California dam RIP

[xcvbn]

I'm not sure people realize how different Northern and Southern Cali are, and perhaps more importantly the coastal liberal sections are from the rural eastern sections, i.e. the Mojave Desert where I live and the Sierras etc up noth

I feel you pimp

The entire central valley from Grapevine to Redding, all of Northern California(north of Santa Rosa, Sacramento, and Lake Tahoe), and all of the eastern part of Southern California are like completely different states. They're more like Idaho, Montana, etc. Left-libertarian politics

These people don't even realize that if Eastern California became a state it would be 5th largest by population

 

[HunterSdVa29]

I feel you pimp

The entire central valley from Grapevine to Redding, all of Northern California(north of Santa Rosa, Sacramento, and Lake Tahoe), and all of the eastern part of Southern California are like completely different states. They're more like Idaho, Montana, etc. Left-libertarian politics

These people don't even realize that if Eastern California became a state it would be 5th largest by population

I have relatives in Yreka, they literally own a Llama farm....

a fucking llama farm, cali hahahah

 

[Teppodama]

This is a perfect opportunity for Trump to "Go Earns Some Fans" by showing support to California in this situation and moving quickly and decisively to deal with the issue of the dam.

But I'll be surprised if he doesn't screw this up.

 

[Pliny Pete]

Or maybe California could stop being a sanctuary city and take the money it spends on illegals and have money for disaster relief?

California voters obviously support sanctuary policies so the state is free to spend its money how it chooses
If the federal government isnt going to help in times of crisis then it shouldnt be demanding payment

 

[Rod1]

Yes, I think Republicans are more willing to spend money on roads and dams and pipelines and other infrastructure projects than are Democrats. Yes, I think that is true.

I also think they are less willing to allow environmentalists to ride roughshod by imposing excessive regulations. That is also true.

As for Trump, he has taken on his own party's establishment on numerous fronts. So why would you doubt that he - a real estate developer with a keen interest in building things - is not interested in spending someone else's money to get things built?

1.- Yet they blocked Obama's attempt at spending at every single step. About dams and pipelines, sure they are probably less concerned about the enviroment. That doesnt makes them pro-infrastructure at all, there are other public works besides those.

2.- Some regulations are excesive, some are not i would presume. there are two sides to that coin.

3.- Trump is a professional conman, whose job is not as much to build as to sell failed enterprises to unwary investors, as with any car salesman type of character im quite skeptical about whatever they claim they are willing to do.

 

[EL CORINTHIAN]

Wtf......I'm not with Cali on most political issues but for god sakes surely the president needs to help the people in need and not pick and choose what states he helps based on how liked he is. Thats rediculous that he would use that as a barometer for helping his country men

 

[Lord Commander Palis]

I was born in California, but seriously, fuck California.

Born and raised here, beautiful state, but it's mismanaged and ran by dumbfuck asshole Democraps for years. FUCK CALIFORNIA

 

[Cold Front]

1.- Im talking mostly about infrastructure getting the shaft due to phony enviromental concerns as opposed to political bickering or budget cuts.

Environmentalists hate dams. They hate them.

Read this article about the history of the California Water Project to get a sense of how environmentalists have opposed the projects their own liberal fathers once championed.

Why California environmentalists hate water.

“Development of our water resources is crucial to every segment of our state — the ranchers in our mountain areas, the farmers who make California the nation’s leading agricultural producer and the home owners in our population, which will grow to 20 million by 1970,” said Pat Brown, whose administration oversaw the bulk of the project’s construction.

The same approach continued after Ronald Reagan became governor in 1967. Construction was completed on the 770-foot-high Oroville dam in the northeastern Sacramento Valley – the tallest earth-filled dam in the country. In 1971, “Reagan starts the first pump at A.D. Edmonston Pumping Plant, as part of a ceremony celebrating the first water deliveries to Southern California,” according to the state department of water resources. Fourteen years later the bulk of the project was built.

Today, that would barely be enough time for the environmental reviews and lawsuits to run their course. The bureaucratic hurdles, the unwillingness to build, began with a change in philosophy, soon after Reagan left the governor’s mansion, in 1975.

By then, the environmental movement was growing. New pumping plants and dams were no longer celebrated because they halted the natural flow of rivers. Population growth became a major concern, with new infrastructure increasingly viewed as its catalyst....

In his first two terms, Brown halted a variety of infrastructure projects, believing that stopping new roads and pipelines would somehow slow the influx of new Californians. But people kept coming.

“Not building dams and reservoirs did not mean fewer people would have water or food and thus would not keep coming to California, but only that there would be ever more competition – whether manifested in tapping further the falling aquifer or rationing residential usage – for shrinking supplies,” wrote Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson, a native of California’s Central Valley, in a Newsweek article earlier this year.

