Last week was a discussion outlining the problems with the Colorado River Compact. Today we try to do the hard part: find a solution instead of pissing downstream to spite your enemies.
This is my review of Fate Brewing Shot in the Arm Barrel Aged Imperial Stout:
It will be mass chaos when the river will runs dry! We’re all gonna die!
While the 1934 Parker Dam Water War is where we began, it should be noted there was no loss of life that resulted from Gov. Moeur declaring war on California. The conventional wisdom is neighboring factions will inevitably resort to violence to preserve their possession of valuable resources. In the case of water mismanagement, others have identified instances in the recent past where this was not the result. Furthermore, in his book Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker of Harvard University devotes an entire chapter of his book making a convincing argument armed conflicts are on the decline. While he specifically cites reasons such as the increased lethality of conventional militaries, ultimately the reason for the decline in conflict is parties that engage in trade are unlikely to go to war.
This is in line with the axiom often attributed (although there is no evidence he said it at all) to Frédérique Bastiat: when goods do not cross borders, armies will. If the AZLP is to have a coherent policy in place on this issue, the simple fact it is entirely within reason to believe cooler heads can prevail should be its foundation.
But you cannot create water in a desert
This is absolutely true, otherwise it would not be a desert. It does not mean that no water exists to be distributed in as efficient manner as possible. The controls put in place by the State and Federal Government simply need to be removed and allow water resources be subject to market forces.
You want businesses to SELL water?
Jack Swilling: Confederate, Entrepreneur, and fucking legend
Yes, and it is hardly without precedent. The City of Phoenix was founded in part because the Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company reused the canals the Hohokam Indians originally built and quite literally sold water to farmers and ranchers that later settled the area.
Water is a commodity like any other. It’s value is determined by a simple relationship of supply and demand. But how does one allow that? First, understand the Federal Government can do little to help
Even though Acts of Congress primarily funded and built the existing infrastructure, there is little reason to believe the current political discourse will change anytime soon. This means any attempt by a congressional majority to tackle this issue will be wrapped up in an omnibus spending bill, ultimately kneecapped by the minority party over political issues that have little to do with water issues affecting a few states. Even bills that do become law will be subject to the same political chicanery that allows for rent seeking, bureaucratic inertia, and government bloat to slow down progress.
The states affected will simply have to go at this alone, but it does have one unique advantage: it complicates the Federal Government’s stake if they cannot simply override rights retained by the states. Furthermore, many with interests in defending their property rights will have an easier time doing so within their own state, rather then using the Federal Courts system where the process is punishment unto itself.
There is however, one facet where the Federal Government can assist: Ending agricultural subsidies.
Are you insane?
This is a serious proposition. Many identified agricultural subsidies as being a part of the problem. While the easy scapegoat for agricultural decadence in the region is almonds, other cash crops grown in the region have a larger impact on water resources:
A majority of the water used by farms — and thus much of the river — goes to growing nonessential crops like alfalfa and other grasses that feed cattle for meat production. Much of those grasses are also exported to feed animals in the Middle East and Asia.
Alfalfa subsidies raise a lot of questions beyond water. Then, there is cotton:
Lustgarten says conservation and increased efficiency in farming could reintroduce enormous quantities of water back into the Colorado River system. By Lustgarten’s estimate, if Arizona farmers switched from growing cotton to growing wheat, it would save enough water to supply about 1.4 million people with water each year.
Cotton subsidies do not amount to a mere pittance for Arizona farmers. Ending the subsidy would force them to realign their financial incentives to grow something that could be more profitable had that subsidy not been available in the first place. Is this politically feasible? Perhaps not for every subsidy like corn, but Arizona natives tend to be more contrarian than their peers in other states. As such, many farmers and ranchers do not collect much of a subsidy, if at all. The preference when given the choice between a subsidy and water rights would rather retain water rights available on their property for their own purposes. Thus reverting to traditional water rights as an extension of property rights.
This will first require states and local governments to reassert jurisdictional authority. How that is then put into practice would depend on the local authorities, who are more easily held accountable by the local population. It might mean agreements such as the Globe Equity Degree, which governs usage in Eastern Arizona based on a first in time, first in right basis would become more prevalent along various river basins. This could be viewed as a consequence of removing agricultural subsidies in that free taxpayer money comes with strings attached—demanding the strings be removed means no free money. It would also end the special statuses interest groups that receive legal backing from the Federal Government, such as Indian Reservations. Under the Globe Equity Degree for example, the Gila River Indian Community does not tie their water use to pre-enabling act maps, a constant legal battle that continues to this day.
