Reader Photo: Spend billions on new reservoirs for California, not a bullet train
A warning buoy sits on the dry lake bed more than 100 yards away from a boat ramp at Folsom Lake in Folsom, Calif., last October.
To the editor: In the 40-year period (1934-74) preceding Jerry Brown’s first election as governor, California expanded its water-storage capacity from about 5 million acre-feet to 20 million by building dams and reservoirs. In the 40 years since Brown first took office in 1975, we’ve grown that storage capacity to just about 22 million acre-feet, despite the fact that population has nearly doubled from 21 million in 1974 to an estimated 39 million today. (“Is the era of dam-building over? Backers of several major projects say it shouldn’t be,” Dec. 27)
From 1962 to 1975, with a much smaller tax base than we have today, we expanded storage by more than 11 million acre-feet, many times what we’ve managed over the last four decades.
The effects of this severe drought could have been substantially mitigated with an additional 20 million acre-feet of storage if our government leaders had just kept pace with our population growth.
John Tintle, Nipomo, Calif.
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To the editor: Let’s get our priorities straight.
Who cares about $10 billion for mere water and food, when $70 billion gets us a high-speed train that can take two and a half hours off my trip to visit Gramps in Gilroy?
Robert Warner, Altadena
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