For the last 40 years, the state has struggled with this tension – between the need to build facilities that accommodate a population now pushing 39 million, and the desire to put the brakes on growth in this unquestionably beautiful state. The state has long had a strong environmental tilt (think naturalist John Muir), and in recent years that emphasis has been winning the political battles.

Jerry Brown is now serving his fourth term as governor. In recent years, he has become an advocate of some large infrastructure-building projects – the $68-billion-plus High Speed Rail System and the $15.5-billion-plus project to build twin tunnels underneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. But even those projects bear the imprint of Schumacher’s idealization of nature. Brown’s bullet-train project is meant to lure Californians out of their cars. The tunnels are largely designed to fix the fish habitat in the West Coast’s largest estuary. Neither project is primarily about serving the needs of a growing population....

The governor’s approach to traditional infrastructure remains largely the same. Indeed, his latest budget didn’t even include new dollars to upgrade the state’s infrastructure – something he left to a special “transportation” session that ultimately failed to provide much action.​

Read the whole thing. You can't get a sense of what I'm talking about without reading this history. It goes into specific about how regulation chokes growth. For example:

In 2001, Gov. Gray Davis signed a controversial bill by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, which forces developers to identify water supplies far into the future before being granted building permits. Proponents called it “a rational way to regulate growth,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Opponents knew that it would significantly slow the construction of new subdivisions. It’s a key example of water politics being used as population control.​

 

[Mr Holmes]

To their defense, they do pay federal taxes currently. So, I think it is reasonable to ask for assistance.

 

[chardog]

I was reading news reports on this , and a figure of $100-$200 million to plug the hole is being put forth . I am like WTF!! that much??

We have gotten soo used to massive defense spending that people now don't even question such outrageous billing for infrastructure repair.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-oroville-update-20170212-story.html

Somebody is ripping off the tax payer bigly.

million, not billions.... seems like a huge job

 

[Exi]

California is full of arrogant self serving assholes

But, but...I thought 'self serving' was a conservative value?

 

[Bloody Pulp]

There aren't people drowning in the streets here. A couple hundred thousand got evacuated as a precaution and the dam is being repaired. Moonbeam wants money to help fix things. And he can fuck right off with Gavin Newsome and the other idiots running this state.

As far as the calexit crap. Most of CA's agricultural and producing counties are red. San Francisco/east bay and LA county don't represent the entire states' feelings.

 

[Rod1]

Environmentalists hate dams. They hate them.

Read this article about the history of the California Water Project to get a sense of how environmentalists have opposed the projects their own liberal fathers once championed.

Why California environmentalists hate water.

“Development of our water resources is crucial to every segment of our state — the ranchers in our mountain areas, the farmers who make California the nation’s leading agricultural producer and the home owners in our population, which will grow to 20 million by 1970,” said Pat Brown, whose administration oversaw the bulk of the project’s construction.

The same approach continued after Ronald Reagan became governor in 1967. Construction was completed on the 770-foot-high Oroville dam in the northeastern Sacramento Valley – the tallest earth-filled dam in the country. In 1971, “Reagan starts the first pump at A.D. Edmonston Pumping Plant, as part of a ceremony celebrating the first water deliveries to Southern California,” according to the state department of water resources. Fourteen years later the bulk of the project was built.

Today, that would barely be enough time for the environmental reviews and lawsuits to run their course. The bureaucratic hurdles, the unwillingness to build, began with a change in philosophy, soon after Reagan left the governor’s mansion, in 1975.

By then, the environmental movement was growing. New pumping plants and dams were no longer celebrated because they halted the natural flow of rivers. Population growth became a major concern, with new infrastructure increasingly viewed as its catalyst....

In his first two terms, Brown halted a variety of infrastructure projects, believing that stopping new roads and pipelines would somehow slow the influx of new Californians. But people kept coming.

“Not building dams and reservoirs did not mean fewer people would have water or food and thus would not keep coming to California, but only that there would be ever more competition – whether manifested in tapping further the falling aquifer or rationing residential usage – for shrinking supplies,” wrote Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson, a native of California’s Central Valley, in a Newsweek article earlier this year.

For the last 40 years, the state has struggled with this tension – between the need to build facilities that accommodate a population now pushing 39 million, and the desire to put the brakes on growth in this unquestionably beautiful state. The state has long had a strong environmental tilt (think naturalist John Muir), and in recent years that emphasis has been winning the political battles.

