The state's worst recorded drought lasted from 1950 through 1957 and prompted the creation of artificial lakes all across Texas to supply water to a state that at the time had a population of 15 million – a whopping 10 million fewer than today
– Other news –
Grim predictions say 9 more years of drought posible | By Jim Forsyth | San Antonio Sept. 29 2011 (Reuters) - A devastating Texas drought that has browned city lawns and caused more than $5 billion in damages to the state's farmers and ranchers could continue for another nine years, a state forecaster said on Thursday.
Courts deny enforcement of Texas sonogram law | By Christy Hoppe | Dallas News Sept. 29 2011 – On Wednesday, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to allow the law to go into effect pending appeals and on Thursday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, acting on behalf of the high court, also refused to lift the lower court order.
Budget trickery worsens in shortfall year | By Jason Embry Austin American-Statesman Wed. Sept. 28 2011 – In a report released this week, Comptroller Susan Combs illustrates the trickery that legislators and Gov. Rick Perry used . . . lawmakers assess fees under the guise that they will be used for a specific purpose — to help low-income residents pay electric bills, for instance — but then leave much of that money unspent to balance the state budget.By Bill Dawson
Texas Climate News
Sept 29 2011
Read the complete story
In outlining recommendations for avoiding a major water shortage by 2060, the new plan has a more detailed discussion of manmade climate change than the 2007 State Water Plan did, including advice for regional water planning groups on how to “address uncertainty and reduce risks” associated with its projected impacts. The Water Development Board drew criticism from some climate scientists for deciding not to factor climate change into its 2007 plan.
The draft 2012 plan warns that water demand driven by rising population is projected to outstrip supplies by a projected 8.3 million acre-feet of water by 2060 if the state doesn’t construct new supply projects or management strategies.
“Annual economic losses from not meeting water supply needs could result in a reduction in income of approximately $11.9 billion annually if current drought conditions approach the drought of record [a multi-year drought in the 1950s], and as much as $115.7 billion annually by 2060, with over a million lost jobs,” the plan warns.
Texas Climate News is a project of the Texas Climate Initiative at the Houston Advanced Research Center.
10 comments:
Several amendments to the Texas Constitution will be voted on in November.
Here is Proposition 2: "The constitutional amendment providing for the issuance of additional general obligation bonds by the Texas Water Development Board in an amount not to exceed $6 billion at any time outstanding."
Texans know that many areas of the state need more water, and at first look, this proposition might seem benign. But know that:
1) Loans can be made to cities, but also to WATER SUPPLY COMPANIES. This means that an investor-owned utility (such as Aqua Texas or Corix) can receive low-interest loans from the State to build or improve their businesses. The public would be providing them the financing to do business.
Those investor-owned utilities currently are green-lighted by the corrupt Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to charge whatever exorbitant water rates they desire to the captive public. It seems that all the Texas Water Board Development funds should go to publicly-owned
water facilities.
2) The amount of money the TWDB will be allowed to allocate at any one time jumps from the current $2 billion to $6 billion. Opponents of the proposition point out that a smaller increase would be wiser -- so that the public can evaluate how the money is being used before it agrees to more lending.
3) Although the amount TWDB can lend is stated as $6 billion, that figure is grossly misleading. Because the loan is a REVOLVING one.
That is, the $6 billion that can be lent is an amount that can be owed AT ANY ONE TIME, but new loans can automatically be granted as old ones are paid off -- just so long as "only" $6 billion is outstanding in loans at any one time. This proposition really grants TWDB unlimited lending authority forever -- a perk that only the Texas Veterans Land Board currently has.
This proposition feels like another crony favor/payoff to Big Business.
Silly Prop 2, money might buy you more pipelines, reservoirs and greedy water profiteers but it can't buy you more water from the sky over Texas. That power you ain't got.
We taxpayers must get it through our heads -- or tattoo-ed on our wrists -- that bond issues = debt = money that some or all taxpayers must repay. When you see Proposition 2 on the ballot in November, whereby the Texas Water Development Board is asking for $6 billion (to start) to issue in bonds, remind yourself that that $6 billion is taken from the one pot of money that the Legislature has to spend, and ask yourself whether that $6 billion could better be spent elsewhere -- or not at all.
Remember that our Legislature has whacked over $4 billion from education funding recently. School districts are forced to raise property taxes to replace part of the $4 billion they had counted on; teachers have lost jobs and will need unemployment benefits; with fewer teaching personnel, Texas will fall even further in student achievement.
In short, remember that every dollar spent on new development, F1 racetrack funding, grandiose parkways, and astroturf is a dollar that can't be spent for education, health care, or other important needs.
Go to www.co.hays.tx.us.
Click on "Elections & Voting."
On left side of page, in green,
click on "Nov. 8,2011 Constitutional Amend. Election."
There you will see a sample ballot for all 10 proposed amendments AND local DSISD and City of San Marcos elctions.
Also voting dates and locations.
Go to www.lwvtexas.org for a discussion of the pros and cons for each amendment. That is the website of the League of Women Voters of Texas, a non-partisan educational group.
Many of the nut-cases on this Blog share a whacky belief in the Manifesto below of the Communists and Anarchists presently invading Wall Street.
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
To Anonymous, Oct 4, 5:08 am:
I think your brain must have been
addled when you were posting at
5 a.m.!
Give a source for your screwball
13 "demands." I've never seen such
a list.
Those wackos on Wall Street are my heroes. They are part of a sacred American tradition--rebelling against injustice and greed which now controls every nook and cranny of our government and political system. They have no agenda. Just JUSTICE which is more than enough for me. The Wall Street 99 protest is spreading across the country like a wildfire. Austin, Thursday, is next. I LOVE IT! Generation X'ers are finding their voice. They will overtake the tea party. And Thank GOD for that.
Anonymous, Oct 4, 5:08 am said... The list of demands was from their (OWS) own website at ;
http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/
What a bunch of fools they are.
.
The "nutcases" with Occupy Wall Street have more courage in their big toe than any of the ignorant hillbilly Anonymouses who comment about them being idiots.
See, the sole purpose of liberals is to bring the goober right wing racist and xenophobe corporate lemmings kicking and scraaming into the 21st century.
The 13 Commandments on the Occupy Wall Street website are so beyond the cognitive abilities of the Amonymouses who comment above that their only response is to attack and diminish - sure signs of rabid inhumanity by those whose first response is to hate change and progress.
You Anonymouses are cowards. And you are the ones who deserve the mace at your racist anti-Obama Tea Party KKK rallies.
It's a PROPOSED list of demands. You do know what the word, PROPOSED, means.
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