The concept of “water banking” popped into my head yesterday morning while showering.  Following the routine capture of “warm up water” in a five gallon bucket by means of the bath tub faucet, I turned on the shower and started another drought inspired ritual: the morning race to save time and water.  During the rinse segment of the morning’s competition I happened to catch a glimpse of sudsy water disappearing into the drain and for some reason flashed on Friday’s unbelievable amount of rain runoff washing down the hill – sure wish I could have captured and saved more for later use.

H2O BANKING?

Water banking, familiar with that?  The water regulator’s system of saving/withholding specific amounts of water in one location so as to permit the legal transfer and use in a different geographical area?   Ever hear, see or somehow experience something that suddenly made other related stuff make perfect sense?  In this case, “perfect cents”?  Lol This is hard to explain.  The “banking” of water is an excellent analogy to the banking in financial institutions with which we most often associate the term “banking”.  Just replace the word money with water.  Money management – water management.   Money deficit – water deficit (drought).   Money credit – water credits.  Money loss – water loss.

We all recognize the concept of money right?  You know, dollars, cash, folding stuff, coin, bucks, bones, bread, dough, jack, dead presidents, Benjamins, and many other slang expressions for our legal currency.

MONEY or  H2O ?

Seems at first like a simple matter of just substituting different units of measurement for a different concept of value, in this case, a natural resource.  Like other things of value in this world (which obviously includes life forms such as humans) natural resources are often exploited by some humans for the sake of monetary profit and/or power over others.  Unfortunately, when such exploitation is accomplished in violation of clear legal restrictions it usually also involves significant waste and complete defeat of the intended beneficial uses by those entitled to its use through regulation.   I believe this is true whether with money or water.

$$$ H2O

True a dollar may have a fluctuating market value and a gallon is a gallon.  It is a volume measurement that doesn’t actually change, however, doesn’t even a gallon of water also become “more valuable” during drought?  I realize nothing is a perfect representation of something else (otherwise there wouldn’t be two different things right?), but there are a lot of similarities between “BREAD” and “WATER”.   (That’s how we live and survive right?  Bread and water?  Lol)

Dollars in US currency.  US Gallons in water.   A single dollar, or a $5, $10, $20, $50, $100.  Hundreds, Thousands, Millions, Billions, Trillions of dollars in currency.  How about a bitter dose of reality this Sunday morning?  http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Water in US measurement: Gallon = .13 CF; CF or cubic foot = 7.48 gallons; CCF – Centum Cubic Foot (one hundred times 1 CCF) = 748 gallons; one acre foot = 43,560 CF = 325,861 gallons; one CF per second = 646,317 gallons per day, etc.

SIDE NOTE:  Ever cross a bridge over a river/stream and notice a structure or some equipment near the flowing water?  Water regulation begins with understanding how much water is actually flowing from a watershed.  Often automated river/stream gage stations report to an integrated system of water release and retention operations by dams and reservoirs that are controlled by government approved facilities.

Check out the Merced River flow the other night just before midnight: (this real time reporting will obviously change…but I was referring to the 2500 cfs flow which should be viewable for a while):   http://www.merced-river.com/merced-flows.htm

Here is some other material on this water flow measuring: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/measureflow.html

 

GOVERNMENT REGULATES MONEY AND WATER

State and Federal Government regulates monetary currency flow through a number of public and private financial institutions.   Banks and credit unions count, monitor, bank, transfer, and loan dollars.  They are also concerned with issues of fraud, money laundering, criminal usury, funding of terrorism, etc.

Water is regulated on the federal level by the US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife, etc. while California organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Water Resources, and the State Water Resources Control Board, etc. regulate water on the state level.  From what I have read it seems like the State Water Resources Control Board, or the SWRCB, controls the “who, what, where, when and why” aspects of water use in the state.

This water regulation is an extremely complex subject especially with the numerous overlapping government jurisdictions and competing perspectives of maximum beneficial use under the California Constitution.

ANYWAY, it sure appears incorrect information was intentionally furnished, and later used by both the community services district and the respective counties of Tuolumne and Mariposa, to greatly expand the district service boundary through LAFCo annexations to the district.  This incorrect information was subsequently used by a variety of government agencies and departments for a host of  purposes including taxation.   This “district expansion” was based on LAFCo representations that even more service connections would be installed outside the clear legal boundary.  This was facilitated by actively concealing the fact Merced River water pumped under L11395 (MIDs license under which the district operates) COULD NOT be delivered to outside license permitted properties.

Revealing and understanding that fact would have been much more honest, accurate and probably would have prevented decades of unnecessary community turmoil.   (Who knows?  Maybe even our Administration Office would not have been destroyed by arson on February 27th, 2012?) 

What are the most important aspects of this DISINGENUOUS FACADE OF A MASSIVE WATER EMPIRE IN THE MIDDLE OF DROUGHT PRONE SIERRA NEVADA FOOTHILLS to the Merced River water entitled 3,128 +/- legal customers in the Lake Don Pedro Owners Association?

• All expansion must be supported with extremely expensive and traditionally unreliable ground water wells – (new wells advertised as emergency water source for existing customers)
• The additional costs associated with this ground water substitution program have been, and are proposed to continue to be, paid for by the 99% of legal users, and
• The District had/has no duty or obligation to provide an alternate source of water to properties outside the surface water treatment plant operating license.              

Such a decision to expand water service based on expensive and unreliable ground water wells to properties otherwise not entitled should have been based on an affirmative vote of every single property owner who had the legal right to Merced River water under L11395 and had paid money to this district for that right since 1980!

$

EVERY SINGLE PROPERTY OWNER – not just local residents.

The District was well aware of its service limitations from the very beginning of its existence in August of 1980.  The first directors on the board and “in charge of this brand new district” however, did not uniformly enforce regulations.  In all fairness, I cannot possibly imagine the horrible pressure placed on these directors to expand service to other nearby properties.

Many of these “outside permitted area” properties, if not all, were included in the expanded district service boundary based on repeated verbal assurances from an inherited General Manager of Sierra Highlands Water Company.

Check out the maps for yourself:

JUNE 15 1978 MID MAP SHOWS SIERRA HIGHLANDS WATER COMPANY BOUNDARIES

 

It should be noted that this GM was also a later employee of a multi-million dollar land development/mortgage corporation that was also aggressively pushing for additional service connections outside the MID POU in addition to other “special considerations” regarding water matters.  (Including refusal to pay substantial overdue water bills and negotiating reduced “settlements”).

Back to the dollar & water banking comparison – (Need to post and get outside to do some work!)

$$$$$$$$$$$$$

If a group of people who desperately wanted money constructed their own secret entry into a bank vault (with the assistance of a co-operative bank president)  would you as a legitimate customer of that bank consider that surreptitious vault entry (even if completely paid for by the group wanting more money) credible and/or sufficient evidence that the group seeking money was entitled to your bones?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

My best to you and yours, Lew

[ie, Juxtaposing the district’s position that the physical presence of a service connection is evidence of a right to water service with an illegal tunnel into a bank vault not being evidence of a right to another person’s money.]