It was posted on an older thread, but there's a quote by a surveyor and geologist in the 1800s as they were defining water rights. He mentioned there is no way to sustain an agricultural population in these areas despite the aquifers.
Old timey academics often had no idea what they were talking about. I don't know the full quote, but that's obviously untrue because indigenous peoples already lived here.
They weren't intensively farming the area. What he (and I) meant was "sustain an agricultural population." They were divvying up water rights but it was recognizable very early on that even modest farming could deplete the aquifer faster than it regenerates.
I've edited it for clarity, but this is one of those times to refer to the site guidelines. You're supposed to look for the most charitable interpretation of a comment's phrasing -- what are the odds I somehow didn't know Indians exist?
I presumed you knew about native Americans, but that doesn't mean the geologist considered them.
Anyway, it's still relevant since many populations in the Sonoran and Mojave had highly intensive traditional agriculture. I assume those are the areas that were being discussed?
The lack of what we'd traditionally call intensive agriculture in places like central valley is mainly just a historical semantic distinction. They cultivated and intensively shaped their local environments to maximize food production, but they weren't herding or clearing fields so it doesn't count.
I've been hearing about water issues my entire life living in California but I don't worry about it because one of these days people will come to their senses and realize clean water is a precious resource that is priced too cheaply. Once we pay for it what it's worth, it will no longer be economical to grow water intensive crops [1] and it will become economical desalinate Pacific Ocean water like San Diego [2] powered by the falling price of renewable energy [3] (one day with plentiful fusion energy maybe) or pumping water from Oregon to California through an undersea pipeline [4] and more far out plans like pumping water from Alaska using 6 nuclear powered pumping stations and atomic bombs to dig trenches will be unnecessary [6] [7]
edit: For example, people are fine with paying $2 for a bottle of clean water but farmers get mad if you suggest paying more than $70 an acre foot for similar quality water. An acre foot is 325,851 gallons of good clean water suitable for growing the high quality crops California is known for
The farmers can use pretty much as much as they want from the aquifers and they pay that $70 for 325 thousand gallons of water.
That's how individual water conservation pales in comparison to a farmer paying for $20 more in water. Or a new chip fab plant that uses millions of gallons of water per day.
> Glenn O’Donnell, vice president and research director at analyst firm Forrester, told CNBC that chip fabrication plants “recycle water religiously,” adding that it’s a bit like a swimming pool in an enclosed building.
> “You need a lot to fill it, but you don’t have to add much to keep it going,” he said. “Also, being in an enclosed space, a lot of the water that evaporates can be captured with a dehumidifier and returned to the pool. The fabs will do similar things with their own water usage.”
> Intel notes on its website that it is striving to achieve “net positive water use” in Arizona and that it has funded 15 water restoration projects that aim to benefit the state. “Once fully implemented, these projects will restore an estimated 937 million gallons each year,” the company says.
Note that most municipal water is recycled in similar fashion (something like 90% of tap water ends up in the sewers directly, and that's low-balling it)--which means you can get great mileage out of municipal systems just by sticking your water treatment intake downstream of your wastewater treatment effluent, although people are somewhat squeamish to discover that this happens.
Agricultural use is pretty much the most effective way to export water out of the watershed--the water that is used in the crops is more likely to be lost due to envirotranspiration or simply literally part of the weight of the crop that is exported (especially for leafy crops like lettuce).
Wouldn’t this also drive up prices of those crops? Not that it’s a bad thing, I’d rather we pay a fair price than something cheaper because the water is effectively subsidized. I’m curious what effect would occur on the prices of CA crops.
The fear is that there’s an analogue to Keynes’ “Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” along the lines of “Markets can stay irrational until irreparable damage is done”.
Some will say that hasn’t ever happened yet, so it won’t happen this time, either, but typically, those will also believe “Past performance is no guarantee of future results”, so that’s no guarantee it will never happen.
In the end, this is a matter of belief.
Also, even if we get to the “desalination plants and solar/nuclear fusion saved California”, we may end up with a different California, where “big water” has the power. Some will think that’s not an outcome we should aim for.
> “Markets can stay irrational until irreparable damage is done”
If we don't address this in regards to climate change then we have bigger problems, but thank goodness California is more forward thinking than most other states.
I did the math a while ago and figured California would need a desal plant on every couple miles of coastline to meet its total water needs, including ag, assuming no other water sources. Something else has to give even with the current rain and snow levels.
And I fear as a central Oregonian that we're going to have our own water problems. Planning to ship our water to California is a political third rail here, just like in the Owens River Valley.
You’d think so, but that’s already happening — taxes will be used and already are used, to subsidize water. Everyone is already paying more, but it’s not a direct correlation. This is part of the issues related to subsidizing resources.
