Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Close to Home — What it’s like on the street where you live
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
No water problem — it's a no-water problem
I tend to agree with all, but I suspect that there are a number of problems with desalination, such as: 1. Cost 2. Financing. In order for the profits to be high enough for investors in Big Water to reap tremendous profits, the price will have to be much, much higher than the total costs. This means taxes, taxes, taxes--largely from the 99%, I suspect. After all, "It's a helluva lot easier to find fifty million suckers with a buck than one sucker with fifty million. Water rates will be much, much higher, and public/private corporations, water districts, and other "authorities" having absolute authority with zero oversight will find millions of tiny cuts into our flesh from which to extract subsidies so's we hardly notice. 3. Alteration of the littoral environment. Just to name a few . . . Others? "Whisky's for drinkin.' Water's for fightin' . . . " --Mark Twain— June 4, 2015 2:30 p.m.
No water problem — it's a no-water problem
I'm not much of an arm-twister, and by declining to answer, they are speaking more loudly than they could in any reply.— June 4, 2015 2:18 p.m.
San Diego long-timers will bear water conservation burden
R.I.P By the way, I have just posted elsewhere http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2015/jun/04/ti… some additional information and comment on this issue.— June 4, 2015 12:09 p.m.
No water problem — it's a no-water problem
. . . continued . . . They want all of us to cut our consumption by "x" percent, regardless of how little water we have used for years. (This relatively rewards water-wasters and severely penalizes water-conservers. How bloody backwards is *that?*) They will fine us severely if we are caught watering on the wrong day. (What does that have to do with water conservation?) They want us to set our sprinklers to run for no more than five minutes, for a maximum of two times a week. (They apparently do not understand the dynamics of plant-soil-water relations. Short-periods of irrigation make sense to minimize runoff, but if only two five-minute irrigations per week are used on alternate days, most of it will evaporate rather than penetrate. And penetration will be very shallow, meaning that more evaporation can take place and root development will be shallow, requiring more frequent irrigation to maintain the illusion of healthy grass/plants. I will stop here, because going more deeply into this will take up too much space and be a bit "technical.") They don't want me to wash off my "hardscape" with a high-pressure, low gpm hose nozzle into the adjacent soil, and they want my neighbors to turn me in if they catch me in the act. (They would prefer that I use a pollution-spewing, dust-raising, germ-spreading blowing machine to get the caked-on dirt off my driveway and patio.) These are only a few examples, but you get my drift . . . They are creating monstrous busybodies out of well-meaning, responsible friends and neighbors instead of asking the only question that matters but the lackeys don't want us to ask, "How much water do you use compared to how much water I use?"— June 4, 2015 11:50 a.m.
No water problem — it's a no-water problem
Bravo! However, there is a reality *behind* the *money-driven* media blitz that has created the public opinion. It's "Mad, Mad, Mad Ave." A PR campaign. Trouble is, it is hypocritical. The water shortage is real--perhaps more real than the PR-driven public policy would lead you to believe, bee-leeeve, BELIEVE! "Ignorance in action," as Goethe once put it ("I abhor ignorance in action.") This article, beautifully brief in its coherence, should be above the fold in every newspaper in the state. It opens the possibility that a give-away rag can be taken seriously (and, at long last, actually *deserve* to be). Make money at a time when the majors are in deep decline, AND tell the truth at the same time. So let's get a few details straight. Drought is a *weather* phenomenon. Water shortages are a *consumption* phenomenon. It is not "rocket science." Spend more money than you have in your bank account, and you get bad-check charges. You can go to jail. "Use" more water than the water-delivery system has in its reservoirs, and you will have to move to a place that has no water shortage (thus creating a water-shortage there?). As a result, the economy will collapse. Won't it be ironic when Oklahoma has to turn back refugees from the California Dust Bowl as California did to the "Okies" in the 1930's? A human can't survive for more than three days on no water, and the state of California needs almost a gallon per day per person to maintain good health, much less take showers, flush toilets, wash, and irrigate. That's almost a half a billion gallons a year (rounded up for basic dental hygiene). No agriculture. No horticulture. It's too, too horrible to contemplate, so the solution is to not contemplate it. (A quick search of the Internet reveals a paltry 41,200,00 uses of the word contemplate.) That wouldn't be so bad, but the "powers that be" and their political and bureaucratic lackeys have "arrived" at a set of "water-conservation" policies that are simply hilarious to anyone with an ounce of sense for the truth and any ability to project. First, they won't tell us how much water is left in the system. (I've tried; they won't even answer.) They won't tell us how much water is used by government to irrigate public facilities, such as freeway landscaping. My 1957 letter to the California Division of Highways (now CALTRANS) on this subject also went unanswered, so *it's nothing new.*— June 4, 2015 11:50 a.m.
