For the past four years, every Californian has dealt with drought. It doesn’t matter where they live, what they do or what their political party. California residents have watched their communities dry up, seen jobs lost, been pitted against one another by politicians and bureaucrats so they hide their failure to provide real solutions and set common sense priorities.
Those politicians and bureaucrats have had their chance to fix the water problems. Their time is up. Now it’s the voters’ turn.
The California Water4All organization is promoting the Water Priorities Constitutional Amendment and Bond Act, which is being sponsored by the California Water Alliance. The legislation does two simple things:
–It puts in the California Constitution what should be obvious to all. Water is a scarce resource in California and therefore the best use of water is for people first.
–Because we need a long term solution that gives all Californians more water, this ballot measure puts an end to high speed rail and takes the unspent money for bullet trains and moves it to building watershed and increasing the capacity of California to store water. Yes—end trains to nowhere that don’t work, and in doing so solve long term water problems without raising taxes.
State Attorney General Kamala Harris has approved the water initiative to begin a signature-gathering campaign. Supporters hope to have the measure on the June primary ballot. That effort is now underway.
Corcoran’s Erik Hansen, a leader of the California Water Alliance, announced that petitions in support of the initiative are available in Corcoran. Several sites will be providing the petitions, including Pizza Factory, the Corcoran Chamber of Commerce, the Corcoran Journal, Thurman and Thurman and Images.
According to California Water4All, recent polls show Californians strongly support terming the Governor’s priority high speed rail project and using its funds to provide people more water. The bond measure must collect almost 600,000 valid signatures of registered voters. The deadline for acquiring the signatures is April 26 to qualify for the June ballot.
On the heels of gaining approval for the ballot measures, Californians have been told that restrictions on urban water use will continue at least until the fall. State officials said last week that despite abundant rainfall this winter, the rain and snow have still been insufficient to offset the historic drought.
