Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire West of the Divide.......Water

New home developments, and things that make them attractive to buyers...such as golf courses...generate property taxes. And extortion of as much money as possible from the taxpayers is part of the absolute chief mandate of government here in America, at the local, state, and federal levels.

He is a POS and I Would enjoy seeing him gone!

May run out of "fresh water", but not water.

May get ugly for a bit and like KFWA said above we[USA] needs to be looking at this item as a national treasure and protect it.

Might have that much of North America's fresh water, but not the world's fresh water.

This is an easy one: the OR and CA governors are planning a on replacing the hydroelectric energy with new “green energy”, and having the public line the wind turbine and solar cell contractors pockets as payback for campaign contributions. It’s just a little bit about the fish. The salmon run improvements are really only for show and not the primary reason to remove the three dams.

Yeah, those dams are so effing great; it's a wonder God didn't build them at the outset. GD

The ag biz out west always scared me a bit. When someone else can regulate your water supply you are living on the edge.

God regulates our water supply here in Iowa and he's been plenty fair with it.

People moving to drier climates and bring their mentality that they can plant whatever they want regardless of the native landscape's needs and support structure. This applies to vegetation too.

Bluegrass. A local farm store sells a low water grass mix they call Desert Green. It has several good looking varieties but no bluegrass. It looks good and uses half the water. Its courser than blue and doesnt stay as green in the winter but it does cut water use.
Its also resistant to sod webworm if you have that problem

It's bad here, saw a rattlesnake dragging a canteen.

Here in Arizona we don't get much rainfall as it is even though we have two rainy seasons. We have a winter rain and the monsoon in the summer and both have been sadly lacking for years. We've also been running warmer than usual and IIRC, February was one of the warmest, if not the warmest on record. I hate to think what this summer may be like.
Paul B.

Apparently people are still arguing about if Twain wrote this or not. Either way it's still pithy

"About the turn of the century Mark Twain took a trip out to the West, passed through Nevada and California, and I believe Arizona. He returned to the East and summarized his view of this rather contentious area by saying, “Out there they use whiskey for drinking and they save the water for fighting.” Indeed, that was something of a prophecy about how we have handled our problems in the past"

Does anyone know how expensive desalination of water on a large scale is? If that really isn't practical it seems the smart move would be to plan to move large scale farming to areas with better water supply. I'd guess that we would loose some early season fresh fruits and vegetables? Personally I'd rather have to eat canned of frozen through the Winter and early Spring than not eat....

The battle kill timber up in BC is terrible. Huge fuel loads for forest fires. Am sure the art teacher Justin has it under control.

Many easterners don't understand how western water rights work. Just because you have water on your land, it usually moves to somewhere else in a creek or river. Someone downstream might have filed a right for that water. The rule is 1st in right gets the water. If there are more rights filed than there is water to fill them, the senior, or earliest, rights get their full amount before anyone else gets any. In water short years like this one, the junior rights might not get any at all. It's not divvied up, it's all or none. You might not like that rule but it was initially set up that way and the laws still exist. Changing it now would disrupt the entire western water supply system.

We had a discussion a while back about people in OR not being able to catch rainwater off their roofs in barrels for watering. To a westerner familiar with water rights, it's very understandable. That roof water will run off into a stream and someone downstream has a right to all water in the watershed. If you catch the water, it won't make it to the stream and you're depriving someone with a senior right of his water.

There's a ski area near here that would love to develop a new run. However, the land where the run would be doesn't get enough natural snow so they'd have to pump water from a creek near the current lifts to make snow. Sounds simple, right? Not so. A rancher down below has the rights on water in the creek. They can use it to make snow where it is as it will still be in the creek when it melts. The new run, however, would require the water to be pumped over a ridge. When it melted, it would go down a different creek and the rancher wouldn't get it. So, he refuses to allow the ski resort to use it as he would lose it. He has the rights, he gets the water.

There are some seemingly exceptions to the rights laws, but not really. An irrigation district can own the rights and sell shares to land owners. The district determines how much water a share will receive each year. My place is under the Twin Falls Canal Company. Generally, you own 1 share/acre and it entitles you to 1 acre foot per share. That's enough water to cover the acre a foot deep during the irrigation season. During a dry year, the Canal Co can reduce the amount of water per share if there isn't enough. This isn't an exception as the Canal Co holds the rights, not the individual land owner. The Company still get it's water under state law and it can divide it up among shareholders at it sees fit.

for example here in Utah

You own water shares in the Canal/Water Company to irrigate with

People inside the city limits have a untreated secondary water source....late April-mid September

Lawns..gardens etc....an annual set fee per season---with restrictions---no watering between 11am-6pm for example

Especially with only 60% of snow pack on the hill

I'd have no problem giving the Tribes '06 ammo and saying go get you some sea lions.

Sign my ass up!

Yes, I was working on the river then. Every dam had their spillways AND powerhouses allowing as much water as possible to get through. By the time it hit Bonneville they were pushing over 500,000 cubic feet per second through the system. One is welcome to calculate that out to gallons per minute if they wish, I don't. I think they may have been pushing closer towards 600K cfs. And you're correct, the grid isn't designed for that kind of generation.

Maybe we should look at regulating "residential" growth too?

Dry as a Baptist picnic here in SoCal yet the idiots running this state allow runaway development. No thought as to where we will get water to supply them all.