[HN Gopher] U.S. takes unprecedented steps to replenish Colorado...
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U.S. takes unprecedented steps to replenish Colorado River's Lake
Powell
Author : prostoalex
Score : 176 points
Date : 2022-05-09 16:46 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| rurp wrote:
| > Lake Mead ... has fallen so low that a barrel containing human
| remains, believed to date to the 1980s, was found in the receding
| shoreline on Sunday
|
| More human remains have already been found since that first
| barrel[0]. It's more than a little disturbing to think about how
| many people rely on that lake for their drinking water and how
| much worse the quality will get as the water levels drop.
|
| [0]https://nypost.com/2022/05/09/more-remains-found-at-lake-
| mea...
| oasisbob wrote:
| From an ops point of view, the unforeseen technical difficulties
| in dealing with this problem are pretty stunning. eg, there is
| "plenty" of water in a bunch of upstream reservoirs which can't
| be released - either because it's in the dead pool, or because
| dropping the levels causes other problems.
|
| The Navajo reservoir has 800,000 acre-feet of water which can't
| be released due to the high placement of an intake pipe. If that
| intake is exposed, water to several small cities and part of the
| Navajo reservation (unfulfilled decades-long promise, still in-
| process) ceases to flow.
|
| Apparently it's a design flaw made in the name of cost-savings.
|
| https://twitter.com/edmillard/status/1520915847316836352
| https://twitter.com/edmillard/status/1520914733674553344
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| Growing up in Southern California, it was always maddening to me
| why water restrictions weren't always in place, it's a desert!
|
| Somehow we would get lots of rain or snow fall in the mountains,
| then state lifts water restrictions, and we end up with low
| reservoirs again.
|
| Another issue is that Los Angeles would issues fines for high
| water usage, that's not enough when wealthy people can pay the
| cost, the consequences for wasting water need to be much higher.
|
| (edit:Typo)
|
| 2nd Edit: Water restrictions should be applied to the agriculture
| sector (since it accounts for ~80% water consumption), that
| wasn't very clear in my original comment.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| We should ban farming in the desert and no offense to the
| farmers there but y'all gotta deal with it somehow. You have
| lobbies stealing and wasting our water to grow shit crops.
|
| My family and I suffered enough from our 3rd world country and
| without any major resources managed to survive and do well
| enough for ourselves. You with your massive resources should be
| able to do something else. Sorry not sorry.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It's not your water. If you want it, buy it from them.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| What are ag lobbies for $100?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Indeed, it probably was the ag and ranching interests
| that set up California and much of the west with a system
| of private water rights in 1850.
|
| Given that this is the case, it about as difficult as
| nationalizing land and homes to deal with the housing
| crisis.
| caymanjim wrote:
| > Another issue is that Los Angeles would issues fines for high
| water usage, that's not enough when wealthy people can pay the
| cost, the consequences for wasting water need to be much
| higher.
|
| Aside from hypocrisy and optics, this isn't really a problem. I
| don't like it for the same reason I don't like cash bail and
| other areas where the rich can buy a free pass, but it has a
| negligible effect on water use. 80% of California's water is
| used by agriculture and another 10% by other industries,
| leaving 10% for residential use, of which rich people filling
| pools and watering lawns is a drop in the bucket. As usual,
| business has succeeded in externalizing costs, and through
| effective lobbying and marketing, has managed to convince the
| public that it's their selfish behavior that is the problem.
| ajdude wrote:
| I've read somewhere that one major factor is agriculture.
| Almonds and pistachios require over a gallon of water per nut,
| or over 1 trillion gallons/year for the former [0] and it seems
| like that's where at least 10% of california's water supply is
| going[1]. Along with actively killing bees[3] I struggle to
| wonder if growing those nuts are even worth it.
|
| [0]
| https://www.gainesville.com/story/opinion/2021/08/24/douglas...
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201203025513/https://fruitgrow...
|
| [2]
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/07/honeybee...
| apcragg wrote:
| Pistachios and Almonds use 4x less acreage than Alfalfa, hay,
| clover, etc. These feed and grazing crops use almost exactly
| equal acre-feet of water per acre as pistachios and almonds.
| It's a convenient direction to finger point at if you want to
| distract from the impact of animal feed agriculture.
|
| https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2020_Ag_Stats_Review.
| ..
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Along with actively killing bees[3]
|
| Off by one error.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Obviously started at 1-based and then decided to switch to
| 0-based afterwards to fit in with the HN crowd
| 01100011 wrote:
| The LA basin, OC and San Diego aren't technically deserts. San
| Diego gets 20% more rain than what generally qualifies as a
| desert(10"/yr).
|
| I agree in spirit though.
|
| We have seen an increase in reservoir capacity over the last 20
| years in SoCal though. San Diego seems to be doing fairly well,
| water wise, with toilet to tap and desalination.
|
| We really need a national water
| grid(https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122) though. Climate change
| is coming. We need infrastructure for moving large amounts of
| water around the country so we can continue to grow food in the
| sun belt.
| lief79 wrote:
| How much of what is currently being grown there would still
| be cost effective if they have to pay the cost of actually
| moving that water through the grid?
