Gov. Jerry Brown, state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, and other legislators are pushing for groundwater regulation during the drought.

Since October 4, 2013, the California Water Resources Control Board has been floating a discussion draft of a Groundwater Workplan Concept Paper. The draft calls for the enforcement of groundwater quality and well design, the creation of an inter-agency task force to crack down on groundwater overdraft and ordering those responsible for nitrate contamination to provide replacement water.

Yet the historical data show that the major groundwater basins in California always have replenished after droughts, with the exception of the Tulare Basin.

1863-64: Orange County Water Basin

An example from the Civil War Era comes from arid Southern California. “Exceptional Years: A History of California Floods and Droughts,” by J.M. Guinn, came out in 1890. He wrote that “the great drought of 1863-64 put an end to cattle raising as the distinctive industry of Southern California.”

The only people that weathered that drought were the “Anaheim colonists” whose vineyards were kept green by groundwater. But by 1867-68, just a couple of years later, ironically the Los Angeles Basin suffered more loss of life and property from flood than drought.

Guinn recorded, “[A]lthough causing temporary damage, [the floods] fill up the springs and mountain lakes and reservoirs that feed our creeks and rivers, and supply water for irrigation during the dry season.”

And instead of depleting over the years, the Orange County Water Basin grew by 225,000 acre-feet in production from 1962 to 2007. (See nearby chart.) The Basin currently enjoys an annual safe yield of 70,500 acre-feet of water and a total storage capacity of 66 million acre-feet.

The major cited source of the growth in productivity of the Orange County Water Basin is rainfall that recharged settlement basins and imported water from the Colorado River and the Sacramento Delta, mainly from home landscaping irrigation.  Imported water was recaptured and reused instead of allowed to flush to the sea; or, in the case of heavy rain, cause ruinous flooding.

1976-77 drought

The 1976-1977 drought, during Brown’s first stint as governor, was in some respects worse than the current drought. According to a recent article by Adam Kotkin and Dru Marion, rainfall was 65 percent of average, reservoirs were empty and snowpack was sparse by 1977. Of 58 counties, 47 officially declared a drought emergency.

By contrast, in January this year the federal government declared only 27 counties as natural disaster areas due to drought. Just 17 water districts mostly in rural areas that are threatened with no water by summer this year.

And Lake Castaic serving Los Angeles is actually 84 percent full going into the summer of 2014.

And as shown in the nearby chart, in 1977 the Sacramento Valley, Delta and Eastside Streams and the San Joaquin Basin hardly suffered much groundwater depletion.

However, the Tulare Basin suffered drastic depletion, but recovered by about 1984. The Tulare Basin also is an exception and has been suffering from long-term depletion, which is projected to totally deplete the basin in 380 years.

Non-crisis

As these examples show, whether by natural recharge or man-made recharge, most groundwater basins have recovered from prolonged droughts and regulation would not have been necessary. There is little reason to think things will be different with the current drought.

Especially during an election year, it’s no surprise that politicians want to appear to voters to be solving crises. Gov. Brown and state legislators were mentioned above.

As CalWatchdog.com has been reporting, President Obama choppered into the state to advance his solutions to the drought. California’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, also have offered solutions.

And Republican House Speaker John Boehner  sought a piece of the drought action.

But the best “solution” might be a phrase from Poli Sci 101: benign neglect. If we just wait, as California’s long history shows, the drought probably will just solve itself.

During California Gov. Jerry Brown’s first term in office, 1975 to 1983, one of the central planks of his political platform was “small is beautiful.” Brown borrowed his platform from economist E.F. Schumacher’s 1973 book, “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.”

As the publisher’s blurb now describes it:

“A landmark statement against ‘bigger is better’ industrialism, Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful paved the way for twenty-first century books on environmentalism and economics, like Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty, Paul Hawken’s Natural Capitalism, Mohammad Yunis’s Banker to the Poor, and Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy. This timely reissue offers a crucial message for the modern world struggling to balance economic growth with the human costs of globalization.”

Fast forward to 2013, and Brown is poised to push through his more than $50 billion package of big water projects: a Delta Twin Tunnels Plan, a Delta Conservation Plan, a Delta Levee improvement project, and a downsized statewide water bond requiring voter approval. One of the surprising changes in public opinion that may present an obstacle with voters to Brown’s water plan is the “small is beautiful” movement that paradoxically he made popular with many Californians.

Some writers have called Brown’s “small is beautiful” philosophy “prescient,” indicating insight about the future. A recent study by UCLA’s Center of the Environment and Sustainability seems to have fulfilled Brown’s prophecy. The study has captivated the public with the idea that solar photovoltaic panels on just 5 percent of Southern California’s buildings could produce half the electricity needed statewide.

The study goes so far as to list the precise building addresses that would generate the highest electricity output. Certainly those property owners will now look to the potential revenues from lucrative solar farms on their rooftops as part of their entitlement of property rights. Many upper-middle-class homeowners in California have already bought into the notion of their right to subsidized rooftop solar power.  This is despite California’s “One Million Roofs” program being overhyped and underperforming and costing other electric ratepayers $1.1 billion in extra costs.

Ad campaign by solar power industry

This burgeoning “small is beautiful” movement cuts across the political spectrum. It has excited those on the politically left Occupy Movement who disdain big utilities and big banks.  It also lured conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers into endorsing rooftop solar projects, even though the devices require huge subsidies and add to the national debt.

