Personal take - the way that the issue currently facing California always seems to be referred to as a “prolonged drought” undermines the seriousness of the situation. A drought sounds unfortunate, but normal and temporary. Isn’t the reality closer to something like “we’re at the beginning of the permanent end of abundant water in the west?” In situations like this where the reality is dire and most people would rather put on rose colored glasses, I think the language really matters.
The reservoir system in California was originally set up to cater to the typical five year peaks and troughs in rain fall so there would always be stored water. Half the California population is in Los Angeles and below but their water is coming from northern California.
California's infrastructure was built to serve a population of 20m but it is currently at 40m and rising with no efforts despite funding in place to increase water storage and service, just bleating about 'droughts'. The last reservoir was created in 1980, 40+ years ago. The climate anxiety crowd would like you to think water is 'running out' but the reality is just spectacular mismanagement incompetence.
> Half the California population is in Los Angeles and below but their water is coming from northern California.
And what's not coming from NorCal is coming from the Colorado River.
> The climate anxiety crowd would like you to think water is 'running out' but the reality is just spectacular mismanagement incompetence.
The reality is both. California was able to get away with mismanagement for a long time, but climate change throwing a wrench in the wet/dry cycle means getting away with said mismanagement is decreasingly viable. Aquifers / water tables are dangerously low and getting lower.
California has one of the longest coastlines in the US. Droughts could be entirely irrelevant if California extracted its cranium from its rectum and put that coastline to use with desal plants galore.
Don't even need desalination plants; They could use tidal energy to spray seawater into the air, increasing evaporation and rainfall. They could pump seawater to several valleys below sealevel, and naturally desalinate, but they would have to cooperate with other states. And those are just a few of many possibilities.
A few valleys eaat of the west coast are below sealevel.
They don't have to be, but piping seawater there would save cost as the water level tries to reach equilibrium.
Then they just need to let the hot sun do its' work, and occasionally open the valve.
The Salton Sea, CA, e.g. is 38m below sealevel.
Another reason to use below sealevel may be safety: Not all cracks and ground fissures are known, and pumping in large quantitues of saltwater may have an undesired effect on groundwater.
The snowpack is an important part of the storage infrastructure. It used to last well into summer, but rising temperatures have put an end to that. So things are worse than the reservoir numbers alone can show.
> California's infrastructure was built to serve a population of 20m but it is currently at 40m and rising with no efforts despite funding in place to increase water storage and service, just bleating about 'droughts'.... The climate anxiety crowd would like you to think water is 'running out' but the reality is just spectacular mismanagement incompetence.
Why would 'climate change deniers' think that money that wasn't appropriated in 2018 still isn't appropriated in 2023? You'd think people would just want the more reliable water supply they voted for regardless of their beliefs...
> Why would 'climate change deniers' think that money that wasn't appropriated in 2018 still isn't appropriated in 2023?
You tell me. I can think of two possible reasons. Either they don't know how to read well, leading to both their climate change denialism and a submission headline that claims the money isn't being spent based on an article written in 2018, or they can read and understand that humans are causing the climate to change rapidly with catastrophic results and that the money is being spent but prefer to mislead like Exxon, API, Shell, and Total.
'humans are causing the climate to change rapidly with catastrophic results and that the money is being spent but prefer to mislead like Exxon, API, Shell, and Total.'
I think you need to calm down a bit here. The money still isn't being spent on water infrastructure five years after the 2018 approval vote. How is Exxon, API, Shell, and Total misleading California voters over water infrastructure?
> The money still isn't being spent on water infrastructure
I gave you a link showing that it is being spent. All of it. The last project is scheduled to be completed in 2025. The article you posted is five years out of date.
> How is Exxon, API, Shell, and Total misleading California voters over water infrastructure?
My first explanation sounds more likely now. They were misleading about climate change. As I pointed out in my first comment, you blamed the "'drought'" on climate alarmists because you are a climate change denier just like these companies, complaining about electrification in your comment history as if its disadvantages are anywhere near as bad as climate change. You pretend (or simply believe out of lack of research ability) the drought is due to population increases instead of due to climate change even though urban and agricultural water usage has steadily declined since 1995. https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
Your link is to snails pace bureaucratic permitting and environmental projects 'in order to proceed with construction phase of reservoir expansion' five years later.
The oil companies have zero to do with this, while 'climate change' has little relevance to increasing water storage.
Sadly you were completely wrong @lern_too_spel, and as you will see there is no 'climate change denier' rhetoric, just a need for more water storage.
“We’re in a climate emergency and we need to start acting with some urgency here,” said Adrian Covert, senior vice president of public policy for the Bay Area Council, which advocates for businesses in the Bay Area. “When you’re talking about storage projects and dams, they are going to last 100 years and you want to get it right and caution is appropriate. At the same time, you have to deliver results.”
"As much clamor as there has been for more storage, however, water experts warn that it may not be the panacea that advocates profess, specifically reservoirs. Constructing reservoirs is expensive, meaning the water they sell may be cost-prohibitive for some, while the increase in water supply is likely to be small and not worth the money given California’s increasing aridity.