|
| Almonds and alfalfa are the two that seems to come up the
| most often, but I'm not pretending to have done my own
| research.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| A national water grid would be incredibly expensive for what
| it provides.
|
| I wonder how feasible it would be to have the federal
| government get California to relinquish some of its rights to
| the Colorado River in exchange to help fund desalination
| plants. Then the Colorado River can go more towards providing
| water to landlocked states in the southwest that don't have
| such an option.
| db65edfc7996 wrote:
| Don't we already have oil pipelines criss-crossing the
| country? Why would water be any harder? Enough capacity to
| ensure the populace has enough to drink (ie not replace
| agricultural requirements) seems like a reasonable goal.
| oasisbob wrote:
| > I wonder how feasible it would be to have the federal
| government get California to relinquish some of its rights
| to the Colorado River in exchange to help fund desalination
| plants.
|
| California and the lower basin states already overconsume
| their allotment of water from the Colorado River, some
| years by a lot.
|
| Colorado and other upper basin states are tired of it, and
| are evaluating what legal approach makes the most sense to
| force a stop to excess water releases into the lower basin.
| 01100011 wrote:
| > for what it provides
|
| Flood safety, food security and more gravity storage for
| renewables. Yeah, not worth much at all.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Or, instead of building a national water grid and thus
| another piece of incredibly expensive infrastructure that you
| won't find politicians willing to maintain 30 years from now,
| you could abandon areas like SoCal that are clearly becoming
| unsuitable to sustaining life. It's going to happen anyway,
| why not get a head start?
| 01100011 wrote:
| Yeah, abandon them. Just let large areas of the US lay
| fallow.
|
| Jesus, what happened to HN?
| kmbfjr wrote:
| Sorry, but that is a cute way to say "take water from people
| who have it".
|
| For decades, southwest states have put up billboards in rust
| belt states to entice workers to move in order to keep
| workers filling their economies. Much to do was always made
| about the great climate. So if climate is an economic
| advantage, so is easy access to water.
|
| These large bodies of water are not just for irrigation, they
| are the method for which much of the nation's harvest of
| grain is moved to eastern ports. It still is used to move the
| raw materials for steel production. Tapping the Great Lakes
| to support California's insatiable thirst will only drop the
| lakes to a level where shipping becomes unprofitable.
|
| Climate change is already making food growing possible in
| some formerly unlikely locations. I'm exactly at latitude 42
| degrees (it runs right through my living room). Not a mile
| from my home, they grow broccoli and other vegetables right
| up until December 1, unheard of twenty years ago. They are
| now on the second planting of lettuce a week into May.
|
| Climate change is going to take that market away from these
| states whether they have water or not.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Yeah why don't you head to the southeast the next time they
| have a flood event and tell them that they need to keep all
| that water and also they can't have anymore produce from
| west of the rockies.
|
| It's hard to take you seriously when you suggest we're
| going to drain the great lakes. Do you think the only
| supply of freshwater the west could tap is the great lakes?
|
| The breadbasket of the US, the great plains, is also prone
| to water insecurity. This isn't just about the west.
| Climate change will bring unpredictable change and we need
| a way to move water around. You never know, you could be
| living under a drought in 20 years. Will you still fight
| water redistribution then?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The amount of water you'd have to move to sustain agriculture
| in arid regions is a stupendously huge number. We can't even
| keep up with badly needed _electrical_ transmission grid
| construction (and maintenance), which would be orders of
| magnitude cheaper to build and maintain than what you
| propose. I struggle to see how thousands of miles of water
| pipeline hundreds of feet in diameter is practical to
| construct or maintain. That 's like type 1 civilization class
| of engineering project.
| 01100011 wrote:
| > stupendously huge number
|
| I'd like to see some napkin math on this. You don't have to
| provide all the water for Ag, you just need to supplement
| local shortfalls. No one is assuming rainfall in the
| western US will drop to zero.
|
| > We can't even keep up with badly needed electrical
| transmission
|
| Oh gosh I guess we should just give up then. Oh well, we
| tried. Let's all commit mass suicide now. Sorry but this
| modern, visionless attitude nauseates me. I'm sorry you've
| believe so much of modern media that you've given up hope.
|
| Water storage is electrical storage(gravity based). Pumped
| hydro can even out renewable energy and allow it provide
| base load.
|
| > That's like type 1 civilization class of engineering
| project.
|
| What? Like the interstate highway system?
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| geph2021 wrote:
| In Northern California, there are neighborhoods (like mine),
| that aren't even on water meters. It's flat rate water usage.
| Only recently have water districts started installing meters
| due to state regulation to have all water metered by 2025!
