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Re: What's Going On In the San Joaquin Valley?
Author: Weary of Whining Corporations!
Date: 09-11-2014 - 17:38
Maybe those farmers should just unit train it in. Twenty or thirty 150 car unit trains a day ought to doooo - right.
With all the T-111 tank cars about to be put out of CBR work by pending government mandates, maybe they instead could be switched to hauling water from where there is too much of it, to whining California farmers. Trouble is, even if the water was free, they would still have to pay all those freight charges. And still be whining. Heaven forbid!
But the real icing on the cake of course, is that whining railroads that just can't Handle It"; would now have a another, very compelling excuse for delaying Amtrak into oblivion; as well as for letting a another bumper U.S. crop of the world's food supply, just rot on the ground, even while people all over the world are starving. But of course, they still certainly deserve all that "Revenue Adequacy" the STB keeps ensuring for these Can't-Handle-It organizations. No matter how bad a job they do - Right?
As for paying water customers, farmers are NOT among them. The only part of California's water delivery system they paid for, was the parts between the federal and state canals and their own fields. A few dams (usually small) were built by PG&E for electrical generation. And some ranchers in the dry hills did sometimes build small earthen structures to create watering ponds for cattle, fed from wind driven wells.
However, all but a pittance of the capital costs for the big reservoirs and major canals were paid for by state and federal tax payers, as were the weirs and other facilities to draw water from delta estuaries. Farmers paid not a dime of these costs in their water rates.
Their fees all went to maintenance and to the massive electric bill to pump the water uphill in order to water the dry west side of the valley; which pumping consumes more electric energy, than do all the other uses in the region combined. Despite the fees farmers complain about so much, the taxpayers still must pay a good part of these operating costs, and virtually all capital costs.
And no, these farmers aren't "getting their water ripped off"; so much as it is, that the water they previously ripped off, is now getting re-ripped off again. But the real problem is the unsustainable nature of growing high water usage crops such as cotton, in a desert such as the western side of the Central Valley. Now if we could actually make it sustainable; maybe just by artificially warming the Alaskan current a bit, as it runs along the Baja Coast, thus causing an El Nino weather pattern to form.
Ha! Puny man, and a whole lot of F.M. . (Freakin' Magic)
And then of course, there's all those unintended environmental consequences, that mankind has so far been unable to foresee - and that the corporate world couldn't care less about. Puny Man indeed!
With all the T-111 tank cars about to be put out of CBR work by pending government mandates, maybe they instead could be switched to hauling water from where there is too much of it, to whining California farmers. Trouble is, even if the water was free, they would still have to pay all those freight charges. And still be whining. Heaven forbid!
But the real icing on the cake of course, is that whining railroads that just can't Handle It"; would now have a another, very compelling excuse for delaying Amtrak into oblivion; as well as for letting a another bumper U.S. crop of the world's food supply, just rot on the ground, even while people all over the world are starving. But of course, they still certainly deserve all that "Revenue Adequacy" the STB keeps ensuring for these Can't-Handle-It organizations. No matter how bad a job they do - Right?
As for paying water customers, farmers are NOT among them. The only part of California's water delivery system they paid for, was the parts between the federal and state canals and their own fields. A few dams (usually small) were built by PG&E for electrical generation. And some ranchers in the dry hills did sometimes build small earthen structures to create watering ponds for cattle, fed from wind driven wells.
However, all but a pittance of the capital costs for the big reservoirs and major canals were paid for by state and federal tax payers, as were the weirs and other facilities to draw water from delta estuaries. Farmers paid not a dime of these costs in their water rates.
Their fees all went to maintenance and to the massive electric bill to pump the water uphill in order to water the dry west side of the valley; which pumping consumes more electric energy, than do all the other uses in the region combined. Despite the fees farmers complain about so much, the taxpayers still must pay a good part of these operating costs, and virtually all capital costs.
And no, these farmers aren't "getting their water ripped off"; so much as it is, that the water they previously ripped off, is now getting re-ripped off again. But the real problem is the unsustainable nature of growing high water usage crops such as cotton, in a desert such as the western side of the Central Valley. Now if we could actually make it sustainable; maybe just by artificially warming the Alaskan current a bit, as it runs along the Baja Coast, thus causing an El Nino weather pattern to form.
Ha! Puny man, and a whole lot of F.M. . (Freakin' Magic)
And then of course, there's all those unintended environmental consequences, that mankind has so far been unable to foresee - and that the corporate world couldn't care less about. Puny Man indeed!
