No one needs Wall Street involved. It is completely wrong to turn water rights into an IPO. The lives of people and the quality of their economies are at stake. States Rights will prevail in the Robert's Court.
New York investors know nothing about the West. Water is a public utility. There is also a very old pact between the states that line the Colorado River. It would be completely wrong to undo all that infrastructure now.
January 31, 2023By Ben Tracy, Andy Bast and Chris Spinder
With the federal government (click here) poised to force Western states to change how they manage the alarming shortfall in Colorado River water, there is one constituency with a growing interest in the river's fate that's little known to some: Wall Street investors.
Private investment firms are showing a growing interest in an increasingly scarce natural resource in the American West: water in the Colorado River, a joint investigation by CBS News and The Weather Channel has found. For some of the farmers and cities that depend on the river as a lifeline, that interest is concerning.
"Our only source of water is the Colorado," says Joe Bernal, who raises cattle and grows crops on land across Colorado's Grand Valley, relying on water from the drought-depleted Colorado River.
"That's all we've got is that river," he says.
Bernal's family came to the Grand Valley nearly 100 years ago, and he has lived there his whole life....
California is ranked the fifth largest economy in the world. The people need to agree on water use. The only interest Wall Street has in this is whether or not the commodities produced in California will continue to flourish and to that end they need to leave the water rights to the farmers otherwise death may follow.
California’s agricultural abundance (click here) includes more than 400 commodities. Over a third of the country’s vegetables and three-quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts are grown in California. California’s top 10 valued commodities for the 2021 crop year are:...
...In 2021 California’s farms and ranches received $51.1 billion in cash receipts for their output. This represents a 3.6 percent increase in cash receipts compared to the previous year....
I don't trust Wall Street as far as I can spit and I don't spit.
Sacramento - California released a plan Tuesday (click here) detailing how Western states reliant on the Colorado River should save more water. It came a day after the six other states in the river basin made a competing proposal.
In a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, California described how states could conserve between 1 million and nearly 2 million acre feet of water through new cuts based on the elevation of Lake Mead, a key reservoir....
In a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, California described how states could conserve between 1 million and nearly 2 million acre feet of water through new cuts based on the elevation of Lake Mead, a key reservoir....
This is not a political issue, it is a States Rights issue and always has been. This is not a political issue, it is a survival issue and always has been. This is not a political issue, it is about water, an aqueduct and the most productive farmland on the West Coast. There is no room for politics here.
The Federal Government has an interest in the Colorado River. It is after all an interstate river. There are also federal lands along the river as well as indigenous peoples.
Any investigation to the way forward begins with history. The USGS is the best place to start. The geologists in that agency will have vast amount of information so long as Trump hasn't burned it.
To understand the physical Colorado River of today we need to take a step back in geologic time and explore the events that set the stage for the formation of today’s Colorado River, and two of its main tributaries (the Green and San Juan Rivers). First a word or two about geologic time....
...This landscape encompasses (click here) portions of two prehistoric cultural areas: the Great Basin and the American Southwest. This area has been continuously occupied since Paleoindian times, with the Clovis culture hunting game as far back as 10,000 B.C. Some of the most well-known structures of the Colorado Plateau are the cliff dwellings found in Mesa Verde, in southwestern Colorado. Around 1150 to 1200 B.C. Ancestral Puebloans began occupying these large alcoves, building stunning dwellings with hundreds of rooms. Around late A.D. 1200 through A.D. 1300 there was a massive migration from the Colorado Plateau south towards the Hopi, Zuni, and the Rio Grande Valleys. It is generally believed that an environmental catastrophe and subsequent collapse of societal organization caused this huge migration. Today, about one third of the Colorado Plateau is Native American reservation land designated to 31 tribes. The tribes that currently occupy the plateau include: Ute Mountain Ute, Southern Ute, various Pueblo groups, Yavapai, Paiute, Apache, Havasupai, and others....
All the governments involved have an interest. The food production of Southern California has a priority to the entire country. The people that live within those states have the right to take care of themselves. No outside interests have any business in this matter. None. This is something that has existed for a long time through all sorts of bargaining and bartering, but, it is the people of these states that have the greatest rights both morally, economically and within their lifestyles.
Bottled water was good enough for Flint and the socioeconomic conditions in that city are very, very different from the socioeconomic conditions in these Colorado states.
The States have the moral high ground, I strongly suggest they use it wisely and to the full extent they are allowed under law. But, if the infighting goes on and they move to court to solve their problems, the decisions will belong to people without a clue as to the dynamics of this river and its people over centuries.
