I’ve never seen it in all my years living here in The Valley – Smith Reservoir is EMPTY! Like completely empty. No water even at the deepest part at the dam. Not even a puddle! I didn’t realize how shallow it is, honestly.
Smith was good to fish from the early Spring till about mid-June when the moss become too overwhelming in the shallows. You can see how shallow the east side of the lake really is.
I caught some fairly big rainbows out of Smith. It’ll take years to build up another sustainable ecosystem at Smith if it ever comes back at all. They’ll just be stocker-size fish for years to come, and that’s only if levels can be sustained. Right now, it just doesn’t feel like it’s ever coming back! Sad.
We need to demand solutions. We can adapt. We MUST adapt! In other parts of America, its raining like crazy! We should have better infrastructure to capture that water, and pipe it out West. We should be capturing more water from rivers that just dump out into the ocean. We should really be talking about desalination plants. Several Middle East nations get 70%+ of their water from desalination plants. Right now this enormously important infrastructure is heavily dependant on fossil fuels. There is also naturally concern about their environmental impact.
We can solve those problems. We must solve those problems. We can’t reject the technology because of these issues. Desalination technology is pro-human. The worst thing ever is human suffering. I am pro-human first. I would rather see PEOPLE not suffer. I’d rather pipe water from our own desalination plants to places like the San Luis Valley, and deal with some problems then see the ecosystem collapse, and people lose their livelihoods, their prosperity, and their roots. And, don’t forget – we still need to grow food. We’ve built several large and small cities in literal deserts because we can harvest water.
The ocean = infinite water. We need the technology now even if it isn’t perfect. The problems can solved over time.
The billions spent on these dumb wars could easily fund these infrastructure projects. We have to start asking ourselves why our leaders don’t want to pursue real solutions. Why would they rather shutdown our wells, let fields go fallow, and make families lose their farms and ranches, rather than invest in proven technologies like desalination that support every nation in the Middle East?
If it’s good for them, why isn’t good for us? It feels like it’s by design. What do you think?