This is not to imply Indian Reservations should not have any water rights, only they must operate under the same set of recognized water rights as an extension of property rights as everyone else in the region.
If they retained water rights, there wouldn’t be any for millions living in cities?
Not necessarily. The current system of allocation acts as nothing more than a price control on water resources. Few topics in economics have the sort of agreement across economic philosophies that government policies dictating price controls, inevitably result in shortages:
Prices inform everyone about consumer needs, how much they are willing to pay for it, while at times of high uncertainty discouraging hoarding. The very existence of profits tends in the long run to bring prices down because they give incentives to the entrepreneurs to produce more of it which will increase supply and may even reduce costs due to economics of scale. On the other hand, price controls or anti-gouging laws discourage innovation and sometimes can lead to supplies of goods and services being directed to foreign markets where these controls don’t apply, the very basic economic law of supply and demand explains that if you artificially suppress rising prices, you will get less supply. Imperfections in the price system do not justify the need to control it by central planners.
Controlling the price of water to be a mere afterthought coupled with subsidies ultimately leads to the perverse incentive to use more water than is really needed by remarkably few people.
Nowhere is that more true than the Imperial Valley, a sun-baked desert in California’s southeastern corner where around 500 landowning families use Colorado River water to grow much of the country’s winter vegetables.
[…]
In terms of water, the valley is especially important because the Imperial Irrigation District holds a right to an astounding 3.1 million acre-feet of the Colorado River’s annual flow. That’s roughly 20% of all the river’s water allocated across seven western states. It’s about two-thirds of California’s stake in the Colorado, and as much as Arizona and Nevada receive combined.
The amount of water used by a single urban dweller over the course of a year is a drop in the bucket compared to a farmer growing a subsidized crop. By subjecting water usage to market forces, the water rights currently retained by those 500 landowners could simply be sold at a premium to a buyer that needs it, rather than growing resource intensive crops IF the market incentivizes them to do so.
What if the market forces do not incentivize property owners to sell water to cities?
A free market approach in this case would be to allow enterprising entrepreneurs and industrialists to build water infrastructure for local municipal use. One example given is the Carlsbad Desalination Plant outside San Diego:
The plant produces 56,000 acre-feet of clean water per year, which means a total of nine such facilities could offset the proposed 2022 allocation cuts from the Colorado River. How feasible is this? No new technology is needed to deploy a fleet of reverse osmosis (RO) water factories where they are most needed – this challenge is largely a political one.
Granted, building anything in California is a difficult, time consuming legal process given their laws regulating environmental impact as well as simple NIMBYism. Compared to every other state in the Colorado River Basin—they are the only ones with this option. Other states can get creative as well. For example, one project in Phoenix is currently underway, that seeks to offset future reductions in Colorado River allocations with water resources from within Arizona.
Could desalinization pose a greater environmental hazard?
It is possible, but the technology is getting better to mitigate adverse environmental impacts. There is also the thought experiment of going to the kitchen sink in the middle of the summer and finding there is nothing coming out of the tap. Would that not change how one views such environmental impacts?
This is not a summer beer…but lucky for me we are currently experiencing cooler weather than normal here in AZ. This one is from a relatively new brewery in Tempe that uses bourbon barrels. Which barrels? From what I can find its either Dickel or Old Forester so if you are into whiskey that won’t necessarily impress your friends this is defined for you. Quite frankly who among us isn’t into whiskey that won’t necessarily impress your friends? It pours thick, with some carbonation, but that might just be trapped by high viscosity. 13%ABV; 55 IBU. Please remember to operate heavy machinery at the level of risk you are willing to tolerate. Fate Brewing Shot in the Arm Barrel Aged Imperial Stout: 4.4/5
It weirds me out how folks [often?] don’t try and plant stuff that’s optimized for the local environment. Still see random fields in VA and NC planted with cotton, etc. Just seems like (esp for the new generation of “gentlemen” farmers – who contract for fedgov jobs (in Cville, or Bragg or elsewhere) and own enough acreage to get the tax break – should plant random crap like that besides just raising a few chickens – and contracting a local good ol boy to plant/harvest the stuff on the side.
Alfalfa being a thirsty plant – makes sense in some central/eastern areas – but no common sense at all out west.
(one of my pending ideas for buying some crappy land in the middle of nowhere – aside from my “covered building” plans that I ought to be able to manage myself).
