I like how you looked at it relative to the present and the future. Things are going to change pretty soon, changing not only your stance but probably so many other people's stances too. Everything is relative to the current state of alarm, just like how now there should be a very high concern with our water consumption going into the next couple of years. Planning is a huge part of being able to reduce and conserve to help the environment.

I do think that we should keep the dam because it provides so many people with clean water in the Bay Area. If all the water was released, it could be very harmful to both the people in the area but also the surrounding ecosystems. The entire Bay Area would need to find a new source to get their water from, which would be an insane amount of renovating and energy to filtrate and transport the new water. The dam should be restored for the benefit and survival of such a huge population.

I agree about what you said about potential socioeconomic distributions of water. If water quality was compromised, the communities who cannot afford even relatively safe water will be the most threatened because they have to power to find an alternative. People with money and privileges might be able to find some alternative to having the bad quality of water, such as individual water filters, a luxury that not everybody in the world has access to.

I believe that water quality is more important than water quantity because no matter how much water is in abundance, the water is not useful to us as a population if we cannot use or consume it. Once contaminated, the efforts to revert water back to safe and healthy standards is much harder than maintaining the water quality overall. Water quantity should be an after thought after water quality because once the water is safe for everyone and every aspect of society to consume, then we can shift our concerns towards water quantity, prioritizing water efficiency, reducing and conserving as much as we can.

I definitely agree with you here that the complexity of the groundwater versus surface water situation is a reason supporting the separation of the management of these resources. Since it is so complicated, each department should be focused on separately, with the needs of each different resource be focused on entirely by the assigned department. Communication is key for everything regarding separate management styles, and if the two sectors of groundwater and surface water could be managed properly but separate, then we could do things properly the way they need to be done for the sake of the future.

I think that managing groundwater and surface water separately is the best option because even though they are intertwining resources, they have different guidelines and recommendations for elongating the time for the available resource. Groundwater is more important to protect than surface water and in our current situation, groundwater should be managed more carefully and just differently than surface water because if the surface water was to dry up, then groundwater is all we got. If they are managed jointly, then some attention that would have been put towards preserving groundwater could be sacrificed in order for the overall operation to run smoothly.

I definitely agree that supporting the cycle of the food web could benefit ourselves because having a natural and healthy system of predators consuming prey can help us with our eating needs as well as the distribution of nutrients throughout the food web. When one animal eats a plant, and another animal eats that animal, all the nutrients that were originally from photosynthesis are then passed on between individuals, potentially reaching us and providing us with nutrients as well. Protecting the water system of the environment is in our best interest for the future because if it is completely destroyed, we will not be able to survive without a replenished water source.

I agree that the environment should have an equal emphasis with humans when considering the effects of water planning because the environment has provided us with our home and we as the human species survive and thrive within nature, so if we destroy it, we therefore destroy our own home. There is a certain delicate balance in the cycle of life, and if we disrupt the water cycle, it could harm certain species or ecological systems that provide us with essential components of life, such as oxygen or water filtration. The environment has provided us with water in the first place, so we in turn should reciprocate with giving it just as much importance as the human race.

I agree with your points related to the economic benefits for providing SoCal with water. If NorCal were to choose to cut them off, that would just in turn be hurtful to themselves because then they wouldn't have the financial support of the Southern California industries. There is a balance between what NorCal provides for the state and what SoCal provides, and altering one in turn affects the other. If we were to change the system, we would need to ensure that it would be for the benefit of the entire state as a whole, because NorCal and SoCal are just two interacting parts of one overall whole state.

I believe that NorCal has an obligation to continue providing water to SoCal because they are apart of the same state, and if they were to cut off the supply, SoCal would need to go outside of the state to find water supply, which is much more risky and could end up with other states threatening to cut them off or taking advantage for their state to profit at the expense of SoCal. Water is a human right, as we discussed in the past debates, which therefore puts the obligation on NorCal to provide for the rest of the state. They have the resources necessary, and restricting those resources would be unfair and self-destructive. SoCal provides a lot for the state regarding economic and agricultural profits, and cutting off the water would destroy that economy, making all of California financially unstable.