California suffers from droughts, but the state’s government is an endless well of bad ideas.
The latest absurd legislation, which Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed into law, places onerous restrictions on water usage.
California citizens will be limited to using 55 gallons of water a day now and just 50 per day by 2030.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, the new laws will “require cities, water districts and large agricultural water districts to set strict annual water budgets, face fines of $1,000 per day if they don’t meet them, and $10,000 a day during drought emergencies.”
As some have noted, the restriction could make it difficult for some California citizens to do laundry and take a shower on the same day without going over the limit.
A Snopes fact check said that this fine is placed on the water provider, not the consumer as some have claimed. This misses the fact that the cost of the fines likely will be passed on to the customer, either directly for violations, indirectly through increased cost of water, or worse, by threatening to shut off household water consumption to avoid fines.
Even some left-leaning outlets admitted the impact on consumers is unknown and the 55-gallon limit is much lower than the average summer usage for the typical Californian. Taking a shower and doing laundry could exceed that amount for some.
According to The Sacramento Bee, the State Water Resources Control Board estimates California residents used an average of 90 gallons of indoor and outdoor water per day in 2017, down from 109 gallons in 2013.
Californians will pay for this law one way or another, making it just a little harder for the middle class to thrive.
The problem also threatens the state’s enormous and important agricultural industry, which is where most of the state’s water goes.
In addition to this legislation, the state is also considering a new tax on drinking water to pay for new infrastructure projects.
The question is: Are these kinds of laws necessary?
Regardless of how punitive the water usage laws end up being, the debate over the details obscures the fact California is always quick to crack down on the individual behavior of citizens with obnoxious regulations before it works to efficiently manage its resources.
Instead of promoting efficient, pro-growth policies, state leaders are in thrall to environmentalist ideology and utopian spending schemes that have created poverty and, yes, economic inequality, even as the state goes through an economic boom.
That California, the richest state in the union and one which in no way suffers for lack of tax revenue, cannot find a way to manage its water resources without cracking down with burdensome regulation is telling.
Droughts are nothing new in California, especially in the desert south, but the increasing inability to deal with them is.
California wastes enormous sums of money on a bullet train to nowhere and other excessive spending priorities, but it has neglected to strengthen its water management infrastructure, leaving it susceptible to shortages and rationing.
As Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University, explained in a 2015 interview with Reason, the problem goes beyond water.
“The water situation in California is pretty bad,” he said. “You have to understand that we haven’t built any new infrastructure for the last 20 years. This, by the way, is not unique to water. It’s roads, it’s schools, it’s an unwillingness to invest in the future because we spend all our money in the government paying the pensions of employees.”
And through this crisis, California has spent enormous resources to protect the delta smelt, a 3-inch fish that appears to be going extinct despite enormously wasteful environmental projects.
“To protect smelt from water pumps, government regulators have flushed 1.4 trillion gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay since 2008,” according to a 2015 report in The Wall Street Journal. “That would have been enough to sustain 6.4 million Californians for six years. Yet a survey of young adult smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta last fall yielded just eight fish, the lowest level since 1967.”
California must find a way to deal with its water shortages. The state may be recovering from a drought, but more are sure to come.
Instead of nickel-and-diming taxpayers and creating onerous restrictions, the state should focus on getting its finances in order and prioritizing basic infrastructure needs over fruitless left-wing welfare schemes.
Read more at Daily Signal
They cut off the water to the Central Valley Farmers over some worthless 3 inch fish(Delta Smelt)they cut off water to the Klamath Basin over two worthless Trash Fish(Short Nosed Lost River Suckers)and Salmon(Coho)that can be bought at your local store the Northern Spotted Owl don’t need Old Growth Timber the Marbled Murlet nesting range gose from the San Francisco Bat Area to the Alaska Pan Handle and some Wildlife Agents once told a Farmer YOU MAY OWN THAT TJAT AND PAY TAXES ON BUT WE CONTROL IT(That was under Slick Willy)and many places in America are UN World Heratage Sites(Independence Hall)or Biosphear Reserves(Yellowstone Park)all under the UN control
Are you freaking kidding me? .. who wrote this garbage? .. Apparently carrying a debt of $1.6 TRILLION helps to make you the “richest”.
FACT: Kommiefornistan carries the largest debt of any State in the nation! .. Kommiefornistan is home to the largest impoverished population in America. .. Kommiefornistan has the largest homeless population, but in shear numbers and per-capita ratio of any State in our Union.
Bottom line: Kommiefornistan is broke! .. they are broker than broke! .. they are in a hole they can never climb out of. The total financial collapse of Kommiefornistan is imminent.
It has been rumored that if President Trump is re-elected California will leave the union. I have a better idea. Kick the state out of the union.
My daughter brought up some good points. Assuming the 55 gallon mandate is state wide, what about the areas of the state that don’t have a water shortage? This would the coastal area of northern California and the communities close to the Oregon boarder. Will water districts in these communities, with plenty of water available, have to limit their customers to 55 gallons a day?
Another thing to consider is agriculture. It uses most of the water in California. Agriculture is good for the economy besides the fact that we all have to eat, but a switch of a few percentages could help the urban dwellers a lot. That is, it could help until the continued massive influx of illegal aliens swells the population and there by the need for water even more.
Shut off the water to Moonbeam and Newsom ration the wine shove the Delta Smelt up the Sierra Clubs backside and drain the Hollywood Swimming Pools
Caliphornia would be better off with
Alcohol rationing
Drug rationing
Illegal wet back rationing and
Moslem rationing
But
Don’t expect any democrat party pig
to understand.
Where did these idiots come up with the 55 gallon per person and how will they verify how many people are in each household? I would suspect thru Big Brother methods.
Of course the water agencies are going to pass the cost (fines) onto the consumer.
For my household in SoCal it would require us to reduce our daily water consumption by more than half. I just did the math with my latest water bill. We already have low flow toilets, faucets, shower heads, sprinkler heads and a low water clothes washer. Suppose we’ll resort to taking showers only a couple times of month, wash our clothes only when they start to stink, never wash our hands and drink beer instead of water.
From the article, “You have to understand that we haven’t built any new infrastructure for the last 20 years.” Yet, they have welcomed tens of thousands of illegal aliens. This increased population requires more water.
Being conservative in use I calculated water usage for one person at
https://www.swfwmd.state.fl.us/conservation/thepowerof10/
It came out to 80 gallons. That assumes brown lawns, which in California can translate to no lawns. I know, I left there in 1982.
There was absolutely no thought behind the 55 gallon limit. Where we live our 540 foot deep well suddenly had a drastic fall in the water it produced. Until I developed swallow well capability, one of the things we did was eat with paper plates and plastic silverware. Can you imagine the impact to landfills as Californians use this method to adapt? I’m sure the state doesn’t want it but isn’t smart enough for that to even occur to them.
Another thing we did was shower at places like the YMCA. This raises other questions. With the 55 gallon limit per person, what about health clubs and other business?
California has suffered enough from the Democrats and Moonbeam Brown we don’t need that Newsom idiot he would be worst then Moonbeam
Just as they would very much like to tax the air, California wants to tax water, something no one can do without. It is an unavoidable tax and therefore insidious and evil, both ethically and legally. It is like mandating healthcare, they might as well put monitors on each person and tax us for each breath we take.