[HN Gopher] California moves to cut off water to thousands of fa...
___________________________________________________________________
California moves to cut off water to thousands of farmers
Author : turtlegrids
Score : 115 points
Date : 2021-07-24 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sacbee.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sacbee.com)
| hamburgerwah wrote:
| The entire california water drama boils down to just two things:
| the delta smelt and the resnick family (Paramount farms, FIJI
| water, POM/Wonderful). 1/3 of californias freshwater is diverted
| back to the ocean to "protect" the delta smelt, the resnicks
| control and use an additional 1/3 including the kern water bank.
| Everything else is window dressing and about moving money into
| and out of various pockets. There is no actual shortage of
| freshwater in any meaningful way in california.
|
| Should one very political and well connected family control 1/3
| of the massive states entire irrigation water? How could they
| abuse that to enrich themselves and california's elite? Who are
| the largest donors to newsom in the recall?
| adolph wrote:
| _The Resnicks are the world's biggest producers of pistachios
| and almonds, and they also hold vast groves of lemons,
| grapefruit, and navel oranges. All told, they claim to own
| America's second-largest produce company, worth an estimated
| $4.2 billion._
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/lynda-stewar...
| EE84M3i wrote:
| Could someone chime in with how these farmers physically get this
| water?
|
| The article says "tap in" to the streams. Does that mean the
| farmers themselves drop a hose with a pump (or some other means
| of limited diversion) into the stream? Do they own the land the
| steam is on or does the government own the streams and provide
| permits for access? Is it generally the farmers themselves doing
| this or is there some middleman (public/private?) water
| distributor?
|
| If there's any suggested reading on this I'd be curious. I would
| have expected the state to simply charge more and more for this
| access rather than cut it off all at once.
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| Pipes and ditches, often agreements or easements with
| neighbors.
|
| In general just because you own land a river runs through
| doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to the river.
|
| Maybe the university of california has some information, i
| don't know anything specific other than seeing first hand
| irrigation ditches in the sacramento valley
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you never own the river.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "In general just because you own land a river runs through
| doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to the river."
|
| Indeed there have been more than a few disputes, incidents,
| and court cases throughout history leading up to the current
| rules and agreements surrounding the various ways it's often
| handled nowadays. One must have consideration for "downstream
| neighbors". Easy way to spark an incident is doing something
| "untoward" or inconsiderate with the water upstream of a
| neighbor.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This article is about farms that take directly out of streams,
| with siphons and diversion dams. However, that is a minor
| component of how California farms get their water. Most of them
| are getting it from pumping out of aquifers or from the giant
| aqueducts of the State Water Project and the Central Valley
| Project (weirdly, not the same thing).
|
| As the article itself says: " _Most farmers_ who rely on the
| State Water Project or the federal Central Valley Project are
| already struggling with dramatically reduced allocations. The
| proposed order released Friday covers those thousands of
| farmers with direct legal rights to pull water out of the
| rivers. "
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Man-made irrigation channels run through the farms. It can be
| as simple as opening a gate on the channel to let the water
| into the fields.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Something to be aware of is a lot of farms have have these
| canals, but they're often attached to a managed water system
| (usually called irrigation districts). This is distinct from
| what the article is talking about. Those are riparian water
| rights:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_water_rights
| mistrial9 wrote:
| California Agricultural Products summary report from 2016
| weighs in at about 1000 pages. Farmers, crop-types (and their
| water districts), use patterns vary dramatically. Depending on
| conditions and the politics of the time, various sections of
| the Central Valley and particular landowners get increased
| scrutiny. Needless to say, any walking human has an opinion on
| water use, and the opinions are sometimes vocal. Every CA
| commercial operation has passed some kind of challenge to
| remain open today, for decades.
|
| The total dollar volumes of some of the crops may surprise the
| first-time reader. For example, the famous California wine
| industry is not anywhere near the most valuable total value
| crop, and yes they use water.
|
| The Pacific Institute is a commonly cited reference center for
| water issues in the US West
|
| https://pacinst.org
|
| the US Global Change research project has some detail about the
| situation
|
| https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/10/
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The total dollar volumes of some of the crops may surprise
| the first-time reader._
|
| Doing a quick search: 1. Dairy (milk and
| cream) $6.56B 2. Grapes $5.79B 3.
| Almonds $5.60 4. Cannabis (legal sales) $3.1
| 5. Strawberries $3.1 6. Cattle and Calves $2.63
| 7. Lettuce $2.51 8. Walnuts $1.59 9.
| Tomatoes $1.05 10. Pistachios $1.01
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_California
|
| However agriculture in general makes up less than 2% of GDP:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California#Sectors
|
| While using 39% of the water:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Uses_of_w
| a...
|
| From a strictly utilitarian perspective, it may not be worth
| the effort to support agriculture. Or at the very least, if
| you're going to triage usage, it may have to be the first
| thing to be cut back on during dry spells.
| username90 wrote:
| So they make around 1 dollar per 1000 gallons? People
| rationing their shower time as urged by authorities must be
| proud that they could save a farmer somewhere a cent or
| two.
| oceanghost wrote:
| This is what burned during the last drought.
|
| I let everything in my yard die because we were only
| allowed to water 1 day a week. Thousands of dollars worth
| of landscaping died-- and for what as you say?
