At this point, the state of California’s namesake has become synonymous with DROUGHT and WASTEFULNESS.

On the one hand, it makes me feel a sense of shame for living in a state that allows such pigheaded corruption and lack of accountability.

On the other hand, it makes me feel aggravated (and downright hostile) toward critics from other parts of the country who seem to have neither any sympathy nor constructive thoughts for California (or the other West Coast / Rocky Mountain states, for that matter).

Let’s look at the facts, first.

Last April, California Governor Jerry Brown imposed mandatory water restrictions on the entire state, which is entering its fourth-consecutive year of record-breaking drought. Brown has ordered the state to collectively cut its water usage by 25%. For some cities and municipalities, the target percentage will be somewhat higher or somewhat lower (based on their past water usage)

Residents have been instructed to water their lawns a maximum of three times per week, on designated days – or face fines of up to $500 per offense. Restaurants are banned from automatically serving drinking water (customers must specifically request it).

But, as Eric Holthaus of Slate magazine points out, Governor Brown excluded agricultural producers from this mandate. Currently, farmers use approximately 40% of California’s groundwater supply.

And, California harvests between 80%-90% of America’s fresh produce. So, despite what many “anti-California” snobs would have us believe, this *IS* a national issue with coast-to-cost ramifications.

The next question is obviously: what do we do about it?

Well, unfortunately, this is an issue where people need to come together to find solutions with mutual benefits. Whether we like it or not, those solutions and benefits will extend far beyond California’s own state borders.

I realize that liberals and conservatives alike might alternately take issue with my own personal opinions on topics such as same-sex marriage, abortion, patriotism, affirmative action, health care, outsourcing, police brutality, food labeling, organized religion, marijuana, indecency laws, voter fraud, and political correctness.

The drought, however, isn’t a red-or-blue issue. It’s an issue where the survival of large populations is at stake.

Following Brown’s declaration of new drought-era restrictions, Star Trek veteran William Shatner proposed constructing a water pipeline from Seattle to Lake Mead (in Nevada). Although I partially agree with Shatner’s line-of-thinking, his envisioning of a water pipeline is one that would travel in the wrong direction; it ignores the realities of the increasing drought problem that is also beginning to burden Washington state and Oregon.

We need water pipelines…but they should be running east-to-west, connecting the West Coast with states that actually receive a plethora of rain (unlike Washington state).

The mainstream media has often floated the talking point of, “California only has a year’s supply of water remaining.”

But the website CaliforniaWaterBlog.com (which is a fantastic resource if you want to bypass all of the noise and fear-mongering surrounding the drought) debunks that myth – acknowledging that the problem is serious, but we won’t run out of water in the near future if we are careful.

It doesn’t change the fact that the entire region (California – as well as its neighbors) must revolutionize the way water sustainability is managed for the long term.

First, let’s go into what we should be doing differently. Call it my Twelve-Step Plan to alleviate the drought (and to prepare for future droughts). None of these ideas are “magic bullets,” and most of them have been proposed by other groups – for example, the California Chamber of Commerce has endorsed the “California Water Fix” plan, drafted by the California Water Fix Coalition.

Here are a dozen or so measures our region (and federal government) can take in order to transform present-day human relationships with water.

DESALINATION PLANTS

These sprawling facilities use “reverse osmosis” to convert seawater into drinkable tap water. The Carlsbad Desalination Project in San Diego County is scheduled to go online at the end of this year. Orange County has approved another one in Huntington Beach. However, despite the ability of desal plants to deliver large quantities of purified ocean water to coastal communities, they tend to be expensive to operate – and a drain on the local power grids.

Environmentalists frequently oppose desal plants because they drain aquatic habitats from marine life while contributing to carbon emissions. Also, the salt brine filtered out of the seawater (along with black residue derived from “reserve osmosis”) gets dumped back into the ocean, thereby making the ocean itself saltier. But those concerns can be remedied if the West Coast looks to the desalination methods developed by Israel.

