I was just informed by TC McCarthy that ISIS troops have seized Mosul's dam, the largest in Iraq, on the Tigris River. This water supply is life for Iraq. Bagdad is screwed and will eventually surrender. Like California, Iraq is dry desert in the summer, and relies on dams to stop the floods from washing away fresh planted crops in spring. Iraq and California have the same rainfall timing and problems with summer heat. Like California, Iraqs rivers flood in spring when the mountain snowpack melts. California deals with this using a combination of dams and reservoirs to catch this water, and levees on the rivers to contain the flow and keep the water out of the fields, keep the floods from drowning and washing away our crops. The method we use works, barely, but sediment is caught by the dams, filling them with silt and sand so the reservoirs hold less and less water. Eventually, none at all, and the dams will just be a waterfall with a meadow. Much like our wildfire problem, there is heavy physical labor required to maintain this, and nobody is doing it. Why? Because it will benefit both political parties and our politics are too divided for that.
The problem with levees on rivers is a matter of physics. Rivers contain sediment and when the water slows down, in a bend for example, they drop their sediment where the water is slower, and take more sediment where it is faster, so they are always getting more and more curvy. Building a levee around the existing system is trying to confine a thing that continues to want to change, and is doing the work to break free. It is important to remember that levees are build out of dirt. So the river can absolutely dig that apart. Additionally, the river is always dropping sediment down the length of the river after the floodwaters slow down, so the river bottom keeps rising. This happens in natural rivers too. Eventually in a serious flood, the waters will crest the natural levees they construct, break free and flood the surrounding lands while finding a new course based on gravity. The old river bed, and the natural levees from prior spring floods that didn't break loose, are left behind, sometimes with Oxbow lakes like you find in Mississippi.
Jefferson state, which I believe will inevitably form due to decades of fiscal abuse by Sacramento, the legal Puppet of LA and San Francisco voters who control California, contains the two largest reservoirs in California. It contains the Shasta and Oroville Dams, and thus the irrigation supplies for the Sacramento Valley which runs from Red Bluff in the north to the San Joaquin Delta and the San Francisco Bay. The Valley's southern end merges in the Delta, most of which is full of levies and much of it technically below sea level and threatened by salt infiltration during high tides if a levee breaks, which it might. Highway 160 follows the Sacramento River from Sacramento down to Isleton, which is the eastern extent of the Bay's salt water and entrance to the Port of Sacramento Channel. Yes, there is a port in Sacramento. Yes, ships go there to on and offload things, including bags of rice bound for China and Japan that were grown in Marysville by the Sutter Buttes. Its a major source of income for California. Worth a couple billion dollars a year. When Easterners say "California shouldn't grow rice" they don't know what they're talking about. It earns more money than High Tech does. At this point, there's little high tech in California. Just buildings and managers calling China and India and fussing over the stock values of their rebranded products built by wage slaves in Shanghai. Rice is grown here. Rice is profit. Not shipping rice is a cause of major panic in China and Japan.
So Jefferson controlling the water supply that allows rice to be grown? That's an international issue. A big one. Whether Yuba and Sutter Counties join Jefferson, and get a fair price for water so they can keep growing the Rice that's propping up Japan and helping our balance of trade with that nation, and keep in mind that California could be terracing very small rice fields in the interior of the North Coast due to the rains and water supply available up there. We could easily quadruple the rice growing land, but that only works if it can be sold, and in agriculture you only plant what you can sell or you go out of business pretty quick. Small scale farm equipment, like tractors and combines, are crucial. And those can be rented and leased, though farmers like to buy them if they can, to control costs better. As bad as the drought is, farmers aren't sitting on their behinds. There's a lot of soil prep work being done, since we don't get the sorts of winds to cause dust storms, and no thunderstorms worth mentioning down in the farmlands.
Jefferson supporters plan to charge more for the water that they release downstream, for pumping to the Bay Area and LA by the pumps near Tracy that feed the California Aqueduct system. Jefferson has a vested interest in returning the Salmon, which suggests they'd only release water to aid the fish, and might get highly annoyed if the Bastards running the pumps turn them on and chew up the salmon fry like they've been doing since 1978. They committed economic warfare against the North Coast fisheries so they could water driveways in Los Angeles, something we have pictures and video of them doing. Not okay. Entire towns died and fishermen lost their boats, their families, their lives when the salmon were churned into sludge by the pumps near Tracy. The smelt are an irrelevance compared to the value of salmon in the Pacific North Coast of California, what will be Jefferson. The lives impacted by LA's greed destroyed the economy of the entire region, plunging hard working towns into a still imposed permanent poverty. Some of them shifted into timber operations, harvesting redwoods and oaks for decks and furniture, for sale down in LA and Berkeley. The Berkeley hypocrites responded by spiking trees and killing timber and sawmill workers who'd just lost their boats when the salmon were wiped out by those benefiting from their efforts.
Berkeley has a SPECIAL place in my heart because of this. Earth First said spiking trees isn't violence despite the spikes, made of ceramic and undetectable, causes a 12 foot diameter saw blade to explode on contact and kill the mill operator, a guy getting minimum wage and caring for a family of four. But killing him is okay because he's white so he deserves it because... Trees? And this happened multiple times. I knew surviving family when I was in school. The few hippies that were "disappeared" over this were victims of a quiet civil war in the 1990's until the Old Growth Redwood logging ban ended the logging and dropped everyone up there into the poverty that lingers today. The hippies went back to Berkeley, cheered by the success of their violent attacks on the rural poor, enjoyed their redwood decks and ate imported Atlantic salmon. My generation HATES hypocrites. This is something the folks in Jefferson also know.