|
| So a farmer could make a little more money that year?
| Cuuugi wrote:
| Your argument doesn't factor in that people need to eat,
| and they well, are making food.
| [deleted]
| mbrumlow wrote:
| And they can get their food grown in a region that does
| not have a water issue.
| panny wrote:
| After referring to them as flyover states, they might be
| reluctant to send California any food.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I don't know much about farming, but I doubt farms that
| refuse to sell their crops stay farms for very long.
| trav4225 wrote:
| Not to mention that official state travel to many of
| these states is banned...
| wwweston wrote:
| Sure. And where food production is the policy concern,
| part of what you want would be incentives to produce high
| nutrition with water efficiency.
| kebman wrote:
| Not a big problem. Can be imported from non-afflicted
| areas. Perhaps local shortages of certain products, but I
| doubt anyone will starve. It's pretty bad for the farmer
| in question, though, who will undoubtedly lose a lot of
| money.
| tdeck wrote:
| The big issue here in CA is that farmers are growing
| water-intensive crops that offer a better return (like
| almonds), but they're growing them in the desert known as
| the central valley. That leads to water shortages.
|
| As someone living in California I certainly appreciate
| the huge variety of great produce that's available
| because of CA agriculture, but even the almond farmers
| know this isn't going to last forever. They're all in a
| race to drill deeper wells than their neighbor and make a
| quick buck before the aquifer runs out. At that point
| we'll have no reserve at all and the party will grind to
| a halt.
|
| The better idea would be to grow different crops here,
| not to stop agriculture altogether. That requires some
| kind of rationing.
| sologoub wrote:
| We really need to re-think our water sources in CA. We
| have nearly unlimited solar potential that can be used to
| power desalination and pumping of the water were we need
| it. Best part - we don't need to worry about power
| storage (just transmission, which is not trivial, but can
| be done), it's not an issue if we cannot desalinate at
| night.
| tdeck wrote:
| I was curious about the energy requirements, so I did
| some envelope math.
|
| The average US household consumes 11,000 KW-hours of
| energy per year. Let's say an average person uses 80-100
| gallons of water a day, so a low end of about 30,000
| gallons of water per year. One article [1] suggests
| desalination takes about 15kJ/kg water at the most
| efficient plants. That translates to 473 kilowatt hours
| of energy required per household each year:
|
| 30000 gallons * 3.79 kg/gallon * 15 kilojoules
|
| So that's about a 4% increase in household energy usage
| just for domestic water for _one person_ (domestic is
| less than 10% of our water use in CA). I 'm not sure what
| conclusion to draw from this, but I suspect that it isn't
| practical to use desalination as a primary source of
| water. I also expect that much salt would become an
| environmental problem to dispose of. Once we drain our
| aquifer, the water shortage will be really severe and
| we'll need to cut back on agriculture regardless of
| desalination, but it could help a lot in urban areas.
|
| [1]: http://www.desware.net/Energy-Requirements-
| Desalination-Proc....
| mlyle wrote:
| More like 80% of the water, because IMO the 50% of water
| use that is "environmental use" -- AKA not drying out all
| the rivers entirely-- isn't directly used by humans.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _From a strictly utilitarian perspective, it may not be
| worth the effort to support agriculture._
|
| That really depends on the economic impact of the other
| sources of water use, most of which, 50% of total use, is
| for "environmental" purposes that do not directly impact
| GDP in the same way as agriculture. [0]
|
| I'm not saying Environmental use is less important: I'm
| saying that a utilitarian _GDP_ focused policy on water use
| is probably not the best metric to use: There 's simply too
| little other water-reliant commerce in CA to use GDP as a
| yardstick here. That just leaves balancing 40% use by
| agriculture against 50% use for environmental purposes.
|
| [0] https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-
| california/
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Be careful with this line of "utilitarian" thinking. Food
| production is not easily replaced.
|
| California produces 95% of tomatoes grown in the USA.[0]
| 18.5% of milk.[1]
|
| These volumes can't be readily replaced by other states'
| production. California is an agriculture powerhouse.
| Certainly luxury export crops like the oft-vilified almond
| might not be sorely missed, but staples like tomatoes,
| lettuces, dairy, and beef would be in shortage at sky-high
| prices without California's production.
|
| [0]https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-
| esmis/files/... [1]https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFil
| es/48685/milkcowsand...
| dmitriy_ko wrote:
| Why doesn't California use a more market-based approach? It
| could simply decide how much water can be sustainably
| consumed and then auction-off rights to that amount of water.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why doesn't California use a more market-based approach?
| It could simply decide how much water can be sustainably
| consumed and then auction-off rights to that amount of
| water.
|
| Because it would have to first seize by eminent domain lots
| of permanently held rights in order to put them into an
| auction, and the costs of the initial purchases would be
| prohibitive.
|
| In the US, a State can't just up and decide to conduct,
| say, an annual auction for use of property that someone
| already permanently owns, and that's how a lot of water
| rights are.
| pstrateman wrote:
| Because water rights in California are extremely
| complicated, many water rights predate California being a
| state.
| deb89434 wrote:
| > Could someone chime in with how these farmers physically get
| this water?
|
| on my grandparents ranch they dig a hole in the river from
| which they pump the water.
