[HN Gopher] Parched oystermen, farmers face off in Supreme Court...
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Parched oystermen, farmers face off in Supreme Court water war
Author : cwwc
Score : 23 points
Date : 2021-02-18 13:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.bloomberglaw.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.bloomberglaw.com)
| specialist wrote:
| Can anyone recommend an authoritative blog, explainer, other
| covering water rights in the USA?
|
| I volunteered at an Audubon project trying to save the pacific
| salmon. The water rights issues break my brain. Farmers, timber,
| fisheries, native peoples, power, flood control, sanitation,
| household use, commerce, industry, etc.
|
| I know _nothing_ about this GA vs FL (vs TN) fight.
|
| I've heard our legal context in The West is it's own crazy. For
| instance, IIRC, we have "use it or lose it", so Idaho potato
| farmers end up growing too many potatoes to avoid risking losing
| their water rights.
|
| Insane, right?
|
| I'd love to follow the thought leaders on water stuff. Like maybe
| create a market for water, so those Idaho farmers could sell /
| rent their water to others interests. I'd love for the Freedom
| Markets(tm) partisans to actually propose market designs and
| reforms that'd address these kinds of challenges. Similarly, I'd
| love for the treehuggers to get smart about using markets to more
| effectively and efficiently allocate scarce resources; a
| constructive alternative to the never-ending legal battles.
|
| After carbon, water will certainly be one of our more pressing
| policy challenges, for a long while to come.
|
| Please set me straight, point me in the right direction.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Georgia has coast access and plenty of sun, right? Sounds like a
| problem a desalination plant and a pipeline would solve :)
|
| I'm always down for a good mega-engineering project.
| Veserv wrote:
| Desalination is not cost-competitive compared to piping [1].
| The bulk pricing of desalination is between $0.50-$1.00 per
| m^3, which is approximately a ton. In contrast, piping is
| ~$0.05 per m^3 per 100 km, so it is cheaper to pipe water
| somewhere between 1000km - 2000km rather than desalinating. To
| put this into perspective, it would cost about to same to
| desalinate water in Georgia as it would to pipe it from the
| Great Lakes and it is only barely cheaper to desalinate water
| than it would be to pipe water directly from the Colorado
| river.
|
| [1]
| https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...
| Retric wrote:
| That's from 2005, desalination costs have fallen
| significantly in the last 15 years. It's still generally
| cheaper to pipe water from somewhere else, but that assumes
| you can legally do so.
| Veserv wrote:
| My research indicates it has not dropped significantly.
| Here is a report from last year on a winning bid to
| construct a new massive state-of-the-art desalination plant
| in Israel for a very low bid of NIS 1.45 or ~$0.44/m^3 [1]
| which this article [2] indicates is NIS 0.65 lower than the
| existing lowest prices (existing prices would be ~$0.64 by
| that count). This is a little lower than my lower number,
| but this is significantly lower than the prevailing number
| which is in range and is being done at scale in Israel, one
| of the leaders in the field, so should probably not be
| viewed as globally representative.
|
| Here are a few other random sources of unknown credibility
| which corroborate:
|
| https://www.advisian.com/en/global-perspectives/the-cost-
| of-...
|
| https://smartwatermagazine.com/blogs/carlos-
| cosin/evolution-...
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263468292_Optimiza
| t...
|
| [1] https://www.globenewswire.com/news-
| release/2020/05/27/203950...
|
| [2] https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-ide-wins-
| sorek-2-desalina...
| Retric wrote:
| The low end of that range in 2005 was also from leaders
| in the field.
|
| In nominal prices that's a 31% drop, but we also had ~34%
| inflation from 2005 to 2021. So relative to pipelines
| it's a ~48% drop which is quite significant IMO.
| Arrath wrote:
| That was my thought in response to the proposed pipeline to
| take water from the Columbia river all the way down to
| California.
| SllX wrote:
| Speaking as a Californian, don't let that crap happen.
| California can take care of itself, we just have a crap
| government.
| pkaye wrote:
| Most of California water consumption is agriculture. Seems
| like we just need to dial back agriculture a bit in
| California if we are hurting for water.
| SllX wrote:
| Keep telling yourself "we just need to X" and someday it
| will surely happen. Could be our State motto.
| bluGill wrote:
| What are you going to eat then?
