soup candy.
https://www.generalmills.com/news/press-releases/soup-you-can-suck-on-introducing-progresso-soup-drops-the-ultimate-cold-and-flu-season-comfort