San Diego long-timers will bear water conservation burden
Re: " Don Bauder June 1, 2015 @ 7:31 p.m. "Twister: You seem to be implying that environmentalists desire slower economic growth. Many do, for a variety of reasons, largely environmental. Since Wall Street is thriving on slower growth and concomitant faster money creation, the plutocrats should give a bow to the environmentalists. Best, Don Bauder" Frankly, m'dear, I don't give much of a damn about what "environmentalists" desire. Although they mean well, most are too indulged in their own selfish fantasies to accomplish much. I will say that sometimes they have done more good than harm, and for that they deserve thanks--but extreme self-righteousness is typical in their ranks, to the point of not, if you will pardon the expression, seeing the forest for the trees. That's my bough. Money, like blood, is meant to circulate, not lie in pools. Ambiguity and irony apparently cannot be avoided.— June 3, 2015 8:10 p.m.
San Diego long-timers will bear water conservation burden
. . . and oh, yeah, "drought" is relative. I have lived in luxury on 12 gallons per day. That's 4,380 gallons per year. That's 586 cubic feet or 5.8 hcf (see your water bill) or 7,000 cubic inches. Theoretically, if you could catch an inch of rainfall on 1,000 square feet, you could "harvest" 83 cubic feet, or 623 gallons, or about 52 days worth, about 1/7 of a year. So, if you captured that much rainwater on 1,000 square feet, you could live in relative luxury for 52 days or have enough to drink for, say, 623 days with a little left over. Two people could barely survive on that for a year. Twelve 55-gallon barrels, or six per person. Or, you could flush your toilet 389 times (@ 1.6 gpf), or about once a day. So, if you captured twice as much, you could drink enough water to stay alive *and* flush your toilet once a day. Or get a composting toilet and use the rest to cook with. No showers, but at 12 gpd you can take a bath every day while standing in a washtub. Pour the gray water on your vegetable garden (agriculture will be essentially gone too, as prices will be driven out of sight except for the one percent. People stealing fruit probably will be shot. A little night science non-fiction musik. . .— June 3, 2015 6:53 p.m.
San Diego long-timers will bear water conservation burden
Both good points, Don. You were not merely wise, but prescient in moving to CO. The outflow resulting from the severely abbreviated flow will crack the CA economy, something like an "adjustment" in the stock market, addressing your second point. Nature, of course, "makes" such "adjustments" too. Populations boom and bust for essentially the same reasons. For example, see "mouse plagues." Some ecologist should look into such population dynamics for different species and see which curves fit the data. Some extinctions may be just big busts, big crashes, to a depth from which the population can't recover. However, since Homo sap. doesn't look at "himself" as one animal among many, and conceives of "himself" as vastly superior, this kind of introspection is not likely to happen, and if it does, "we" will persist in the seductive illusion that we are made in the image of God. Organisms do what they can, when they can, where they can. Homo sap. believes "he" can do anything "he" wants. The fact that the development of culture has demonstrated that "improvements" can be made in the relatively short term (ten or fifteen thousand years or so), he believes he can persist in spite of himself. (Ain't ambiguity in the language grand?) Hell, even some of our most intelligent are stupid enough to believe that we can populate other planets. When we look at our reflection we don't see our souls, we see our images. Makeup anyone? (Gad, MORE AMBIGUITY, MORE IRONY!)— June 3, 2015 5:57 p.m.
Megan's Law, Step-Grandpa — deal with it
Speaking of who's the most popular writer at the Reader, see http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2004/oct/14/dr… It doesn't rank Don or anyone else, but the story was a ringer! I had missed it. Bauder was the only reason I read the Union, and when he retired, it was some time before I found him at the Reader. I remember hearing "Billo," but I thought it was in the fifties . . . Talk about thread creep . . . but how else would I post this? Long may you wave, Don.— June 3, 2015 5:30 p.m.
Dr. Laura's Tell-All Lover
Stupid error--thanks for catching.— June 3, 2015 5:19 p.m.