The Peripheral Canal vote, 30 years on

Here’s a cool map for folks thinking about California’s current discussions about building some sort of Peripheral Thingie to carry water around (through? beneath?) the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta:

1982 Peripheral Canal vote

1982 Peripheral Canal vote, courtesy PPIC

That’s the vote thirty years ago on a ballot initiative asking voters whether the state might build a Peripheral Canal to do the same thing. The red bits show level of pissed-off-ness about the idea. The green bits show where people liked it.

In  governance terms, California’s always been an unwieldy beast – divided north-south, divided urban-rural, divided in some sense east-west (coastal-inland?).

Map courtesy PPIC. (pdf) Nice interactive web version of the map here.

 

One Comment

  1. AFAIK this voting pattern is unique in the history of CA ballot measures. I don’t think views have changed much since then. There’s a bit more of a population tilt toward the south but, even assuming no shift in sentiment there, nothing like what would be needed to overcome the intensity in the north.

    What I really don’t get about the current process is how the people running it ever thought they could get away with designing a Thingie big enough to practically dewater the Delta (well, strictly speaking turn it into a brackish sump).

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