The other stuff with western water…if CA can’t manage water properly – new construction, etc rather than throttling existing water due to “Delta Smelt”, etc – then may just need to look at good alternatives. ….central valley outside Port Hueneme, etc – if the natural water isn’t sufficient or the type of massive farming work they claim is the most productive growing area in the country….maybe some nuke-powered desalination, etc….
I don’t think Desal can cover agriculture, the sheer volume used would need dozens of plants. That estimate in the Doomberg article I cited is just to replace the cuts.
That doesn’t mean it can’t replace what’s used by urban dwellers.
A little history of honey subsidies and why subsidies will never get cut once they are implemented.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-21-mn-13718-story.html
Little guys like us don’t directly get any subsidies but since the bees we buy have been brought in from CA we probably do benefit by the market price being a little lower.
Neat experiment with honeybees: https://www.sciencealert.com/honeybees-go-crashing-into-the-ground-if-they-fly-over-a-mirror
The neighborhood bear got to my deer hunting buddies hives. The electric fence was no match for a hungry bear.
Recently? Like this spring? We’ll get bees in about 2 weeks, won’t be much to eat, I’m afraid.
Thursdee. He tried to overwinter them.
Yeah, we’ve never been successful overwintering. They die ,get moldy and are nasty to clean up.
Honeybees will also forage any sugar source they can find. I was looking for a story about red peppermint honey that popped up once due to a candy factory dumping a batch of candy canes, but couldn’t find it.
Careful drinking coke, soda, pop outside. Bees like to drink too. I’m sure someone here was experience that and hopefully didn’t get stung on the lip or worse.
They like beer as well. There was at least one story I recall reading about some wort (unfermented beer) runoff that bees used to make honey. There’s a twisted part of me that wants to feed bees wort, gather the honey, and then make mead with it.
Kinnath may be looking over your shoulder. He brings mead to the HH, he always makes a big hit with the girls and the boys.
If the bees were Southern they’d be into sweet tea.
Can bees get the diabeetus?
(Northerner who has to be very specific when ordering “iced tea” when down South)
They don’t live long enough, they work themselves to death
I wonder what the NIMBY breaking point is. If population keeps growing, which one would assume it would, at some point they’re almost going to have to build some desalination plants, right?
5️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣4️⃣
I like your plan.
And that beer looks good.
The City of Phoenix was founded in part because the Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company reused the canals the Hohokam Indians originally built and quite literally sold water to farmers and ranchers that later settled the area.
I got that far and was reminded of this
Looks interesting.
We are standing at that same crossroads today without realizing it. While it may not be motorcars and stagecoachs it may well be the ending of private transportation, the days of Sunday drives and a stop at Dairy Queen with the family may be winding down.
Huh, I know the title character (and that movie) from the Neal Asher books.
I’ll have to check it out. Westerns are like listening to the classic rock station: hard to find “new” classics.
I kinda sorta believe in an entity some here refer to as “Sky Daddy” (currently an extremely lapsed Catholic), and over the years have come to the conclusion that, while he is probably all-knowing, all-loving, all-just and all lots of other things, he is primarily the Big Comedian in the sky. How else to explain the never-ending scarcity of a vital substance which covers 70% of the earth’s surface?
There’s plenty of water, just not enough fresh water. But subsidies and other interventions discourage the kind of innovation which might serve to make the limitless supply of water available for human consumption and agricultural use. In the long run, I believe desalination is the answer. The technical issues are non-trivial, but human ingenuity has a way of solving technical problems. The political obstacles are a much greater challenge. Meanwhile, the Lord is having a good laugh.
I think there’s more than enough fresh water – it’s just not necessarily where people really want to live (ie. Southern California). Similarly…in other places like SubSaharan Africa, there’s plenty of water – but it’s a matter of proper filtration tech, etc. Of course…that requires infrastructure, power generation, etc.
When I lived in SE Asia on the equator, we’d have water issues sometimes during the “dry” seasons – since there were often power issues at the same time (which gives you issues even iwht – but even when we had water, we’d need to boil it and then filter it before it was drinkable by US standards. (never ask for ice in a restaurant).
I think there’s more than enough fresh water – it’s just not necessarily where people really want to live
This also applies to food…
LOL knew it
Plenty of water here in Ohio. I wouldn’t recommend drinking it straight from Lake Erie though.
He’s the great comedian and the great architect. Notice how the natural vegetation doesn’t seem to need supplemental irrigation? Yet somehow the food crops can’t survive without massive amounts of water.