Further, only a few companies and families control the water rights. Many of those farmers purchased the water rights and water once used returns to the soil in many cases (plus evaporation, but that’s being reduced constantly with improved irrigation)
> The National Smart Water Grid{trademark} will pay for itself in a single major flood event.
Weather patterns will likely change dramatically and violently. We cannot relocate our farmland fast enough. We need a system capable of absorbing extreme precipitation and reclaiming it for food.
This isn't about stealing water from the Great Lakes(that's a common worry). Yes, pumping water takes energy, but it also provides an infrastructure for gravitational storage of solar energy for night time use.
Instrumenting water usage I think is the more important task that would fall under a national water grid. California uses an incredible amount of water that can be blamed on maintaining habitats, scenic views, and landscapes as well as agriculture respectively [1]. When states can't get enough water from the ground, they focus on redirecting rivers [2] which destroys other habitats and extracts value out of other states.
Is it a problem if CA uses an incredible amount of water if that water can be provided cheaply and in an environmentally sound manner? Sure, the current situation is unsustainable, but we don't have to focus on conservation and usage restrictions if we have a way to supply CA's water wants while reducing flood damage outside of CA.
What do you think is more likely:
- People voluntarily accepting a reduced quality of life by cutting back on water usage and forgoing water intensive produce.
- Using excess water from flooding in other parts of the country to replenish CA aquifers and support historical usage patterns while helping to reduce flood damage outside CA.
> People voluntarily accepting a reduced quality of life by cutting back on water usage and forgoing water intensive produce.
IMO this is what people need to understand. If we need conservation, it won't be the people of California cutting back on their showers. That has very little to do with consumption. It will be everyone in the country who benefits from all the farming in California who will have to learn to do without some of their favorite water-intensive produce.
Farming is indeed a big user of water, but I was surprised to see maintaining scenic views and habitat conservation being nearly equal to farming. That's effectively drawing water from other states and destroying other habitats in the name of conservation in California.
What comes to my mind are the 11 golf courses in Indian Wells, or 89 golf courses the Coachella valley / Palm Springs area. It's an arid region, it always baffles me to see it around there.
There are very basic things CA can do to improve things before your hypothetical. For example, we can filter and re-use water rather than letting it drain into the ocean. However, everyone a politician proposes this, their opponents brand it “toilet-to-tap” and it never passes because who wants to drink toilet water.
San Diego is doing it now, and the presentation I saw mentioned the TDS of the water is actually lower with toilet to tap. That's nice because normally the water is liquid rock.
> California uses an incredible amount of water that can be blamed on maintaining habitats
Wait, am I reading this right? Are you saying California is to be "blamed" for letting water run through rivers it normally (i.e., without human intervention) would have run through, so that the natural habitats of the state continue to serve as habitats? Your second point is even about how bad destroying habitats is. I'm confused about what you're trying to say.
As I understand it, about 50% of CA's water use goes to maintaining rivers, things like making sure fresh water always flows out the golden gate, rather than letting seawater flow into the Sacramento delta (which would be an ecological catastrophe).
You can "instrument" (measure?) all the water you want, but in California you will always need a ton of water flowing out through the Bay unless you want to destroy huge areas of wetlands.
The amount that goes towards environmental needs won't decrease just because you measure it.
But overall I completely agree with you: we should measure and users should be charge appropriately for water in agriculture, as they are for any other use -- the water rights system means that water use is not allocated efficiently in the economic sense, but rather by seniority and incumbency (as is typical with other scarce resources in the state: zoning, Prop 13, rent control, etc).
> Are you saying California is to be "blamed" for letting water run through rivers it normally
Don't you think there's a valid argument to not just interfere in one particular area ("pumping up water") and then throw your hands up when it comes to others that could help offset the first interference? If you have e.g. flood events and you don't capture that water, you're essentially wasting it. Instead, draining wetlands and channeling rivers makes sure that you get rid of the water as soon as possible and dump it into the ocean instead of giving it a chance to permeate into the ground.
I do think there’s an argument to be made for this, and it’s in fact what’s happening in California — where water reservoirs (Hetch Hetchy, etc) flooded valleys that were once habitat for spawning fish, the state has built fish tunnels, etc., and the state is careful to release water that keeps the downstream flow going to preserve wetlands, etc.
All this is important, and it’s the “environmental” use that I read the OP complaining about — but maybe I misread.
I wish I'd found the article that lists every major river California has redirected for their own needs. It starts to make the "habitat preservation" reasoning look really dim. It's about six major rivers in total and most of them are dried up now. Why are California's habitats considered so important versus the habitats and communities that lived near those rivers in the first place?
