Should State Earmark Billions for Water Projects Every Year? Voters Could Decide in 2022.

[Auggie]

A proposed ballot measure aims to increase spending for California’s storage and supply of clean, safe drinking water.

The proposed Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022 would allocate 2% of the state’s general fund every year to invest in California’s sustainable water supply without increasing state taxes.

SNIP

California’s general fund for 2021-22 totals $196 billion. Thus, if the act were in place, it would set aside about $4 billion annually for sustainable water supply efforts. And that funding could be leveraged to attract dollars from the federal government or be combined with state water proposition funds that are unappropriated.

Funding held in a water trust fund account could be used for projects. The goal: create at least 5 million more acre-feet of annual water supply capacity for farms and cities each year.

https://gvwire.com/2021/10/15/should-state-earmark-billions-for-water-projects-every-year-voters-could-decide-in-2022/

This is basically a funding measure, designed (among other things) to get already approved state propositions moving forward, like Prop. 1, approved in 2014, that would help unlock hundreds of millions of dollars to fund environmental projects.

According to the link, the measure would also pay for:

• underground water storage
• water recycling for potable use standards
• improved runoff capture
• desalination
• safeguard irrigation water for farmers
• protect the environment through sustainable maintenance (keeping state aquifers healthy and clean)
• provide funding to defend against lawsuits that often times delay water projects
• basically anything that provides more water

[padfun]

1. We had a 68 billion surplus this year

Instead of giving everyone a $600 check, we would be better off if they spent that on infrastructure and water projects. This last year alone could have put away 10 years of that water project. (4 billion per year, 40 total)

[Auggie]

2. Yeah, well, it'll be a year or two or thirty late

This should have happened decades ago.

[Bobstandard]

3. Most of the money will go for dangerous projects

The plans to raise the Shasta dam and to build a tunnel from the Sacramento River to Southern California are ultimately environmentally destructive. However they will help sustain wasteful big-ag agricultural practices and unbridled development, so sure.

[Auggie]

4. How do you know these funds will go to "dangerous projects?"

Do you have insider information?

[Bobstandard]

6. The Shasta and Big Tunnel projects are very public

And so are the adverse effects. Look up either and pay attention to the arguments of those opposed. Insider information not required.

[Auggie]

7. Not applicable. Shasta is a Federal project initiated by Trump ...

which the State has sued to stop.

Regarding the tunnels, "participating local water agencies and irrigation districts south of the Delta would pay for it," according to the Sacramento Bee.

The tunnel cost estimate now stands at nearly $16 billion. The Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022 earmarks only about $3.5 - $4 billion a year. There would be lawsuits up the wazoo if this 2022 act money was ever used for the tunnel.

https://www.sierranevadaally.org/2020/11/24/raising-the-shasta-dam-completely-erasing-the-winnemem-wintu/
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article245150370.html

[Bobstandard]

10. Good to know

I got the dangerous part right anyway

[Auggie]

11. The dangerous part could be that it makes growing water-hogging crops okay

And this is where I'll float the idea of paying farmers NOT to grow these crops, or, fund price supports for the growing of less thirsty crops.

[Bobstandard]

12. Exactly right!

For me, I advocate for salmon, steelhead, shad, and their ecosystems too, us being part.

Don’t get me started on how hedge funds buy rice and hay land, plant piss nuts and almonds then flip the land to other hedge funds. And we all subsidize them with water projects. There are very few farmers any more but plenty of farm management companies

I’m not contradicting you. I think we’re just disgusted in different ways. Our power is where we overlap.

[hunter]

8. The big tubes are opposed by some because they would put a hard physical limit...

... on water exported south.

Big Ag wants to suck up every last drop of fresh water before it reaches the sea, damn the natural environment.

[Mr.Bill]

5. I like the idea of building solar panels

over the aqueducts. This is a twofer because it reduces evaporation while generating power. And the state does not have to acquire any land to do it.

[hunter]

9. That's a much more palatable idea to me than huge solar power farms...

... built on previously undeveloped land.