In the mid-naughts, Israelis were facing a widespread drought similar to California’s. Then they built Sorek, a $500 million facility that now serves as the world’s largest desalination plant. Over the past three years, Sorek has reinvigorated Israel’s water delivery system with an energy-efficient design. Granted, Israel is about twenty times smaller (in square miles) than California, and has only about one-fifth of the Golden State’s population; yet, if California (along with Oregon and Washington state) green-lit several Sorek-style desal plants up-and-down the Pacific coast, that would go a long way toward water sustainability for years to come.

The main problem: desalination plants are time-consuming to construct…and our region is running out of time. So, while desal plants are a wise investment for the long term, it wouldn’t be a solution to rectify the drought in the present.

DEFLATE THE BOTTLED WATER INDUSTRY

Companies such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Crystal Geyser have been allowed to drill more than 3 billion gallons from California’s groundwater supply annually – all so they can bottle it and resell it to consumers for their own profit. This is unacceptable, given the extent of the current drought.

Now, as conditions worsen, bottled water companies are expanding northward into Oregon to drill beneath the Beaver State’s surfaces. Here’s a crazy idea: why not drill for water in the states that receive intense rainfall? Those regions would certainly welcome the extra revenue from water exportation; consumers would still have bottled water available for purchase; and it would curb the ongoing depletion of the West Coast’s water supply. Sounds like a Win/Win/Win situation to me!

As much as I’m generally opposed to additional taxes on consumers, I say that California should choose to heavily tax the Bottled Water Industry for as long as it continues to exploit our state’s scarce groundwater supply. This should be carried out via an excise tax on actual bottled water in stores…as well as hefty state business taxes specifically aimed at beverage companies that persist in drilling from our groundwater reserves.

I guarantee you that if prices of bottled water skyrocketed (which they would, if California’s legislators forced bottled water suppliers to increase their operating costs), consumers would stop buying that bottled water in droves. Bottled water companies would high-tail it out of California, as the exorbitant taxes and operational expenses would outweigh any net profit from drilling our state’s groundwater.

INCENTIVIZING RESPONSIBLE AGRICULTURE

Approximately 40% of California’s overall water consumption goes to farms. As part of Governor Brown’s new water restriction measures, it’s been mandated that farms report how much of the state’s groundwater supply they’re using. Unfortunately, that mandate (in contrast to the higher residential water bills for consumers) doesn’t exactly have teeth in terms of encouraging conservation.

With so much Californian produce being delivered across the rest of the United States, it wouldn’t be practical to ban farming altogether. A better alternative would be to incentivize the cultivation of crops that are less water-intensive. Potatoes, sugar beets, carrots, tomatoes, berries, watermelons, oranges, lettuce, squash, watermelon, grapes, lemons, broccoli, apples, and cucumbers top that list.

Meanwhile, commodities such as rice, walnuts, alfalfa, cattle, poultry, dairy products, and corn require far heavier quantities of irrigation. These are crops and ranches that really should be cultivated in other parts of the U.S. that lack drought-like conditions. While it’s not realistic to “kick out” producers of those crops, we can make it a lot less profitable for them to operate on California soil. By incentivizing the water-moderate farmers, we can essentially “de-incentivize” the water-heavy farmers.

Some of the incentives could include: increased (and, perhaps, reallocated) water rights, tax credits for farmers who produce a mega-majority (80%-90%) of their crops being those designated as “less water-intensive,” and priority receipt of any new future water sources brought into the state.

REINING IN BIG AGRICULTURE

In that spirit, if the free market is going to allow farmers to raise certain crops that have no business being grown in a climate like California’s, then there need to be stricter accountability standards than mere “water reporting” for those agricultural entities.

While farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have agreed to give up 25% of their water allotment for this growing season, those producers only account for around 5% of California’s overall agricultural community.

It’s time for the corporate farms to quit feeding at the trough. There should be an index correlating the amount of water used by each farm against the quarterly profits brought in by that farm. If a farm underperforms (in other words: it uses a greater proportion of water compared to what it should be yielding in quarterly profits), then its next quarter’s water usage would be subject to a much higher rate than those farms that make efficient use (mathematically speaking) of their water/output models.

