So here’s where things stand

So export water contractors plan to seize Delta land to create a combination of habitat and infrastructure so complicated that they can’t even figure out how to describe it in a proper public project description. Their plan to pay for this hodgepodge includes issuing bonds based on a degree of water supply availability and stability that no amount of infrastructure can possibly guarantee. And they’re going to try to persuade their ratepayers to pay for the bonds and bond investors to accept the risk. The greater the risk, the higher the returns to investors, and the higher the cost to ratepayers.

These are the kinds of fantasies that brought us the savings and loan debacle, Enron, the foreclosure crisis, and a national recession.

Somewhere along the line, “beneficiary pays” will fall apart and we’ll see California’s taxpayers on the hook for bailouts.

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