Good article.
Here's another issue in the mix that isn't often discussed.
Our beloved government decided to favor some looters under cover of the drug war and banned growing hemp. Hemp is arguably much superior to other fibers, both natural and man made, including cotton.
"Cotton: To grow cotton you require about 1400 gallons of water for every pound you intend to produce. That’s a lot of water!

Hemp: You require about half the amount of water to produce hemp as you would if producing cotton. Hemp is a strong and reliable plant that grows very quickly. Not only that, hemp produces about 200% – 250% more fibre in the same amount of land compared to cotton."
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013...

California cotton production
http://www.ipmcenters.org/cropprofiles/d...
"In 2001, 869,980 acres of cotton were planted. The acres grown in the Sacramento Valley were 21,700, the San Joaquin
Valley 814,800 acres and 33,400 acres in the Southern Desert Region of California. "

These figures are much lower in 2015:
"Cotton acreage in California will consist of 110,000 acres of American Pima and 45,000 acres of Upland cotton, each down more than 20 percent from the acreage seeded last year."
http://www.capitalpress.com/California/2...

Currently cotton growing uses 2.3 million acre feet of water per year in California.
http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgro...
Could half of this or more be saved if hemp were grown instead?

Thanks, Federal Drug War. You created an economic disaster and possibly a dust bowl drought in California.

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Anyone remember the reason for the war for liberty in Heinlein's "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress"?
Scarce resources being wasted, of course, specifically water. California is doing exactly what the moon was doing.
California uses 5.3 million acre feet of water growing Alfalfa- its the biggest single use of water in the state. Alfalfa is a supplementary food for beef production.

"Unfortunately, it’s a plant that’s not generally cultivated for humans: alfalfa. Grown on over a million acres in California, alfalfa sucks up more water than any other crop in the state. And it has one primary destination: cattle. Increasingly popular grass-fed beef operations typically rely on alfalfa as a supplement to pasture grass. Alfalfa hay is also an integral feed source for factory-farmed cows, especially those involved in dairy production.

If Californians were eating all the beef they produced, one might write off alfalfa’s water footprint as the cost of nurturing local food systems. But that’s not what’s happening. Californians are sending their alfalfa, and thus their water, to Asia. The reason is simple. It’s more profitable to ship alfalfa hay from California to China than from the Imperial Valley to the Central Valley. Alfalfa growers are now exporting some 100 billion gallons of water a year from this drought-ridden region to the other side of the world in the form of alfalfa."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinio...

If there was a free market on water the cost of growing alfalfa would rise so far as to make it uneconomic to grow in California, but as in Heinlein's "Moon...Mistress", government has interfered and caused a severe problem that it now wants to "solve" with more government.

Thanks for the link Khalling. I will be pasting on FB. I'm in CA and waiting for the next shoe to drop. Thanks to Dimms Smart Meters are mandatory. I already have it on the house I'm renting.

A great article. Thanks for posting it. The save the fish argument is such a sham. Years ago I was in the Trinity River Basin and the fish were trying to go up river to spawn, but the fish ladders were blocked because they had to many fish, so they would just be left to die without being able to go to the spawning grounds.

That's a good article. Txs for posting.
I lived in the Portland, Or area several years ago and believe it or not, CA. wanted to tap the Columbia River and pipe it all the way to CA.

great info;;; Thanks, K! -- j