|
| > Do they own the land the steam is on or does the government
| own the streams and provide permits for access? Do they own the
| land the steam is on or does the government own the streams and
| provide permits for access?
|
| they own the land on either side of the river and have water
| rights to the river (or at very least they have taking water
| from the stream for over 100 years ... it's an old family
| farm). though apparently fish supersede their water rights.
|
| > Is it generally the farmers themselves doing this or is there
| some middleman (public/private?) water distributor?
|
| no middle man
| HappyDreamer wrote:
| > they dig a hole in the river
|
| Maybe a silly question, but why did they dig a hole in the
| river? Wasn't there water there already, at that time?
|
| Or maybe the river is dried up in the summer, and they dig a
| hole (dig? drilled?) to access water in the ground below?
|
| > though apparently fish supersede their water rights
|
| I'm curious about what your grandparents think about the
| water restrictions (if you happen to know, and if I may ask)
| sparky_z wrote:
| I assumed they meant that they dug a hole in the river to
| create a tunnel/pipe that conveys the water out of the
| river and into their irrigation system.
| dimal wrote:
| Can we start to talk about massive desalination projects? The
| Israelis seem to have made it work.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-
| the...
| blooalien wrote:
| I been seein' a lotta little blurbs in my various science feeds
| about recent fairly shocking improvements in both cost and
| effectiveness of some really interesting new desalination
| methods, so it's absolutely a space to keep an eye on for
| interesting developments. Improvements also in solar power and
| battery tech, clean fuels, safe/clean(ish?) nuclear, and a
| bunch of other really exciting stuff invented lately. Leaps and
| bounds... Still, much of that is all still "in the lab" as it
| were, so we can't expect to see the benefits of some of that
| for years (or even decades?) maybe. Still. All of that good
| stuff happening in science should not be ignored. At least
| _some_ humans are still working toward the goal of trying to
| avoid total disaster.
| resonantjacket5 wrote:
| Desalinations projects would not solve the issue. The 'water
| crisis' is really an economic problem with the underpricing of
| water leading to suboptimal practices not a engineering one.
| Even if desalination worked moderately -- Californian farmers
| would end up farming more rice and walnut trees and you'd end
| up in the same situation.
| adventured wrote:
| Increasing the price of water would not work effectively
| either. Almonds have high margins and more pricing power than
| most crops. To say nothing of the obnoxious fact that around
| 2/3 of the US almond crop is exported (ie California is
| depleting their water supply to line the pockets of a
| billionaire almond cartel and exporting their scarce water
| resources in the process).
|
| And even if the rich almond growers could somehow afford
| dramatically higher water prices, it still doesn't make sense
| to allow them to consume so much of California's water -
| water which is a critical, scarce public good being converted
| to very narrow private wealth.
|
| The correct solution is to ban the growing of all almond,
| pistachio and walnut crops in California. The minimum they
| should do is ban the export of those crops, although that is
| likely still not enough.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| IDK. I love roasted almonds as a snack but they are pretty
| expensive. If they went much higher I'd cut back or stop
| buying them. As it is I only buy them on sale.
| resonantjacket5 wrote:
| Increasing the price of water would of course work. There
| is nothing inherently special about water. What is special
| is how water has been underpriced for so long as well as
| the use of aquifers through wells temporarily 'increasing
| the supply' until they run out. Banning almonds, pistachos,
| walnut crops etc... is really just an indirect way of
| increasing the price of water for farmers.
|
| I've heard other suggestions to mandate more conservative
| water practices aka drip irrigation and ban water hungry
| crops and sure that kinda works -- but this is exactly what
| higher prices is supposed to fix already. There is no
| magical solution to the now permanent decreased water per
| year, it's not a 'temporary drought' anymore. Eventually
| the price of water will be set back to normal either
| through dollar cost or with lottery random shortages as the
| agency is currently forced to do.
| Animats wrote:
| California has huge desalinization plants.[1] 11 in operation
| now, more being built. Water price at output is US$0.005/gal.
| But that's $1630 for an acre/foot, very expensive for
| agriculture.
|
| [1] https://www.carlsbaddesal.com/
| dehrmann wrote:
| I doubt that desalination would work at agriculture scale
| because most of the fields and orchards are too far away from
| the ocean, and the water is just too expensive.
|
| That said, seeing water prices from desalination, I'm very
| frustrated California wants me to take a shorter showers when I
| would very happily pay an extra 50 cents for that long shower.
| IvyMike wrote:
| One thing you could do is desalinate water in Los Angeles,
| and thus keep the water in the central valley rather than
| pumping it over the grapevine. I'm pretty sure agricultural
| use of water in CA dwarves urban use, so maybe it wouldn't
| make that much of a difference. (Maybe someone can find
| actual numbers, sorry I can't right now.)
| apcragg wrote:
| I bet this is the first use of large scale desalination. It
| already takes huge amounts of power to pump the water over
| the mountains to L.A. so reducing that load could make the
| desalination power requirements more palatable.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| It's expensive to build and takes time, but is feasible
| especially if we have nuclear energy to meet increased demands.