Again, no one is denying the importance Californian farmers play in contributing to California’s economy – as well as the economy of the U.S. as a whole. But if better efficiency standards (i.e. drip irrigation, micro-irrigation) aren’t mandated for California farms (both those that are corporate-owned as well as family farms) across-the-board, then the result will be Californians dying of thirst and unable to buy that precious in-state produce.

SUBSIDIES FOR ARTIFICIAL GRASS AND DESERT-STYLE LANDSCAPING

Bar none, the greatest cause of water overuse from consumers is people who excessively water their lawns and landscaping. But it isn’t just residential homes that do this: schools, college campuses, brick-and-mortar businesses, apartment complexes, and golf courses are all guilty of this, as well.

A recent trend here in California, over the past five years, has been encouraging residents to replace actual grass with either artificial greenery or desert-friendly vegetation. And some of those landscaping options can actually look aesthetically-pleasing (and cut down on water bills).

However, these xeroscaping efforts are usually an expensive option for individuals (sometimes costing anywhere from $2,000 to $12,000 per job). Some cities and municipalities have offered rebate programs to homeowners who go this route; but others, such as the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, have stopped those programs due to budgetary shortfalls.

These programs need to be revitalized. But going further: they need to be extended to business owners and public properties, in addition to private homeowners. This is where federal intervention is necessary – to fund the rebates for those who participate…since the state of California, by itself, doesn’t have the extra money to do so.

STRONGER MECHANISMS TO CATCH WATER

When low-precipitation states don’t receive adequate amounts of rainfall, we need to find ways to preserve that liquid so it doesn’t simply flow back into the ocean. This is a logical strategy to plan for drier years…since we never know whether the next twelve months might be rainier than the last.

To achieve this, people and businesses must be educated on effective methods for capturing water during rainy periods. Stormwater-capture facilities, cisterns, rain barrels, bioswales, “green roofs,” and networked water storage (via microchip technology) top the list of potential solutions. If I were Governor Brown, I would immediately appoint Noah Garrison of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability to head up such a Task Force.

In fact, MIT researcher Moshe Alamaro is developing an experimental “monolayer” (engineered with a perimeter of “skimmers” to prevent wind disruption) that could be used to cover reservoirs as a way of preventing water from needlessly evaporating.

Again, the federal government should step in to help California and its neighbors take advantage of these innovations. More about that, momentarily…

FINES FOR FAILURE TO RECYCLE WATER

By that same token, there should be more logical penalties for those who waste our limited water supply. It’s all well-and-good to ban driveway-based car-washing…or bribe residents to tattle on each other when they see neighbors misusing lawn sprinklers. But such “remedies” only selectively punish random individuals – while barely putting a dent in the water shortage problem.

Instead, homes and businesses should face steep fines (statewide!) when they fail to recycle water in realistic ways. Case-in-point: decorative waterfalls. Any home, business, or theme park that features a continuously-running cascade of water (usually surrounded by flowers or shrubbery) must be required to employ a mechanism by which the water is re-circulated and re-used around the clock.

If a shopping center wants to have a magnificent trickling fountain spewing water amid its frontage – great! Just make sure that water is being re-funneled internally…rather than sucking it in and out of the city’s water supply. Or face monetary penalties in the quadruple – or quintuple – digits!

California state legislators…are you listening?

RECHANNEL, REUSE, REFURBISH, YO!

Hydroponic (indoor) and aquaponic (outdoor) systems are the way of the future. Vegetation is continuously nourished by water that gets reused within either greenhouses or reservoirs. They also use 90% less water than traditional farms. But startup costs for these facilities are high – and yes, it’s an additional area where federal investment would be wise.

Another remedy is using “greywater” (any water that gets wasted through plumbing systems after initial use – this excludes that from the toilet or kitchen sink pipes). “Greywater planning” is time-consuming, expensive, and often complicated (homeowners must be in compliance with state codes for graywater usage). Laura Allen of Greywater Action leads a team of activists to educate West Coasters on how to employ these techniques in “water-wise” ways. Other independent analysis show that such water reuse can also lead to improved water quality.

