A hundred years ago today, a negotiation set the stage for western expansion. Six states negotiated a way to share water. The drought of 1863 decimated most of Southern California's cattle ranching but animals were one thing. Since 1900 the human population of Los Angeles had grown over 80 percent - and the LA aqueduct was maxed out.(1)

The same natural confluence that make it one of very few polluted places in America even today(2) also meant it was running up against a natural cap on population. The solution was the Colorado River Compact, which allowed the lower basin to be shared by Arizona, California and Nevada while the upper basin provided allotments for Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. It was a terrific example of states working together - primarily because they worried if they did not, the federal government would come in and Washington, DC all over the place and help no one.

The big problem was the 7.5 million acre-feet allocated was based on the same kind of wishful thinking that led governments from California to Germany to believe in solar and wind power - it wasn't science, it was a high average. Some of it is understandable because the Colorado River flow can fluctuate by 500 percent from year to year but if you know the low could be 4.4 and the high 22 and the basin needs a minimum, it is trouble waiting to happen.

The future problem was not yet know because politicians had an unrealistic amount of trust, the same way California voters trusted poltiticians when politicians said Proposition 65 - warning labels for anything that might be correlated to cancer - would not be abused by the lawyers behind it. It was destined to be abused. And California made sure the compact did not allocate water to the states, but rather to the basins.    


(1) Yet to come was the 1929 drought, which sent water levels so low trees stumps at the bottom of Lake Tahoe were visible, the 1976 and 1987 ones also had nearly all counties declare states of emergency, while the 2014 made it into the top three droughts since records have been kept.

(2)  Real pollution, not the PM2.5 'virtual' pollution invented in the 1990s, after there was very little smog left to fix, and now counts particulate matter so small you need an electron microscope to see it.

Without the Colorado River Compact, an agreement to share water signed 100 years ago this week, there is no Hoover Dam, and cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, and Phoenix would be drastically different.


Smart states that don't put politics over science are immune. Nevada, for example, has spent $1.5 billion to get alternative water for Las Vegas. Northern California, meanwhile, has not undertaken a major water storage program since the 1960s - when the population was one-third today. Governor Gavin Newsom is required by law to start a new infrastructure program but California today is a lot like the California of the 1930s Water Wars era - so power politics trump public interest and the Governor will stall and then declare the issue void because government did not meet its own deadlines. 


Example 1. California Air Resources Board. They have been caught exaggerating emissions by 300%
They fetishized PM2.5 once PM10 cratered in the state. As a result, we got crazy claims like that grilling a hamburger is worse for the air than driving an 18-wheeler.

Example 2. Solar Power.

In no business can you buy a product at the same price you sell it and make money, yet California forces California utilities to do with solar power customers. Not wholesale costs, retail. Which is a great deal, if you are in the 1% (or the aspirational 1%, so the top 3%) but terrible for poor people or those in apartments, who are forced by law to pay extra so solar power customers can get paid.

And solar isn't working. At this time in 2021, the California Governor was facing a recall election, so California got permission from EPA to ignore all emissions standards and run natural gas plants overtime to insure there were no blackouts during the recall vote period.

This year, after banning gasoline-powered cars, the same state agency told consumers not to charge their electric cars. Or cook. From 4 until 9pm. Or there would be blackouts. The good news is that the state is in such a panic they defied their progressive base's hatred of nuclear and agreed to extend Diablo,

There was never any science to show that solar and wind were ready to offset conventional power but the state used the most optimistic projections and did it anyway.