Jerry Brown is now serving his fourth term as governor. In recent years, he has become an advocate of some large infrastructure-building projects – the $68-billion-plus High Speed Rail System and the $15.5-billion-plus project to build twin tunnels underneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. But even those projects bear the imprint of Schumacher’s idealization of nature. Brown’s bullet-train project is meant to lure Californians out of their cars. The tunnels are largely designed to fix the fish habitat in the West Coast’s largest estuary. Neither project is primarily about serving the needs of a growing population....

The governor’s approach to traditional infrastructure remains largely the same. Indeed, his latest budget didn’t even include new dollars to upgrade the state’s infrastructure – something he left to a special “transportation” session that ultimately failed to provide much action.​

Read the whole thing. You can't get a sense of what I'm talking about without reading this history. It goes into specific about how regulation chokes growth. For example:

In 2001, Gov. Gray Davis signed a controversial bill by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, which forces developers to identify water supplies far into the future before being granted building permits. Proponents called it “a rational way to regulate growth,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Opponents knew that it would significantly slow the construction of new subdivisions. It’s a key example of water politics being used as population control.​

Of course they hate dams, because dams tend to fuck up the enviroment pretty bad and for what? more cash crops or energy that can be produced in other ways?

Dams are incredibly enviromentally unfriendly and its really hard to justify them in a nation which values individual rights because the externalities tend to fuck up a lot of people.

 

[Cold Front]

1.- Yet they blocked Obama's attempt at spending at every single step. About dams and pipelines, sure they are probably less concerned about the enviroment. That doesnt makes them pro-infrastructure at all, there are other public works besides those.

Yes, but by Obama's own admission, none of his infrastructure projects would have meant a thing for the stimulus. In other words, there was nothing he could build in fast enough time to matter.

Forget the partisan politics for a moment. Republicans and Demcrats often oppose one another for petty political reasons and not out of consistency.

Look at the deeper political movements. Who contributes most to Democrats and Republicans?

 

[Cold Front]

Of course they hate dams, because dams tend to fuck up the enviroment pretty bad and for what? more cash crops or energy that can be produced in other ways?

Dams are incredibly enviromentally unfriendly and its really hard to justify them in a nation which values individual rights because the externalities tend to fuck up a lot of people.

Okay. So why are you complaining when I point out that this hatred contributes to a lack of adequate infrastructure?

If you want to double your population in forty years, you need to add to your water supplies. California can't do that adequately without new water infrastructure.

 

[SomebodyElse]

Except they are net giver to the Fed so if CA wasn't in the Union they'd have money for disaster relief and you'd have less money for the next Katrina.

Negative.

After paying for the water needed via the Colorado, it is a pretty good bet they would end up further in the hole. Other states are already asking D.C. for a bigger share of the freshwater NOW, and they are still part of the U.S.

Never mind the vast erosion of their Agricultural industry as the US shifted production back to the Midwest, also bringing more income to those states for dealing with their own disasters (frequent floods and the infamous tornado alley).

 

[Rod1]

Yes, but by Obama's own admission, none of his infrastructure projects would have meant a thing for the stimulus. In other words, there was nothing he could build in fast enough time to matter.

Forget the partisan politics for a moment. Republicans and Demcrats often oppose one another for petty political reasons and not out of consistency.

Look at the deeper political movements. Who contributes most to Democrats and Republicans?

Im not posting in this thread because of partisan politics im posting in this thread because water is also a big battle in my state.

I think dams main function should be flood control, agriculture and energy generation should be secondary to that, specially on a state with a large access to ocean water.

 

[Cold Front]

Im not posting in this thread because of partisan politics im posting in this thread because water is also a big battle in my state.

I think dams main function should be flood control, agriculture and energy generation should be secondary to that, specially on a state with a large access to ocean water.

Building fresh-water Dams are far cheaper than converting ocean water. If you follow the environmentalist mantra, you will just make things unlivable for most poor people in your state.

 

[Huked on foniks]

In case you guys weren't aware, there are many republicans living in California too... and the county where the flood is happening (Butte County) is a rural county that voted Republican

Not that it matters... for fucks sake these are Americans being affected... are you guys so partisan that you only care about helping victims who are members of your party?

Yup. The irony is to much to pass up. Fuck California

 

[Rod1]

Okay. So why are you complaining when I point out that this hatred contributes to a lack of adequate infrastructure?

If you want to double your population in forty years, you need to add to your water supplies. California can't do that adequately without new water infrastructure.

1.- Because infrastructure is a large encompassing word that doesnt limits itself to dams.

2.- Most of California water goes to turning pieces of desert into green pastures or to water intensive crops.

3.- Desalination plants could be used to serve the population centers for example, agriculture could certainly improve its efficiency and i dont know about water distribution but there is a lot of loss in open water reservoirs and canals that could be addressed without the need to build more dams.