| Sam Diego built a giant desalination plant a few years ago and
| hoped it would supply more of the city's needs, but it is only
| good for about 7% of their demand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsba...). California the state
| would need a huge number of these.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| The issue with these is that the other side of the output is
| hyper-salty brine, which kills pretty much any life it
| encounters, and that brine does get dumped to the ocean. The
| ocean has more than enough capacity to absorb the hit, but it
| still damages the ecosystem at the exit point nevertheless.
| Israel and Saudi Arabia do it because, well, if they don't
| their country pretty much ceases to exist, but it's much
| better cost/performance ratio to focus on whatever water
| California has before we go there.
|
| It's also that even the most water-conscious agriculture
| practice uses obnoxious amounts of water just because of the
| sheer size of land involved. Supplying that kind of water via
| desalination plants pretty much by definition means having
| done all prior optimisations to the max before tapping into
| that stream.
|
| If you're interested in agriculture from a layman's
| perspective, I recommend _Clarkson's Farm_ on Amazon Prime
| Video, where Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear figures out how to
| farm right, long way round.
| trimbo wrote:
| How much power is required to pump so much water from sea level
| to the elevation and distance of the Central Valley?
|
| Just as one example, Tulare is at 300 ft, ~100 mi from the
| ocean.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Have California farmers expressed interest in funding such
| projects?
| apcragg wrote:
| Given how many of them receive absurdly subsidized water from
| the Bureau of Reclamation, I'm going to say no. Take Arizona,
| where the already subsidized (though not nearly as much as
| some BOR water projects) cost is ~$200 per Acre-foot from the
| Colorado River (via the Central Arizona Project) compared to
| the $2200 per Acre-foot price of Desalination water.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Farms in the Central Valley Project are paying < $20 per
| acre foot because the contracts were negotiated sixty years
| ago and not indexed to inflation.
| apcragg wrote:
| Yeah and on top of that many of them had their loan
| interest federally subsidized to build out their private
| infrastructure. The original 160 acre limit per farm of
| the 1902 Reclamation Act at least made sense in this
| context. Despite that, many of the multi-millionaire
| farmers flaunt that rule entirely even with it being
| raised to 960 acres in 1982.
| apcragg wrote:
| Desalination plants are vastly more expensive than current
| water conservation solutions. Solving a problem with tech is
| sexy, especially on HN, but simple programs like canal lining
| and drip irrigation are much cost effective for now. It's not a
| forever solution, but conserving water resources will take a
| patchwork of half-measures and incremental progress. There does
| not appear to be a silver bullet.
| curation wrote:
| Association between exposure to desalinated sea water and
| ischemic heart disease, diabetes mellitus and colorectal
| cancer; A population-based study in Israel https://www.scienc
| edirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139...
| enraged_camel wrote:
| The other problem with desalination is pollution. Brine, for
| example, needs to be released somewhere.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Could it be turned into table salt?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I doubt there is that much demand for table salt. Maybe
| it could be used to deice roads in areas that have
| freezing weather in the wintertime, now most places use
| mined salt for that.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| The exhaust muffler industry would love that.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Sea salt is filled with mondo micro-plastic particles, so
| I think this would be that, plus other "stuff" thrown in.
| EG, leakage/contaminants from the desalination process.
|
| The best table salt we can currently get, it stuff mined
| from old oceans. No contaminants, no plastic, etc. For
| example, Windsor has huge mines in rural Windsor, ON,
| Canada.. and doesn't just supply table salt, but road
| salt, water softener salt, etc, the supply has been used
| for 100 years, sold internationally, and shows no sign of
| exhaustion... from one old-sea underground deposit.
|
| (There's plenty of table salt, no shortages...)
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Just dump it back in the ocean (at a suitable
| depth/distance from shore). Almost all of the purified
| water will eventually return to the ocean so there won't be
| a net concentration of salt (not to mention the ocean is
| really, really big).
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| We are about to pass a trillion dollar nebious Infractructure
| Bill passed, which I imagine is filled with pork.
|
| I pretty sure most Californians would be happy if they got a
| few strategically placed desalination plants.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Investing some public money in research to make desalination
| more economically would be worthwhile, even if it isn't a
| very viable solution right now. Or bringing down the price of
| energy as renewable sources themselves become more economical
| could change the economics by itself. It would be a pity to
| give up on almonds.
| bbarnett wrote:
| It seems to me that we already do tidal power, so combining
| a tidal power and desalination plan into an all-in-one
| solution seems interesting to me.
| mlyle wrote:
| Right now, many farmers spend under $100 per acre-foot of
| water; 80% of non-environmental water goes to agriculture.
|
| Water prices in urban areas are $1000 per acre-foot of
| water, because distribution is expensive. Desalination of
| brackish water can cost $1200-1500 per acre foot, and
| moderate improvements in costs could make desalination
| economically viable for urban water.
|
| But it would require a truly massive improvement to be
| competitive for agricultural water use, and because most
| use of water is agricultural, we can only reap small
| benefits from desalination.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Sure, either desalination must become more energy
| efficient or energy must become cheaper for it to be
| usable in agriculture (well, the third option is that
| such food becomes a lot more expensive). Either of those
| seems hard but not impossible.
| mlyle wrote:
| Power is only about 40% of OPEX of desal plants and very
| little of CAPEX. Even if energy were free, and there were
| brackish water right next to the farmers, you're not
| hitting the water prices above.
| apcragg wrote:
| Not to mention that we'd need to pump those millions of
| acre-feet uphill into the various agricultural regions.
