Bush admin hurts environment while simultaneously busting the budget.

[Mackenzie]

We often hear that there's a shortage of water for people who live in cities in the west. But actually, there is plenty of water. The problem is that the Bush administration is doing ridiculous things like what's described here. It's bad for the environment. It causes water shortages for people who live in western cities. And it's increasing the budget deficit.

And to top it all off, it's also corporate welfare for the big agribusinesses.

Don't let those dishonest Republicans get away with their lies that they believe in "small government."

By the way, an "acre foot" is enough water to cover one acre with water that's one foot deep. That's about 325,000 gallons. It's what a typical household uses over a two year period.

http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/enviro/watermkts/main.html

The Central Utah Project (CUT) currently delivers water to Utah farmers at the subsidized price of $8 per acre-foot. The farmers in turn produce crops that yield $30 per acre-foot, yet the water costs taxpayers about $300 per acre-foot.

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http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1557

Water for farming from the federal Bureau of Reclamation sells for $10 to $15 per acre-foot, and the cheapest subsidized water sells for as little as $3.50 per acre- foot, even though it may cost $100 to pump the water to the farmers… Meanwhile, households in Palo Alto pay about $65 for the same quantity of water, and some urban water users pay as much as $230. The most desperate nonagricultural communities along the Pacific coast of California have gone as far as to build desalination plants to obtain potable water from the ocean at a cost of approximately $3,000 per acre-foot. (Since this was written, it is now possible to desalinate ocean water at about $1,000 an acre-foot.)"

"How much of the cheap water is used? One agricultural use alone, irrigating pastures for grazing cows and sheep, used 5.3 million acre-feet of water in 1986. This is enough water to cover the District of Columbia to a depth of 1,250 feet! …Yet the industry of raising cattle and sheep on irrigated pasture in California had gross revenues for that year of less than $100 million. Plainly, devoting so much water to such a low-value use is possible only because the water used to irrigate pastures is sold so cheaply."