If they are, then they're not serious about conserving water.

It is the most progressive state in many ways, but is being an Ostrich with regard to water? Absolutely doesn't make sense.

Every year during droughts in the past we conserved water. We were able to do so I think because we weren't suffering from heat of this magnitude. Fires have been off the charts as has the heat index. A very bad combo when trying conserve water.

... and I had no idea until recently that at least one oil company here had been fracking. I have known for years that Big Oil considers us troublesome pipsqueaks with not nearly as much money to fight them as they have to fight us, but I thought our county had fought them to a draw. It's obvious they consider any attempt to fine or otherwise control them as just one more line-item in their budget.

Then I read about the group that had been persistently fouling a stream with runoff --- and that they were fracking, too. In SB County.

What I'm saying is, don't blame us, the citizenry, for fracking. As far as I am concerned, the bastards just do what they want and wait to get caught.

California is serious as a heart attack about water -- has been for well over a century: where it comes from, who controls it, who gets it. We've never had an oversupply. (Look up California's Water Wars.) The issue of conservation is newer, but not that recent. What we are by now is overpopulated -- but then, that is a problem all over the planet.

I don't know what we are going to do, frankly.

but most people think the world started when they were born. Hence they think that nothing has ever been done.

Sorry if I came across that way. I'm blaming the PTB, who will restrict water usage for the citizens while they're making money off the fracking industry and any other money making enterprise that wastes/pollutes the water.

I live in the Alleghany Highlands of Va., surrounded by the George Washington National Forest, and we're fighting Dominion Power and our own Rethuglican legislature to keep fracked gas pipelines out of our watershed.

These greedy bastards won't be happy until they ruin everything in their path.

People seem to be blind or ignorant to the facts about water in California, about how many billions of acre-feet are moved around and how the biggest cities were founded on water projects.

SF gets it's water from the other side of the state, LA gets it from the Colorado River and the north.

It's all a bunch of massive projects:

Los Angeles Aqueduct, Central Valley Project, State Water Project, Delta Mendota canal California Aqueduct and more.

http://www.watereducation.org/all-california-water-sources

I like what the city of Cambria on the central coast has done: No new water meters. Period. That means if you really want to build a new home, you'll need to buy and old house and use it's meter.

In Santa Cruz County there is a similar crisis, but they haven't caught on yet. Even the environment-friendly county board has been approving new construction if the builders are willing to shell out $40,000 and more for a meter, same thing in Half Moon Bay.

But people think that all we need to do is build desalination plants.

Now I need to stop or I'll have an aneurism.

BTW, I'll be in Arroyo Grande this Wednesday and Thursday....

We were slow-growthers by virtue of severely restricting new water meters. Unfortunately that's not a cure-all, but it did help.

Enjoy Arroyo Grande!

and most absolutely positively important of all,
make absolutely positively sure that
thou art praying to the absolutely positively right
one-and-only petty god who art in heaven...
or there shalt absolutely positively be hell to pay. sarcasm

I remember 5 years ago it rained for 4 weeks straight. Our family hosted an exchange student and she hardly saw any sun. Now, I'm afraid to think of what's in store. I doubt it will be in only California though. Nevada and Arizona too. Is it still raining a lot in the Northwest? I hope so. May have to move there. We do a lot of things right here in CA, but there's only so much one state can control. Very very concerned.

First a breaking news item from a local Fox affiliate about the protest happening right now -- and then some background from earlier this week.

http://fox40.com/2015/03/20/happening-now-nestle-water-bottling-plant-protest-in-south-sacramento-more/

Protesters are trying to stop operations at the Nestle Water Bottling Plant off Florin-Perkins Road. Demonstrators gathered as early as 4:30 a.m. to stand up against the company’s water practices.

Water activists are arguing that the facility is draining up to 80 million gallons of water a year from Sacramento aquifers while the state is in a drought.


https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/03/17/18770053.php

The city of Sacramento is in the fourth year of a record drought - yet the Nestlé Corporation continues to bottle city water to sell back to the public at a big profit, local activists charge. ...

The coalition, the crunchnestle alliance, says that City Hall has made this use of the water supply possible through a "corporate welfare giveaway," according to a press advisory. ...

The coalition will release details of a protest on Friday, March 20, at the South Sacramento Nestlé plant designed to "shut down" the facility. The coalition is calling on Nestlé to pay rates commensurate with their enormous profit, or voluntarily close down.

"The coalition is protesting Nestlé's virtually unlimited use of water – up to 80 million gallons a year drawn from local aquifers – while Sacramentans (like other Californians) who use a mere 7 to 10 percent of total water used in the State of California, have had severe restrictions and limitations forced upon them," according to the coalition.

The one that's coming is going to be "everyone with a drop of water on that day" vs. "everyone without a drop of water on that day.'

You will experience the thrill of either:

Dying because you are dying, or...

Quite possibly dying because you are not quite dying!!

Now, how's that for an existence?