That doesn't even begin to touch the agricultural based consumption, which is equally significant.
Well, basically every river from the Sierra that goes into the Central Valley has been dammed or redirected, and yes many are now a trickle because of it, and the Bay and Sacramento River delta are saltier for it.
I think the pushback is about externalities, which I mentioned elsewhere. Fishermen [1], for example, suffer from the increased diversion of rivers that blocks spawning grounds, etc., demands for water conservation fall on already-relatively-thrifty households rather than profligate farmers, etc.
> Why are California's habitats considered so important versus the habitats and communities that lived near those rivers in the first place?
I'm not sure which "habitats and communities" you're referring to, there are several. But given my read of your stance on this whole thing, I presume you're thinking of the farming communities that now benefit from the vast cheap irrigation water that comes from these reservoirs (in wet years, anyway) -- and not the Native American populations that preceded them, nor the millennia of wildlife prior still.
If so, I think the idea is that the people who benefitted from nearly-free water at state and environmental expense can in fact adapt if the true cost of the water is suddenly expected of them -- or, even, is merely taken away from their heirs or corporate interests. The fish and birds, not so much.
Do we have an obligation to preserve natural diversity and preexisting ecological habitat? What about if it does -- or doesn't -- benefit society over time even as it exacts real costs on those who have so far benefited from prior policy?
I think ultimately these are philosophical questions.
> That doesn't even begin to touch the agricultural based consumption, which is equally significant.
Agreed, and this needs fixing. The "incentives matter" school in economics would probably argue that hiding the true cost of water leads to inefficiencies with respect to the harms caused by overuse. Your point on this is spot-on, though I think mere instrumentation is not enough, and prices should reflect costs. How you calculate those costs, though...
I think CA often gets a bad rap from jealous people but your message is a case that is 100% right on. California's agricultural practices are unsustainable and exploitative.
There are certainly some bad practices but overall don’t we need the agricultural capabilities of California? It’s not like all those crops can be grown elsewhere in the country more efficiently, right?
Efficiently in that with enough water it’s the best place to grow things. The soil, weather, etc. are really good. Water needs to be better allocated but my understanding is that it’s not feasible to just say that California should have much less farmland since there isn’t elsewhere in the country that can have its output.
California is a great place to grow what is grown there, but it is not efficient in terms of water use, in part because the incentives are screwed up.
The end result of the existing water rights systems is that for some farms in very arid regions, water is basically free, so they use a ton of it growing e.g., Almonds and Pomegranates, highly water-intensive crops which should probably be grown in less-arid parts of the state.
If water cost effectively reflected water scarcity within the central valley, I suspect things would be quite different. But this is hard to change, because politics (in California but also everywhere) favors incumbents who have a lot to lose, over newcomers who could have a lot to gain, or over a large population that stands to gain a little bit but not enough to vote over it. (See: occupational licensing, Prop. 13, etc.)
This is my understanding too. That the types of crops being grown in a given place (like almonds) is a problem and water use could be much less than it is but we do absolutely need California to grow things because it’s an important agricultural contributor. Other states wouldn’t be able to pick up the slack in California’s absence. Such is my understanding.
I'm talking about the Central Valley, which is basically an unsustainable extractive factory. Agriculture in coastal areas is largely lower value row crops and vegetables.
Water is discussed the most, as there are essentially no pricing signals to moderate use. High water crops like rice are grown in the desert. Water has been pulled without limit from a 20 Ky old aquifer; the land has subsequently settled meaning it won't ever refill even if you could wait long enough. It's not just water though; topsoil practices are equally short-term oriented, leading to a rise in topsoil prices (old topsoil is trucked out and replaced by new) though not water rates.
I've done projects out there; visiting a farm or farm town is more reminiscent of a chemical factory than the bucolic pictures on the packages in the supermarket.
Agriculture is responsible for about 80% of water extraction yet the burden of rationing is placed on consumers who collectively use about 10% of the State's water directly. So 80% of the water goes to 2% of the gross state product, a lot of which is exported. Literally exporting the thing for which there is a shortage.
It would be cheaper, simpler, and ecologically superior for the tech and aerospace sectors to simply pay the farmers to stay home and watch TV.
It's hard not to notice that the Central Valley was settled by refugees from Oklahoma who had unsustainably farmed their area until it literally blew away (read, for example, The Grapes of Wrath) and just restarted those practices in their new home. But they had nothing to do with the unsustainable fishing practices that destroyed the industry described by Steinbeck in Cannery Row et al.
> The National Smart Water Grid{trademark} will pay for itself in a single major flood event.
