Drought-Stricken California Slated to Run Out of Water Soon — But is This a Man-Made Crisis?

27th October 2015

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Last March, NASA released shocking news: California has about one year left of stored water. To some, this may not be surprising considering the state has been suffering over the last four years from severe drought. Couple this with a large population and massive agricultural industry, and it would seem to be par for the course in the scheme of things. But many are questioning whether California’s water supply running dry is truly a natural and unfortunate event or if the crisis is intentionally engineered for a specific purpose.

Drought, Water Rights and the West

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Throughout its history, the American West has always been known to have dry spells and periods of drought, which is why water rights have been an important factor since the days of pioneers settling the land. And yet, California hasn’t seen a drought this grave in about 500 years.

Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and a professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine, writes in the Los Angeles Times:

“Data from NASA satellites show that the total amount of water stored in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins — that is, all of the snow, river and reservoir water, water in soils and groundwater combined — was 34 million acre-feet below normal in 2014. That loss is nearly 1.5 times the capacity of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir. … Statewide, we’ve been dropping more than 12 million acre-feet of total water yearly since 2011.”

Famiglietti believes a large portion of the problem is due to lack of forward planning regarding water security in the state, as well as mismanagement of agricultural water use. Like others, he questions why California has no contingency plan for persistent drought and why mandatory water rationing hasn’t been implemented statewide. When we look at the problem from a broader perspective, there are a multitude of solutions that, if actualized before this midnight hour, could have prevented the crisis at hand.

Building an adequate number of reservoirs, banning the use of fresh water for fracking, purifying sewage wastewater for irrigation and industrial use, utilizing ocean turbine technology to power desalinization plants or creating water from moisture in the air are just a few of the possibilities.

A number of countries have even turned to purifying wastewater for use as drinking water. Namibia has employed this technology for decades. And Singapore has followed suit by building advanced wastewater recycling facilities that meet about a third of its daily water requirements. Meanwhile, researchers at Alexandria University in Egypt have developed a desalination technique called pervaporation, which removes salt, impurities and even sewage from sea water in just minutes using specially designed synthetic membranes and an electricity-free evaporation process.

Needless to say, technology is available to support water security.

So why would California prioritize a $68 billion dollar high-speed rail system instead of investing in an infrastructure which would ensure adequate water for the state? Evidently, drought can be quite valuable for those who recognize the opportunity.

Weather Manipulation, Profiteering and Monsanto

Dane Wigington, lead researcher at Geoengineering Watch, believes California’s drought is a direct effect of weather modification. In a recent article Climate Engineering, El Niño and the “Scheduled Weather” for the Coming Winter in The US, he explores the reasoning behind geoengineering:

“Climate engineering is about power and control, and about hiding the severity of climate damage already done (while doing even more damage at the same time) from a population that so far has not wanted to face the truth in the first place. The climate engineers have managed to keep the Eastern US cooler than average for almost three years in spite of a record warm world.

“Why? To help manipulate the perception of the US population.”

Wigington also notes that “Weather “forecasters” are now trumpeting the arrival of a “Godzilla” El Niño event, but somehow — because of its direct link to ongoing climate engineering — they seem to already know that there will be no relief for the epic California drought.”

El Niño has been attempting to form since 2007, only to be thwarted time and again by the constant high pressure over the US West Coast — referred to by meteorologists as “the ridiculously resilient ridge” of constant high pressure over the US west coast. Could this high pressure system be created through geoengineering? Absolutely. When heavy metals are released into the air through aerosol spraying operations — such as what is occurring off the US West Coast — ionosphere heater installations (like HAARP) are much more effective in creating and maintaining zones of high pressure.

Climate Engineering, El Niño and the Bizarre “Scheduled Weather” for the Coming Winter in The US - West Coast Precipitation Map

This recent radar map of the Eastern Pacific shows reflective metals used in Geoengineering as precipitation, where in fact there is none.

Beyond managing public perception of global warming, who would benefit from a prolonged drought?

The documentary “Why in the World are they Spraying?” tackles this question and more. Experts in the fields of finance, agriculture and geoengineering weigh-in on the motivations behind weather control.

One aspect deals with agricultural commodities and how — if you have inside information about weather patterns — you can make a killing on market predictions. Another facet covers farmers bankrupted by drought or erratic weather destroying their crops, who are then forced to sell their land at rock bottom prices — largely to corporate entities. Finally, the idea of profiteering through genetically modified seeds developed specifically to tolerate the conditions created by aerosol spraying programs (drought, heavy metal contamination, salty soils, flood, heat, cold, severe weather) is addressed.

Monsanto holds thousands of patents for genetically modified seeds with the ability to withstand environmental stress. The biotech behemoth holds a patent, “Stress tolerant plants and methods thereof,” which explains the direct benefit of these GM creations:

“Improvement of abiotic stress tolerance in plants would be an agronomic advantage to growers allowing enhanced growth and/or germination in cold, drought, flood, heat, UV stress, ozone increases, acid rain, pollution, salt stress, heavy metals, mineralized soils, and other abiotic stresses.”

Water “the petroleum for the next century”

We also have to consider the trend of water becoming a commodity in and of itself. When something is in short supply with high demand, the situation is ripe for corruption, exploitation and profit. Wall Street has seen the writing on the wall for years now and is cashing in on the potential by purchasing aquifers, lakes and water rights.

In an report for Global Research, The New “Water Barons”: Wall Street Mega-Banks are Buying up the World’s Water, writer Jo-Shing Yang explains:

“In 2008, Goldman Sachs called water “the petroleum for the next century” and those investors who know how to play the infrastructure boom will reap huge rewards, during its annual “Top Five Risks” conference. Water is a US$425 billion industry, and a calamitous water shortage could be a more serious threat to humanity in the 21st century than food and energy shortages, according to Goldman Sachs’s conference panel.”

Reporter Paul Gallagher elaborates further, in a July 2015 article entitled Is California’s Water Supply Being ‘Enronned’:

“Over the past 30 years, global financial firms have pushed for the privatization of public water supply systems all over the world, and in the past 15 years they have developed exchange-listed “water price indices” to introduce “trading floors” into the world of populations’ water supplies…

“In the midst of the California drought emergency, the huge multinational Nestlé, seller of bottled water to the world, is providing one example of what must be stopped. Gov. Jerry Brown, while cutting public water use 25% by order in Sacramento, as in the rest of the state, has placed no limitation on Nestlé’s withdrawal of freshwater from aquifer springs nearby. Nestlé… continues to draw water at an 80 million gallon/year rate, paying 2 or 3 cents/gallon; it bottles the water in Sacramento, and sells it for roughly $16/gallon-equivalent to the city’s population, which has had its tap water use restricted.”

As it turns out, creating water scarcity in California through manipulated weather can be a highly profitable venture indeed. For some, anyway.