The California water crisis is essentially being ignored by our government and the media. That comes as no surprise. The energy crisis was ignored until we began having rolling blackouts, and the education crisis was ignored until our schools began graduating students who were functionally illiterate. None have been rectified. In other words, California is inept government by crisis.

A recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California recommends that the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California stop drawing water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and to build a peripheral canal that would pump better quality drinking water around the Delta to more than 25 million Californians and farmers in the Central Valley and Southern California.

Contentious debates about the Delta and a peripheral canal have been going on for decades. The proposed peripheral canal was put to a vote of the people in a voter inititiative that was defeated in 1982, largely by environmental fear mongering and Northern California voters who feared a water grab by Southern California.

This "Wag the Dog" mentality by liberal government and unreasonable environmentalists has cost Southern Californians dearly, and continues to do so. Our electric and natural gas energy rates are the highest in the nation. And our water rates are increasing because of a 30 percent cutback in water supplies from the California Water Project to protect Delta Smelt fish.

Two-thirds of California's population is in Southern California. It's time for us to wake up, wise up and protect our future. We need more, affordable energy. Above all, we must have adequate supplies of water. We simply cannot survive without it. While our government and selfish interests continue to talk the talk, a voter initiative to build the canal now is certainly in order.