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| I figure a "progressive" water bill would make more sense like
| our progressive tax brackets. If someone wants to pay
| $100/gallon for their 1,000,001st gallon so be it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It wouldn't have any appreciable effect on usage, however.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Silly to punish the urban water users when they only account
| for 10% of usage in the entire state.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| But they consume 100% of the water they own. If urban water
| users need more water than they own, they can buy more or
| consume less.
|
| There is a mechanism for government sizing property, but they
| do have to pay for it.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| None of that really matters. Agriculture uses so much more
| water than people in LA that focusing on those people (whether
| rich or poor) is a waste of time and energy.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| The other day I was scrolling through google earth and visited
| the hottest place on earth "Furnace Creek" in Death Valley. And
| to my surprise there is a golf course right next to it.
| oinksoft wrote:
| As far as I know, Furnace Creek is an oasis, and its golf
| course is irrigated by non-potable groundwater from local
| springs.
|
| Water Conservation at The Oasis:
| https://www.oasisatdeathvalley.com/who-we-
| are/sustainability...
|
| Hydrogeology of Lower Amargosa Valley (see Fig. 1 in report):
| https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/sir20185151
| rurp wrote:
| Pulling water out of a desert ecosystem like that can have
| a profoundly negative impact on the native wildlife,
| whether or not the water is human drinkable.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The major use of water in California is agricultural, not
| residential, by a large margin.
|
| Moreover, the crops with the highest water usage are not at all
| the most economically valuable.
|
| The real issue is that the true cost of the water is not passed
| onto the agricultural farms.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| We'd be in a much worst situation if the farms didn't produce
| the food they do. The entire continent would face food
| shortage, and the world's economy would be hit. Just see what
| happened when Ukraine's farms got knocked out of the playing
| field, and scale that up by California's farming supply to
| North America.
| pkaye wrote:
| Grow those crops in other parts of the country where there
| is more water.
| [deleted]
| valarauko wrote:
| Perhaps, though is California really the best place on the
| continent today to grow what it does? Perhaps 50 or 80
| years ago it was reasonable - is it today? I agree that
| California's agricultural output is important, but it would
| also be strategically important to move some of to places
| better able to sustain it.
| s0rce wrote:
| I don't think that's true, the largest use is crops that
| aren't eaten like pasture and alfalfa for cattle or even
| that ends up exported.
|
| https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these
| -...
| soco wrote:
| And the almond milk produced by most of the Californian
| water-thirsty farms is going to solve the world shortages
| how?
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Ukranian wheat is a staple. Californian pistachios are a
| luxury.
|
| An entire continent with a shortage of California
| pistachios does not mean people starving in the streets and
| the world economy imploding. It means a handful of really
| unhappy pistachio plantation owners and millions of people
| happily eating Georgia peanuts (only half of which are
| artificially irrigated, they get plenty of water from the
| sky) instead.
|
| Unfortunately, the pistacho farmers are wealthy and
| connected, so they can shift the narrative to "turn off
| your expensive city water while you're brushing your teeth"
| while they draw more in an hour than years of toothbrushing
| would use.
| s0rce wrote:
| Barring eliminating long standing (pre-statehood) water
| rights and the entire system (likely not to happen) they
| probably just need to pay these plantation owners not to
| grow stuff.
| [deleted]
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I have Kentucky bluegrass throughout my yard and so do the
| other 100,000 people in my town.
|
| We live in a fucking desert with cactuses part of the native
| flora. Why are we watering Kentucky blue grass?
|
| Colorado resident.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Minor nitpick as an amateur green thumb, but depending on where
| you're talking about in southern California, coastal California
| is a Chaparral ecoregion [1], characterized by a high density
| of shrubs. A desert has lower plant density. It irks me when
| people in the Bay Area and LA go full desert xeriscape because
| a) the plants are not adapted for those environments b) animals
| are less adapted to those plants and c) the exposed sand does
| little to locally cool the area, unlike native plants
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_coastal_sage_and_ch...
| dmckeon wrote:
| Of the water used in California, 80% is used by agriculture.
| Asking people to stop watering lawns is merely a way to appease
| the public by suggesting that everyone is doing as much as they
| can to ease a drought, and an attempt to shift responsibility
| to those horrible urban businesses with broken sprinklers. /s
| Meanwhile, almond growers in the Central Valley and alfalfa
| growers in the Imperial Valley are mining aquifers to grow
| crops.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| I don't disagree that blaming regular people is a
| distraction, but lawns?? really? Why does anyone have a lawn
| in the desert. Can we just not?
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Sure, but if we are talking about "low hanging fruit" --
| putting some restrictions or adjusting the costs of water
| use for agriculture would have a massive outsized effect on
| water tables. Yet we keep trying to nip at the edges on
| super small issues like...water for a lawn
|
| There is already some math in the thread regarding how its
| almost 2 magnitudes more of water use for a cow for a month
| over a lawn for a year
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Don't get distracted. Grass lawns aren't all that common in
| the desert. Yes, some people pay for the water to make it
| happen, but by far most do not.
| swarnie wrote:
| I really hope my generation can kill off the concept of a
| "lawn". Growing a mono-cultured weed in a desert just so that
| you can have a Saturday morning chore is utterly baffling to
| me.
| recursive wrote:
| Killing the entire concept seems to be a solution too big
| for the problem. There are plenty of places where lawns
| require zero additional irrigation.
| warcher wrote:
| it will not make a lick of difference and I like my kids to
| have someplace to play outside.
