California's water wars are as old as the state itself.
Today, two farmers - just 2 - in the central valley use more water than all the residents of Los Angeles and the entire San Francisco Bay Area combined. These two privately owned, family farmers own the largest farms in the nation, and they are also the wealthiest family farmers The shit these people pull is un-effing- believable. I don't know if you read my articles on the region, but they offer insight into the politics behind water shortages in the southland. They also tell you who Trump is answering to with his ignorant comments about these fires and it sure ain't voters. If the Delta Smelt fish dies off, that means the ocean has breached the levy system and entered the fresh water supply for a huge percentage of Californians.
California's Plantation Culture
https://meraffey.medium.com/californias-plantation-culture-f2fc5696aad5
The Lords of Bakersfield
Add the water used for oil fracking and mining in the same region, and residential water shortages in the southland are guaranteed.
The Saudi Royal family owns water rights in California as well. They pay way under market value for that water too, because they bought old farmland that came with old water rights. The Saudis use that water to grow alfalfa hay that they ship to Saudi Arabia to feed their cattle. Saudi Arabia is running out of water. The aquifer below Riyadh, their capitol city, hit fossil water more than a decade ago, but the 7-Million residents of Riyadh, keep sucking water out of their dying aquifer.
The Harvard University Endowment has been buying water rights in central California for just about a decade. They call it an investment and I suppose it is, if you think making money off people dying of thirst is A-okay.
Thank you, I need all the hope I can get. If the sun does not unfreeze my pipes this Sunday, I'm looking at another week of snow, and below freezing temps with frozen pipes. My outdoor spigots are still running, so we might have to reconfigure the water hookup for my trailer. But that's a brrrrrr of a job. In the meantime, we are busy mudding and taping drywall in my house. My daughter is making my interior doors and they are oh so pretty. We've done everything we could think of to make this house work for me as I age, so its highly customized. I wouldn't trade this adventure for anything. :)