And its not like the money will go to waste, either. The North Coast needs reliable highways. Highway 101 washes out in normal rainfall. Building a stable road in those bad areas would help the locals retain access to crucial things like hospitals and food supply. Dredging the harbors to allow freighters to onload and offload cargo and run the coastal ferry system again? Important. Restoring the Pacific Coast Railway to operation again? Also key. As a new state, they can ignore prior logging rules imposed by UC Berkeley hypocrites and manage their timber as needed, including the planting and stabilization efforts that Berkeley wouldn't fund because it was always about hatred and violence, never about the trees. Didn't know they ignored replanting? Yep. After the clearcuts, the Berkeley hippies didn't plant new trees. If it were really about trees, they'd have done that, and made sure the saplings actually rooted properly. It was never about the trees. That was the excuse for the violence. Redwood Summer 1990 was really about murder. I am glad that Judi Barri blew herself up. She was evil.
The hard part of the division is the enduring rage. Generations of Californians hurt by bullies in the built up urban areas, the callous junkies and neurotics and wasters in Berkeley, San Francisco, Hollywood and LA. These are the voters who had the numbers to bully the rural areas and abuse everyone else into poverty. Forgiving them and playing nice after we become multiple states is unthinkable because the money is needed for basic infrastructure that was neglected since the 1980's. LA wanted smoother freeways. We wanted ones that weren't closed entirely be landslides every time it rained. Funding those long overdue projects means selling the only resource worth anything: water supply. Jefferson will BLEED Silicon Valley for money, jacking up rates until the dregs of the Middle Class still there start fleeing the East Bay and South Bay settlements. It's not like their jobs really pay that well. The Federal govt will doubtless subsidize a few of the poor for public relations photo ops, but realistically the price of water is going to destroy the Bay Area. The cost of water equaling your monthly rent or mortgage payment will depopulate it and leave it as crime ridden and abandoned as Detroit is now. That's my prediction.
Dividing California will unchain the dogs of long held resentments, and I worry about actual violence over control of the water. Charging more than is easy to pay, which is anything more than they pay now, to San Francisco is likely to call out the national guard, sending armed men across state lines to seize control of the powerhouses of Shasta and Oroville dams. It sounds crazy, but seizing Oroville dam means they can release water anytime they want, without paying. And arming the dam powerhouse and building fortifications to shoot militia attempting to retake the primary money supply for their state would certainly escalate into deaths and actual war, right up to blowing up the dam and wrecking the reservoir, to flood the farmlands and destroy everything downstream. We already know the Bay Area commits violence against the rural poor. They've done it again and again. Worse, the floods would create water for mosquitoes, so biowarfare associated with malaria and meningitis is exactly their style. If there's nobody in Jefferson alive to complain, so much the better. And yes, I do think the Bay Area would commit mass murder. They already did. They care most about winning. Its the essential poison of ambition which drives the place.
Sure, that sounds absurd, but keep in mind, Berkeley killed hundreds of people over trees, if you include the jobs and families destroyed by the logging ban. Entire towns died out over the loss of the salmon, and LA used the water to wash their cars and clean the dust off their driveways. The Aqueduct was sold to California voters as a way to make the San Joaquin bloom with new crops and money, but the west side of the San Joaquin gained some orchards for Vitamin C, but the rest of I-5, where the aqueduct goes, is mostly desert. The promised development just didn't happen. Much of the land planned for crops turns out to have too much calcium in the soil and it turns into a kind of natural concrete a few feet down that seals up the fields, preventing drainage and crops die, their roots choked to death by the stagnant water. Roots need air. They have to have drainage. Voters didn't know this. And you can't really fix Caliche (the concrete) without physically removing both the calcium soil AND breaking up the concrete, which is so expensive its ridiculous. No crops would pay for that. Even rice fields have to dry out for harvest. The planned Cotton and Wheat just can't work there. So the fields are empty, turning back into sand, and the area grows more tumbleweeds than anything else.
The water of the California Aqueduct is mostly just rolling South to LA, using the hydroelectric power generated by the dams down the Feather River, and carried by high tension towers down the center of the valley, ignoring cities, to the various pump stations, except the two most important ones: Tracy and Grapevine. Yes, the aqueduct is a feat of engineering, BUT the consequences impoverished the North Coast and there has been nothing done to reverse the poverty. LA doesn't care about a bunch of poor people far away, unless they have cute outfits and ancient religions they can pretend to care about. They love Tibet, but ignore poor Christians in their own state. See why revenge is necessary?
So yeah, division, then water wars. Complete with special forces attacks on dams, power tower sabotage, aircraft bombing water infrastructure. You name it. This will happen. Its one of those things you can't stop. It's a long time coming and the scales will balance in blood and poverty. If you live in LA or San Francisco area, think hard about what price of water you can afford and when it is time to move out. Both places are on long supply chains and sit upon a lot of abuse. Retaliation will be charged against YOU. Don't be there when the aqueduct shuts down. There's only about 45 days of water supply to those cities stored locally. There will be a serious rush for the Uhauls. You might have to discard lots of your precious stuff when you flee in thirst.
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