| wyre wrote:
| There's a lot of room between a grass yard and a safe
| yard for children to play in
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Most yards are just natural local grass. A relatively small
| number of people put in extra effort to make it a
| monoculture, but most just let it settle into whatever the
| local grass variety is, and then mow it periodically.
|
| And in the desert, most people don't have grass lawns.
| r00fus wrote:
| Don't forget livestock - much bigger use than Ag. Pound per
| pound meat requires a LOT more clean water than crops, even
| almonds.
| thfuran wrote:
| Isn't livestock largely a subset of agriculture?
| slimsag wrote:
| Livestock are largely fed dried grass/grain which
| consumes a ton of water to grow but doesn't provide much
| to the cattle. Cows drink 9-12 gallons/day, 30-40
| gallons/day for milk cows. Probably more in dryer
| climates.
|
| For comparison a 20'x20' lawn uses about 120 gallons/day.
|
| One acre of alfalfa requires ~12k gallons/day and
| sustains 0.4 to 0.8 heads of cattle.
| r00fus wrote:
| I find the diagram on this article more clear [1]: pound
| for pound, beef uses 2x what nuts do on average. If there
| is an effort to reduce industrial water usage, those
| high-usage categories are probably where to look to cut
| (and less on residential water usage).
|
| [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/water-
| footprint-food-...
| Ekaros wrote:
| Yeah, high-usage categories in areas without sufficient
| supply of water. On other hand in some areas there is
| sufficient amount of water available even with this
| usage. There really isn't one fit everywhere policy.
| slimsag wrote:
| Same thing here in Arizona. Saudi Arabian hay farms here are
| massive, and use _groundwater_ aquifers to grow Alfalfa which
| is exported back to SA to feed cattle.
|
| But yeah, it's the people not turning off the faucet while
| brushing their teeth that are the problem! Who do they think
| they are? Don't they know we're in a desert?! /s
| markvdb wrote:
| Both agricultural and residential overconsumption need
| tackling. Both.
|
| Example from the article: "326,000 gallons (1.23 million
| liters), is enough water to supply one or two households for
| a year."
|
| No! That is enough for >16 households a year in this rich
| part of northwestern Europe [0]. In a naturally dry area,
| consumption should be substantially less, not 16 times more.
|
| Lowering residential water consumption to these reasonable
| levels gives an immediate 18.80% savings on total water
| consumption. That's nothing to sneeze at.
|
| Forcing responsible water use upon non-agricultural users
| might also encourage a critical look at agricultural water
| consumption.
|
| [0] https://www.vmm.be/data/gemiddeld-leidingwaterverbruik-
| gezin...
| frumper wrote:
| They might be calculating for loss in getting it from
| Colorado to Los Angeles. LA averages around 28k gallons a
| years per household.
| raphaelj wrote:
| I'd expect water consumption to be actually higher in a dry
| area compared to Belgium (not 16x more though). You'd need
| more water to grow crops, wash your car, hydrate yourself.
| You might also take more frequent showers.
| markvdb wrote:
| One may think of it as balancing the water budget, or
| more realistically as somewhat managing the negative
| externalities of sucking the land dry in ~ four human
| generations.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Example from the article
|
| ... is incorrect, by at least a factor of 10.
| markvdb wrote:
| I wish I had misread my sources[0], but unfortunately,
| 500000l per year per household really is in there.
|
| From the relevant wikipedia article [1]:
|
| "Many homes in Sacramento didn't have water meters until
| recently. They now are gradually being installed after
| [...] law mandating meters statewide by 2025." In other
| words: we pretend to care a little, but actually, we
| don't.
|
| The famous French saying is more honest: "Apres nous le
| deluge". Loosely translated: "We'll be long gone before
| the flooding starts.". Both very applicable and not at
| all...
|
| What we shall tell the children?
|
| [0] http://www.irwd.com/images/pdf/save-
| water/CaSingleFamilyWate...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Urb
| an/resi...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If people want the water owned by agriculture, they should
| put their money where the mouth is and buy it. Everything is
| for sale for a price.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| Water restrictions should be applied to the agriculture
| sector as well, if it was up to me I would put a quota on
| each supplier for how much water they can pull per year.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Would you pay them for their water?
| caymanjim wrote:
| It's not their water. It's collectively our water. And
| they don't pay market rates for it.
|
| Agriculture costs are incredibly complex. The true cost
| of food is socialized, in the form of free/cheap land and
| water, subsidies, tax breaks, and fixed prices. I don't
| want to pay the true dollar price for food any more than
| the next person. I recognize that there's a societal
| benefit in socializing/externalizing the cost of food
| production.
|
| That shouldn't stop us from acknowledging the true cost
| and trying to fix it. If we're looking to conserve water,
| the very first place we should be looking is agriculture.
| Maybe we shouldn't be growing rainforest crops in the
| desert. Maybe we shouldn't be draining our reservoirs and
| aquifers for crops that are exported. Maybe
| agribusinesses making record profits should feel the pain
| of higher water costs before we tell people they can't
| take a shower.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It almost always is "their" water. California was founded
| in 1850 with private water rights, where individuals
| owned the water, like the surface land or gold and oil
| under their property.
