The Battle for Smelly Water & Toxic Air
You know, I just don’t know.
Looking out over the vast dustbowl and dingy saltiness of the Salton Sea in the southern Coachella Valley, I’m struck by contrasts. The oasis of Palm Springs followed by this desolation immediately south of it. The Salton Sea is another sad, vestigial example of politically driven ecological screwups so prevalent in California. A lake never meant to be ecologically permanent, followed by an ecological effort to make it so. The old two wrongs make a right logic.
It’s the nasty, smelly remains of an aborted early 1900s campaign to divert Colorado River water for irrigating the Imperial Valley and later, through other political means, to divert it for greater Los Angeles. For decades, mitigation mistakes, runoff, and drainage from the farmlands kept the Sea from naturally drying up. When irrigation and runoff became more efficiently contained, the 1970s saw the Sea begin to shrink. Evaporation led to concentrations of fertilizers, salts and selenium with unintended consequences of fish and waterfowl die offs, toxic air pollution and high salinity waters. That will tell you a little something about how well these power motivated, political initiatives usually work out. They’re always a clusterfuck.
It’s a screw up no one can agree how to address, much less fix. But that’s just one of the many water issues that inevitably happen in the desert. There are now roughly 300,000 people in greater Palm Springs. It keeps growing. The aquifer beneath this great oasis is dropping. As a result, so is the land above it. And, as is the want of government and people in general, everyone observes and acknowledges the problem, but no one’s addressing it with a viable plan. I guess the thought is, ‘the water will come from somewhere.’ I got news – I don’t think it will. It looks like government will do what it does best – wait until it becomes a crisis.
California has been trying for years to steal water (and power) from the Pacific Northwest through the Bonneville Power Administration, the federal bureaucracy that manages much of the hydroelectric power and water in that region. So far, that hasn’t worked out for good, old Cali. In the meantime, though, Palm Springs and its neighbors just keep on building, adding water hungry golf courses, swimming pools and hot tubs. Must be nice to be an eternal optimist, or absolutely full of delusional grandeur.
But hey, then, that’s the California mantra, isn’t it? Just another sunny coastal land of laissez faire excess, with its spirit personified and maximized by its little next door neighbor, Las Vegas. You know, just over the border where the tax-hungry government can’t nail you.
Hey, don’t get me wrong, I love a good time as much as the next guy, but let’s get real. Water is going to be the next gold standard, the next medium of exchange, like oil and bitcoin. I can’t help but think that’s coming. And the only people doing anything about it are probably the mega billionaires who have the resources to exert some control. Except, of course, for Elon Musk, who’s already opted for leaving town and settling on Mars, where he’ll no doubt exert control over all the water rights. Yeah, baby, let’s hear it for ‘X’!
California is the most delusional state in the Union. The one all the other idiot wannabes, like Oregon and Washington, follow. They just passed a wealth tax. It taxes everything you own, including anything you own anywhere in the world, even if you’re only a part-time or soon-to-be ex-resident. If you don’t like it and try to leave town, they’ll tax you for leaving, too. No bullshit, that shit’s real. Hopefully, someone will sue and the Supreme Court will strike it down, but that shows you where these maniacs are coming from. Nothing is sacred.
You remember that old expression, ‘and they will take your first born’ as payment? In California, that’s next. Welcome to the new age of slavery. And you thought you were emancipated. Haha!
It’s all such a shame, because it is a beautiful state. People do enjoy coming here. Unfortunately, trying to manage growth has been an abysmal failure. But people here have done nothing to help themselves. They elect spend happy idiots intent on trampling rights to grab more and more money and power. People who purport to support diversity and justice, but who practice the opposite by attacking our bill of rights. They’re not pecking away anymore, they’re knocking off chunks of what’s left.
Wow! Is this a big enough bitch for you? This is getting really close to a full-on rant. Sorry. I was just going to talk about my concerns about water. For christsake, I don’t even live here. But I do enjoy it immensely. So much so, I think I’m going to throw in the towel and go get an In-N-Out double-double, animal style.
Ah, California – ain’t it great!
