I'm a Libertarian living in Humboldt County, CA. I've lived here in Eureka since 1973 and joined the Libertarian Party in 1992. This blog will mostly focus on local political issues, but I may stray into state and national issues as well, when I can't help myself. Please post your comments by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each post. Although I do moderate comments, you need not be a registered user to post them.
The Mad River Union has an update on plans to sell water from the Mad River to areas down south. The bottom line as I read it is it will be hard to find a buyer since the least expensive means of getting the water down there is about the same cost as desalinization.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 8:46 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
WHere is the outrage! A plan to sell more water to the south? Haven't we seen enough of that I.e., trinity river and Eel River? They said they were going to study the issues and now they are throwing out red herrings as to how it would potentially affect the estuary. There is absolutely no evidence the estuary would be adversely affected buy higher flows during certain periods of time. This is wrong, wrong, wrong! There is less flow in the MAd river when they are storing water. Increase these flows. This typically occurs during the late fall/early winter, but may occur throughout the wet weather period depending on how much rain falls. In addition, how are they considering the effects of climate change in their future water availability? This is disgusting.
they need to allocate the water to the county and reduce the water rates
If you're referring to Southern Humboldt as "the county", the article says there's been no interest in the water from communities down there.
The reason our water rates spiked, as I understand it, is twofold:
As the article stated, when the last mill in Samoa shut down, that left a big hole in the water district's funding as they paid a lot for the water they used. They basically subsidized the rest of us.
I also understand that, at least in Eureka, they found they weren't charging enough for water to pay for needed infrastructure repairs and upgrades. They ended up having to charge more to make sure they could afford to fix things.
How much both of those reasons intertwine, I don't know.
*by not buy, lol. Spelling correction. Love these smart phones. WIth that said, the issue regarding rates and selling water down south are separate. Are you saying we should subsidize Humboldt County water users by selling water to the south? Absolutely not! There are additional options for improving habitat for salmonids including higher releases during smolt outmigration when the district artificially lowers flows as well as mitigating the high flow reductions in the upper reaches when storing water. I am also very concerned with how future allocations may be affected by climate change. We know the Colorado River appropriations were based on a period of time that was extremely wet and did not account for megadroughts or even natural decadal fluctuations in precipitation.
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