On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:24:48 -0700, Billy wrote:

Good read Ross. Thank you. There must be a series of dams to store the
rains, so that a farmer can tell whether it is a good year for annuals
or not.

There is a complex arrangement of water catchment authorities that
monitor rainfall, plus local and state authorities that monitor river
flows. The information they gather helps formulate whether the already-
sold water allocations can actually be "delivered" to the irrigators.
Overselling allocations (especially to tax-avoidance-based MIS
plantations) has meant that irrigators who did the "right thing" and put
off drawing on their allocations until later in the season actually got
no water, and thus had paid for an abundance of nothing.

The current fiasco^H^H^H^H^H^H government effort is an attempt to
establish water allocations based more on actually how much water is
likely to flow, and allowing for some to come out at the ends of the
system too.

Front page of the local paper heralds the planets human population as
reaching the 7 billion level. There is certain to be tension between
resources and needs.

To me it just seems so bloody damn stupid that we have supported these
profane wars, which cause people to hate us, when a fraction of the
money would have given clean water and sanitation to the worlds
underprivileged (previously colonized), and they would have loved us.

But the OECD world needs to secure the oil and the gas pipelines! I
mean, bring peace and democracy to the middle east and expunge terrorism
from the planet!
--
Ross McKay, Toronto, NSW Australia
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" - Wizard of Oz