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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
California is close to adopting strict Obama-era federal environmental and worker safety rules that the Trump administration is dismantling. But as the legislative session draws to a close, the proposal faces fierce opposition from the state's largest water agencies.
To shield California from Trump administration policies, lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow state agencies to lock in protections under the federal Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Fair Labor Standards Act and other bulwark environmental and labor laws that were in place before President Donald Trump took office in January 2017.
Written by one of the most powerful politicians in Sacramento, state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, Senate Bill 1 has strong support from some of California's most influential environmental and labor organizations, including some that helped get Gov. Gavin Newsom elected.
But several of California's water suppliers and agricultural interests, which also flex ample political muscle, oppose the measure. This coalition includes the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which has made SB 1 a top lobbying priority.
The water agencies fear the state would cement into law endangered species protections and pumping restrictions that would add to uncertainties about pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ilPapa on Saturday September 14 2019, @04:04AM (15 children)
It should upset every single American who is human that a group of wealthy people known as "water interests" are buying themselves a say in whether or not we have clean water.
And before you try to cite some rule about rain barrels or some other Fox News bullshit, know that none of that has anything to do with the Obama era clean water standards. And let's be honest: Trump only decided to be opposed to clean water because Obama was for it. In his soggy, petty little rat mind, he feels that he has to undo absolutely everything that Obama ever did, no matter how many people it helps or how much good it does.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 14 2019, @04:07AM (2 children)
Jews. It's always the fucking Jews.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @03:53PM
Disagree. There aren't a lot of kikes in California. Most live on the east coast. This is more likely the work of wetback scabs who need the water to support their illegal communities. This comes at the expense of farms, which use the water to grow food for the entire country.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 14 2019, @04:31PM
Forget it, Eth. It's Chinatown.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @05:06AM (5 children)
I think it has more to do with that "for every new regulation, remove two regulations" promise.
A large portion of humanity lives in coastal cities. Time for rapid desalinization.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @08:40AM (4 children)
And on fucking river deltas. So, instead of keeping the water clean, let's pollute the fuck out of it and then use a fuckton more energy (ie. money) to clean even dirtier water from the oceans?? Seems a lot easier to not pollute the water you want to drink in the first place???
Please. That idiot doesn't know WTF he's doing. Sound bites for his fascist rallies are not policy.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @10:03AM (2 children)
Anything SEEMS easy to an incompetent who expects someone else to do it for him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @11:27AM (1 child)
I was expecting an AC to agree with "don't poison the water", yet here we are. Do you miss /.?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @01:43PM
Constant redefinition of what "poison" is, what "warming" is, what "harm" is, what anything is, no holds barred to support the agenda du jour, makes it extra naive to agree to any proposition from the word-games side. However reasonable and innocuous it might read at first glance, it can and will be twisted into some utter craziness further along.
Besides, in this non-platonic-ideal reality, time and again it is really easier and cheaper to fix things as you need them, than to go out of your way to leave them lying fallow for you. Like, for one extreme example, on a submarine you scrub CO2 out of air instead of trying not to breathe out, and desalinate seawater instead of never washing.
As to the water, your city dweller's body is too weak to drink unprocessed natural water with all its natural microbes and natural parasites and natural sediment anyway; or did you believe that natural beasts don't piss or crap, or get sick, or die and decompose, near the streams and right in them? To keep you alive, a large and expensive water cleaning station is indispensable in any case, human-added pollutants of whatever definition notwithstanding. And when you already have that station, for some kinds of pollutants it is much cheaper, or even totally free, to scrub them out of water there than go into contortions to keep them out in the first place.
A proper definition of "poison the water", in this case, would be "add something that the station cannot easily take out". Not the "breathe wrongly in the water's direction" that it instantly gets redefined as whenever it suits someone.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 14 2019, @12:45PM
There's this policy which fulfills this sound bite promise. What a coincidence!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday September 14 2019, @12:41PM
Why? The regulations in question are insane. And this is supposed to be a democracy, right? Why shouldn't "wealthy people" have a say in what goes on. The thing also missed here is that these "wealthy people" are agriculture in California which remains an important industry in California. They have to get water from somewhere in order to grow things.
Trump has a record now of modest reduction in regulation while Obama was one of the worst in recent history for increasing said regulations. Sooner or later Obama would become a target, if only because he's done so many regulatory increases in the first place.