Fantastic! Now let’s bring the public sector into it on a wider scale – and keep them involved. Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District is one entity that currently offers incentive programs to help homeowners go this route…until the funding for it inevitably runs out, that is.

On that note: isn’t it about time for drip-irrigation to be mandated when for-profit farms are using limited state water supplies? Or, at the very least, entice more farms to make this switch through tantalizing benefits. You can crow about Big Government all you want…but if our major agricultural producers begin doing it – in tandem with a coordinated public awareness campaign – how long will it be before non-agricultural property owners follow suit?

CLOUD SEEDING

Some scientists have floated the idea of manmade weather modification. In “cloud seeding,” chemicals are injected into clouds to force precipitations out of the sky. Some of the chemicals used in past trials have included silver iodide, dry ice, liquid propane, and potassium iodide.

The disadvantage to relying on this method is that the atmosphere must contain enough clouds, at a given point in time, so there are enough nuclei to create new raindrops and ice crystals.

It’s certainly a strategy that’s worth exploring. But it just hasn’t proven to be consistently effective. For that reason, cloud seeding could be tried out with greater frequency – but, much like desalination plants, we shouldn’t consider it the end-all-and-be-all of reversing our drought.

ALTERNATIVES TO FRACKING

Aside from the obvious environmental hazards of hydraulic fracking (to extract natural gas for commercial use), we have to research ways in which this process can become obsolete.

Not enough research has been put into the logistics of mass-producing solar, wind-generated, geothermal, tidal, and biofuel/biomass energy output. The West Coast should be a breeding ground for scientific trials and pilot programs that explore these advancements…with the goal of someday achieving the technology that will make fracking a thing of the past. Grants and federal money is necessary in order to make this happen (sorry, all you Big Government decriers!).

But, until we’ve fully revolutionized those alternative energy sources, why not make fracking more responsible (at least, as much as it can be, by definition)? The Canadian energy services firm GASFRAC (originally led by Calgary-based accountant James Hill) has used a propane-based hydrocarbon gel to conduct fracking with minimal use of water. Some other methods that could transform traditional hydraulic fracking include the utilization of recycled “frack water” or non-potable brine in place of fresh water.

Governor Brown, please bring in James Hill as a consultant for our state’s oversight of fracking policies, hmm?

INTER-STATE WATER PIPELINE?

With all the controversy generated by the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that would transfer dirty tar sands across the largest water source of the Great Plains (I’m anti-Keystone, in case you couldn’t tell)…you’d think we could apply that same technology in order to pipe water, coast-to-coast, from rainier areas to arid regions.

Unlike oil pipelines, an inter-state water pipeline would cause minimal-to-zero environmental damage in the amount of pipe leakage or ruptures. Water-catching systems could be built in states with excess rainfall; then, the Western states with thinner water supplies would purchase that water from states farther eastward…these pipelines would be a method for transporting that water.

A mutually-beneficial scenario – replenishment for places such as: Shasta Lake; the San Luis, Don Pedro, and Elephant Butte Reservoirs; Owens Valley; Lake Tahoe; Lake Mead; Lake Havasu; Lake Powell; the Hoover, Cochiti, and Abiquiu Dams; Heron Lake; and the Colorado, Snake, Arkansas, and Yellowstone Rivers…on top of that, the states replenishing them shall receive additional revenue (from inter-state water-purchasing).

Yes, this would require billions of dollars of investment along with years of infrastructure planning. It’s a long-term solution, not a “quick fix.” And no, we wouldn’t be “stealing” water from sources like the Great Lakes, Toledo Bend Reservoir, Lakes Okeechobee and Champlain, or the Mississippi and Hudson Rivers This would be a venue through which states that are hungry for capital could sell (and pipe) water to drought-ravaged states for a high profit.

That brings me to the final cog in my Twelve-Point Plan – how to make it happen.

AN INTER-STATE WATER COMPACT (aka “RWC2”)

Should California have put more effective sustainability measures in place decades ago? Absolutely. But that doesn’t address the threat that drought poses to other states throughout the West Coast and Rocky Mountain regions.