"With the warming climate, the state is not only seeing more intense droughts, alongside more intense storms, but more of the precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow. Snow has historically provided a second wind for reservoirs, melting after the wet winter season and giving the lakes an additional hit of water."
"'What you want is reliable supply and this (type of storage) is not very reliable. You don’t know when you’re going to fill it.'"
In other words, the problem facing California is drought depleting snowpacks and groundwater, not "more water storage" in reservoirs.
The world's scientists are in agreement that you're wrong about climate change and doubling down like Pope Urban VIII is just silly and especially sad when you cite an article that disagree with you.
'State voters have approved eight water bonds since 2000 that authorize some $27 billion in funding for various water projects, but little of the money has gone to storage or flood control. That’s because politicians buy off green support for water bonds by promising to spend a large share of their proceeds on ecosystem restoration'.
No, that's because Proposition 13 meant funding for essential new infrastructure could only come from ballot initiatives, meaning projects have to be approved by the least informed people.
Thanks for this. It's strange when you search for the last reservoir built in California 1985 comes up multiple times but diamond lake was completed in 2003 as you say.
specially in California Megacities that are next to the sea, why we are not storing desalinated water? Or is most water demand outside the cities for farming and industrial purposes ?
California: the land that forgot how. Seems like we've become incapable or unwilling to build new infrastructure, housing, or even essentials for life like water reservoirs. How can a state with the wealth/income of one of the top 10 countries in the world be managed so incompetently? Is it purely corruption or is it that voters simply don't demand accountability and thus get what they vote for? Really wish I could understand how California can be so high achieving and yet totally dysfunctional in so many other ways.
> California: the land that forgot how. Seems like we've become incapable or unwilling to build new infrastructure, housing, or even essentials for life like water reservoirs.
Building new reservoirs doesn't help when the problem is inflow, not storage. (Desalination, OTOH, can help, and is being actively pursued.)
> How can a state with the wealth/income of one of the top 10 countries in the world be managed so incompetently?
To the extent this isn’t just a misapprehension actively fueled by political propaganda, largely Constitutional fallout fron 1970s tax revolt politics. (The supermajority threshold to raise any individual tax, even if it is a net tax cut, for instance makes it practically impossible to realign the tax system; until recently repealed, the similar requirement to pass an annual budget had even bigger effects on governability.)
This is just my opinion, but I believe it is because California is the land of the “I got mine!” mentality, the types who pull up the ladders that they climbed. Housing has effectively been outsourced to the Central Valley and the desert due to a “sorry, we’re full” mentality along the coast despite the fact that there’s plenty of room to densify existing metro areas instead of creating sprawl that stretches over 100 miles. Transportation and other infrastructure projects get routinely delayed or even canceled due to the same mentality. Even mass-transit projects that are more environmentally friendly get the same treatment.
There is this large contingent of Californians, especially along the coast, who are hellbent on preserving an imagined 1950’s California where the population was much smaller. While they’re not able to stop job growth in the major metro areas, they are able to offload housing to far-flung places, and they are able to block or at least delay infrastructure projects that help serve this increased population. This is starting to reach severe levels. Housing is very expensive, homelessness abounds, the prices for anything sensitive to rents and labor are sky-high (have you been to a restaurant lately?), and California seems to have a hard time maintaining and expanding its infrastructure to meet a population of 40 million.
“If you build it, they will come; therefore, if you don’t build it, they won’t come” is the thinking of many influential Californians when it comes to housing and infrastructure. But, lo and behold, the people kept coming due to the job market, and California wasn’t ready for them. We’re now dealing with the effects of roughly 50 years of such thinking, and it’s about time California changes its mentality before it kills the goose that laid the golden eggs that made California so prosperous.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 83.5 ms ] threadhttps://www.californiasun.co/the-curiously-lop-sided-populat...
California's infrastructure was built to serve a population of 20m but it is currently at 40m and rising with no efforts despite funding in place to increase water storage and service, just bleating about 'droughts'. The last reservoir was created in 1980, 40+ years ago. The climate anxiety crowd would like you to think water is 'running out' but the reality is just spectacular mismanagement incompetence.
https://andthewest.stanford.edu/2022/does-drought-prone-cali...
California population is down half a million since July 2020 and continues to shrink.
And what's not coming from NorCal is coming from the Colorado River.
> The climate anxiety crowd would like you to think water is 'running out' but the reality is just spectacular mismanagement incompetence.
The reality is both. California was able to get away with mismanagement for a long time, but climate change throwing a wrench in the wet/dry cycle means getting away with said mismanagement is decreasingly viable. Aquifers / water tables are dangerously low and getting lower.
California has one of the longest coastlines in the US. Droughts could be entirely irrelevant if California extracted its cranium from its rectum and put that coastline to use with desal plants galore.
Could you explain how this works? Why does the valley need to be below sea level?
They don't have to be, but piping seawater there would save cost as the water level tries to reach equilibrium.
