12-28-2023, 01:45 PM
Santa Cruz is getting nailed.
https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/s...578344.php
Wishing the best under the circumstances for everyone over the hill.
That article about Hamby and Imperial Irrigation District is fascinating. I wish him well with a probably intractable problem. Too many people, not enough water, and we can't just kill agriculture in California.
I'm reminded of the firm in Colorado I worked for immediately prior to coming out here to Stanford. They ran the Colorado River Simulation System for Bur Rec, which had all the senior and junior rights for the six states. They basically had a war room with banks of mainframe computers and a cool wall showing everything going on. My impression when talking to the lead engineer on that project is the Compact was struck based on weather in the 1920s, which was unusually precipitation heavy. So lots of rights that weren't supported by typical rainfall and snowmelt. California sponged off excess water from Arizona's allocation until Phoenix happened.
I am prompted to look into why Imperial Valley is the kingpin of kingpins other then all that flat land and sunshine. The Salton Sea is a happy (well that's debatable) accident as Bob Ross would say when the All American Canal (?) broke and dumped billions of gallons of water into the Salton Sink over a year and a half in 1905. Apparently there is push back on that origin story with assertions that the sea would have formed naturally. That will play into this lithium mining deal, because if the lake was a mistake, why not desalinate the water to mine lithium since the sea is shrinking to nothing eventually?
Finally visited the area last year when our son was at Twenty Nine Palms on rotation. Interesting mix of military, hippies, meth heads, and socialites from Palm Springs. Not too many socialites though when we visited Slab City. Our son was deployed to the border a couple of years ago for drug and human trafficking intervention and he thought we needed to see the area in the flesh.
https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/s...578344.php
Wishing the best under the circumstances for everyone over the hill.
That article about Hamby and Imperial Irrigation District is fascinating. I wish him well with a probably intractable problem. Too many people, not enough water, and we can't just kill agriculture in California.
I'm reminded of the firm in Colorado I worked for immediately prior to coming out here to Stanford. They ran the Colorado River Simulation System for Bur Rec, which had all the senior and junior rights for the six states. They basically had a war room with banks of mainframe computers and a cool wall showing everything going on. My impression when talking to the lead engineer on that project is the Compact was struck based on weather in the 1920s, which was unusually precipitation heavy. So lots of rights that weren't supported by typical rainfall and snowmelt. California sponged off excess water from Arizona's allocation until Phoenix happened.
I am prompted to look into why Imperial Valley is the kingpin of kingpins other then all that flat land and sunshine. The Salton Sea is a happy (well that's debatable) accident as Bob Ross would say when the All American Canal (?) broke and dumped billions of gallons of water into the Salton Sink over a year and a half in 1905. Apparently there is push back on that origin story with assertions that the sea would have formed naturally. That will play into this lithium mining deal, because if the lake was a mistake, why not desalinate the water to mine lithium since the sea is shrinking to nothing eventually?
Finally visited the area last year when our son was at Twenty Nine Palms on rotation. Interesting mix of military, hippies, meth heads, and socialites from Palm Springs. Not too many socialites though when we visited Slab City. Our son was deployed to the border a couple of years ago for drug and human trafficking intervention and he thought we needed to see the area in the flesh.