WATER WARS

Author Chuck Frank

Well water, in the photo, remains plentiful at Venetucci Farm, Colorado, but water law requires purchase of an almost equal amount of “allocated” water before they can pump. Sources for allocated water are becoming harder to find.

Since 1992, a systematic attack on agriculture and food production in the United States has been developing, however the West has bore the brunt of this highly purposeful agenda which began with President Clinton in 1993 and is currently being promoted in California by the courts and Governor Brown. Consequently, ranchers have had their long-existing grazing and water rights methodically stripped away on Federal land and now private lands as well. Agricultural interests have been relentlessly sued by environmental groups and then over-regulated by the government.

Here is an example:  The California State Water Board, recently invoked an emergency water allotment regulation without due process. Since January 2015 major changes have been made in the State of California with regard to private wells and ground water. There is now a new move by Governor Brown who recently signed a bill that changed water laws in the fall of 2014, which undermines the people’s property rights where private wells all over the state, will begin to be metered wirelessly by satellite. It is foreseen that the next step will eventually be mandated flow meters on pipelines coming from lakes, canals, creeks and rivers.

Already, state water agencies and/or community water districts have begun to implement allotment controls which allows the monitoring of well water meters and includes the use of fines and enforcement. I am familiar with someone in Northern California that was recently forced by P.G.& E. to put in a smart meter on his new well, and yes, it was mandated.

If local government takes this a step further and mandates flow meters on irrigation pipelines coming from a variety of water sources, there will very well be a limit to the amount of water that may be taken. What is now transpiring more and more is a rogue and unconstitutional government that is on a mission to monitor and control water locally and this fact is already happening in other states. Presently, broad government overreach, in matters of personal needs, such as food, water, shelter, & electricity, is off the charts. And let’s not forget about the other issues such as saving the frogs and toads by eradicating thousands of trout in the Sierras. There are thousands of other “endangered” species that are all part of a massive, decades old agenda that includes a tidal wave of lost rights and jobs.

Is the sky the limit?

Nestle Continues Stealing World’s Water During Drought

Debbie Coffey

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Before we get to our featured article below, it is important to note that the BLM continues to remove wild horses and burros because of “drought,” or because there’s “not enough” forage and water.  We know there is a “man-made” drought because of the huge amount of water used by mining and other extractive industries.  Advocates need to be aware of all of the issues surrounding big users of water from our aquifers.   I’ve listed a few sources regarding California’s dire drought below, but there are similarities in other states and areas.

A recent Los Angeles Times editorial by the hydrologist Jay Famiglietti starkly warned: “California has about one year of water left.”

Sonali Kolhatkar recently wrote an article “To Solve California’s Water Crisis, We Must Change the Nation’s Food System.”  Residential use of water in California is about 4% and agricultural use is 80%.

Kolhatkar states:  “The truth is that California’s Central Valley, which is where the vast majority of the state’s farming businesses are located, is a desert. That desert is irrigated with enough precious water to artificially sustain the growing of one-third of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, a $40 billion industry.   Think about it. A third of all produce in the United States is grown in a desert in a state that has almost no water left.”

Kolhatkar also states “When water allocations from the federal government were cut, Central Valley farmers began drilling deep into the ground to pump water out of the state’s precious, ancient aquifer. Now, the pumping has gotten so out of control that water is being tapped faster than it can be replenished by rain or snowfall, leading to some parts of the land literally sinking. What’s worse, California’s farmers are irrigating their lands with water from a 20,000-year-old reserve, depleting and probably permanently damaging a reservoir that formed in the Pleistocene epoch.

Shockingly, until recently, California did not even regulate groundwater use, unlike states like Texas. Anyone could drill a well on their property and simply take as much water as they needed for their own use—a practice that dated back to the Gold Rush.”

The New York Times also recently ran a big article on the drought.  You can read it HERE.

Hopefully the links to articles above and the article below will give you some information on a few (of the many) issues with water and what is happening with our aquifers.  The wild horses and burros are “the canary in the coal mine.”   –  Debbie Coffey

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Nestle Continues Stealing World’s Water During Drought

SOURCE:  mintpressnews.com

“Nestlé is draining California aquifers, from Sacramento alone taking 80 million gallons annually.  Nestlé then sells the people’s water back to them at great profit under many dozen brand names.”

A New Age of Hydro-Imperialism: US Water Wars in the Middle East

by GARIKAI CHENGU

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So we find that France controls 50% of the worlds water. Ghadafi required that his great man made river belong to Libya and the Libyan people. He refused to let the rest of the world control it. Now since the illegal invasion and attack on Libya, FRANCE is now rebuilding and re designing the Great man made River, the Libyan people will suffer not only the cost of design and construction but will bear the weight of the expensive water. We look for the great Tribes of Libya to take back their country from the occupiers and give all the assets back the rightful owners – the Libyan people..

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Water is to the twenty-first century what oil was to the twentieth century: the commodity that determines the wealth and stability of nations.

People who think that the West’s interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria are only about oil are mistaken. Broadly speaking, Western interest in the Middle East is becoming increasingly about a commodity more precious than oil, namely water.

According to the U.S.-based Center for Public Integrity, Western nations stand to make up to a US$1 trillion from privatizing, purifying and distributing water in a region where water often sells for far more than oil.

Although over two thirds of our planet is water, we face an acute shortage. This scarcity flies in the face of our natural assumptions. The problem is that 97 percent is salt water. Great for fish, not so good for humans. Of the world’s fresh water, only one percent is available for drinking, with the remaining two percent trapped in glaciers and ice.

Vote in the poll to protect Klamath dams

Debbie Bacigalupi / PPj Contributor

PLEASE HELP US FREE Rural America !

THE MINING OF OUR AQUIFERS

 

By Debbie Coffey       Copyright 2010   All Rights Reserved.

“Meanwhile, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management is rounding up our wild horses with a vengeance because there’s “not enough water for them to drink.”  (A horse only drinks about 10-15 gallons of water a day.)  It seems that DOI Secretary Ken Salazar has spent all of his time envisioning the “new direction” with his Wild Horse and Burro Initiative, which will take our wild horses off their federally protected lands and use taxpayer money to put them on preserves.”

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Just one mine in Nevada (Barrick Gold’s Goldstrike Mine) has pumped over 383 BILLION gallons of water from an aquifer.  (and that was a 2005 statistic, so it’s much more than that by now)  According to a New York Times article by Kirk Johnson, nearly 10 million gallons of water a day is draining away from the driest state in the nation.