Here in right-wing country water is a major issue. Agriculture is the big industry and big farmers think they should have all the water they want for next to nothing. When they don't get their way they like to blame environmentalists. Environmentalists have these quaint ideas about protecting species that might go extinct if the water policies of the big farmers get enacted.
We even had to suffer a visit from the right-wing shill Sean Hannity a few months ago.
Marc Riesner's great book Cadillac Desert shows the idiocy and folly of water policies for the few at the expense of the many. This article by Yasha Levine shows that Californians are also in danger of a Katrina-like disaster if the levees and dams built to satisfy the big farmers ever break. The article is at www.alternet.org:
Imagine the devastating flooding of Hurricane Katrina multiplied by epic sandstorms, drought and economic collapse of the Dust Bowl. Now picture it happening an hour east of Apple's headquarters in Silicon Valley and spreading all the way down to the Mexican border. It's not as far-fetched as you think. A routine 6.7-magnitude earthquake would be enough to set it off, liquefying the decrepit levee system that walls off California's main source of drinking water from the Pacific Ocean and triggering a deadly flood that would submerge roads, destroy homes, wipe out thousands of acres of farmland, kill countless numbers and possibly cut over 20 million Californians off from their water supply for a year or more.
California's politicians have known about this looming catastrophe for decades. They also have had the power to neutralize the threat. But no one has done anything to prevent it.
