[Midnight Marauder]

This is still yet another reason I am grateful to be in my early 50s instead of my early 20s - i likely won't be around for the endgame.

Do you see it coming? I sure do.

A hydraulic empire (also known as a hydraulic despotism, or water monopoly empire) is a social or government structure which maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to water. It arises through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy.[1]

Often associated with these terms and concepts is the notion of a water dynasty. This body is a political structure which is commonly characterized by a system of hierarchy and control often based around class or caste. Power, both over resources (food, water, energy) and a means of enforcement such as the military are vital for the maintenance of control.

Hydraulic empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the real reason behind the ethanol boondoggle. How better to rapidly use up our free and abundant groundwater - creating a "crisis" - than to mandate a product in fuel which takes 1,200 gallons of water, to make one gallon of? Once the "crisis" takes hold, the federal government will be able to take possession of all water rights.

It's happening - we foolishly grow one of the most water intensive crops on the planet - corn - right here in the semi arid region where it takes massive irrigation to do so - and the aquifer is plummeting as a result.

The Eco-nuts who demanded ethanol be mandated for fuel - to 'save the planet' - have themselves reversed their opinion of it universally, and have been calling for the ethanol boondoggle to end for years now. Because it isn't in any way 'green' and it's actually just the opposite of environmental friendliness.

It stays because of the government subsidies - no congressman or Senator who wants re-elected will ever try to fight this, especially if he/she represents a agriculturally driven district or state.

The US Hydraulic Empire is coming.... It's the largest manufactured crisis mankind has ever devised.

[Midnight Marauder]

And of course they have already found a way to tax the rain. Few people know this, but more and more property taxing entities (local included) now tax you for "impermeable surfaces" such as parking lots. The tax ostensibly goes to "wastewater infrastructure" and "groundwater conservation" but here's the catch - this tax isn't designed to get you to alter your behavior, hell no. Because using crushed concrete or crushed asphalt or any other permeable surface for parking lots is forbidden!

By the way this tax happens annually whether it rains or not, and regardless of how much precipitation there is - they tax you X amount per square foot of impermeable surface you have on your property!

It's a beautiful racket! You cannot remove existing impermeable surfaces and replace them with permeable ones, and the rain tax is attached to the rest of your property tax!

They're not even pretending they are trying to improve the groundwater problem by giving you incentive to change anything. They're simply, taxing the rain.

[moomin]

Fracking isn't exactly a low water-consumption project either...

[Midnight Marauder]

Originally Posted by moomin

Fracking isn't exactly a low water-consumption project either...

That water is actually brine from the salt table, it is pumped out of the ground then treated with chemicals, then pumped back down to fracture the rock holding in the gas. It actually uses little water compared to ethanol production.

[Midnight Marauder]

And as if by magic, this appears in the local paper today:http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news...e-water-rights

By BY ENRIQUE RANGEL
enrique.rangel@morris.com

AUSTIN — Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas economist Keith Phillips vividly recalls a visit to Amarillo two decades ago. After speaking about groundwater rights at a business conference, someone in the audience walked up to him to call him a communist.

Phillips, one of the best-known economic forecasters in the state, said he was neither surprised nor offended.

“The problem with having property rights on groundwater is that you have to have meters on wells,” Phillips said after speaking at a recent water summit sponsored by the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas.

“And you know West Texas, they don’t want government intervention,” he said. “And as long as water isn’t scarce, as long as there is plenty of water to go around, it makes sense not to have meters on wells. If water was well-contained within each person’s property you wouldn’t need property rights.”

But times have sure changed.

The current devastating drought has made landowners and local officials everywhere aware that water rights start at one’s own backyard, especially in hard-hit areas such as the Texas Panhandle and the South Plains, Phillips said.

In West Texas, people became more aware of water rights after billionaire T. Boone Pickens proposed building a pipeline to sell water to San Antonio, said Phillips, who hasn’t been back to Amarillo but has visited other communities in the region.

“People began asking, ‘What do we do to stop him? We can’t stop him unless we have rights allocated to individual landowners, and T. Boone Pickens would simply have a limited amount of water that way.’”