|
| The fact that people now wish that the water was
| collectively owned by the state, does not make it so.
|
| If people want water to be collectively owned, they need
| to collectively purchase it and buy out the farmers.
|
| In some instances where farmers are not using their own
| water, they have contracts with the state to provide X
| gallons at Y prices. If the state wishes to break those
| contracts, they need to pay for breach of contract.
| sulam wrote:
| Farmers keep planting more and more almond groves in places that
| cannot naturally support anything but grazing. At some point
| there will have to be a reckoning over water rights, although I
| don't expect it to be pretty.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| From what I know of this problem, these "unprecedented steps"
| aren't going to matter a hill of beans.
| version_five wrote:
| > Amid a sustained drought _exacerbated by climate change_
|
| This is a religious statement, same as writing "god is great"
| after a statement. Climate change, sure I'm on board and I think
| we need to act to address it. News articles just throwing in
| these random "praise the lord"s in their writing serve nobody,
| make any case for action weaker, and undermine the credibility of
| the reporter and news service.
|
| If you're reporting on a study about that fine, if you're just
| writing about how the reservoir is low, no need to add some
| hallelujahs to your article.
| scoofy wrote:
| I mean... really? Is this what we're doing to discredit
| researchers now? I can understand the argument that the general
| term "climate change" is problematic as a catch all term for a
| lot of complex climate systems all changing at once because of
| one macro input changing, but "a religious statement"? Do you
| not realize that these changes are predictions made by
| researchers related to _falsifiable_ hypotheses? Do you
| understand how empiricism works?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| No individual climate event is a testable event. The claim is
| that multiple events will become more frequent over time. It
| is not empiricism to claim there will be more hot days then
| normal, and then say every hot day is driven by your
| hypothesis
| scoofy wrote:
| We do this all the time. This is basic bayesian analysis.
| We make predictions on the probabilistic increase/decrease
| in events. When the evens occur at the predicted rates, we
| can attribute them, in aggregate, to the underlying
| theoretical causal factors.
|
| If say, climate scientists were predicting a 5% decrease on
| rainfall over a 10 year period, and the rain completely
| stopped over that time, we could rightly say the hypothesis
| was bunk. However, to suggest that probabilistic causality
| is incompatible with scientific claims, I would say you
| need to need to re-read your philosophy of science.
|
| Yes, you should always read a "very probably" with any
| claim of fact for any empirical claim (this is the problem
| of induction), but yes, you can say that "this weather
| event is (very probably) the result of climate change," if
| it fits in nicely with the probabilistic predictive model.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| In my lifetime, the population of the world has doubled, and the
| population of the US went from 209M to 330M. Much of our water
| problems stems from the simple fact that there's so many more
| people and companies that are now trying to use the same amount
| of water.
|
| The only long term solution for our water problems is massive
| investment into desalination and pipelines from the coasts
| inland. There are other solutions such as using what we have more
| efficiently, equitably and with less waste, but that will only
| get us so far. We're heading towards 400M Americans by 2060.
| They'll all need water.
| vuciv1 wrote:
| Wow. I just kayak'd this lake with my partner and her family 3
| days ago. The white coloration of the bottom 30 feet or so
| contrasted with the red tops show just how much the lake has
| fallen.
|
| My partner's parents said that they were on the lake about 20
| years ago, and their reaction to how much it had fallen was very
| visceral.
|
| I'm very glad something is being done to help the lake.
|
| Also, go see it if you get the chance. It's very beautiful.
| Kalanos wrote:
| maybe millions of people aren't supposed to live in a desert a
| mile above sea level
| jmyeet wrote:
| The first thing to point out is that some like to hijack the
| water shortage as being related to climate change. It isn't. It's
| based simply on inaccurate projections of how much water would
| flow in and increased usage. That's it.
|
| What I find infuriating is:
|
| 1. Water rights for agriculture are a particular problem. As if
| we don't subsidize agriculture enough (eg [1]);
|
| 2. There really should be more water restrictions and there
| should've been for years already; and (this is the big one)
|
| 3. We're making consumers (further) subsidize agriculture by
| funding and paying for expensive desalinated water.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2021-10-10/colorad...
| time_to_smile wrote:
| While you are absolutely correct that there are plenty of
| problematic issues around water management in the West that
| would have created a problem like this eventually even in a
| world without climate change, it is absolutely the case that
| aridification of the region, caused by climate change, is
| exacerbating the issue.
|
| This is similar to the issue regarding forest fires in the West
| cost. A huge factor _is_ mismanagement of controlled burns in
| the forests. However, years of record drought absolutely do
| increase the probability of a forest fire.
|
| Rather than falsely say "it isn't", it's better dismiss the
| false narrative that this is completely unavoidable because of
| climate change. With much better water management we could have
| postponed the impact of climate change quite a while.
|
| The bigger issue is that climate change is being used as an
| excuse to mask decades of mismanagement of water resources in
| this region. I also agree with your point that the real
| conversation should be entirely "what are we going to do about
| agriculture in deserts and regions that are soon to be
| deserts?"
| burkaman wrote:
| Why were the projections inaccurate?
