#water wars

[shiversdownyourspleen]

Everything I see of this man in this arc makes me love him respectfully

[caldrive]

Another (overhead) view of the other-worldly landscape of the LADWP work on Owens Lake, Owens Valley, California (March 2022).

[jadagul]

Honestly, I like American ice preferences, but they're not that big a deal.

My problem in Europe is their water preferences. I just want a couple liters of still water with my meal. Why is that so hard and why is it something I have to pay for?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 11, 2023 (Tuesday)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 12, 2023

The dramatic events in Nashville last week, when Republican legislators expelled state representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two young Black men, for speaking out of turn when they joined protesters calling for gun safety, highlighted a demographic problem facing the Republican Party. Members of Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, grew up doing active shooter drills in their schools, and they want gun safety legislation. And yet, Republicans are so wedded to the gun industry and guns as part of party members’ identity that today, one day after five people died in a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky—including a close friend of Kentucky governor Andrew Beshear—the Indiana Senate Republicans passed a resolution honoring the National Rifle Association (NRA). Later this week, Republican leaders will speak at the NRA’s annual convention in Indianapolis, where firearms, as well as backpacks, glass containers, signs, and umbrellas, are prohibited. Those speakers will include former president Trump and former vice president Mike Pence. The resolution and the speeches at the NRA convention seem an unfortunate juxtaposition to the recent mass shootings. Abortion rights are also a place where the Republican Party is out of step with the majority of Americans and especially with people of childbearing age. Last Tuesday, Janet Protasiewicz, who promised to protect reproductive rights, won the election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court by an astonishing 11 points in a state where elections are often decided by less than a point. Victor Shi of Voters of Tomorrow reported that the youth turnout of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, increased 240% since the last spring general election in 2019. Youth turnout at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, increased 232%. Almost 90% of those young people voted for Protasiewicz. And yet the party needs to grapple with last Friday’s ruling by Trump-appointed Texas federal judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved mifepristone, a drug used for more than 50% of medically induced abortions, and that it must be removed from the market. The party also must grapple with a new Idaho law that makes it illegal for minors to leave the state to get an abortion without the consent of their parents. In New York today, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg pushed back against Republican overreach of a different sort when he filed a lawsuit in federal court against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) in his official role as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the committee itself, and Mark Pomerantz, whom the committee recently subpoenaed, in response to a “brazen and unconstitutional attack by members of Congress on an ongoing New York State criminal prosecution and investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.” The lawsuit accuses Jordan of engaging in “a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack District Attorney Bragg” and to use congressional powers to intervene improperly in a state criminal prosecution. Like any defendant, the lawsuit says, Trump had every right to challenge his indictment in court. But rather than let that process play out, Jordan and the Republican-dominated Judiciary Committee “are participating in a campaign of intimidation, retaliation, and obstruction” that has led to multiple death threats against Bragg. Bragg’s office "has received more than 1,000 calls and emails from Mr. Trump's supporters,“ the complaint reads, “many of which are threatening and racially charged." “Members of Congress are not free to invade New York’s sovereign authority for their or Mr. Trump’s political aims,” the document says. “Congress has no authority to ‘conduct oversight’ into District Attorney Bragg’s exercise of his duties under New York Law in a single case involving a single defendant.” While Jordan and the Republicans defend Trump, there is a mounting crisis in the West, where two decades of drought have brought water levels in the region’s rivers to dangerously low levels. According to Benji Jones of Vox, who interviewed the former director of the Water Resources Program at the University of New Mexico, John Fleck, last year about the crisis, the problem has deep roots. One hundred years ago, government officials significantly overestimated the water available in the Colorado River System when they divided it among Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming through the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The compact provided a formula for dividing up the water in the 1450 miles of the Colorado River. It was designed to stop the states from fighting over the resource, although an Arizona challenge to the system was not resolved until the 1960s. On the basis of the water promised by the compact, the region filled with people—40 million—and with farms that grow much of the country’s supply of winter vegetables. Now, after decades of drought exacerbated by the overuse permitted by the Colorado River Compact and by climate change, Lake Powell and Lake Mead have fallen to critical levels. Something must be done before the river water disappears not only from the U.S., but also from Mexico, which in 1944 was also guaranteed a cut of the water from the Colorado River. The seven states in the compact have been unable to reach an agreement about cutting water use. Today the Interior Department released an environmental review of the situation that offered three possible solutions. One is to continue to follow established water rights, which would prioritize the California farmland that produces food. This would largely shut off water to Phoenix and Los Angeles. Another option is to cut water distribution evenly across Arizona, California, and Nevada. The third option, doing nothing, risks destroying the water supply entirely, as well as cutting the hydropower produced by the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams. There is a 45-day period for public comment on the plans, and it appears that the threat of the federal government to impose a solution may light a fire under the states to come up with their own agreement, but it is unlikely they will worry much about Mexico’s share of the water. Historically, states have been unable to agree on how to divide a precious resource, and the federal government has had to step in to create a fair agreement. Meanwhile, back in Tennessee, the fallout from last week’s events continues. Judd Legum has reported in Popular Information that Tennessee House speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, doesn’t live in his district as state law requires. And Tennessee investigative reporter Phil Williams of News Channel 5 reports that state representative Paul Sherrell, “who recently suggested bringing back lynching as a form of capital punishment, has been removed from the House Criminal Justice Committee.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[disgruntledexplainer]