Washington state and Oregon are now beginning to experience strained water resources to California’s north. Utah, Montana, and Idaho all hover at around 25% drought. In Arizona, that level has risen to nearly three-quarters…and in Nevada and New Mexico, it’s climbed even higher.

How long before these trends spread across the Rockies and begin to permeate the Great Plains?

If the sitting Governors from the eleven westernmost states on the continental plate (California, Oregon, Washington state, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming) join forces and develop an “Inter-state Water Compact,” the political pressure to strengthen water delivery systems west of the Dakotas would be immense.

I dub this blueprint “the Rocky / West Coast Water Compact” (or “RWC2,” for short). It would be a bipartisan alliance to spur water replenishment efforts across those collective 1,200,000 square miles of U.S. soil. RWC2 would be led by Governors Steve Bullock (D-MT), Jerry Brown (D-CA), Kate Brown (D-OR), Doug Ducey (R-AZ), Gary Herbert (R-UT), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Jay Inslee (D-WA), Susana Martinez (R-NM), Matt Mead (R-WY), Butch Otter (R-ID), and Brian Sandoval (R-NV). More than one of these individuals undoubtedly has presidential aspirations for 2020.

RWC2 could demand and advocate for federal funding that would facilitate water-delivery systems from rainfall-heavy areas in the Midwest, South, and East Coast. By bringing together both Republicans and Democrats whose constituents are deeply affected by this dilemma, West Coast / Rocky Mountain states would have an organized venue in place to purchase water from regions of the U.S. with an excess of it. The stewards of RWC2 would also share ideas and resources to help all eleven of these states (not just California!) preserve their dams, reservoirs, lakes, rivers, and snowcaps.

Many from outside of California will sneer at this idea. I can already hear it: “Oh, California caused this problem for itself…so why should the rest of the country have to bail California out of its mess?”

Such naysaying misses the point: it doesn’t matter who caused the problem or failed to do this-or-that. The problem is here…and if you think drought won’t eventually find its way beyond the Sierra Nevada range, you are naive. So why not pool our resources to empower the Western United States as a whole (including, but not limited to, California) on the issue of water sustainability for future generations?

This attitude is what I refer to as “regional snobbery” – where people ignorantly embrace stereotypes based on misconceptions and misinformation about the cultures of other states.

Last spring, I encountered such a perversion while engaging in a discussion on Facebook about the drought. Dorothy Mickleburgh, a former Co-Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Women’s Caucus, complained about how it is primarily the fault of Californians for not conserving our own water supply (this exchange occurred on the Facebook wall belonging to a mutual friend of hers and mine). Mickleburgh rejected my argument for an inter-state water pipeline by sneering:

I don’t agree though about diverting water though from states with a lot of water to California, though. I also watched California pump the Santa Cruz and other rivers bone-dry. I live in Washington state and the last thing I want to see is wasteful states sucking us dry. We already are having problems here because snow melt has drastically decreased over recent years. And we use our water for hydropower, so diverting it to water-guzzling California isn’t a grand plan. I think there’s a lot of planning that has to happen, and California needs to figure some alternatives out that doesn’t mean poaching off everybody else.

When I pointed out that it’s a national problem (due to food prices and the Entertainment Industry) rather than local one, Mickleburgh responded:

Desalination comes to mind. For sure, there’s national implications. California raises most of our food. I think we’re all going to be pushed to very different alternatives. I’m just saying, don’t expect other states to just say, ‘Oh here, take our water’ when they’re having their own issues too. But I know the West Coast pretty well, and California has had a big 'entitlement’ chip on its shoulder for decades. Now it’s biting back. But it’s also a truly innovative place. Necessity will be the mother of invention once again for California. Got a whole ocean right next to you. Technology has advanced hugely in desalination…is that even being considered? In tandem with Big Ag wising up in conservation methods?

