“Sorry, you now get 40% less water. Deal with it . . . "

Photo above - Oprah's 70-acre California mansion and estate. Want to guess how many millions of gallons of water it takes each month to keep this place looking like the Versailles Palace? Google doesn't know . . .

We can’t take water for granted any more. Australia is enduring an 18-year drought. Which apparently began 18,000 years ago, during the peak of the ice age. Mexico City is in perpetual crisis. A dozen US cities are virtually out, including Buffalo, NYC, St Louis, Austin, Phoenix, and the entire state of California.

If I tried to describe how California delivers water, it would take a day and half. Suffice it to say, there are multiple state agencies involved, apparently not on the same page. Enter the California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB). They’re going to cut the supply by 40% over the next 15 years. As immigrants flood in by the hundreds of thousands (pun alert). And as crop production supposedly needs to expand, to feed a growing US population. See link below.

Cutting water use 40% is going to save gazillions of gallons, and billions of dollars, right? There’s no way to tell how much California residents pay for water now, because 95 different municipal and regional suppliers are involved, each with their own unique pricing, sources, and rules. Billions and billions (of dollars) as Carl Sagan would say.

So nearly cutting water consumption by half HAS to save big money, right? Not so fast. The SWRCB is NOT mandating cuts on consumers or corporations. It’s simply going to impose HUGE fines ($10,000 per day) on each of the 95 water suppliers which fail to achieve the top-down mandated cuts. Want to guess where those water agencies will recover the money? If you guessed "from customers – through higher water bills", go to the head of the class.

All this provides air cover for the California legislature in an election year. The new rule pretends people won't have to pay more. Water use will just magically slow to a trickle over the next 15 years.

By the way, this regulation was NOT drafted, debated, or voted on by the legislature. The SWRCB bureaucrats and heads of the 95 suppliers dreamed it up all by themselves.

What this regulation DOESN’T do is provide more water. Californias rivers are completely tapped (Mexico has sued the USA because we virtually cut them off). Ground water is being pumped out to grow arugula and radicchio and marijuana. Photos of nearly empty reservoirs abound.

Last time I looked at a map, California had more than 800 miles of Pacific coastline. And we’re worried about rising sea levels because not enough people drive a Tesla. So, the plan apparently is to continue to throw big tax breaks at well-to-do EV drivers, but NOT accelerate research and implementation of saltwater desalinization. Or purification and recycling of wastewater. (Australia is way ahead of us on this). Our government will stick with taxes, fines, and EV rebates. This is why they never invent anything good: EVs, Solar Panels, Artificial Intelligence, Marvel Cinematic Universe movies . . . politicians and bureaucrats only think in terms of taxes and rebates.

Hey, Elon Musk: instead of screwing around with Twitter, and building electric-car-only tunnels under Vegas, and plotting an escape to planet Mars, can you possibly have your engineers work on something we REALLY need? Like desalinization? Here’s a hint . . . solar panels may need to be involved.

I’m just saying.

~California Imposes Permanent Water Restrictions on Residents (msn.com)~