One just doesn’t know of to laugh or cry at these news:
Sacramento sells water to a bottler, DS Services of America, at 99 cents for every 748 gallons — the same rate as other commercial and residential customers. That water is then bottled and sold at Walmart for 88 cents per gallon, meaning that $1 of water from Sacramento turns into $658.24 for Walmart and DS Services.
Keep all of this in mind when you next hear about California’s shortage of water. What’s a drought for you is a rainmaker for somebody else.
Here are some pretty charts and graphs to put things into perspective …
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Let’s check out the western part of the United States:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/RegionalDroughtMonitor.aspx?west
Now let’s check out California:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA
This is about considerably more than whether Walmart is getting a pass on water arbitrage from Sacramento — the problem doesn’t spread out from Sacramento.
Almost half of the state is experiencing “exceptional drought”, and over 65 percent of the state is experiencing “extreme drought” or worse.
How long does this set of conditions have to persist before the Central Valley, formerly one of America’s great agricultural regions, becomes a new Dust Bowl?
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Unfortunately, it is going in the direction of becoming another Dust Bowl. It’s very sad.
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