As I see it…

(1)  Southern California is a natural desert. The drought is, in part, artificially manufactured by progressive communist democrats who have infiltrated the environmental movement and oppose all rational solutions to cyclic wet/dry periods. Namely, refusing to build water catchments and distribution systems to deal with an increasing population exacerbated by hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens in Southern California. Diverting billions of gallons of freshwater from agriculture and human use to the ocean is just another scheme to destroy progress in Southern California.

(2)  As for systemic inequities, there will always be minorities and the poor – just as nature produces strong and capable individuals as opposed to weak and incapable individuals. The benchmark is a moving target manipulated by the progressive communist democrats, and the poor in Southern California are wealthy compared with the poor in many other nations. As for systemic oppression, the system is governed (ruled and managed) by the progressive communist democrats, and most areas under their oppressive control are impoverished, illiterate, crime-ridden, and drug-infested.

(3)  As far as I am concerned, the Los Angeles Times, owned by billionaire academic/entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, is as dishonest in its political reporting as the New York Times and the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. It is a political tool to secure power and influence and quash negative stories about its owner and friends. In my opinion, it is just another propaganda outlet for the progressive communist democrats.

From the Los Angeles Times…

Climate crisis and systemic inequities drive push to reform California water laws

California’s mountain snowpack is shrinking, and climate change is intensifying the severe drought. Streams have dwindled and reservoirs have declined as vast quantities of water are diverted for farms and cities. Endangered fish are struggling to survive. And in farming areas in the Central Valley, hundreds of families are struggling with dry wells as groundwater levels continue to drop.

[OCS: Farming areas decimated by progressive communist democrats and the de-growth environmentalists.]

A group of prominent legal experts has presented a blueprint for updating California’s system of water laws to fix long-standing weaknesses and adapt to the worsening effects of climate change. They say their proposals, if adopted by the Legislature, would help the state better manage surface water and groundwater, protect vulnerable communities and ecosystems, and improve state oversight of the water rights system.

[OCS: Putting lawyers in charge of anything produced little more than needless complexity, special interest loopholes, and political solutions which do not promote effective and efficient stewardship of our national resources.]

The group presented their 11 proposals this month, saying the reforms would represent a major revision of laws that govern diversions from streams and rivers, and would give state officials better tools to deal with mounting strains on the state water system.

“California’s water laws, they were adopted a long time ago ... in a California that was a very different place,” said Holly Doremus, a UC Berkeley law professor who was part of the group. “It’s past time to take a broad look,” Doremus said. “Climate change makes the situation that much more acute.”

[OCS: Indeed, California is a very different place.The environmentalists have done everything in their power to cripple growth and to implement socialism in the formerly Golden State of California. Doremus is an environmentalist with one of the most radical progressive communist universities in the nation, UC Berkeley, known pejoratively as “the little red schoolhouse.]

The group recommended changing state law so that decisions about water rights, including approvals of new diversions from streams and rivers, would require regulators to consider the effects of climate change. With the heating of the planet bringing more extreme droughts, the legal experts said there is an urgent need to change how California administers water rights, and to start monitoring in real time how much water is taken from rivers.

[OCS: Political power and profits flow from the political management of real or imagined scarcity by the elite ruling regime and their special interest friends who keep them in power.]

They called for measures to protect vulnerable Californians in low-income rural communities, who have unsafe contaminants in their tap water or wells that are at risk of running dry.

[OCS: The truth is that many of the “vulnerable Californians in low-income rural communities” were crippled by the existing water policies designed by the progressive communist de-growth democrats who diverted billions of gallons of drinkable water to the ocean to save a worthless garbage fish known as the Delta Smelt. This diversion forced increasing use of well water and the faster depletion of the aquifer.]

The group urged the Legislature to require completion of a long-delayed water-quality plan to protect threatened fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the heart of the state’s water system. And they said the state needs to change the rules governing water releases from dams so that agencies must consider not only the flows that fish need but also the water temperatures — because warmer temperatures have taken a worsening toll on endangered salmon and other species.

[OCS: Proof positive its about the progressive communist democrats and their communist environmentalists – many of whom value a fish over man.]

“We are in a time of crisis. We have a climate crisis, we have wildfire crisis, and we have droughts intensifying over time,” said Jennifer Harder, a member of the group and a law professor at University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law. <Source>

[OCS: There is always a real or imagined crisis – designed to subvert critical thinking and advance toxic ideas. There is no climate crisis. However, the so-called environmentalists did create a wildfire crisis with their refusal to implement ecologically-sound forest management and brush containment practices. Exacerbated by imprudent zoning variances and poor building codes in dangerous areas, many of which lacked proper ingress and egress routes. As for the opinion of Jennifer Harder, in addition to specializing in water rights law, she is associated with environmental groups and water rights lobbyists.]

Corruption or planned indifference?

Oroville Dam crisis 5 years later: Spillways rebuilt; lawsuit in appeals court

Shortly after the spillway broke, the county filed a lawsuit against the department claiming that the spillway’s infrastructure had been neglected, leading to severe damage to the river that received a sudden and mighty flow of water and debris.  [Butte County District Attorney Mike] Ramsey said he thought the incident came down to 50 years of negligence by the department, thus leading to the rupture and subsequent flooding of the Feather River. <Source>

Bottom line…

Water studies and reports have funded the academic community for decades – with little progress, perhaps because the great majority of proposals are communist de-growth schemes meant to increase the power of centralized government planners and reduce personal freedoms like declaring ponds and mud puddles to be “navigable waters” to provide government agencies with control over private property.

The progressive communist democrats hate personal freedoms and private property. They are trying to implement state capitalism, where property owners are agents of the state and work for its benefit.

Screw that.

steve