the city of Los Angeles is a parasite on the face of southern California. it’s continued existence actively makes the lives of residents of every other city in the area worse, because they divert water from where it used to naturally flow (Owens Valley) into their desert dystopia, depriving farmers of irrigation and other cities of cheaper water sources. they literally used underhanded legal tactics to steal water from those regions and render them barren.

In the unlikely case that I somehow end up governor of california despite my open disdain/hatred for politicians, i would do everything I could to empty that city and return the water to those whom it justly belongs.

[retrograderesemblance]

❝ all men are made of water, do you know this? when you pierce them, the water leaks out and they die. ❞ (Arthur Dayne @ Sloane)

a.soiaf sentences // @pagetreader

"Not always."

"A ship does not sink each time it is damaged."

[rjzimmerman]

Full episode (47 minutes) from National Geographic. Short description:

“As the planet dries up, access to water has become not only a powerful lifeline, but also a dangerous weapon of war.”

[caldrive]

More of the other-worldly landscape at Owens Lake in the wake of the LADWP's remediation efforts (Owens Valley, California).

[apollopleasant]

My mutuals see that I participate in the water war.

I am immediately soaked to the bone.

That’s is, reblog this to hit EVERY LAST ONE of your mutuals with a water ballon!

[jadagul]

You've been posting a lot about water and I appreciate it. jadagul beverage preferences effortpost when

<3

Not sure what the effortpost is about, though! Water is great. I rarely drink stuff that isn't water, partly because water is great. Sugary drinks feel unnecessary, and I'm a huge lightweight so I have to be careful with either alcohol or caffeine.

I probably should drink more herbal tea, because it's also tasty, but effort and I have a pitcher of water right next to my desk.

[grrlscientist]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren & Rep. Ro Khanna aim to End Trading in Water💧 Futures, reducing the risk of worsening a Water Crisis💦 in western states🚰

[elfis]

SAWS files suit to get out of a water contract - San Antonio, TX 2023

Here’s why SAWS finally filed suit to get out of a water contract “Medina Lake, seen at 4% capacity in August, is the water source at the center of a lawsuit filed by the San Antonio Water System seeking to dissolve a contract it inherited in 2012.” Credit: Brenda Bazán / San Antonio Report Source: https://sanantonioreport.org/saws-lawsuit-bexar-medina-water-district-contract/

[stealingpotatoes]

boy who's never seen a large body of water before + insane force abilities = a very tired obi-wan

(donation doodles! // tip jar)

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.

and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.

...which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.

see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.

while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.

especially if the president of the united states is on board.

yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.

and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like "move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you."

but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.

...and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.

not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.

yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.

but yeah, so thats my new measure for "how much did i really fuck up?" and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire