Those Luddite eco-fiends. In a state prone having either a drought or a flood every 3-4 years (the El Nin~o effect), and badly in need of clean renewable (i.e., hydroelectric) energy, we can never have enough dams. Those who get goo-goo over "wild and scenic rivers" need to be committed.
They will ruin us. The eco-fiends scared us with phony earthquake claims (somehow mysteriously, earth and rockfill dams like Oroville and Lake Berryessa seem to have no problem with this).
Let's see, we had heavy rains and snows in January 2008, which we couldn't entirely store behind Folsom. Then we had a drier than normal February and March 2008, and by late spring they were issuing drought warnings. When everything west of Watt Avenue is under water some very rainy winter, or when nothing comes out of our taps, someone will come up with the bright idea to revisit Auburn Dam.
The "no new dams" approach to water supply, like the "no new roads" approach to traffic, has just been wonderful, hasn't it? We didn't build the infrastructure, and people came anyway.
It seems that Auburn dam opponents are of the belief that "there are too many people in California", and that development should be curtailed for the sake of the environment, and that Auburn Dam would only spur more development. Sorry, but the facts are that:
(1) even in spite of no major dams and water infrastructure since the late 1960's, people kept on coming anyway in the 1970's and 1980's.
(2) If you really feel that too many people and too much development is a problem, then you should be demanding immigration restrictions. From 1990 to 2000, California actually lost U.S. citizens, per the Census figures. The net outmigration of U.S. citizens from California was offset by increases in legal immigrants and resident aliens and presumably even more so by illegal aliens. Even the "dot-com" economic recovery of the late 1990's did not reverse that. And I will wager that the Census figures from 2000 to 2010 will be much the same.
If the eco-luddites were serious about immigration restriction, I would take their carping about "evil" development seriously.
Let's see, we had heavy rains and snows in January 2008, which we couldn't entirely store behind Folsom. Then we had a drier than normal February and March 2008, and by late spring they were issuing drought warnings. When everything west of Watt Avenue is under water some very rainy winter, or when nothing comes out of our taps, someone will come up with the bright idea to revisit Auburn Dam.
The "no new dams" approach to water supply, like the "no new roads" approach to traffic, has just been wonderful, hasn't it? We didn't build the infrastructure, and people came anyway.
It seems that Auburn dam opponents are of the belief that "there are too many people in California", and that development should be curtailed for the sake of the environment, and that Auburn Dam would only spur more development. Sorry, but the facts are that:
(1) even in spite of no major dams and water infrastructure since the late 1960's, people kept on coming anyway in the 1970's and 1980's.
(2) If you really feel that too many people and too much development is a problem, then you should be demanding immigration restrictions. From 1990 to 2000, California actually lost U.S. citizens, per the Census figures. The net outmigration of U.S. citizens from California was offset by increases in legal immigrants and resident aliens and presumably even more so by illegal aliens. Even the "dot-com" economic recovery of the late 1990's did not reverse that. And I will wager that the Census figures from 2000 to 2010 will be much the same.
If the eco-luddites were serious about immigration restriction, I would take their carping about "evil" development seriously.
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