Conservative Republican Barry Goldwater Jr. has founded a lobbying group in Arizona called Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed — T.U.S.K.  The former chairperson of the Republican Party in Arizona, Robert Morrissey, has joined the group. In California, this campaign has tried to co-opt the Tea Party into an alliance with the Sierra Club.

PR campaigns portray green power as patriotic, Biblical and as American as apple pie, the American flag and Mom.

The Obama administration’s scandals with big solar panel manufacturers like Solyndra in California have caused some in Congress to threaten cutting solar-energy tax credits.  To counter the threat, the solar industry is trying to gain public legitimacy by portraying itself as small, beautiful and uncorrupted.

But what does all this “small is beautiful” marketing effort by the solar and wind energy industries have to do with Jerry Brown’s water plan?  Plenty.

Small Water vs. Big Ag and Big Tunnels

The UCLA study goes so far as to propose cutting Los Angeles off of dependence of imported water from the huge California State Water Project and the even larger federal Central Valley Project.  Under preliminary plans being floated by the UCLA Luskin Center, Los Angeles instead would rely on ocean water desalting plants, the recharging of local groundwater basins with recycled water and rainwater harvesting.  To get the public to cut its dependence on imported water, big corporate agriculture and Brown’s Big Tunnels project would have to be demonized.

Forget the reality of  8 to 10 year droughts that sometimes hit Southern California.  Forget the reality that two-thirds of its allotment of Colorado River Aqueduct water has been curtailed to Southern Californians in recent years.  Forget that 65 percent of Southern California’s allocation of water from the California Aqueduct has been curtailed due to lawsuits to protect fish. Forget the consequences to California’s agricultural industry. Big is bad and small is beautiful is the message being successfully implanted in the receptive minds of the public fed up with the failures of big banks, big crony capitalist companies and now Big Obamacare.

Some of the most recent polling results show Brown’s proposed water bond on the 2014 ballot would “go down pretty dramatically,” according to the Northern California water advocacy group, “Restore the Delta.” Of course, the culprit named as the basis for the failure of the water bond is Brown’s Big Tunnels project.

Representing the little people in California’s water wars are the small Delta farmers, advocates for Delta small towns, small fisherman, protectors of small groundwater basins; and Delta restoration groups, which seek to take the Delta back 150 years before humans changed it.

Also opposing Brown’s water bond are big recreational, tourism and commercial fishing interests. Well-funded environmental advocacy organizations like the National Resources Defense Council, with a staff of more than 400 lawyers and scientists and a budget of $119 million, also oppose the Twin Tunnels project. The NRDC is the organization that filed the infamous lawsuit to protect the Delta smelt fish that was based on bogus science. This lawsuit, later thrown out of court, curtailed water deliveries to California Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities to a dribble for three years.

There is no small and beautiful California water war

There is no small is beautiful when it comes to California’s water wars.  There are big water agencies, big corporate agriculture, and big water projects. But there are no real small water or Delta restoration interests that aren’t well funded and supported by big commercial, union, and environmental interest groups. The saying “water runs uphill toward money” was invented in California.

Even UCLA is in the process of raising big bucks — $150 million — from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the X PRIXE Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Aeronautic and Space Administration to fund further research into small and local water projects to replace large water infrastructure projects and regional aqueduct systems.

So, irony of ironies, a “small is beautiful” policy that has worked politically to decentralize expensive green energy and phase out cheap centralized power plants is backfiring when it comes to Brown’s water policy.

By Katy Grimes

As I was reflecting back on 2012 last evening right before midnight, I realized that the events of the year were made to happen by people – we cannot think about the good and bad events without acknowledging the people behind them.

The list of people I never want to hear from again is long:

Sandra Fluke – 30-year old Georgetown law student, feminist activist, obsessed with free contraception

Jesse Jackson – race-baiting shakedown artist

Mary Nichols – arrogant, unaccountable bureaucrat who heads up the California Air Resources Board… calling her ‘unaccountable’ is kind.

Anyone on unemployment for 99 weeks

The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board – always wrong, always out of step, always liberal

Michael Moore – wealthy documentary movie maker, conservative hater, pontificator-in-chief

Independent voters – desperate for media attention

Harry Reid – one of the nastiest politicians in American history

Nancy Pelosi – House Minority Leader, who led her party to become a minority

Labor unions

Low information voters – morons with voting rights

President Barack Obama – campaigning since 2004

Republican Strategists – the smart guys who lost another national election and got paid millions for losing

Leslie Marshall – radio talk show host, big mouth, husband is a doctor

Iowa caucus

Eva Longoria – Hollywood actress, should forgo political endorsements in the future… and speaking roles

anything Kardashian

local television news – is no longer news or reporting. Talking in soundbites is not news, nor is chasing down crime victims and sticking cameras and microphones in their faces.

And a few California politicians who have a special place in my heart, who we will be hearing plenty from in 2013 – particularly with a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature:

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento – wolf in sheep’s clothing

Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles – “How do I love me? Let me count the ways.”

Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco – represents San Francisco

Gov. Jerry Brown – Governor Moonbeam, fading to a crescent moon?

California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom – wants desperately to be governor… or somebody famous

Assembly Speaker John Perez – the intimidator

The people on this list have one thing in common; they believe that citizens exist for the government. Is this really who we want representing us?

Who do you want to add to this list?

Happy 2013.