??
Granted, there are some differences in water needs, but that doesn’t account for nearly all the delta.
Notice how the natural vegetation doesn’t seem to need supplemental irrigation?
Oh yeah. Weeds will grow where no cultivated plant dares to tread.
Some of our best crops have been cultivated from weeds – or vice versa.
Along those lines, I allowed Japanese wineberries to take over a patch where I couldn’t get anything to grow. I’ve now got enough tasty berries to feed the birds and squirrels with plenty left over for making syrup for shrub, and don’t need to lift a finger.
OT: Which one of you writes for The Adventurers’ Guild?
*I believe the Surete was described as the French FBI in some material for this game. If it is anything like American FBI, federal agents don’t do anything for local murders, even famous ones. Also, I’ll probably shoot a dog and flashbang someone before the game is over.
Not a bad week.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/04/the-week-in-pictures-maskless-edition.php
The Disney one got a real laugh.
Of course being glibs
Couple having sex outdoors in Bigfoot costumes gets accidentally shot by hunters
STEVE SMITH SAY IT NOT COSTUME!
Nice rack on Harrison.
Can I put my hans on your tits?
Can I put my hans on your tits?
You have German orphans?
Only 1/4 to 3/4 German, I swear. I should have left the ‘s’ off, eh?
I chortled uncontrollably at the Musk/Bezos one.
OT: “The data about learning loss and the mental health crisis is devastating. Overlooked has been the deep shame young people feel: Our students were taught to think of their schools as hubs for infection and themselves as vectors of disease. This has fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves.”
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/im-a-public-school-teacher-the-kids?s=r
Couple that with indoctrinating grade schoolers to hate their own bodies and want to surgically alter them and we’re going to have a bumper crop of suicides for the next 10+ years.
Why do they want to kill Grandma?
That article is quite telling, and not entirely what the author intended.
COVID killed the public school system as much as it killed any other entity with multiple comorbidities. My district returned to “normal” months ago but it’s far from what it used to be. I talk to a lot of kids at every grade level. The percentage of students who just don’t care about what they are being asked to learn is growing and the culture has shifted enough that the difference between what the staff and students consider to be acceptable is striking. Rather than address the obvious and work to adapt, schools would rather label them as disabled. The response to COVID is a convenient way for schools to admit that there is a big problem without actually taking the responsibility needed to meaningfully address it.
I’ve been mulling over a post or series about the trends I’ve seen since returning to the school system in 2016. Maybe this summer I can get my thoughts together in a way that’s not too boring for someone who doesn’t work in this field.
They’re too focused on how they FEEL about their peers, their gender, their sexuality, their identity, their tribes, to think about grades and doing well.
This is part of it. I suspect I may be the only person who regularly reads this site (lurkers vary, so who knows) who thinks that addressing social and emotional issues in school is a good thing. I do agree that SEL tends to focus on the wrong things, such as those you mentioned in your reply. Full disclosure: One of the functions of my job is to be the person who helps develop SEL programs in my district. I’ll do my best to keep this reply concise and give Tonio and excuse to flog me when I can submit the longer version.
The way it has been presented to me, philosophically speaking, is that public education is a vessel that reinforces societal virtues. The point of reading and writing is not to memorize Paul Revere’s Ride, but to enable a command of the language in the service of critical thought against tyranny. Education in math serves a similar function, to oversimplify, understanding the relationship between numbers and the ways that quantities interact makes it harder to fall for someone else’s lies. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but that mission has been discarded in favor of credentialism. Introduce grift, pop psychology, social media, and an apathetic public, and we have what we’re commenting about here.
I would be very interested in reading about your thoughts on the subject.
Ditto. Automatic reply to anyone wondering if their subject is too boring or esoteric to be of interest here: no, post away.
Likewise.
Metoo
Agreed!
Narrator: They were lied to. Constantly and for years.
I’ve been lied to. When will I be loved?
I’m beginning to suspect these aren’t actually beer reviews.
I’m still in the denial stage.
Wait…that means you actually…read …the article?
Speaking of brain damaged chilfren
COVID-19 had eased so much at Williams College that the private liberal arts school in Massachusetts allowed professors to decide whether to require masks in their classes early last week. But just days later, with cases rising, it reinstated an indoor mask mandate, which was even stricter than what had been in place before.
“I think students are really feeling like people they know are dropping like flies,” said junior Kitt Urdang, who’s had a half-dozen friends test positive in recent days. “There’s definitely been a lot more uncertainty than there’s been on campus since COVID hit.”