It’s interesting that Mickleburgh had cited desalination as a “go-to” solution for this problem, as other liberal activists have rejected desalination based on fiscal and environmental concerns. But then I pointed out the logistics of how long it takes to approve, build, and activate desal facilities. I rebutted her criticisms, perhaps somewhat defensively:

The rest of you can accuse us Californians of being 'entitled’ all you want…but we’re still a major cog in the American economic machine. Deal with it. If we want to remain collectively strong as a nation, different states need to collaborate to help each other out…even if it’s for a short-term solution until the innovative ideas can actually come to fruition. A Darwinian attitude is just not going to cut it – this isn’t The Hunger Games…

And then she snapped back:

'Deal with it?’ There’s that entitled tone again. In the meantime, you need to organize more locally. That’s pretty much the new game in town now everywhere. It’s a local ground game. And the rest of us need to wean off our Big Ag dependence…just as we are actively doing in my area of Washington. I’m not so sure that staying collectively strong as a nation is really viable anymore as much as it 'sounds good.’ We’re as strong as our weakest link, and I don’t fancy being dragged down to Alabama- or Wisconsin-levels any longer. Guess what? – Darwinian attitudes aren’t pleasant for the weak ones, but survival of the fittest is simply fact. California has plenty of assets and initiative, and they need to get busy.

She also pointed out the dangers of fracking, made broad references to “brilliant initiatives” at UCLA, referred to citizen pressure to rein in Big Ag (“the necessity to do so is upon you,” she said), and uttered additional generic platitudes about organizing locally.

I emphasized to Mickleburgh that what she was saying was emblematic of exactly why our society is failing – people simply not caring about others, and only looking out for themselves rather than the public good. Regional snobbery, at its finest.

Then I reiterated how no one would expect other states to freely give California their water, but that inter-state water-purchasing (for profit) needs to be on the table as an option. But, I contended, it’s ridiculous how this “Sucks to be you; sorry, you’re on your own”-mentality is due to anti-California biases (which Mickleburgh herself clearly harbors) – and if it was smaller states needing help, we wouldn’t hesitate to offer them federal assistance. Some of my choice words for her:

At any rate, we can’t rely on desalination plants as the end-all-and-be-all of water sustainability. I’d really like to taste some of these Wonkaland chocolate drops you have up your sleeve when it comes to your broadly-phrased 'mother of invention’…since you seem to know so much about what all of the rest of us outside your own current state of residence should supposedly be doing to replenish our natural resources, perhaps you might contact the administrators of CaliforniaWaterBlog.com to suggest these great innovations (obviously, our public servants appear to be clueless). Big Ag is so entrenched in the system, dislodging its wastefulness is a gargantuan task (regardless of all the local organizing in the world)…how about federal incentives (and/or penalties) that will compel corporate farms to conserve? Because they’re sure as hell not going to do it voluntarily (or without a motivator). Talking about local farming is all well & good, but it’s sort of hard to do when the water supply is scarce for everyone to begin with. We need to get past the whole neocon 'pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps’ condescending 'figure-it-out-for-yourselves’ rhetoric…or else it truly will be the fall of our civilization.

To which Mickleburgh immediately acquired this “Oh, my, whyever are you attacking *me*?” demeanor of faux-innocence, as though I was the one viciously castigating her in an unwarranted manner.

In reality, my hostility toward her was because of Mickleburgh blaming ordinary Californians for widespread bureaucratic and civic mismanagement that’s largely beyond our control. She was essentially shrugging her shoulders at the notion of people in the Western United States dying of thirst – while peppering that cynicism with bitter, sarcastic comments.

But hey, if we want our public decision-makers harboring this same flavor of ambivalence and heartlessness – I guess we’re headed for some really dark times…

Consumers keep being told “every little bit counts” in terms of water conservation. Yet, people so often make excuses for allowing the bottled water companies to continue draining our groundwater.

Tim Moran, a spokesman for the California State Water Resources Council, claims that “It’s a pretty small amount.”

Um, I wouldn’t exactly call 3.1 billion gallons of water bottled annually to be a “small amount.”

Yet, these water officials seem inclined to continuously engage in groupthink. As rationalized by Moran’s co-spokesperson, Miryam Barajas:

We’ve determined that bottled water serves a good use, especially in drought-stricken areas where people’s wells have gone dry.



Meanwhile, John Laird – the California Secretary for Natural Resources – has stated that “everybody is a soldier in the fight” against our state’s drought.