That claim seemed... inflated to me. Digging into the report, the project is estimated to cost $82 billion (in 2009 dollars). That's... not a single major flood event. The worst flood in recent US history only managed ~$30 billion in ~2011 dollars, and many of the more pedestrian "major flood events" are managing to cost somewhere around $1-10 billion. (And that presumes it's not something like Hurricane Harvey, that would drench a metropolitan area downstream of any intakes to the west coast, so it wouldn't actually mitigate those events.)
> That's... not a single major flood event. The worst flood in recent US history only managed ~$30 billion in ~2011 dollars, and many of the more pedestrian "major flood events" are managing to cost somewhere around $1-10 billion.
This is only half of the equation. There are large areas of the US with water shortages. If you could, hypothetically, completely remove the effects of the flooding you would "save" $30 billion in damages and then sell that water for profit to areas with droughts. For example, from 2010 to 2017 water bills for some families jumped 71% [0]. A quote from the same article:
"Bills increased from $86.31 to $195.86 a month for a household of four using 150 gallons per person a day"
So ~0.10 $/gallons. I'm not going to attempt to calculate the amount of water that recent floods have had but statements like "peak flow of 213,000 [ft^3/s]" are used I think we could see how it would be possible to make this math balance out. I'm not saying it does but the napink math leads me to believe that it could be possible if construction and maintenance was cheap enough. It would also improve economic prosperity in the regions (Vegas, etc).
> This isn't about stealing water from the Great Lakes(that's a common worry)
Yes and the people who worry we Canadians because we border four of five lakes with the USA. It's often been said if the USA ever attacks us it will be for water not oil or land. Or at the very least force us via some obscure trade agreement clause to sell or allow the sale of water to the USA.
Why would the US have to attack Canada for water? Why wouldn't you sell it to us? We sell you the produce we grow with water. Why can't it be a simple economic exchange?
Because the assumption is as most often is the situation the US won't ask it will just do as it pleases. It may be due to pressure from states, citizens, lack of water seen as a destabilizing threat, no time to debate or negotiate or the US would be impatient, or just arrogance.
Because once water is sold as a commodity it can't be stopped. That's why trade agreements go out of their way to not even dare mention or very precisely say how sales of water isn't on the table.
Lots of countries sell us food and we sells lots too. Take tomatoes for example Canada produces a crazy amount of them. Same for wheat millions of tons exported.
At least from skimming the Abstract, the "National Water Grid" on that OSTI.gov page would be nothing resembling a "national grid". It could only move water from the Mississippi R. to the upper Colorado R. Ignoring the pumps...just the aqueduct that you'd need to build - ~1,400 miles long, with the capacity of a major river - would have zero political chance of being approved & funded.
And for a water grid that could absorb extreme events - upgrade the sizes of all the aqueducts and pumps by an order of magnitude or two. And then you've got to extend it to every spot you want to protect from extreme weather...
> just the aqueduct that you'd need to build - ~1,400 miles long, with the capacity of a major river
The heart of the proposal is 4 x 8' diameter pipes from the Ohio/Mississippi River junction to Lake Powell, and having worked in a water treatment plant, that amount of flow might quench the thirst of a few million people, but it won't divert even a river the size of the Potomac River, let alone the Missouri, Upper Mississippi, or Ohio Rivers.
Just making an observation. As someone living in Asia, pre-pandemic our apartment association had to buy 3-6 times the water we normally did, during this time of the year. We had people visiting from outside the country mostly from the US. So basically for an additional 10% population at the very least we had to get 3 times more water.
A personal observation with relatives, they tend to use toilet paper. Maybe it is our plumbing. But they flushed like 5-7 times(yes I counted a few times). Flushes take a ton of water, not sure if toilet paper actually makes you use more water even in the west.
Just need to upgrade the hardware to something more modern. Any mid-grade or better low-flow toilet made in the past 10 years or so can flush a lot of TP without any difficulty. Some of the early low-flow toilets weren't particularly good at it, and the high-flow toilets from the 70s were amusingly bad given the sheer quantity of water they use.
Also, encourage people to use bidets. Those are the best.
California could easily build reservoirs, but they don't -- which makes the constant water fear mongering annoying. Reservoirs would capture much of the rainfall which isn't absorbed into ground water, and currently flows to the sea. The reservoirs would create new habitat for wildlife.... the downsides are few, if any.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted for this and it's absolutely true. Cue the pedants nitpicking every word of the story below. We could do so much better here but we choose otherwise despite the highest state income taxes in the country.