Then they just need to let the hot sun do its' work, and occasionally open the valve.
The Salton Sea, CA, e.g. is 38m below sealevel.
Another reason to use below sealevel may be safety: Not all cracks and ground fissures are known, and pumping in large quantitues of saltwater may have an undesired effect on groundwater.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_on_land_with_...
And the climate change deniers would like you to think that money that wasn't appropriated in 2018 still isn't appropriated in 2023. https://bondaccountability.resources.ca.gov/P1Program.aspx?P...
You tell me. I can think of two possible reasons. Either they don't know how to read well, leading to both their climate change denialism and a submission headline that claims the money isn't being spent based on an article written in 2018, or they can read and understand that humans are causing the climate to change rapidly with catastrophic results and that the money is being spent but prefer to mislead like Exxon, API, Shell, and Total.
I think you need to calm down a bit here. The money still isn't being spent on water infrastructure five years after the 2018 approval vote. How is Exxon, API, Shell, and Total misleading California voters over water infrastructure?
I gave you a link showing that it is being spent. All of it. The last project is scheduled to be completed in 2025. The article you posted is five years out of date.
> How is Exxon, API, Shell, and Total misleading California voters over water infrastructure?
My first explanation sounds more likely now. They were misleading about climate change. As I pointed out in my first comment, you blamed the "'drought'" on climate alarmists because you are a climate change denier just like these companies, complaining about electrification in your comment history as if its disadvantages are anywhere near as bad as climate change. You pretend (or simply believe out of lack of research ability) the drought is due to population increases instead of due to climate change even though urban and agricultural water usage has steadily declined since 1995. https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
The oil companies have zero to do with this, while 'climate change' has little relevance to increasing water storage.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/california-water...
Sadly you were completely wrong @lern_too_spel, and as you will see there is no 'climate change denier' rhetoric, just a need for more water storage.
“We’re in a climate emergency and we need to start acting with some urgency here,” said Adrian Covert, senior vice president of public policy for the Bay Area Council, which advocates for businesses in the Bay Area. “When you’re talking about storage projects and dams, they are going to last 100 years and you want to get it right and caution is appropriate. At the same time, you have to deliver results.”
"Such efforts require years of design, permitting and fundraising and are not easy to build.'
In other words, the state isn't sitting on the cash.
https://www.kunc.org/environment/2022-03-10/what-does-it-tak... shows that a reservoir in Colorado took two decades to get permitted. The projects in California are moving at light speed in comparison.
"As much clamor as there has been for more storage, however, water experts warn that it may not be the panacea that advocates profess, specifically reservoirs. Constructing reservoirs is expensive, meaning the water they sell may be cost-prohibitive for some, while the increase in water supply is likely to be small and not worth the money given California’s increasing aridity.
"With the warming climate, the state is not only seeing more intense droughts, alongside more intense storms, but more of the precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow. Snow has historically provided a second wind for reservoirs, melting after the wet winter season and giving the lakes an additional hit of water."
"'What you want is reliable supply and this (type of storage) is not very reliable. You don’t know when you’re going to fill it.'"
In other words, the problem facing California is drought depleting snowpacks and groundwater, not "more water storage" in reservoirs.
The world's scientists are in agreement that you're wrong about climate change and doubling down like Pope Urban VIII is just silly and especially sad when you cite an article that disagree with you.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/water-is-a-terrible-thing-for-c...
Is this true? Diamond Valley Lake was started in 1995 and completed in 2003.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Valley_Lake
This is exactly the issue. Most of it is used by agriculture and golf courses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEPVlWarVMI
Building new reservoirs doesn't help when the problem is inflow, not storage. (Desalination, OTOH, can help, and is being actively pursued.)
> How can a state with the wealth/income of one of the top 10 countries in the world be managed so incompetently?
To the extent this isn’t just a misapprehension actively fueled by political propaganda, largely Constitutional fallout fron 1970s tax revolt politics. (The supermajority threshold to raise any individual tax, even if it is a net tax cut, for instance makes it practically impossible to realign the tax system; until recently repealed, the similar requirement to pass an annual budget had even bigger effects on governability.)
There is this large contingent of Californians, especially along the coast, who are hellbent on preserving an imagined 1950’s California where the population was much smaller. While they’re not able to stop job growth in the major metro areas, they are able to offload housing to far-flung places, and they are able to block or at least delay infrastructure projects that help serve this increased population. This is starting to reach severe levels. Housing is very expensive, homelessness abounds, the prices for anything sensitive to rents and labor are sky-high (have you been to a restaurant lately?), and California seems to have a hard time maintaining and expanding its infrastructure to meet a population of 40 million.
“If you build it, they will come; therefore, if you don’t build it, they won’t come” is the thinking of many influential Californians when it comes to housing and infrastructure. But, lo and behold, the people kept coming due to the job market, and California wasn’t ready for them. We’re now dealing with the effects of roughly 50 years of such thinking, and it’s about time California changes its mentality before it kills the goose that laid the golden eggs that made California so prosperous.