(#4509) Another drought year here out west!

      Water that is clean and usable is now more a scarcity than ever. Out west here it is anyway. We here in Sacramento are gearing up for another year of water restrictions and a lot of brown dried ground. Not so much the wealthy, corporations, and the golf courses of course. Their properties will get all the water they want because water here is apportioned as a cost, not so much a need. Hopefully that calculation will come to an end so that money doesn't decide who gets the Lion's share of our public natural resource. We all need water to survive and those that play games for no other activity other than to entertain themselves need to be halted until we can get a water sharing plan that helps to preserve the water resource while giving farmers, fishers, and ranchers a chance to save their livelihoods.
     One way to do this is to have a federal program that paid certain water dependent industries in tough drought years to abandon attempts at their normal production and then taper that production to meet lower water resource allocation. So less water used in some industries makes more water available for some others on a priority scale that doesn't have privilege and advantage built into it. It can be done as this idea of paying industries not to produce as much during drought years has been around for decades. There are other options with water than can increase wildlife which increases life cycles for many species. Intelligent legislating in the arena of water allocation is needed and should be a priority as the drought years are not going away any time soon.
     We, each individual here in the west, needs to be responsible about our water usage as well. I gave up watering the "lawn" nearly a decade ago. I don't care if the ground is brown 7-8 months a year. I water my necessary bushes, trees and plants sparingly so as to keep them hearty but yearning as that is how we all should be during this water crisis. Global warming has much to do with this and on that front much needs to happen before we see relief from low yearly rainfall water levels. The drought is just another example of what will happen if we don't become better stewards of our planet. Our right to manage this planet is our destiny and if we don't do it effectively that right will be taken from us by the forces of nature we are ignoring.