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| As someone that enjoys being able to eat, I think that
| agricultural subsidies are far better than the alternative.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Water rights aren't a subsidy, but Water ownership is part of
| the problem. If the state wants water someone else owns, they
| should buy it.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| If we're going to subsidize something agriculture is one of the
| things i'd be willing to foot the bill for. The invisible hand
| of the market is not a good way to make sure that everyone
| stays fed.
| spiderice wrote:
| I'm not expert, but I think you're oversimplifying a real
| problem. My understanding is that we're giving water to
| farmers at such a cheap price, that they are essentially
| wasting it on crops that shouldn't be grown where they are
| growing them. Which costs us ridiculous amounts of water in
| order to get cheap luxury crops, at the cost of other things.
| If it were about keeping people fed.. well, that really isn't
| an issue. We're REALLY efficient at farming enough crops to
| keep people fed, even without wasting water.
|
| edit: after reading some other comments, it's perhaps
| inaccurate to say that we're giving agriculture the water.
| And it sounds more like they bought it years ago at a
| ridiculously cheap price and are still benefiting from that.
| rurp wrote:
| But why grow that food in a desert where residents are facing
| critical water shortages?
| [deleted]
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| What do you mean "It isn't"? Yes, the projections were
| inaccurate, but the reason they were inaccurate is that they
| climate change has and will continue to decrease the amount of
| water that falls in the region.
| jmyeet wrote:
| You'll see a lot of charts on the water levels of Lake
| Powell, for example. It's easy to paint a picture of drought
| and/or climate change and that's what people do. But you
| can't just look at the net. You have to look at inflows vs
| outflows. Here's one such study on supply and demand [1]:
|
| > Apportioned water in the Basin exceeds the in the Lower
| Basin despite recently approximate 100-year record (1906
| through experiencing the worst 11-year drought in the 2011)
| Basin-wide average long-term historical last century.
| However, there have been natural flow2 of about 16.4 million
| acre-feet periodic shortages throughout the Upper (maf).
|
| Note the increasing consumption from Figure 2.
|
| [1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Col
| orad...
| russdill wrote:
| It's really hard to argue that climate change isn't a
| component. The problem may still exist without climate change,
| that's an argument that certainly can be made.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Why, I wonder, does the article talk about a massive drought if
| that is not a factor?
| banannaise wrote:
| It's only a "massive drought" in comparison to excessively
| rosy projections. Unfortunately, that's the default position,
| and a lot of material simply runs with it.
| titzer wrote:
| https://www.drought.gov/current-conditions
| margalabargala wrote:
| Yes indeed- everyone agrees that based on current
| definitions of drought, large areas are in drought.
|
| The argument being made here is that rather than some
| current conditions being considered "drought" compared to
| what's "normal", current conditions _ought_ be considered
| "normal", as the current definition of "normal" does not
| accurately reflect what is in fact normal for some of
| these areas.
| kokanee wrote:
| > It's based simply on inaccurate projections of how much water
| would flow in
|
| This ignores the fact that both projections and actual flow are
| trending downward. If the problem were just bad data, we would
| be just as likely to have a surplus as a deficit.
| manquer wrote:
| Equal probability of both errors is only if the errors were
| random. The errors or poor data could be intentional so the
| outcome is favorable to someone
| lvl102 wrote:
| Is Orange County paying for this? Because they should...
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Isn't Orange County paying for a desalination plant sometime
| soon? https://www.ocregister.com/2022/05/04/newsom-gets-it-
| right-o...
| manquer wrote:
| That plant is years late and had recent setback with an
| unfavorable staff report from the costal review (which can be
| overridden in the commission meeting next week)
|
| Even if that plant goes live it is only 50 million gallons a
| day or just 2.5% of the needs of Orange county.
|
| You would need 40 more plants like that .
| peachtree2 wrote:
| The almonds in California consume as much water in one year as 56
| cities the size of Los Angeles (back-of-the-envelope math from
| publically available sources)
|
| The issue is not just people but an out-of-control agro
| businesses that have no limitation to their water usage
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Time to plan the end of hydro in Western states. Power can come
| from the sun (there's a _lot_ of sunny land in the West) rather
| than hydro. We need that water for drinking and sanitation, with
| ag coming a distant third [in terms of human survival].
| wswope wrote:
| Are you claiming that hydroelectric generation leads to loss of
| water somehow? Or just that the reservoirs should be drained?
| wswope wrote:
| Update with some papers I found for anyone else curious:
|
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.06.067
|
| https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/water_pubs/59
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Three books anyone interested in the Colorado River generally or
| Glen Canyon Dam specifically should read are
|
| Cadillac Desert. A history of how all the dams came to be.
|
| The Emerald Mile. Things got pretty perilous at Glen Canyon Dam
| owing to it being too full at the wrong time of the year. In the
| midst of this, three guys decide to take advantage of flow levels
| we're unlikely to see again in our lifetimes to set an all time
| record for running the Grand Canyon. This is on my personal list
| of the greatest true stories ever told.