——-
“I don’t think people are super unhappy about wearing masks,” said Lia DeGroot, a George Washington senior who never shed her mask during the single week the mandate was lifted at her school. “Of all of the things that the pandemic has disrupted, I think wearing masks is, you know, a relatively small thing to do. I think that’s kind of the mindset that a lot of students have.”
“Dropping like flies”? She’s so busy going to funerals she can’t get to class?
Unquestioning obedience to authority is what sets America apart from the rest of the world. It made us great. It keeps us strong.
What the fuck have we done to this country?
You’d think the fact that all your jabbed and boosted and muzzled friends are “dropping like flies” anyway might trigger a coherent thought along the lines of “why the fuck are we doing this?”
Coherent thoughts are tools of oppression, and will not be tolerated.
I lost 2 years of saying good bye to old friends. We won’t get a second chance, my peers are ‘dropping like flies’ because they are old, old, old.
Heard a Houlagan from PA on TV saying the pandemic is still amongst us. Dumbass, there never was a pandemic, only a political panic. The hero, Trump, is as guilty as the Joeys come lately. Tossing money at a non problem was proof that ignorance rules.
I’ve got 300 feet of rope, 30 feet to a sample, 10 at a time
The Bureaucracy has great power. The number of people he could truly trust is quite minimal, I’m sure. Not making excuses for the egomaniac, but it’s a win-lose situation.
Look, if it weren’t for the safe and effective vaccines, those people would have died twice!
What the fuck have we done to this country?
We’ve raised the second generation of imbeciles?
What the fuck have we done to this country?
I haven’t done shit.
Saw one of these guys in the park this morning. A little beauty helps when the world looks bleak.
Nice!
We had one take about eight feet of corner molding off our house.
Destructive little bastards.
Huh huh huh HUH huh!
They’re early-warning alarms for insect infestations in wood. They’ve bored out a bunch of wooden fenceposts in our HOA, which tells us where to concentrate our restoration/repair efforts.
“Destructive little bastards”
Well, they’re redheads, what did you expect?
On this day in history: Reinheitsgebot adopted across Bavaria.
The krauts and their purity stuff.
It’s as bad as needing a doctor for everything for everything you put in your mouth. [NOT.A.EUPHEMISM]
WTF Now I stutter when typing? I need an edit button.
RIP to the greatest artist of my generation
Her work stood tall in an era of mediocrity.
Was she up against some stiff competition?
It was tough, but her subjects always rose to the occasion.
It must be hard to insert yourself into that genre.
These euphemisms.
Water is for fighting and whisky is for drinking. And it’s stupid to grow rice in the Sacramento Valley.
Not just white rice either
https://wildrice.ucanr.edu/
Which takes a lot of water.
Squirrels ate my First
Went smoker shopping today. Probably gonna get a pellet smoker and really liking the Coyote brand over Treager
Did you catch when I shared this earlier?
https://hbr.org/2019/03/traegers-ceo-on-cleaning-up-a-toxic-culture
Maybe they’re great, but I’m disinclined to buy shit from that douchebag.
Word is they stole the technology from this company I’m looking at. No clue if true
Diplomacy, American style.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/23/antony-blinken-lloyd-austin-will-visit-ukraine-zelensky/
“US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will travel to Kyiv Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, for his first face-to-face meeting with members of President Biden’s cabinet since the Russian invasion began.”
I hope Z-man is full of shit. If a stray missile happened to accidentally strike that meeting… Been nice knowing y’all.
10% for the Big Guy.
This is fucking stupid sending not one but two cabinet secretaries, the most important ones too, into what is supposedly a war zone of active operations.
That story about panic in the Capitol because the Golden Knights were doing a show jump for the baseball game is just too precious.
Nancy and the gang thought it was Spetznatz commandos coming for them? Awesome.
Land of the free. Home of the brave.
Other source of potable water is from treated reclaimed water from sewage plants. They put out a lot of volume, which can be rendered quite safe except for the stigma of where it came from.
The project in Phoenix I mentioned is sourced from a treatment plant.
Nice. If it’s good enough for astronauts to drink..
If it’s good enough for astronauts to drink..
Tang, anyone?
Cover up the taste.
I like tang.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/elon-musk-rebuffs-bill-gates-climate-philanthropy-request-in-scathing-text_4422628.html
I wonder when Gates entered into that $500M short position on Tesla.
Great article MS.