That really baffles me about CA. The quality of services and amenities doesn’t seem any higher there - in fact in many cases it seems lower than low tax burden states. Where does it all go? Is it too simplistic to say the government is mismanaged and has unqualified workers spending massive budgets? Or is it that public workers are lazy/coasting? Something else?
The major downside is total inundation of all of the valleys filled in by the reservoir. The 20th century is littered with dams whose headwaters have completely destroyed unique natural environments, eg Hetch Hetchy [1]. They are technically “easy” to build if only speaking to their constructibility, but dams are incredibly charged from an environmental perspective.
Imagine if instead of every building having parking spaces, we required a mandatory water store and used that non-potable water for watering green spaces, flushing toilets, etc. Doesn't remove the impact of agriculture but it does make residential areas more resilient in times of draught. But that would require public transit and California is rather lacking in that regard. Even LAs plan for metro expansion is going to take 30-40 years.
Most of the good sites for building reservoirs in California are already taken. You could dam the Smith River, but that isn't going to be popular.
Same thing goes for the Los Angeles River - replacing the channelized aqueduct with a meandering set of flood plains that recharges an aquifer would require removing large chunks of residential, commercial, or industrial land.
I think the Ogallala is an indication that industrial farming cannot work long term. The immense increase in yields from advanced machinery and GMO crops effectively means that rich farmlands are basically shipping out vast quantities of water and disrupting the local balance. The underground aquifers don’t have much more left, so we will have to confront this at some point. Maybe that means a new advance in farming technology and reduced consumption, but I also wonder if we just need fewer people and a lot of other problems go away without needing to roll the dice on the possibility of new advancements.
The problem is we try and grow crops in places like Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma (corn, soybeans) that have no business being grown there. There production could disappear overnight and no one would notice. Problem is what are you replacing the economic activity with? Ideally it would be pasture fed cattle, but again that's 'inefficient' compared to other production tactics.
I'd rather people in Nebraska/high Plains use the Ogallala aquifer than California residents.
Something that Desert really drove home was that the universe doesn't owe you a solution. Just because we back ourselves into a corner does not mean we will be able to innovate our way up and out.
> Existing AWH approaches include fog harvesting and dew harvesting, but both have significant limitations. Fog harvesting only works with 100 percent relative humidity, and is currently used only in a few coastal deserts, while dew harvesting requires energy-intensive refrigeration to provide cold surfaces for moisture to condense on — and still requires humidity of at least 50 percent, depending on the ambient temperature.
> By contrast, the new system can work at humidity levels as low as 20 percent and requires no energy input other than sunlight or any other available source of low-grade heat.
Water we take out of the air can't go into clouds and rivers upstream anymore.
Maybe, and this might sound crazy but hear me out, we should stop consuming that much water in regions where it's scarce. It's not sustainable and lowering the ground water table is only going to work for so long.
People in California who are interested in actually improving things should read up on what Fresno county does and see what lessons they can borrow.
Fresno county is where a lot of California water law was hashed out more than a hundred years ago. It was basically a desert with a river (or rivers) running through it and they built a series of irrigation canals. The history of those canals is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Fresno county then turned lush and green. It is a modern Hanging Gardens of Babylon and I never hear about that. I only know because I spent a couple of years there while homeless and read some local history.
Following the creation of the canals, they began having problems with low lying areas turning into ponds and they began creating recharge ponds. In some years, they have actually raised the water table.
In addition to the history of the canals, there's a book called Salt Dreams that I highly recommend that is about the history of water stuff in Southern California, basically.
The Salton Sea is both kind of a manmade accident kept alive by agricultural runoff and a recurring periodic feature of the region historically. It would turn into a body of water for some reason and then slowly dry up over a period of years or decades because it wasn't getting recharged. The current version was predicted to dry up but hasn't because of recharge from agriculture.
If you are actually interested in understanding water issues in the state, I recommend those two books. I don't think this is hopeless.
Edit: Water for a thirsty land is the history of Fresno water development
> It was basically a desert with a river (or rivers) running through it and they built a series of irrigation canals.
My understanding is that much of the Central Valley was actually a (seasonal?) marshland/grasslands ecosystem, not a desert environment. The irrigation and diversion to Southern California caused many large, shallow lakes (e.g., Tulare Lake) in the region to dry up entirely.
If you factor out usage for agriculture (which serves others out of state) does CA per capita use more or less water? That is, how much of this problem is strictly CA and how much is it a national food system issue? Mind you, I realize there are crops that grow best in CA (and not elsewhere in the US) but that doesn't nean we have to grow them if they weaken other aspects of the broader system.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadI've edited it for clarity, but this is one of those times to refer to the site guidelines. You're supposed to look for the most charitable interpretation of a comment's phrasing -- what are the odds I somehow didn't know Indians exist?