If that’s the case, then why are we not holding oil producers, farmers, and bottled water companies to the same standards by which we’re expecting residential consumers to abide? "Shared sacrifice" cannot truly be “shared” unless EVERYONE sacrifices proportionately.



If everybody is a soldier in the fight, then why aren’t public officials being held accountable for their actions…or inaction, as the case may be?

Mike Soubirous, a Riverside City Councilman, owns a lavish home that pumps an estimated one-million gallons of water annually. Yet, he had no qualms about voting with his fellow council members to impose tough new restrictions on water use in their community. When confronted about it, Soubirous plays the victim:

Do I have to sell my house to set that example, or do I have to just abolish all my shrubs? I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I can reduce my water rate.

Oh, I’m playing my violin for him…

Perhaps it would be a good idea for Soubirous to invest in some of the unsubsidized xeriscaping costs for which he and his peers seem to want us lesser taxpayers to shell out our own money.

Soubirous isn’t alone. Coachella Valley Water Board president John Powell Jr., Coachella Valley Water Board member Peter Nelson, Fresno mayor Ashley Swearengin, Riverside Board of Public Utilities members Andrew Walcker and Nick Ferguson, Fresno city councilman Oliver Baines, and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California chairman Randy Record are among the most egregious offenders who hold public positions.

Lots of people tend to be long-winded on opinions about who’s to blame for this ongoing problem…but they’re lacking a plethora of solutions on what to do about it.

Joe Geever, an activist and policy coordinator with the Surfrider Foundation (a non-profit coastal preservation group), criticizes desalination. As a longtime opponent of desal plants, Geever cites the harm that would be caused to marine life…as well as the billions of dollars that would be “wasted” if the drought ends soon.

While Geever’s concerns are understandable, the threat to aquatic species can be minimized if proper subsurface intakes are employed. But, as Geever told CBS Channel 2 News last May, he believes that desalination should be rejected in favor of increased conservation.

Again, individual conservation efforts only go so far. As stated by fellow California resident “JDPriestly” – who posts at Democratic Underground, a political messageboard where I often lurk:

The answer is not in cutting back on water use, although we are doing that and have done an amazing job of it in California (I have even cut back on bath and shower water, and I collect all runoff water for watering my vegetables). We need to invest in desalinating water. The population of California is over 38,000,000 people. That is more than 10% of the American population. Conservation is a good idea, but it will not solve the problem. So thanks. But scolding is not the answer. We need to start desalinating water. Telling people to conserve water in California is like telling the homeless to save their money. It’s really rather rude and insensitive. And it will only help so much. It really won’t work.

So here’s an interesting case where “JDPriestly” agrees with Mickleburgh’s sentiments on desalination…but disagrees with Mickleburgh’s propensity to shift a lion’s share of blame onto average modern-day Californians.

Where do we go from here? Well, here are some things we SHOULDN’T do:

We shouldn’t follow Governor Brown’s ill-advised blueprint to abuse eminent domain by building “WaterFix” tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

We shouldn’t close down the public swimming pools and waterparks (at least, not during June, July, August, and September), as they provide vital economic revenue and reprieve from the summertime heat.

We shouldn’t force homeowners to drain their backyard swimming pools, seeing how it not only poses a safety hazard but also wastes energy to complete the draining process.

We shouldn’t continue piling on even more draconian water restrictions in the name of protecting the delta smelt or other creatures protected by the Endangered Species Act. I believe in protecting animals…but not at the expense of millions of human lives.

Also, telling residents to take “military showers” is disingenuous. The biggest offense when it comes to residential water overconsumption is lawn maintenance…not personal hygiene.

I’m going to be relentless in busting the myth that this is somehow predominantly “a California problem.” And I’m not the only one calling for federal intervention, as CaliforniaWaterBlog.com has proposed actions the U.S. government could take based on research at UC-Davis.

The problem can be solved. But first, the Dorothy Mickleburghs and Mike Soubirouses of the world need to accept that ordinary California residents aren’t disproportionately fueling this problem…and we can’t rectify it all by ourselves.