| Some are lower lying but if California is serious about
| its GHG targets, it won't be building the massive power
| stations required to pump all of that water in addition
| to desalinating it.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Assuming the the other challenges can be met, me solution
| to distribution is to use desalinated water to fill up
| underground aquifers. The other option is simply to move
| agriculture closer to the coasts.
| mlyle wrote:
| The Central Valley aquifer does not extend to the coast
| and is poorly connected to the coastal aquifier:
| https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-
| resources/science/c...
|
| There is not enough flat, cultivatable land closer to the
| coasts to move much agriculture out of the central valley
| towards the coast, even if desal'd water was free.
| contravariant wrote:
| > "We have really tried to walk that line of not wanting to
| invoke new measures that are going to have a significant effect
| ... unless it's absolutely necessary,"
|
| This isn't exactly an unusual stance, but I'm increasingly
| convinced it's a terribly ineffective way to handle a crisis.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| It seems that necessity is one of those things that can only be
| definitively assessed in hindsight.
|
| If you're closely monitoring the situation you might be able to
| trim it down to a very short term sort of hindsight, but, yeah,
| it's hard to see how that's a winning strategy in the long run.
| Even just barely too late is still too late.
| blooalien wrote:
| "Hindsight is 20/20 vision." - _Everyone 's Uncle or Gran'pa
| Ever_
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| "Crisis" is the only way change happens. Politicians can't sell
| change without a crisis (for good and bad).
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I might phrase it as "afford change."
|
| Telling people they have to pay an extra $1 in taxes for
| renewing stockpiled medical equipment gets you booted out of
| office by voters.
|
| Asking people to pay $1 during a pandemic is obvious to
| everyone and agreed.
|
| Was it any less of a good idea in the first time period than
| the second?
| blooalien wrote:
| Sadly, the _effective_ way to handle these crises would have
| been to avoid or minimize it all in the first place, but sadly
| politicians decades ago who could have done exactly that were
| _nearly_ as corrupt, greedy, ignorant, and short-sighted as
| those we still have "leading" the world today.
|
| Anyone wishing to debate my view of politicians, first do your
| research on how many decades ago they had advance warning _all
| these things_ we hear, read, and see in the news these days
| were _exceedingly likely_ statistically speaking, but _were
| avoidable_ with appropriate actions being undertaken to avoid
| the worst. Pandemics, climate causing weather to freak out,
| extinctions of entire species, civil unrest, financial
| craziness. All predicted by _many_ scientists who devote their
| lives to studying those topics _decades_ ago.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Interesting that the California government approach to COVID
| was completely opposite: lots and lots of measures, most
| without even any idea about effectiveness, much less cost-
| benefit calculation.
| atrus wrote:
| All about visibility. A water shortage is a lot slower and
| less flashy than a packed hospital.
| wwweston wrote:
| I have acquaintances who work in this field, including bio
| sciences for CA state institutions and state public health in
| another blue state, and having heard some narration of
| internal conversations, I think it's _exceptionally_
| presumptuous to claim that the kind of people who contribute
| to these decisions weren't thinking about effectiveness and
| tradeoffs. I've seen some of the papers they were passing
| around about effectiveness of various restrictions. I've
| heard stories about internal conversations over economic
| concerns and pressures and secondary impacts. If your model
| of what was happening was action without consideration, then
| it's _badly_ wrong.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| At the very least, the rationale behind some of the
| restrictions was poorly and (I think) in some cases
| dishonestly communicated. Outdoor dining, playground
| shutdowns, etc., come to mind. It's very hard to stand up
| and say for the good of all we're going to do things that
| will cause some of you to lose your businesses. So many
| politicians simple didn't.
|
| Moreover a number of the people making such decisions
| didn't follow their own rules. There are so many instances
| of this in particular that it's probably not necessary to
| cite them.
| molszanski wrote:
| Almonds use like what, 10% of CA water? How is the war on almonds
| going?
| dehrmann wrote:
| I wonder what the current water use looks like. In the last 20
| years, even almonds in areas with good water situations have
| switched to drip irrigation. Also, those "gallon per nut"
| figures often ignore groundwater recharge.
| ncmncm wrote:
| When a billionaire owns the almond trees, blocking their water
| is a governor-level operation.
|
| Last I heard, a reporter said he was stealing the water for
| them. That ought to make it easier to get it blocked, but I bet
| it makes it harder, instead. Better just to drive a truckfull
| of thrift-store rags up to where he is tapping the canal, and
| feed them in one at a time.
| [deleted]
| briefcomment wrote:
| Fish over crops? We already have crazy shortages of corn and
| grains world wide [1] (ignore the conspiratorial tone in the
| video if you don't like it, there are still plenty of objective
| observations).
