The Saudi Arabia of Water?!

http://www.blueoregon.com/2008/08/the-saudi-arabi.html

Oregon's Senate Republicans finally have a new idea - and it's a doozy. They want to sell water from the Columbia and the Willamette to people in California, Nevada, other states, and yes, even other countries.

http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/08/senate_republicans_propose_sel.html

Republicans in the Oregon Senate released a legislative agenda earlier this week that contained one big surprise: they want to sell Oregon water to "water-poor communities out of state."

Northwesterners have always had a healthy fear of their abundant rivers being sucked dry in a Los Angeles-style water raid (anyone seen Chinatown recently?), so the issue usually only comes up when politicians are fighting some outsider expressing interest in the region's water.

But state Sen. David Nelson, R-Pendleton, who convinced the Senate R caucus to take up this idea, insists that times have changed and that Oregon could be a Saudi Arabia of water. "We wouldn't allow them to take it," he says of other regions. "We would sell it to them." And he adds that it could make the kind of profits that will help support a level of state services that the taxpayers aren't willing to fund.

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What's next, selling air?

too.

Thanks for these links.

They own this one.

and thanks again for the links.

Actually, I thought you were kidding.

:hi:

Maybe you could divert part of the Willamette or the Deschutes into the Klamath, and part of that into the Sacramento, but I'm sure the regulatory agencies would have a problem with that.

Speaking of water, I heard the other day that 1/5 of the power used in California is used to move water around and treat it. :o

No, I'm not kidding. These Republicans aren't exactly geniuses.

http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/08/senate_republicans_propose_sel.html

Sen. David Nelson, R-Pendleton, said he thinks Oregon still has plenty of water downstream from the Columbia River dams that could be sent - likely by tanker - to out-of-state and even foreign users facing increasingly severe shortages. An international market is being developed, he said, and Oregon ought to get into it.

"I look at it as a vital commodity just being flushed down into the ocean," Nelson said, "and we're not getting any use of it."

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So this dude thinks water is more expensive than the oil required to ship it to, well, Sacramento I guess. I suppose we could truck it from The Dalles and drive it to Winnemucca. That would have the Nevada thing covered.

I'm not surprised at that stat...20% just to move it around.

Jeez.

to undue the DAMAGE that mining and water diversion have caused?

Salmon, the Delta, the San Joaquin, Owens, Mono Lake, the Sacramento, the Klamath... ALL the subjects of HUGE amounts of work in order to bring them back to some semblance of health.

Do they really want to do that to the Willamette, the Umpqua, the Rogue, the Columbia, the Grande Ronde, the Powder et el.? :shrug:

But I do.

I am tired of 60 and 70 year old men setting our policies. They are old and will die soon and are not affected by their critical fuckups. We're the ones who have to live with their short term ideas.

many times they become old while in office. Run for office, change things. Then resign before you become old.

the right to rule is for the nobility. Who has the money, connections, and unsullied background necessary to gain office?

I had to sell cars to live. That knocks me out of the running right there.

greenland should build a giant wall in its middle to keep all of the melting snow/ice in to become a giant reservoir and then start owec.