Do you believe that human uses for water are of equal value to all other environmental uses (as in, any need or use for water that does not directly benefit humans)? If you do, then you should be pleased with the “truce” called by the California legislature around the state’s perpetual water issues.
It’s a group of bills and an $11 million bond issue that still needs to get voter approval. The core issue, and I have to agree with this, is that California operates on really old water rights claims and laws- things that have been around since the Gold Rush. The sheer number of people combined with agricultural demands on the water present issues that that era never dreamed of- there are just too many people around now to try and use outdated laws as guidance for how to manage the water in California.

And of course, there is the prickly issue that Los Angeles bought/stole much of the water from the northern part of the state long ago, which significantly alters where the water ends up versus where it would naturally go. California is part of the dry west, and there is an inherent difficulty is distributing the water, exacerbated by the growing population. The state has been trying to deal with this in recent months, specifically with what to do about the Sacramento Delta.

Turns out the solution that is supported by these new bills is to build a canal taking some of the water out and away from the Delta- to go to other canals and so on and so forth- probably throw a dam in there somewhere. Point being, there will be a decent amount of water taken from its natural state.

Never a good thing, really, for anyone.

My favorite sentence in the Reuters article about this whole situation is: “Los Angeles has reduced water use and now supports the environment as a way to avoid legal tangles.”

Los Angeles now supports the environment? What does that even mean? Los Angeles is an ego-island built in a desert. I mean, it’s great fun to hang out there, and the coast is an amazing place to live, but come on, Los Angeles supports the environment? Funny. Though I do believe that they will do anything to avoid legal tangles, that sounds very southern California…

What could turn out to be the one good thing about this agreement and set of bills is that it will finally establish numbers of how much water needs to stay in various streams to ensure that the wildlife that lives there can actually survive- I applaud that, but if that has to be established by law in order to keep people from taking too much water out of streams then there is something much larger and deeper as an issue.

And I think that’s the final issue with California and water, and perhaps with the U.S. and water- we continue to believe that we are the ones who need to figure out how to manage the water, what is the best way for us to utilize it- when in truth, we do not manage what water can do,but water manages us and what we can do, and we need to start understanding that.