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNry6K908xw
| mistrial9 wrote:
| fifty percent food waste in the USA ?
| briefcomment wrote:
| We export food to places that don't waste as much as well.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Go look at the grain futures market and tell me there are
| "crazy shortages".
|
| Variations in crop production especially regionally are quite
| normal, perhaps a little irritated because of climate issues,
| but the conspiracy and exaggeration are not at all necessary.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Would this not be considered out of the ordinary then [1]? I
| couldn't care less about the conspiratorial rhetoric. I just
| think he does a good job of finding and synthesizing
| interesting news on crops.
|
| [1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/salgilbertie/2021/04/28/shrin
| ki...
| colechristensen wrote:
| The abnormal is normal with ag production. There's always a
| drought or a flood somewhere or over or under supply,
| market forces and bad predictions. Volatility is normal
| when you are beholden to the weather, pests, and shifting
| demand.
|
| People choose what to plant or to plant at all in marginal
| land, they choose cultivars targeting specific weather
| patterns that are right or wrong, or a weather pattern
| makes a great year or a terrible one. This is all situation
| normal.
|
| A lot of market analysis is just filling space with words
| or inventing attribution.
| briefcomment wrote:
| I see. So you would say that cutting farmers off from
| access to water they've had access to before, as stated
| in the featured article, is reasonable then in the
| current circumstances?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Probably. The status quo of how water is used and where
| people live and farm in california is inappropriate for
| the old climate (much less how the climate will change)
| and how much water there is and where it is. Climate
| change and population growth are making this worse and
| the need for people to not live some places and not farm
| some places seems inevitable.
|
| Change is hard but necessary and will involve some
| difficult choices.
| resonantjacket5 wrote:
| If there's a water drought every year -- it's not really
| a temporary drought. There's permanently less water now.
| Some person/industries needs to use less water and the
| urban sector is only using 10~15% even major cuts there
| aren't enough to make up the shortfall.
| gruez wrote:
| >We already have crazy shortages of corn and grains world wide
|
| What makes it a "crazy" shortage? Current wheat future prices
| is around $700[1]. That's definitely high at the last 5 years,
| but it's still lower than 2011-2012. If we zoom all the way
| out, we see that it was peaking at around ~$550 in the 70s-90s.
| Adjusted for inflation that's anywhere from $850 to $1650 in
| today's dollars. Was there "crazy shortages" during those time
| periods?
|
| [1] https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=CBOT%3AZW2%21
|
| edit: fix link
| Barrin92 wrote:
| In that case it would probably be great to link to those
| sources rather than spread disinformation from a channel that
| apparently thinks Bill Gates is spying on your trash and China
| is bio-engineering tiny humans.
|
| That video is a good example of why not to ignore the
| 'conspirational tone'.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Ok, the full list of links to all the articles he referenced
| are at the bottom of this page [1].
|
| [1]https://www.iceagefarmer.com/2021/07/21/global-wheat-
| supplie...
| treeman79 wrote:
| Maybe stop burning our food supply
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| I would like to know what the alternatives are. What are the
| negatives to a decrease in the fish population?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Prob collapse of local ecosystems. Anywhere there's a river
| with fish it's prob gonna be an important source of food for
| the animals in the area. Also extinction of certain species
| would be possible.
| 01100011 wrote:
| We need a national water grid.
|
| I suggested this in another thread and got a mix of responses:
|
| - You can't touch the Great Lakes.
|
| - You can't steal another region's water.
|
| - Pumps consume electricity.
|
| - Grids are a security vulnerability.
|
| to which I'd say:
|
| - Water would be drawn from a number of sources, and having a
| grid would allow the draw to be distributed, lessening the impact
| to any single source.
|
| - No one complains that the rest of the US is stealing CA's
| agriculture. If there is an exchange of funds, there should be no
| objection to an ecologically responsible exchange of water for
| local funding.
|
| - Desalination also consumes electricity. Shipping imported food
| from other countries also uses energy(and has inherent national
| security risks above a certain level).
|
| - Insecurity is not an inherent quality of a grid. Poor
| implementation of our electrical grid is not sufficient evidence
| against a national water grid. In fact, they enhance regional
| security by allowing us to cope with climate change and
| unforeseen weather events.
|
| We could draw the water from regional flood control systems and
| the mouths of great waterways (St. Lawrence, Mississippi,
| Columbia, etc). We could leverage a larger system of reservoirs
| for gravity based energy storage systems.
|
| I don't know, it just seems to make perfect sense to me. Right
| now, we treat water as a regional issue and have an antiquated
| system of treaties and agreements that favors entrenched parties
| and fails to serve the needs of society.
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| That's an interesting idea. I think we also need to consider
| the possibility that some of these areas experiencing drought
| might be unfit for agriculture. To put it another way, maybe we
| should be helping the farmers move rather than the water?
| 01100011 wrote:
| The issue with that is many of the areas which may have
| insufficient water have insufficient water because they are
| otherwise so conducive to agriculture. The CA central valley
| is amazing for Ag, we've just exceeded the (surprisingly
| plentiful) natural supply of water because we've grown too
| much.
|
| There are many areas where we would grow even more food if we
| could only supply the water, and many areas of the country
| where we often have too much water. Why not solve both
| issues?