And don't forget the water is still clean even after the regulatory rollback. Clean is not a bit you set.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 14 2019, @04:54PM (4 children)
Is that what is happening? Because anybody who knows anything about water rights in California understands it is a complicated and fiercely contested issue, and has been for a long time. Anybody who has seen Chinatown and understood what the movie was about understands that.
In gross terms, people who live in coastal enclaves like San Francisco, LA, and Marin County and prate on about endangered species as it relates to water use have about zero idea what goes into the agriculture in the Central Valley that powers that area's economy and puts that nifty organic produce in their friendly neighborhood grocery stores. People in the Central Valley don't really give a damn how loudly people on the coast whine about silly plants and animals as long as they can get their crop in. So, right there, without any quantity of Trump involved, you have the main axis of the life-and-death struggle for water that has always been at the heart of things in the state of California.
Me, though no fan of Mao, I think one of his tricks might help bridge the divide between those two camps there: send all the kids from the Coast to work the orchards and fields during the summers and send all the kids from the Central Valley to the Coasts to learn how to appreciate the impact agriculture has on all the other species that share God's green Earth.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday September 15 2019, @04:49AM
Someone pointed out that in an average year, were the winter Sierra snowpack not allowed to mostly melt into the ocean, it contains about 150% of California's total water needs. The money to build reservoirs (which are boons to wildlife too) was authorized some 40 years ago, yet here we are today, crying beware-of-drought following a winter with one of the heaviest snowpacks in history.
And precisely as you say... young urbanites' utter ignorance of where their food comes from is a good reason to require a year of national service, picking strawberries or whatever, but somewhere they have to get their hands dirty learning how the food chain works.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Sunday September 15 2019, @04:01PM (2 children)
Yes, it's fiercely contested between people who want clean water and a clean environment and factory farms owned by huge multinationals who would gladly poison 100,000 schoolchildren if it meant a $2 bump in their stock price. Also petroleum companies who give zero fucks if their fracking and drilling pollutes every goddamn thing.
But complicated? Not so much unless you have a stake in trying to portray it as such. Do you honestly believe there is a single good-faith reason why Trump is so keen to roll back Obama era EPA regulations?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 16 2019, @01:03PM (1 child)
Forgive me, but it sounds like you're ignorant of how agriculture works and of how municipal water systems work. Agriculture does not "poison" the water supply. They don't spray crops with mercury, dioxin, or depleted uranium. They spray crops with water, fertilizer, and occasionally pesticides. The first two are meant to help the crops grow, and the last to bring more of the crop to market rather than lose it to insects, which keeps prices lower for people who don't have a lot of money in their food budgets, and to keep sheltered urbanites from throwing tantrums if they see holes in their lettuce leaves and believe the produce has been "contaminated." The pesticides, though, break down in the environment because federal regulations dictate they must, or they cannot be used. Fertilizer and water not absorbed by the crops gets snapped up by other plants and organisms downstream because it helps them grow, too.
As for municipal water supplies, no city takes its water straight from a stream of agricultural run-off, which you seem to fear, but rather treats the water for various things to ensure it is safe to drink. They also have to test it regularly with labs who have to certify it safe (my sister is a chemist who owns such a lab). If the water is not safe, it's a big deal. See: Flint, MI.
Further, you're lumping in fracking, which TFA is not about. That's a different deal entirely than the agriculture vs. city water supplies & endangered species that TFA is talking about. But California doesn't really have fracking to contend with the way that, say, Wyoming, North Dakota, or Colorado do.
Finally, how many schoolchildren really drink water straight out of the tap anymore, anyway? In California people, especially the ones that scream loudest about the Earth, drink their water out of plastic bottles which they blithely throw into the trash afterward. (They don't give a shit, because as soon as the bottle hits the waste stream it's Somebody Else's Problem (TM).)
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday September 17 2019, @01:24AM
Yeah, about that:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/farms-more-productive-than-ever-are-poisoning-drinking-water-in-rural-america-11547826031 [wsj.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/18/california-central-valley-sinking-arsenic-water-farming-agriculture [theguardian.com]
http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/1027/1052055/Regional_Updates/update30.htm [prenhall.com]
Just "pesticides"? Is that all?
Most of them. It sounds like you may live a pretty privileged lifestyle if you think everyone is drinking water out of plastic bottles. And yes, I've lived in California. The EPA is not the source of their water problems.
You are still welcome on my lawn.