|
| Down The River (or anything else by Edward Abbey, really). The
| titular essay is about a trip down the Colorado. Abbey was an
| ardent critic of Glen Canyon Dam for flooding Glen Canyon. Better
| known for writing The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire,
| but Down the River more specifically deals with the Colorado.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| To add an interesting fiction book: _The Water Knife_ by Paolo
| Bacigalupi focuses on a hypothetical future where individual
| militias and municipalities /states in the South/South West
| fight and engage in near hidden warfare over access to the
| dwindling Colorado River. The wealthy are able to live in
| compounds where enormous amounts of water are recycled in a
| self contained system, while the less well off have to fend for
| themselves in what is a veritable super desert. It's quite
| dark, but a troubling possible future written in a clear hard
| sci-fi voice.
| drums8787 wrote:
| Add to that list "Where the Water Goes" by David Owen.
| chasd00 wrote:
| The movie Chinatown was also about California and water.
|
| "The film was inspired by the California water wars, a series
| of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of
| the 20th century, by which Los Angeles interests secured water
| rights in the Owens Valley"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_(1974_film)
| pneumatic1 wrote:
| Or for water infrastructure more generally, City Water, City
| Life by Carl Smith
| imperialdrive wrote:
| https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-water-knife-paolo-bacig...
| I enjoyed the audiobook.
|
| "In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a
| trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez "cuts"
| water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that
| its lush arcology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When
| rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix,
| Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate
| as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more
| oppressive. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened
| journalist with her own agenda, and Maria Villarosa, a young
| Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north. As bodies begin to
| pile up, the three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger
| and more corrupt than they could have imagined, and when water
| is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the
| only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed if
| anyone hopes to drink."
| RationPhantoms wrote:
| Sprinkle in "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi as a really
| fun read about "Water Wars" in the future.
| ericmay wrote:
| > One acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons (1.23 million liters), is
| enough water to supply one or two households for a year.
|
| This is mind-blowing. Is this true? Each house in American
| (roughly) uses this much water? I assume it's certainly not an
| issue in, say, Ohio where my monthly water bill I think has never
| exceeded $25 - but there's just no way this is sustainable in
| places out west prone to drought, right?
|
| Am I over-appreciating this seemingly large number?
|
| > "We are never going to see these reservoirs filled again in our
| lifetime," said Denielle Perry, a professor at Northern Arizona
| University's School of Earth and Sustainability.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > One acre-foot
|
| These units seem to be deliberately obtuse.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| ca 1200 cubic meters
| conqueso wrote:
| I think it's a perfect descriptor - makes me picture an acre
| of land (footprint) with a height of 1 ft
| macksd wrote:
| I've mostly heard it used by farmers. And it makes sense if
| you're thinking of the equivalent rainfall measured in inches
| on a property measured in acres.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Ohio where my monthly water bill I think has never exceeded
| $25
|
| My sewer bill in Seattle is over $120. That isn't for water,
| that is just the price of getting the water out of my house!
| (My water bill is half that, go figure!)
|
| This was winter/spring, so just this is just laundry,
| showering, and doing dishes.
| mhh__ wrote:
| In general American houses seem to use enormous amounts of
| basically everything.
| thedougd wrote:
| I had a city issued smart water meter at my last residence with
| 5-6 residents. I set a text message alert at 400 gallons per
| day, as that was a very unusual event that might warrant
| attention. I had high efficiency showers, toilets, and washers.
| I only ever hit it, and well exceeded it, when I did something
| like water the lawn a few times a year. A high watermark
| estimate (har har) would be 400 x 365 = 146000. I suppose two
| households is plausible, but I'd guess more like three to four
| for 326000.
|
| Where I live, in a very wet part of ther United States, water
| is still too expensive for watering the lawn regularly. This is
| usually because the meter reading is used to assess charges for
| sewer as well. Those who do have irrigation systems request
| second meters to avoid sewer charges or even tap into the gray
| water supply.
| brewdad wrote:
| Where I live, the sewer charges for the year are based off of
| your water usage during the coolest, wettest months of the
| year in winter. My water usage (3 person household) is about
| 80% higher in the 3 hottest summer months. The rest of the
| year, there is no need to water anything unless you planted a
| completely inappropriate landscape or you enjoy seeing your
| money runoff into the storm sewers.
|
| I pulled my figures for the past year. We used approx 36,000
| gallons in household use and 9,000 gallons in
| irrigation/outdoors use. Effectively, my lawn is equivalent
| to one additional person living in our home.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The fact that decorative lawns exist at all is indicative of
| water not being expensive enough.
|
| Edit: By decorative, I mean the manicured lawns that are only
| for aesthetics that require tons of watering and sprinkler
| systems, and pesticides/insecticides/fertilizers.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Aren't all lawns decorative?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There is value in tick control around a residence. For
| that, grass is the most practical ground cover. Anything
| beyond the bare minimum is an excess.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Wouldn't dirt, sand, or rocks work just fine?
| ghaff wrote:
| Where I live in the Northeast, the natural state of a
| patch of dirt--or for that matter a patch of gravel--will
| be to become a forest in most cases by way of grass,
| weeds, bushes, and trees.