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I am not arguing with you, but with the expense and energy
| costs of moving water over mountain ranges, wouldn't it make
| more sense to double down on increasing solar and wind power
| and technology that reduces the energy costs of desalinization?
| 01100011 wrote:
| What is the net energy expenditure of moving water over a
| mountain range besides losses due to friction/turbulence?
|
| Desalinization also uses pumps and most heavy water users(Ag)
| are nowhere near the ocean so I'm not seeing your point.
|
| Why not use that solar and wind power to move water from
| areas with too much water to areas with too little water?
|
| You could even start with a bifurcated grid which avoids the
| Rocky Mountains if that satisfies your concerns. There is
| quite a bit of excess water up north. You could even pipe the
| freshwater through pipelines sunk near the seafloor. Imagine
| if the coastal CA metropolises got their water from an off-
| shore pipeline coming from Alaskan river mouths while the
| inland water they're currently using stays inland to feed big
| Ag. If you made the pipeline flexible and used one-way
| valves, you might even power it with tidal motion.
| pdx6 wrote:
| I have to imagine this will increase global food costs, but
| there's opportunity here to make farming high water crops more
| efficient:
|
| - reclaim runoff
|
| - more efficient growing methods
|
| The capex and research are there. I wonder how the Boise startup
| scene is handling it?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| In Texas, you're not allowed to robo-water (hoses are fine) your
| lawn outside of your two specific days (at least, in the city we
| were in). Seems like a common sense strategy to me, yet I know
| Oregon doesn't do that and I'm guessing CA is the same way. I
| know residents can be weird about water but surely after years
| and years of droughts, everyone would understand.
| kemiller wrote:
| Lawns are really not the problem though. Golf course maybe. The
| problem is thirsty crops like alfalfa grown in the desert and
| then shipped out of state.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think lawns have an important role psychologically. There's
| something amiss to me about continuing to dump water on non-
| native grasses in a major drought. Part of solving climate
| change is about changing our minds. And I've always felt
| happy to see brown lawns since the draught started. If the
| actual effect of lawns is truly insignificant then that's one
| thing, but if it's a borderline case I'd factor in the
| psychological value. Brown lawns or natural landscaping are a
| sign of unity on this important issue.
| blooalien wrote:
| You mention a huge part of an easy start to a solution to
| _one_ part of the problem a couple times... "non-native
| grasses", "natural landscaping". It's entirely possible to
| create a _really pleasant_ yardscape with native plants
| that require little to no care once placed, and can still
| supply that green which the human psyche seems to require.
|
| The hard part is convincing the cities to stop fining and
| harassing folks who choose that over a standard "golf
| course" lawn.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Agreed. And ooof a state ballot measure to prevent cities
| from fining people for this might be a good idea hmm...
| kemiller wrote:
| That's why my front lawn is dead dead dead but I have a
| small patch of green in the back. I get the psychology
| angle, but when we grow cheap commodity crops with
| irrigation water only to ship them to China where they are
| fed to cattle is outrageous. We tend (maybe nobly) to focus
| on the insignificant steps we can take (navy showers?!)
| personally while ignoring the politically difficult but
| much more impactful big steps.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It will take legislation to cut off the golf courses.
|
| Most likely it will need a ballot measure, because what
| legislator is going to vote for cutting off the golf courses?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I live in Southern California, and the lawn watering rules were
| surprisingly lenient during the last drought.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > outside of your two specific days
|
| ...a week?
|
| ...a month?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| A week, yes lol
| downrightmike wrote:
| IT's just insane that you have grass, the worlds leading
| useless crop, in a desert.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I don't disagree and I don't like having it. I think AZ-style
| dry landscaping is the neatest concept on earth. However, HOA
| rules prevent me from changing my grass.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| California typically orders similar or more severe restrictions
| during shortages, but residential use in total is such a small
| share of water use that residential conservation is mostly
| symbolic.
| davidbiehl wrote:
| I live in a small ag-town in Merced county and we are currently
| allotted 3 days a week to water our lawns. During the last
| drought it was reduced to 2 days a week. This is a city
| ordinance and I suppose it's up to the different cities to
| enact their own limits.
|
| 2 days a week is not enough water to keep a lawn alive when the
| highs hover around 100F in the summer. Many people converted to
| "drought friendly" landscaping, and there was a boom of lawn
| painting services. (Painting your dead lawn green so it still
| looked alive)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Does California do reclaimed water?
|
| I ask because experience in Florida (of all places, did not
| expect but was pleasantly surprised by!). They reprocess
| waste water back to non-potable, but sterilized standards,
| then run it out a parallel pipe system for irrigation use.
|
| Makes perfect sense, especially since you effectively get (1)
| geologic filtration & (2) lower discharge volume treatment
| effort for free.
| unearth3d wrote:
| Santa Monica has a dry-weather runoff recycling facility
| SMURFF, many millions of litres/day. Sells/trades it back
| to other LA cites, and locally for landscape irrigation and
| toilet flushing. They do guided tours, well worth going.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| In ny hometown near San Diego the water from the local
| sewage treatment plant gets used by some nearby avocado
| farms.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Irrigating non food crops hopefully? Idk anything about
| water filtration so maybe it's fine?
| nradov wrote:
| I've got news for you: wild animals shit on your food
| crops all the time.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| The issue when it's people is it let's parasites enter a
| lifecycle which isn't complicated. Human feces is more
| likely to have parasites infectious to humans
| ethbr0 wrote:
| My father was in livestock pathology and always had a
| chuckle whenever spinach or (insert product here) would
| claim field contamination.
|
| His verdict: 9/10 it's rat feces at the processing or
| packaging plant.
|
| But from a marketing perspective, field crop
| contamination is an act of God. Can't be helped.
