Gov. Jerry Brown's Payoff to the Enviro-Extremists

Proposition #1 isn’t a water infrastructure bond, it’s nothing more than a $7.12 Billion payoff to the enviro-extremists who control natural resources in California. What else do you call it when over 50% of the money is being used to fund the daily operations of those agencies whose goal is deny every drop of water to agriculture and industry in our state so that the fish can flourish while the farmers die. It’s not by accident that over 800,000 acre-feet of water were allowed to flow out to sea in the midst of the worst drought most Californians have ever seen. That’s real power.

Here’s how they plan to use this 40-year money:

 – $520 million to improve water quality for “beneficial use,” for
 reducing and preventing drinking water contaminants, disadvantaged
 communities, and the State Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund Small
 Community Grant Fund.
 – $1.495 billion for competitive grants for multibenefit ecosystem and
 watershed protection and restoration projects.
 – $810 million for expenditures on, and competitive grants and loans to,
 integrated regional water management plan projects.
 – $725 million for water recycling and advanced water treatment
 technology projects.
 – $900 million for competitive grants, and loans for, projects to
 prevent or clean up the contamination of groundwater that serves as a
 source of drinking water.
 – $395 million for statewide flood management projects and activities.

So far, that’s a lot of words to describe a $4.42 Billion jobs program to keep all the enviro-bureaucrats employed for the next few years so they can make life miserable for anyone involved in the production of food or energy.

– $2.7 billion for water storage projects, dams and reservoirs.

When we finally get around to actual infrastructure–that is, water storage and conveyance–there’s only $2.7 Billion left for water storage, and not a penny for conveyance.

If we are going to leverage the future earnings of our children and grandchildren, shouldn’t it be for something that will last at least that long? If Proposition 1 was strictly for building dams, conveyance, and making physical improvements to water storage infrastructure, then it would be worthy of your vote.

The problem is that long after the money has been squandered on all the pet projects the Sacramento leftists couldn’t find funding for, we’ll still be paying and paying and paying. When you spread repayment over 40 years–if we get a favorable enough interest rate–we might only pay double or triple or quadruple the original amount.

However, in a state that needs to build over $750 billion in infrastructure over the next decade, can we afford to waste scarce dollars to fund the day-to-day operations of the same gov’t agencies whose mission is to take more and more control over our private property in the name of the environment?

I’ve been trying to figure out why so many voted for this boondoggle. The new mantra of the Republicans in California is we stand for fiscal conservatism and nothing else. Let’s review that. On one hand, they can legitimately claim that this $7.12 Billion bond has less pork than the $11.2 Billion bond passed in 2009, but never placed on the ballot for fear it would fail. And given the pressures of the drought, I’m sure many of the Central Valley representatives felt compelled to vote for it. But when you look at what we get for what we are paying, it’s hard to justify a sticker price of $7.12 Billion for $2.7 Billion worth of water storage, and no conveyance.

And we all know that the enviro-extremists who aren’t employed by the government will try to strike it rich by blocking any of the legitimate projects funded through this bond, making a payday for these activists groups, but whittling away the funds available for building actual concrete infrastructure.

I must admit that as I pondered why the Democrats voted for something that shrunk the payola available, I realized that perhaps I was being obtuse and missing the obvious. The so-called “Water Bond” passed the legislature on Wednesday, August 13th to great fanfare. Just over two weeks later, on Friday, August 29, a bill to takeover control of groundwater and limit how much private property owners can draw, passed out of the legislature to the governor’s desk.

I believe that in exchange for “allowing” a fraction of what’s needed to be set aside for dams–which the environmentalists loath–the Governor got his Water Bond out in time to ride a white horse to the rescue of the crisis that he and his cohorts created.

What the farmers and industry leaders failed to calculate was that the governor had sold them out long before the ink was even dry on so-called “Water Bond”, agreeing to give the enviro-extremists disguised as gov’t regulators control over the water that flows under their private property.

However you slice it, Proposition 1 is a bad deal for everyone except those who get paid to control us by controlling our water.

That’s why I was the one of only two “NO” votes, and why you should join me in rejecting this indecent proposal.