Anyway, it's still relevant since many populations in the Sonoran and Mojave had highly intensive traditional agriculture. I assume those are the areas that were being discussed?
The lack of what we'd traditionally call intensive agriculture in places like central valley is mainly just a historical semantic distinction. They cultivated and intensively shaped their local environments to maximize food production, but they weren't herding or clearing fields so it doesn't count.
[1] https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-...
[2] https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawat...
[3] https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_interstate_water_pipe...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power...
[7] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nijhuis/pipe-dreams-the...
edit: For example, people are fine with paying $2 for a bottle of clean water but farmers get mad if you suggest paying more than $70 an acre foot for similar quality water. An acre foot is 325,851 gallons of good clean water suitable for growing the high quality crops California is known for
> Glenn O’Donnell, vice president and research director at analyst firm Forrester, told CNBC that chip fabrication plants “recycle water religiously,” adding that it’s a bit like a swimming pool in an enclosed building.
> “You need a lot to fill it, but you don’t have to add much to keep it going,” he said. “Also, being in an enclosed space, a lot of the water that evaporates can be captured with a dehumidifier and returned to the pool. The fabs will do similar things with their own water usage.”
> Intel notes on its website that it is striving to achieve “net positive water use” in Arizona and that it has funded 15 water restoration projects that aim to benefit the state. “Once fully implemented, these projects will restore an estimated 937 million gallons each year,” the company says.
Agricultural use is pretty much the most effective way to export water out of the watershed--the water that is used in the crops is more likely to be lost due to envirotranspiration or simply literally part of the weight of the crop that is exported (especially for leafy crops like lettuce).
Some will say that hasn’t ever happened yet, so it won’t happen this time, either, but typically, those will also believe “Past performance is no guarantee of future results”, so that’s no guarantee it will never happen.
In the end, this is a matter of belief.
Also, even if we get to the “desalination plants and solar/nuclear fusion saved California”, we may end up with a different California, where “big water” has the power. Some will think that’s not an outcome we should aim for.
If we don't address this in regards to climate change then we have bigger problems, but thank goodness California is more forward thinking than most other states.
And I fear as a central Oregonian that we're going to have our own water problems. Planning to ship our water to California is a political third rail here, just like in the Owens River Valley.
"Water needs" are price dependent. People will come up with unlimited ways to waste water at the prices California charges for it.
Further, only a few companies and families control the water rights. Many of those farmers purchased the water rights and water once used returns to the soil in many cases (plus evaporation, but that’s being reduced constantly with improved irrigation)
Oregon does not have a magical surplus supply of fresh water ready and willing to ship off to California.
(Your link for that one is missing, by the way.)
> The National Smart Water Grid{trademark} will pay for itself in a single major flood event.
Weather patterns will likely change dramatically and violently. We cannot relocate our farmland fast enough. We need a system capable of absorbing extreme precipitation and reclaiming it for food.
This isn't about stealing water from the Great Lakes(that's a common worry). Yes, pumping water takes energy, but it also provides an infrastructure for gravitational storage of solar energy for night time use.
We need to think big, and we need to think fast.
[1]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
[2]: https://disappearingwest.org/rivers.html
What do you think is more likely:
- People voluntarily accepting a reduced quality of life by cutting back on water usage and forgoing water intensive produce.
- Using excess water from flooding in other parts of the country to replenish CA aquifers and support historical usage patterns while helping to reduce flood damage outside CA.
IMO this is what people need to understand. If we need conservation, it won't be the people of California cutting back on their showers. That has very little to do with consumption. It will be everyone in the country who benefits from all the farming in California who will have to learn to do without some of their favorite water-intensive produce.
Wait, am I reading this right? Are you saying California is to be "blamed" for letting water run through rivers it normally (i.e., without human intervention) would have run through, so that the natural habitats of the state continue to serve as habitats? Your second point is even about how bad destroying habitats is. I'm confused about what you're trying to say.
As I understand it, about 50% of CA's water use goes to maintaining rivers, things like making sure fresh water always flows out the golden gate, rather than letting seawater flow into the Sacramento delta (which would be an ecological catastrophe).
You can "instrument" (measure?) all the water you want, but in California you will always need a ton of water flowing out through the Bay unless you want to destroy huge areas of wetlands.
The amount that goes towards environmental needs won't decrease just because you measure it.
But overall I completely agree with you: we should measure and users should be charge appropriately for water in agriculture, as they are for any other use -- the water rights system means that water use is not allocated efficiently in the economic sense, but rather by seniority and incumbency (as is typical with other scarce resources in the state: zoning, Prop 13, rent control, etc).