State Sen. Kel Seliger, a member of the Texas Senate Natural Resources Committee during his 10 years in the Legislature, agreed with Phillips.

“I think that for a long, long time people have taken it for granted,” said Seliger, R-Amarillo.

“But it has been less true for years, years and years starting back in the mid-’90s when the city of Amarillo, when I was mayor, started to acquire water rights.”

“And then, the recent drought has sharpened the focus of everybody in the state,” Seliger added. “In our part of the state, when we look at the decline of water over the last few years, it’s kind of gotten people’s attention — as it should.”

Like other lawmakers, Seliger said he is encouraged the public has become more aware of the severity of the water crisis.

“Awareness of the scarcity of water is a resource,” he said. “It is encouraging that a very, very broad part of the populace is increasingly aware of that.”

When the Legislature is back in session in January, the water issue will pick up where it left off last session, predicted state Rep. Doug Miller, former chairman of the board of Edwards Aquifer Authority.

“This is absolutely a continuation and part of the implementation process of what we need to do to fix our water challenges in Texas,” said Miller, R-New Braunfels.

In last year’s session, the lawmakers overwhelmingly approved major water legislation, mainly a bill that would authorize the Legislature to withdraw $2 billion from the rainy day fund to begin financing the state’s $53 billion, 50-year water plan. And thanks to Proposition 6, which Texas voters overwhelmingly approved on Nov. 5, the funding is now available,

For lawmakers and water experts, as well as for landowners and local officials in hard-hit areas, the issue is getting more attention than in previous years because the population of Texas is projected to increase from 26 million to 42 million by 2060.

“Population growth will be concentrated along the Interstate 35 corridor, where water use is growing and surface water supplies are shrinking,” the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas wrote in a 74-page report distributed at its all-day conference.

Danny D. Reible, a water expert at the University of Texas and chairman of the conference, calls the 2011 drought “the worst single-year drought in Texas’ recorded history.”

“Meeting residential and economic development requirements of a population that will nearly double over the next 50 years will require dramatic improvements in water conservation and reuse, as well as tapping new sources of water,” Reible wrote.

Not one mention at all of ethanol production... It's all about the drought you see. A drought that should be THE reason to stop growing corn in the desert.

But did you see that commie 20 years ago, basically predicting what we're seeing now?

[moomin]

Originally Posted by Midnight Marauder

That water is actually brine from the salt table, it is pumped out of the ground then treated with chemicals, then pumped back down to fracture the rock holding in the gas. It actually uses little water compared to ethanol production.

Mmm. Isn't the principal opposition (well, one of them) to fracking that pumping a lot of salt water into places where it will seep into the water table is not necessarily a brilliant move?

[moomin]

Good catch. Might the water wars be the next progressive cause after then climate change fizzles?

[masterminion]

Now a smart fella would set up catch basins and catch all of that rainwater which runs right off of the impermeable surfaces. No matter how. They get the water.

[Midnight Marauder]

Originally Posted by moomin

Mmm. Isn't the principal opposition (well, one of them) to fracking that pumping a lot of salt water into places where it will seep into the water table is not necessarily a brilliant move?

Right, the lies mostly involve well water contamination, making the water flammable. This has been proven false each time it is brought up, either they can't duplicate this flammability or the well water always was flammable - it DOES happen in nature.

The injection points for the frack water are well below the water table - much deeper in fact. Typically there's no trapped natural gas in the water table so, no reason to inject the fracking chemicals there..

Right now it is open in my mind though whether or not sinkholes result from mass dissolving of salt domes, and if fracking increases earthquakes in the areas where it's being done - primarily due to this dissolving of the salt domes and the fracturing of the bedrock. Thus far no connection has been shown...

[Midnight Marauder]

Originally Posted by masterminion

Now a smart fella would set up catch basins and catch all of that rainwater which runs right off of the impermeable surfaces. No matter how. They get the water.

Try that in your municipality. Let me know how that goes. I bet they tell you "no no no."

If the taxing entity is getting this water, this is one of the reasons they point to, for the tax. They have to pay to treat that water, see.

Here where I live storm water runs off into playa lakes, it's not treated by the city.