|
| Plant contamination would actually mean someone was at
| fault. And would require (expensive) changes.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Right but apparently that doesn't kill me. The question
| is what happens to industrial runoff in the water stream
| and if that has any effect on food safety.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I _think_ (someone correct me if I 'm wrong) US
| stormwater / runoff systems have to be isolated from
| sewer systems. Maybe an EPA requirement?
|
| So reclaimed water is typically dealing with "anything
| anyone puts down a piped drain in their house."
|
| (That said, I think there are also runoff processing
| requirements before discharge into waterways too)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Depends on the initial use. Water treatment is a
| surprisingly interesting (to me at least) rabbit hole.
|
| You don't really control the upstream: someone flushing
| their toilet, or a laundromat dumping solvents down the
| drain?
|
| But it's a solved problem to continually test the
| incoming water supply for the basics (pH, TDS). Plus
| intermittent checks for full workup (heavy metals, etc).
|
| After that, it's a question of working it through the
| appropriate steps to get it to the state you want. Sort
| of like a continuously operating manufacturing line,
| except you get to blend the product at the end and only
| have to QA the blended result.
|
| As someone quipped, "Dilution is the solution." Given
| enough volume and time, you can dilute even an
| arbitrarily large amount of lead to safe levels.
| s0rce wrote:
| Monterey county uses reclaimed water for agriculture, I'm
| sure there are others as well.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I know someone with only two watering days allowed in Santa
| Cruz County in CA.
| s0rce wrote:
| Some counties (maybe Sonoma?) are restricting residential
| irrigation like you described. Maybe even a complete ban.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Lawns only use about 3.5 to 5% of the water used in California.
| Focusing on saving that water isn't going to help much.
|
| https://ucanr.edu/sites/UrbanHort/Water_Use_of_Turfgrass_and...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Using 5% of your water on something entirely optional seems
| like a good place to _start_ cutting.
| finiteseries wrote:
| If targeting _California homeowners_ of all the loud,
| politically active groups of people to achieve an absolute
| best case scenario of _5% gains_ is a good way to start,
| you're not going to finish.
| apcragg wrote:
| Sure, but it will help some. There is no silver bullet for
| solving our water resource problems. It is going to take a
| massive patchwork of partial solutions to even approach
| something resembling a solution. Balking at small changes is
| a sure way to ensure that we never make progress. In the
| post-script of the 2016 update to the book, Cadillac Desert,
| Mark Reisner makes the point that during the time L.A.
| County's population increased 40%, it's water usage remained
| constant due to it's water conservation efforts. That is huge
| not just for water resources but also CA's greenhouse gas
| targets. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to pump water
| from the Delta down to southern California and over the
| mountain ranges that encircle Los Angels.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| This is a scary situation. Personally, I would like to see
| allocation of agricultural water for maximum human nutrition
| value per gallon: chicken (much, much, much less water per ounce
| than beef, and much less than pork), soybeans and peas (less than
| chickpeas), kale, Brussels sprouts, carrots, etc. that take
| relatively little water. There are good web sites that break down
| nutrients vs. water used.
|
| It seems like we are approaching two problems: economic collapse
| for middle class and poor people, and problems with food
| production. I wish that news media would cover these topics.
|
| The problem is that the only things on the table for discussion
| by our governments and news media is the promotion of things that
| maximize corporate profits or otherwise cater to special
| interests.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Does it necessarily make sense to grow any of these foods in
| California though, as opposed to in a part of the country which
| isn't a natural desert?
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning that. Of course food should be grown
| both near end consumers, and as efficiently as possible. It
| is crazy shipping food very long distances. Eat local and
| fresh.
| jeffbee wrote:
| OK, now we know what your strategy would be in Sim California,
| but please bring it around to our actual legal system.
| ghoward wrote:
| The media won't talk about it because what politicians are
| doing is exactly what's causing or exacerbating the economic
| collapse of the poor and middle class. And I'm not talking
| politicians from one party. _Both_ parties are responsible.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| +1 And of course both parties are responsible. In real (non-
| digital) life, I know many Democrats and Republicans who have
| almost a religious zeal that their party is the one true way.
| Laughable, but I also feel that everyone gets to have their
| own opinions.
| spicybright wrote:
| I know things will keep breaking down. I just wonder at what
| point will things actually change?
| pepperonipizza wrote:
| The liters per kg of beef number we often see around is not
| accurate. It doesn't take into account that most of the water
| cows need, they urinate it and it goes back into the water
| cycle.
|
| But it could be, even taking account that they urinate most of
| what they need, they still need a lot more water per calories
| than other foods.
|
| I don't eat beef because of the environmental impact, but I
| recently discovered that the impact of beef has been
| exaggerated.
|
| It still has a big impact and I will keep not eating red meat,
| but I am more prudent with the numbers around beef I read in
| the news.
| llampx wrote:
| Well, technically all of the water used goes back into the
| water cycle somehow. That's why it is a cycle.
|
| However it doesn't help if California is using millions of
| gallons of freshwater to irrigate some crops and it is
| evaporating and ending up on the other side of the Rockies,
| or in the Pacific.
| degrews wrote:
| The vast majority of the water usage that's attributed to
| beef is from growing the crops that feed the cows. The amount
| of water that the cows drink directly is probably negligible
| in comparison.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-24 23:02 UTC)