Don't you think there's a valid argument to not just interfere in one particular area ("pumping up water") and then throw your hands up when it comes to others that could help offset the first interference? If you have e.g. flood events and you don't capture that water, you're essentially wasting it. Instead, draining wetlands and channeling rivers makes sure that you get rid of the water as soon as possible and dump it into the ocean instead of giving it a chance to permeate into the ground.
All this is important, and it’s the “environmental” use that I read the OP complaining about — but maybe I misread.
That doesn't even begin to touch the agricultural based consumption, which is equally significant.
I think the pushback is about externalities, which I mentioned elsewhere. Fishermen [1], for example, suffer from the increased diversion of rivers that blocks spawning grounds, etc., demands for water conservation fall on already-relatively-thrifty households rather than profligate farmers, etc.
> Why are California's habitats considered so important versus the habitats and communities that lived near those rivers in the first place?
I'm not sure which "habitats and communities" you're referring to, there are several. But given my read of your stance on this whole thing, I presume you're thinking of the farming communities that now benefit from the vast cheap irrigation water that comes from these reservoirs (in wet years, anyway) -- and not the Native American populations that preceded them, nor the millennia of wildlife prior still.
If so, I think the idea is that the people who benefitted from nearly-free water at state and environmental expense can in fact adapt if the true cost of the water is suddenly expected of them -- or, even, is merely taken away from their heirs or corporate interests. The fish and birds, not so much.
Do we have an obligation to preserve natural diversity and preexisting ecological habitat? What about if it does -- or doesn't -- benefit society over time even as it exacts real costs on those who have so far benefited from prior policy?
I think ultimately these are philosophical questions.
> That doesn't even begin to touch the agricultural based consumption, which is equally significant.
Agreed, and this needs fixing. The "incentives matter" school in economics would probably argue that hiding the true cost of water leads to inefficiencies with respect to the harms caused by overuse. Your point on this is spot-on, though I think mere instrumentation is not enough, and prices should reflect costs. How you calculate those costs, though...
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-river-flows...
The end result of the existing water rights systems is that for some farms in very arid regions, water is basically free, so they use a ton of it growing e.g., Almonds and Pomegranates, highly water-intensive crops which should probably be grown in less-arid parts of the state.
If water cost effectively reflected water scarcity within the central valley, I suspect things would be quite different. But this is hard to change, because politics (in California but also everywhere) favors incumbents who have a lot to lose, over newcomers who could have a lot to gain, or over a large population that stands to gain a little bit but not enough to vote over it. (See: occupational licensing, Prop. 13, etc.)
Water is discussed the most, as there are essentially no pricing signals to moderate use. High water crops like rice are grown in the desert. Water has been pulled without limit from a 20 Ky old aquifer; the land has subsequently settled meaning it won't ever refill even if you could wait long enough. It's not just water though; topsoil practices are equally short-term oriented, leading to a rise in topsoil prices (old topsoil is trucked out and replaced by new) though not water rates.
I've done projects out there; visiting a farm or farm town is more reminiscent of a chemical factory than the bucolic pictures on the packages in the supermarket.
Agriculture is responsible for about 80% of water extraction yet the burden of rationing is placed on consumers who collectively use about 10% of the State's water directly. So 80% of the water goes to 2% of the gross state product, a lot of which is exported. Literally exporting the thing for which there is a shortage.
It would be cheaper, simpler, and ecologically superior for the tech and aerospace sectors to simply pay the farmers to stay home and watch TV.
It's hard not to notice that the Central Valley was settled by refugees from Oklahoma who had unsustainably farmed their area until it literally blew away (read, for example, The Grapes of Wrath) and just restarted those practices in their new home. But they had nothing to do with the unsustainable fishing practices that destroyed the industry described by Steinbeck in Cannery Row et al.
That claim seemed... inflated to me. Digging into the report, the project is estimated to cost $82 billion (in 2009 dollars). That's... not a single major flood event. The worst flood in recent US history only managed ~$30 billion in ~2011 dollars, and many of the more pedestrian "major flood events" are managing to cost somewhere around $1-10 billion. (And that presumes it's not something like Hurricane Harvey, that would drench a metropolitan area downstream of any intakes to the west coast, so it wouldn't actually mitigate those events.)
This is only half of the equation. There are large areas of the US with water shortages. If you could, hypothetically, completely remove the effects of the flooding you would "save" $30 billion in damages and then sell that water for profit to areas with droughts. For example, from 2010 to 2017 water bills for some families jumped 71% [0]. A quote from the same article:
"Bills increased from $86.31 to $195.86 a month for a household of four using 150 gallons per person a day"
So ~0.10 $/gallons. I'm not going to attempt to calculate the amount of water that recent floods have had but statements like "peak flow of 213,000 [ft^3/s]" are used I think we could see how it would be possible to make this math balance out. I'm not saying it does but the napink math leads me to believe that it could be possible if construction and maintenance was cheap enough. It would also improve economic prosperity in the regions (Vegas, etc).
