Not Enough Water

[Collin]

We joke about living on the wet coast of Canada. Well, starting April 2, and this is not an April fools joke, we are being hit with the most severe water restrictions ever. This from todays paper.
http://www.canada.com/cgi-bin/local.asp?f=/britishcolumbia/victoria/stories/20010322/010322victoriastory1.html

[Pegleg Smith]

I would never associate Canada with water shortages. It's a fact of life here in Southern California. This is a desert. Now we have to worry about the electricity drying up as well.

[Collin]

Typical politicians and environmentalists. The local dam was slated to be raised 5 years ago. But no, we had to wait till there is a crisis.
Hey Pegleg:
What's the latest on your private power companies? It is my understanding that many are teetering on bancruptcy and are offering BC Hydro (where they bought it from) 20 cents on the dollar. Has there been a worse example of deregulation?

[Pegleg Smith]

It is kind of eerie to drive thru an area at night and see a large block of blackness where there should be lights on. Happened last night on out way back from Arizona. Out by Palm Springs there was a casino all lit up and almost right next store to it complete blackness. lasted for about a mile. The other side of the freeway was lit up and after that mile the lights on my side of the freeway were on again. When I say blackness even the offramp signs were out.
Edison has engineered a way to cause panic in the populace that is guaranteed to lead to extreme rate increases.
The spineless governor of California has thrown money at the problem without fixing anything. He decided to buy all the main transmission lines and I guess we will now have a government official controlling the power distribution. I see nothing but problems ahead.
This isn't only the electric company it is also includes the natural gas company, the gasoline companies, the water companies and every other utility that can be listed. Deregulation has given them the incentive to demand higher prices for the service and if it isn't forthcoming they start saying they will have to file for bankruptcy protection. So. Cal. Edison paid 6 Billion in profits dollars to Edison international last year and now they are saying So. Cal. Edison is broke! Need to file for protection from its' creditors! It's a bookkeeping thing I warrant. They are only going to make the same profits this year so they in effect are losing money by not having increased profits! Don't you wish you could run your business this way? And then have the government step in with billions of dollars in GRANTS to help you through this troubled time? See you don't pay back grants.
We are about to become slaves to the utilities. We will continue to work but not have money to do anything but pay the obscenely huge utility bills.
And is our industry helping in this? Why yes we are. We are pushing high efficiency equipment which uses less energy, at the urging of the utility companies. Less energy equals less dollars to the utilities. This in turn equals less profits to the utilities, which leads to government bailouts. Viscous cycle.