President Obama signed a bill that will address our dire water situation that stems not so much from drought as it does from policies that have squandered the water we would otherwise have in storage. The bill, with broad bipartisan support, passed through both houses of Congress and will facilitate water storage, conservation, desalinization, and recycling projects.
Now, to win back the West, we have to beat back government overreach, which has created vast wastelands of inertia, deprived the populace of the ability to transform raw materials into valuable resources, and deprived government of billions of dollars in tax revenue that would otherwise accrue.
Our problem has to do with the fact that the federal government owns and controls too much land—specifically, 47 percent of all the land in the West. Compare that to the eastern United States where only 4 percent of the land is owned by the government! These western lands are managed by four principal agencies: the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the Forest Service.
What’s worse is that the federal government has also established de facto control over much of the rest of the land that is still privately owned, by virtue of overreach in the area of the federal Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. Even though everyone agrees with the premise of protecting our waters from pollution and protecting species from becoming extinct, these federal regulations are no longer being used for the purpose for which they were created. Instead, they are being used to control land in the West by way of regulatory obfuscation, which arises to de facto confiscation.
Quite honestly, the federal government has no business controlling so much land because it is a pathetically poor land steward! This has to do with its hands-off approach to land management including prohibitions against production and use of natural resources.
Opening these vast tracts of land to recreation, logging, mining, housing, and ranching would make wise use of the land in addition to creating jobs and tax revenues. It would also cut down on devastating fires that routinely ravage the West, including Santa Barbara County.
We need to employ technology to our situation to solve our problems. Hence, building dams, reservoirs, pipelines, desalinization plants, and reclaimed water projects would provide more water than we could ever need! The fact that most all of Southern California lives on borrowed water has been the case for 100 years. Yet, despite tremendous population growth over the past 40 years, California has created virtually no new means to serve our increasing needs. Why is that?
It’s because people in power—including politicians, bureaucrats, and activists—value the goal of conservation more than they do solving real-world problems by increasing supply. They believe that increasing supply will eventually increase demand and the cycle will start all over again!
It’s high time to realize that most of the earth’s natural resources are in fact renewable, and what could be more natural than enjoying the bounty of the same?
Andy Caldwell is the executive director of COLAB and the host of The Andy Caldwell Show weekdays from 3 to 5 p.m. on AM1440. If you have a response to his commentary, let the Sun know at letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 5-12, 2017.