[0] - https://www.kqed.org/science/1920428/californians-are-strugg...
[1] - https://www.weather.gov/lix/ms_flood_history
Yes and the people who worry we Canadians because we border four of five lakes with the USA. It's often been said if the USA ever attacks us it will be for water not oil or land. Or at the very least force us via some obscure trade agreement clause to sell or allow the sale of water to the USA.
Because once water is sold as a commodity it can't be stopped. That's why trade agreements go out of their way to not even dare mention or very precisely say how sales of water isn't on the table.
Lots of countries sell us food and we sells lots too. Take tomatoes for example Canada produces a crazy amount of them. Same for wheat millions of tons exported.
See reason #2.
What is to stop this system from stealing water off to California when there is a drought everywhere?
Let California use the water it has. And when it's wrecked it's resources, then industry has to face reality.
California's water resources has been managed badly and industry has run rampant there.
And for a water grid that could absorb extreme events - upgrade the sizes of all the aqueducts and pumps by an order of magnitude or two. And then you've got to extend it to every spot you want to protect from extreme weather...
The heart of the proposal is 4 x 8' diameter pipes from the Ohio/Mississippi River junction to Lake Powell, and having worked in a water treatment plant, that amount of flow might quench the thirst of a few million people, but it won't divert even a river the size of the Potomac River, let alone the Missouri, Upper Mississippi, or Ohio Rivers.
A personal observation with relatives, they tend to use toilet paper. Maybe it is our plumbing. But they flushed like 5-7 times(yes I counted a few times). Flushes take a ton of water, not sure if toilet paper actually makes you use more water even in the west.
Also, encourage people to use bidets. Those are the best.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...
https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2008-09-EN/BudgetSummary/SUM/1249...
But also, people are really triggered by rain reclamation for some reason. They're not saying why though which is weird.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetch_Hetchy
Most of the good sites for building reservoirs in California are already taken. You could dam the Smith River, but that isn't going to be popular.
Same thing goes for the Los Angeles River - replacing the channelized aqueduct with a meandering set of flood plains that recharges an aquifer would require removing large chunks of residential, commercial, or industrial land.
http://duwaterlawreview.com/crisis-on-the-high-plains-the-lo...
I'd rather people in Nebraska/high Plains use the Ogallala aquifer than California residents.
> Existing AWH approaches include fog harvesting and dew harvesting, but both have significant limitations. Fog harvesting only works with 100 percent relative humidity, and is currently used only in a few coastal deserts, while dew harvesting requires energy-intensive refrigeration to provide cold surfaces for moisture to condense on — and still requires humidity of at least 50 percent, depending on the ambient temperature.
> By contrast, the new system can work at humidity levels as low as 20 percent and requires no energy input other than sunlight or any other available source of low-grade heat.
Maybe, and this might sound crazy but hear me out, we should stop consuming that much water in regions where it's scarce. It's not sustainable and lowering the ground water table is only going to work for so long.
https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/blog-articles/743-update...
Fresno county is where a lot of California water law was hashed out more than a hundred years ago. It was basically a desert with a river (or rivers) running through it and they built a series of irrigation canals. The history of those canals is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Fresno county then turned lush and green. It is a modern Hanging Gardens of Babylon and I never hear about that. I only know because I spent a couple of years there while homeless and read some local history.
Following the creation of the canals, they began having problems with low lying areas turning into ponds and they began creating recharge ponds. In some years, they have actually raised the water table.
In addition to the history of the canals, there's a book called Salt Dreams that I highly recommend that is about the history of water stuff in Southern California, basically.
The Salton Sea is both kind of a manmade accident kept alive by agricultural runoff and a recurring periodic feature of the region historically. It would turn into a body of water for some reason and then slowly dry up over a period of years or decades because it wasn't getting recharged. The current version was predicted to dry up but hasn't because of recharge from agriculture.
If you are actually interested in understanding water issues in the state, I recommend those two books. I don't think this is hopeless.
Edit: Water for a thirsty land is the history of Fresno water development
https://www.worldcat.org/title/water-for-a-thirsty-land-the-...
.
My understanding is that much of the Central Valley was actually a (seasonal?) marshland/grasslands ecosystem, not a desert environment. The irrigation and diversion to Southern California caused many large, shallow lakes (e.g., Tulare Lake) in the region to dry up entirely.