As we all know, California is suffering from a drought.  There is not enough water to grow the food crops that we all need to survive.  Food shortages tend to increase prices at the supermarket and many people find it more difficult to feed their families.

California produces much of the fruit, nuts and vegetables consumed here in the United States.  Over the past years, there have been numerous news reports of farmers struggling to remain financially solvent without the water they need.  It seems that an endangered minnow could put some farmers out of business.

To handle the water shortage, the California politicians have recently imposed water use restrictions on their residents whose only “crime” has been to use water.  Isn’t this a typical political solution?  Penalize the innocent because their government has failed to provide the necessary infrastructure to meet the needs of their residents.  Do they really “need more government controls” because their government has decided to be reactive instead of proactive in supplying water for their citizens?

Is there a simple way to solve this problem?  No, but there is a long term solution.  The solution is sea water desalination plants.  The city of San Diego has contracted for 50 million gallons per day of water from a desalination plant that will cost about one billion dollars to build.  What if instead of a high speed railway system being built for over 60 billion dollars, ten or more 100 million gallon per day sea water desalination plants were built?  Is a high speed rail system more important than drinking water and water for food production?  Looks like it, doesn’t it?

The desalination plant design uses reverse osmosis (use of membranes and differential pressure to produce the potable water).  The nice thing about reverse osmosis desalination is that the design can be  modular which makes it easier to expand or run at reduced capacity.  The most costly part might be securing the right of way for the pipelines needed—but since the pipelines would contain water, there should not be any reason why these large pipelines could not be above ground to save money and the consequences of a spill would be wet roads—but then this is California and how it looks is important.  It should be noted that any rail system would be aboveground and how will it affect how the neighborhood looks remains to be seen.

Just think, the farmers and general populace would have up to a billion gallons per day of water to use to drink or produce the crops to feed the country and the minnow would be “saved?”   Do I think the California politicians would do something as practical as this proposal?  No!!  Oh yes, the number of people that could be served by this proposal would probably be well over the estimated 65 million per year rail riders by 2040.  And here I thought that our political system was supposed to help the people of this country and not just the special few.  I must have missed something.  By the way, if you think environmentalists are preserving the environment for you, you need to stop smoking that stuff.  The idealistic good  intentions of environmental activism is long gone and today it is all about the ability to use government force to control the people.

By the way, since I live in Texas, it should be noted that our politicians here are as lacking in good old common sense as the California politicians when dealing with drought.