[env-trinity] Thomas Elias: Both logic and illogic in Brown's drought plans

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.redding.com/opinion/columnists/tom-elias/thomas-elias-both-logic-and-illogic-in-browns-drought-plans_77025671
  
Thomas Elias: Both logic and illogic in Brown's drought plans
6:00 PM, Apr 13, 2015There is both sense and nonsense in the $1 billion drought relief package announced by Gov. Jerry Brown in a parched Sierra Nevada Mountains. But the rationale behind the single largest part of the package is fundamentally contradictory.Brown says California must be ready for new and lasting, drier realities, then bases the most expensive part of his plan on weather patterns he previously said are most likely things of the past.Authorized spending on all this now comes to $1.7 billion, including almost $700 million Brown proposed and the Legislature approved last year, most of it not yet spent.But Brown has taken heat over the fact that his emergency rationing plan does not force farms to cut use of surface water or lower pumping of groundwater. Leaving farmers’ groundwater out of the order, of course, exposes the weakness of the ballyhooed underground water regulations Brown signed into law last year — a law that will lack teeth for more than 10 years.This all leaves plenty to question. One big question is why the plan includes only about $270 million — just over 15 percent of the package funding — for helping develop new sources of freshwater, including innovative desalination methods other than the hyper-expensive and power-sucking reverse osmosis technique now in use in a few places. Brown has not yet spoken about that.But he has talked about why he included $660 million for new flood control projects — essentially building dams and reservoirs and lining some streams with concrete, a la the Los Angeles and Santa Ana rivers, where activists regularly push to remove concrete and return streams to their natural state.The governor cited the danger of “extreme weather events,” caused by climate change, even though the only changes so far in California’s weather from global warming have been extended dry periods.But the state already has an extensive system of flood control channels and huge reservoirs designed to capture and control floodwaters.Existing reservoirs are so low now there is little imminent danger they will overflow in the foreseeable future.Essentially, Brown and the Legislature are focusing on old technology to solve new problems.If the current measures are a way to justify shoring up levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area, fine, but say so. Don’t sell them as something quite different.Email Thomas at: tdelias at aol.com
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