Scant hours before he is scheduled to be elected Culver City’s new mayor at this evening’s 7 o’clock City Council meeting, Mehaul O’Leary is spending this afternoon trying to convince peers and others to help him bring water into this parched state.
As a board member of the League of California Cities, the vice mayor will join other water activists at USC where former Gov. Schwarzenegger, the Schwarzenegger Institute and the Public Policy Institute of California are sponsoring a forum on drought-exploration proposals.
“The New Reality: Addressing California’s Water Challenge,” starts at 3 in the Doheny Memorial Library.
Besides Mr. Schwarzenegger, the roster of speakers during the three-hour forum will include Mark Baldasarre, president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute, Marcie Edwards, general manager of the frequently controversial Los Angeles DWP, Juliet Christian- Smith, a climate scientist and member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, among 21 speakers.
Mr. O’Leary has an agenda.
“One solution to our drought problem seems to be overlooked at every discussion, at every juncture,” he said this morning. “And I am going to bring it up again until somebody starts listening.
“It’s NAWAPA, the North American Water and Power Alliance that was created by John F. Kennedy.”
Mr. O’Leary explained the Alliance as “a system of 30 dams, from Alaska through the Great Lakes, down through Middle America, solving not only the drought in California, West Texas, Arizona, Nevada, northern Mexico, at the same time, relieving the flooding in the Northeast.”
Mr. O’Leary is frustrated because “nobody is discussing it” as a potential source for channeling desperately needed water into western states.
“Back in the 1970s, it was studied by the Parsons Group, and then it was dropped. John Kennedy no longer was around, and it never was studied again.
“I have been asking for this to be re-studied,” the vice mayor said.
“There is an opportunity here for all the states to get together and talk about importing water. More people are moving to California every year. Wateer problems only will get worse.”
I’m so happy to hear a leader is bringing up NAWAPA. We need to do long term investing in America and in the future. These sort of projects help get our economy going again and are what I feel most Americans would like to spend our tax money on instead of fighting wars and taking actions which funnel all the worlds wealth to the already obscenely rich banksters and oligarchs. I hope Donald Trump will be a president like this Mayor O’Leary. Thanks Mayor!