1. Hi my name is Taylor and I chose to study the serve water crisis happening in California. This water crisis has a start date of 2012 but in reality has been going on for much longer than that.
2. The drought in California isn’t just a natural disaster but is also a man made one in another critical sense by capitalist governments largely beholden to giant energy cooperation 's refusal to seriously address the issue. Since the states founding in 1850 water policies have never been carried out in a rational scientific or democratic fashion, but rather subordinated to powerful corporate interests that include but are not limited to agribusiness, real estate, and finical aristocracy.
3. Two-thirds of California’s precipitation falls in the northern portion of the state, while two-thirds of all Californians live to the south.
4. In addition to their water crisis the states infrastructure has long been since allowed to decay and the American society of civil engineers estimates that over the next 20 years California 's drinking water infrastructure will require a 44.5 billion dollar investment while there wastewater infrastructure will demand 22.9 billion dollars to remain functional.
5. California 's water comes a married of places such as aquifers, groundwater, reservoirs, dams and irrigation systems where 80% of that water goes towards agriculture and 20% to urban/residential use.
6. The current water crisis in California are bound together with more than a 165 years of complex issues that date all the way back to the California gold rush of 1849. After the US takeover of California the state’s water resources underwent significant altercations ignited by the gold rush. Because of the gold rush the state’s population grew and gold mining increasingly polluted water systems with mining tailings. Mercury was an essential commodity of gold mining and once gathered the miners would use pressure washers from water cannons, to separate gold from other minerals, by doing that they also flushed toxins into the water supply. And because of that there were various court rulings that restricted mining in favor of agricultural and commercial development. Now more than a century later, the miners have long since departed, but the mercury remains, with harmful consequences. 7. As the city of Los Angles grew rapidly at the turn of the century the city had exhausted all of its local water sources and in 1906 was granted permission by President Roosevelt to divert water from the Owen River Valley 223, miles south to a newly formed reservoir in the San Fernando Valley. Through backroom meetings between Mayor Fred Eaton and some of LA’s leading capitalists, the water was initially diverted to the San Fernando Valley to bolster real estate speculation, irrigate vast new acreage of farmland, and boost the profits of this select group. An equally tortuous process unfolded in San Francisco, where it took 30 years to divert water from the Tuolumne River. Naturalist John Muir waged a 10-year struggle against the destruction of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which he lost to President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Raker Act to permit dam construction in 1913. But despite Section 6 of the Raker Act outlawing the sale of any electrical power generated from the dam to any corporation or individual most of the generated power was sold to utilities monopoly Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), headquartered in San Francisco. And by 1948, San Francisco was selling upwards of 5 million kilowatt hours each year to PG&E, which in turn profited handsomely by selling the power back to San Franciscans at over four times their purchasing price, an illegal form of arbitrage that continues to this day. 8. With the great depression crippling the state’s economy it prompted federal intervention. The 1933 Central Valley Project CVP became the largest water purveyor in California mostly meant to irrigate the agricultural Central Valley. The project itself brought both disastrous environmental and historical consequences such as salmon and fish populations dramatically declining, entire river environments were obliterated, and more than half of the Central Valley’s freshwater wetland was lost, while Native American archaeological sites now lie under CVP reservoirs. 9. The State Water Project is the most expensive public’s works project in California 's
2. The drought in California isn’t just a natural disaster but is also a man made one in another critical sense by capitalist governments largely beholden to giant energy cooperation 's refusal to seriously address the issue. Since the states founding in 1850 water policies have never been carried out in a rational scientific or democratic fashion, but rather subordinated to powerful corporate interests that include but are not limited to agribusiness, real estate, and finical aristocracy.
3. Two-thirds of California’s precipitation falls in the northern portion of the state, while two-thirds of all Californians live to the south.
4. In addition to their water crisis the states infrastructure has long been since allowed to decay and the American society of civil engineers estimates that over the next 20 years California 's drinking water infrastructure will require a 44.5 billion dollar investment while there wastewater infrastructure will demand 22.9 billion dollars to remain functional.
5. California 's water comes a married of places such as aquifers, groundwater, reservoirs, dams and irrigation systems where 80% of that water goes towards agriculture and 20% to urban/residential use.
6. The current water crisis in California are bound together with more than a 165 years of complex issues that date all the way back to the California gold rush of 1849. After the US takeover of California the state’s water resources underwent significant altercations ignited by the gold rush. Because of the gold rush the state’s population grew and gold mining increasingly polluted water systems with mining tailings. Mercury was an essential commodity of gold mining and once gathered the miners would use pressure washers from water cannons, to separate gold from other minerals, by doing that they also flushed toxins into the water supply. And because of that there were various court rulings that restricted mining in favor of agricultural and commercial development. Now more than a century later, the miners have long since departed, but the mercury remains, with harmful consequences. 7. As the city of Los Angles grew rapidly at the turn of the century the city had exhausted all of its local water sources and in 1906 was granted permission by President Roosevelt to divert water from the Owen River Valley 223, miles south to a newly formed reservoir in the San Fernando Valley. Through backroom meetings between Mayor Fred Eaton and some of LA’s leading capitalists, the water was initially diverted to the San Fernando Valley to bolster real estate speculation, irrigate vast new acreage of farmland, and boost the profits of this select group. An equally tortuous process unfolded in San Francisco, where it took 30 years to divert water from the Tuolumne River. Naturalist John Muir waged a 10-year struggle against the destruction of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which he lost to President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Raker Act to permit dam construction in 1913. But despite Section 6 of the Raker Act outlawing the sale of any electrical power generated from the dam to any corporation or individual most of the generated power was sold to utilities monopoly Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), headquartered in San Francisco. And by 1948, San Francisco was selling upwards of 5 million kilowatt hours each year to PG&E, which in turn profited handsomely by selling the power back to San Franciscans at over four times their purchasing price, an illegal form of arbitrage that continues to this day. 8. With the great depression crippling the state’s economy it prompted federal intervention. The 1933 Central Valley Project CVP became the largest water purveyor in California mostly meant to irrigate the agricultural Central Valley. The project itself brought both disastrous environmental and historical consequences such as salmon and fish populations dramatically declining, entire river environments were obliterated, and more than half of the Central Valley’s freshwater wetland was lost, while Native American archaeological sites now lie under CVP reservoirs. 9. The State Water Project is the most expensive public’s works project in California 's