Equipment World

May 2015

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C alifornia's water shortage looms large in the headlines this spring. What few are talking about, however, is that the shortage is entirely man made. While the shortage is being blamed on global warming, big developers and big agriculture, it's really the fault of big-headed people with a small vision of the future. These dire circumstances could have been prevented had the state's leaders in the 1970s had the wisdom and foresight of their parents. In the 1940s, '50s and '60s the state invested in sufficient infrastructure, roads, dams and aqueducts to spark a tremendous boom that was the envy of Ameri- ca and the rest of the world. But starting in the 1970s, then- Gov. Jerry Brown and like-minded Democrats decided that big was bad and small was beautiful. They curtailed funding on big infra- structure projects, spent all their money on something else and here we are today. The other contributing cause of California's water shortage is that it is not priced anywhere near it's true value. In fact, residential water is cheaper in Southern Califor- nia than it is in many places east of the Mississippi, where lakes, streams and aquifers are abundant. Again, like infrastructure, the pricing of California's water at artificially low levels was and continues to be a political deci- sion. The Peoples' Republic of California may frown upon such things as market-based pricing, but it does a good job of allocat- ing scarce resources, changing behavior and spurring alternatives and innovation. The failure of the government of California to adequately man- age its resources and infrastruc- ture is a lot like the current debate over funding a six-year highway program for the rest of the coun- try. Everybody knows we should raise the gas tax, but politicians don't have the courage. When I see this decades-long, kick-the-can-down-the-road mentality it reminds me of what a contractor in Austin, Texas told me once. After the hippies, yippies and NIMBYs successfully blocked roadbuilding in that city for 20 years, the government finally shook stiff-armed the anti-growth activists and starting building roads again. Good, except, as this con- tractor noted, they are never going to catch up. Austin's traffic is hor- rible now and will be forever. There is a point where you get so far behind that you can't ever catch up. Austin is now that way with traffic. And it looks quite likely that when it comes to water, California may have waited too long as well. Politicians tend to suffer from the illusion they're so smart they can solve any problem. But farm- ers know if you don't have the seed in the ground by a certain date, you won't have a crop. Sol- diers know if you storm a position without adequate firepower, ev- erybody will die. Mechanics know if you try to tow a backhoe with a 1/4-ton truck you will smoke the transmission. Reality is a bitch to those who suffer from delusions of grandeur. And California is about to find out just how mean she is, as will the rest of the country when it wakes up in the near future to realize it doesn't have functional interstate system anymore and no way to bring it back. final word | by Tom Jackson TJackson@randallreilly.com Water shortage in California the result of 40 years of neglect May 2015 | EquipmentWorld.com 82 Starting in the 1970s, then-Gov. Jerry Brown and like-minded Dem- ocrats decided that big was bad and small was beautiful. " "

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