[81alum]

Just one contribution to add to this very Cardboard-ish debate on water policy (I say that in the most positive way; what other Sports board witnesses these kinds of extended debates).

While many, at this moment, decry the government regulation of water in California, it's worth remembering that the farming industry, as it is currently set up, and nearly every major city in the state, would not exist without a heavy investment by governments at various levels to create the water works in the first place.  The battle over the control of water in the West has been going on since the West was settled and while some might say government always gets in the way and should be minimized as much as possible, its very unlikely that agricultural businesses would have invested the billions of dollars to create the various dams and aqueducts and storage facilities that have facilitated the development of the Central Valley and simultaneously provided water for the of exceedingly large proportions urban centers of California.

I'm not advocating turning back the clock and reverting to California as it was in the 1800s. Just arguing for a bit of historical perspective, that the communities we live in, and the industries that drive the economy of the state, have benefitted from government investment in the state water system (including federal government investment that led to the construction of Shasta dam and the California Water Project, and legislation like the Newlands Reclamation Act that pumped millions of dollars into land projects in the West.) The struggle over how to manage, distribute, and pay for water is endemic to the politics of the Western U.S. (except for the more damp Northwest), and will continue long after we all are gone.

Very well said and quite diplomatically written. 

By the way, under Brown's recent water restrictions pressure was put on local water agencies to enact tiered rate structures.  The courts have struck such efforts down:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me...story.html

The water agencies, the court said, are not allowed to charge more for water than it cost them to provide.  Why not?  Because of restrictions on taxes enacted by the anti-tax movement in Proposition 218.  Of course, those water agencies are not paying for the real costs of the water--they are getting it heavily subsidized mostly from the Feds who built most of the dams and much of the distribution system.  I doubt it was the intention of the conservative free-market types who backed Prop 218 to undermine a market based solution years later, but that is what happened.  Our initiative system is filled with similar irrational and unintended consequences.

What makes it even more ludicrous is that water in California is extremely expensive to supply and has been subsidized heavily by the government for a century--most especially since Hoover Dam--that great public works project begun not by Roosevelt but by that free-market advocate and Stanford alum Herbert Hoover in 1931.  Nearly all our water storage and water transfer systems since then were publicly constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corps of Engineers, and the state.  I would highly recommend the late Mark Reisner's book Cadillac Desert for anyone who wishes to understand the history of water in the American West.  It is really not far fetched to say that the great bulk of the population of California and Nevada is a product of socialistic government water programs.  Los Angeles and Las Vegas exist in cities of greater than 10k people only because they have had access to abundant supplies relatively cheap water--water that has been cheap to them through government water agencies that developed it and supplied it.  If they had paid the full costs of their water, they would not have grown into the brobdingnagian cities that exist today.

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-Am...0140178244

[81alum]

Just one contribution to add to this very Cardboard-ish debate on water policy (I say that in the most positive way; what other Sports board witnesses these kinds of extended debates).

While many, at this moment, decry the government regulation of water in California, it's worth remembering that the farming industry, as it is currently set up, and nearly every major city in the state, would not exist without a heavy investment by governments at various levels to create the water works in the first place.  The battle over the control of water in the West has been going on since the West was settled and while some might say government always gets in the way and should be minimized as much as possible, its very unlikely that agricultural businesses would have invested the billions of dollars to create the various dams and aqueducts and storage facilities that have facilitated the development of the Central Valley and simultaneously provided water for the of exceedingly large proportions urban centers of California.

I'm not advocating turning back the clock and reverting to California as it was in the 1800s. Just arguing for a bit of historical perspective, that the communities we live in, and the industries that drive the economy of the state, have benefitted from government investment in the state water system (including federal government investment that led to the construction of Shasta dam and the California Water Project, and legislation like the Newlands Reclamation Act that pumped millions of dollars into land projects in the West.) The struggle over how to manage, distribute, and pay for water is endemic to the politics of the Western U.S. (except for the more damp Northwest), and will continue long after we all are gone.

Very well said and quite diplomatically written. 

By the way, under Brown's recent water restrictions pressure was put on local water agencies to enact tiered rate structures.  The courts have struck such efforts down:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me...story.html

The water agencies, the court said, are not allowed to charge more for water than it cost them to provide.  Why not?  Because of restrictions on taxes enacted by the anti-tax movement in Proposition 218.  Of course, those water agencies are not paying for the real costs of the water--they are getting it heavily subsidized mostly from the Feds who built most of the dams and much of the distribution system.  I doubt it was the intention of the conservative free-market types who backed Prop 218 to undermine a market based solution years later, but that is what happened.  Our initiative system is filled with similar irrational and unintended consequences.

What makes it even more ludicrous is that water in California is extremely expensive to supply and has been subsidized heavily by the government for a century--most especially since Hoover Dam--that great public works project begun not by Roosevelt but by that free-market advocate and Stanford alum Herbert Hoover in 1931.  Nearly all our water storage and water transfer systems since then were publicly constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corps of Engineers, and the state.  I would highly recommend the late Mark Reisner's book Cadillac Desert for anyone who wishes to understand the history of water in the American West.  It is really not far fetched to say that the great bulk of the population of California and Nevada is a product of socialistic government water programs.  Los Angeles and Las Vegas exist in cities of greater than 10k people only because they have had access to abundant supplies relatively cheap water--water that has been cheap to them through government water agencies that developed it and supplied it.  If they had paid the full costs of their water, they would not have grown into the brobdingnagian cities that exist today.

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-Am...0140178244