This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A Public Forum letter published in The Salt Lake Tribune alleges that the drive to create a Bears Ears National Monument in Utah is being pushed by California millionaires who don't care about the Bears Ears and the Native American tribes supporting (or opposing) it. It's all just a plot to get the water.
[Didn't Jack Nicholson make a movie about that?]
— Bears Ears a California plot to take our water — Clark Larsen | The Public Forum | The Salt Lake Tribune
" ... The best way to keep stealing the water from the other six river basin states is to keep people, farmers, ranchers, loggers, miners, drillers, tourists, settlers and businesses out of the watershed. I suspect they have found the best way to do that is to enlist Uncle Sam in their cause."
I'm not buying it.
But guess who is ready to pick up and run with this handy conspiracy theory:
— California's drought: How Trump's blustering caricatured a genuine crisis — Michael Hiltzik | The Los Angeles Times
"Of all the mistakes, misstatements, and assorted bloviations issuing from Donald Trump during the current presidential campaign, surely one of the leading head-scratchers is his May 27 assertion to the effect that 'there is no drought' in California. ...
" ... This was a typical Trump liturgy, in that he took an extremely complicated problem and caricatured it as a simple problem, easily solved. It was also typical in that, while masquerading as the people's friend, he actually was parroting the position of vested interests — in this case, Central Valley growers and their water suppliers, especially the giant Westlands Water District, which has been grousing for years about its drought-related reduced allocations from the federal Central Valley Project. ..."
— Lies Trump Reality — Phil Plait | Slate
"At this point, it's painfully clear that Donald Trump is incapable of telling the truth. Listening to him talk is actually rather amazing; just by the laws of statistics he should randomly say something accurate just once, at least by accident.
"Yet, here we are. ...
" ... To believe there's plenty of water in California you'd either have to be a cactus or completely, utterly oblivious to reality. Because that's grossly wrong. Grotesquely wrong. ..."
— But Donald Trump Is Right About California Water — The Problem Is The Price, Not The Drought — Tim Worstall | Forbes
" ... Trump is actually correct here. There is no existential shortage of water in the state, not at all. What there is is misallocation of water and that misallocation is because water is incorrectly priced there. The solution therefore is to get the pricing right: then the allocation will be. ..."