|
| Most of California water goes to the sea. Of the
| remainder agriculture is the majority, but agriculture is
| also paying the most attention to water conservation
| overall. (though you personally might not water your lawn
| or golf, enough others do as to cancel out private
| residences)
| sbierwagen wrote:
| https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/ Dairy
| Products, Milk -- $7.34 billion Almonds -- $6.09
| billion Grapes -- $5.41 billion Cattle and
| Calves -- $3.06 billion Strawberries -- $2.22
| billion Pistachios -- $1.94 billion Lettuce
| -- $1.82 billion Walnuts -- $1.29 billion
| Floriculture -- $1.22 billion Tomatoes -- $1.17
| billion
|
| Not seeing wheat or rice on this list. Sue me for saying
| this, but I don't think strawberries are critical to
| survival.
| specialist wrote:
| Thanks. Your comment got me to wondering about the almond
| harvest's impact.
|
| Quick inference from the top hits:
|
| almonds use 10% of the water to generate 12% of the
| revenue
|
| compared to rice, almonds use 40% more water and generate
| x3 the dollar per acre-foot.
|
| https://fruitgrowers.com/what-california-crops-use-the-
| most-...
|
| https://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/CA-Ag-
| Water-U...
|
| So while growing almonds in California is insane
| ecologically, it's pretty damn good economically.
| bluGill wrote:
| Using fresh water is far cheaper than any desalination scheme
| we have so far. I'm surprised they have issues getting enough
| fresh water without a river though, but I'm don't care to look
| into why.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| On the other hand, given the direction everything else in the
| world is going, maybe it would be better to build a
| desalination plant NOW and before the problem gets
| critical...
|
| There's only so much fresh water you can take from a natural
| source before you have an impact on wildlife order(s) of
| magnitude greater than what we've already done.
| peterwoerner wrote:
| A Georgia lawmakers also sued Tennessee to move the state border
| so that they could siphon water from the Tennessee river:
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/01/tennes...
|
| Georgia and Atlanta have unsustainable growth which their natural
| resources can't support and are trying to pass off the
| externalities onto their neighbors. I am biased as a former
| resident of both Tennessee and Florida.
| mc32 wrote:
| Georgia? They get enough rain. Seems to me they need to learn
| about water conservation.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Yeah, if Las Vegas can figure out how to make do with the
| Colorado, I'm pretty sure Atlanta will be ok.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Las Vegas got to take advantage of an early 20th century
| hydroelectric dam project. They also had frequent water
| restrictions when I lived there in the 90s, and the
| population has only grown so I imagine it isn't much
| improved now.
|
| Atlanta's artificial lakes/reservoirs are from a similar
| time, new ones aren't being made fast enough if at all, and
| the population continues to grow. Dealing with multiple
| jurisdictions (the region known as Atlanta encompasses the
| city of Atlanta, many other cities, and is spread across
| several counties) further complicates the issue when it
| comes to funding and determining responsibility. You
| _could_ argue the state of GA should step in. However,
| there 's a huge political chasm between the metro Atlanta
| area and most of the rest of the state (A "fuck those city
| slickers" attitude is very common in rural Georgia and the
| smaller cities, Atlantans aren't viewed as Georgians given
| how many are transplants). The water in the Atlanta region
| also needs to travel down river to many other areas (and
| other states) in order to sustain those regions.
| specialist wrote:
| I was last in Las Vegas 10+ years ago. The shrinking of
| Lake Mead, the reservoir made by the Hoover Dam, was
| alarming back then. I'm afraid to even check it's current
| status.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mead#Drought_and_water
| _us...
| cobookman wrote:
| Cheap solar in the west (California, Arizona, Nevada)
| coupled with desalination plants. We'll be fine for
| *urban/residential* water needs for the foreseeable
| future.
| mc32 wrote:
| Where is the briny/salty water in ariz/nev? Cal, yes,
| lots.
| hinkley wrote:
| It's just a One Major Metropolis versus rural thing.
| Chicago is Chicago, not Illinois. Watch two Illinoisans
| try to sort out they're "From Illinois" but one's from
| anywhere but a Chicago exurb, and they'll say, "Oh,
| you're from _Chicago_ ," not, "cool." More like, "Yeah
| you're technically in Illinois ... You're in the corner
| by the weird lake and you're way too close to Wisconsin
| and Indiana for comfort anyway."
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(page generated 2021-02-19 23:01 UTC)