| recursive wrote:
| Not if that dirt grows tall weeds. Many lawns don't need
| to be irrigated at all.
| ghaff wrote:
| To some degree. But there are a lot of reasons to keep
| some sort of buffer around the house in any case. Now
| (unless required by local regulation/HOA/etc.), this
| doesn't necessary mean a perfectly manicured Kentucky
| bluegrass lawn but in a lot of the country just letting
| nature take its course will have tall grass, bushes, and
| eventually trees growing right up to the foundations.
| bombcar wrote:
| Midwest ground becomes a lawn without any real effort.
| Maybe seed it a bit.
|
| To imitate that in the southwest you usually need
| irrigation.
| snarkerson wrote:
| That is in terms of electrical power generation by
| hydroelectric dams.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| According to my water company I used about 67,300 gallons of
| water the past year, which is about 300,000 L. It's not out of
| the ballpark.
| foobarian wrote:
| Be a bit aggressive and assume the number is 365,000 gallons -
| that means 1000 gallons per day. Statistics from a perfunctory
| Google search seem to indicate around 300 gal/day/household, so
| it seems about right if a bit on the high side.
| gernb wrote:
| I thought it meant 1 acre-foot provides enough electricity at
| the dam for 2 households for 1 year?
| ericmay wrote:
| You might be right, though I'd still say that seems like a
| lot of water...
| bumbledraven wrote:
| https://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/family-home-cons...
| :
|
| _Water supply planners estimate that a typical household needs
| 0.4 -0.5 acre feet of water per year (approximately 150,000
| gal) to satisfy the demands of a home and landscape._
| ghaff wrote:
| I have to believe that a lot of that is the landscape part. I
| admittedly live by myself but if I do the math right, it
| looks like I use about 3,000 gallons a year--virtually none
| of which is used outside the house.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| 3,000 gallons a year comes out to 8.2 gallons per day.
| Seems a bit low. Even a low flow toilet uses 1.1-1.6
| gallons per flush.
|
| In my experience, with a family of 4, a lawned landscape is
| gonna take up about 50-70% of your water use in SoCal. This
| is based upon living in a couple of places down here.
|
| Also, pools are a giant red herring. A noncovered pool
| would take up about 5% of that above water budget. Once you
| cover it it consumes basically no water (once filled).
|
| Note that drought tolerant grasses use upwards of 60% less
| water than standard lawns. And subsurface irrigation uses
| upwards of 70% less water. Still not a good idea to have
| tons of the stuff, but if you want a small patch of it you
| can do so without blowing the water budget. Most people
| don't do this though.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm usually at my town $50 minimum and my last quarterly
| bill was for 100 cu.ft. So 3,000 gallons a year. I would
| say that of course I'm not there all the time--and pre-
| COVID I travelled a lot--but not true at the moment. I
| did grow up in a house with a poor water supply from a
| well so I probably have a lot of habits related to not
| running water unnecessarily. I agree it seems low but
| that's what the numbers say. (And, as I say, this is
| mostly just one person.)
|
| I live in New England and haven't watered my lawn since
| it was established and rarely water gardens. Even if
| things can get a bit brown during the summer, they come
| back.
| brewdad wrote:
| Are you sure there isn't a base amount of water usage
| captured in the minimum charge? 2 toilet flushes a day (1
| solid, 1 liquid) and a 3 minute shower gets you to 8
| gals/day before you've washed any dishes or clothes.
|
| I mean, if you are able to keep your water use that low,
| congrats and keep it up. We could all use more people
| like you. In reality, I'm guessing you are using a bit
| more than that however.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's the actual amount on my water bill. And yeah. 2-3
| toilet flushes a day. Probably a 3 minute shower. A
| gallon or two for plants. The biweekly high-efficiency
| washer. (And I'm sometimes traveling but much less so
| recently.) The weekly dishwash. Etc. Surprises me too.
| But that's what the numbers say. Not even trying to be
| unusually convervationist.
| chemeng wrote:
| I think average US household water usage is around 250-500
| gallons per day. So 326k gal per year for 2 households isn't
| that far off.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| 250 gallons a day? Where would someone use that much water?
| Are they filling their tub 10 times a day?
| driverdan wrote:
| People use far more water than they should and water is much
| cheaper than it should be. $25 in water could very well be this
| much, you'd have to check your bill to see what volume you use.
| brewdad wrote:
| My town charges $3 per CCF (748 gallons). The biggest
| challenge to getting residents to alter their usage is that
| that number gets lost amongst all of the fixed charges. If I
| turned off my meter for a month, I'd still face $85 in fixed
| charges. My lowest water bill of the past year was $91 and
| the highest was $106. Typical bill is $94.
|
| The water usage rates are pretty much noise for all but the
| poorest families.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The average American uses about 29,930 gallons of water per
| year[1]. The figure of 326,000 gallons is enough for 3 families
| of four people. However, water usage varies wildly in the US by
| region and housing type.
|
| [1] https://www.epa.gov/watersense/statistics-and-facts.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Compare that to Germany, where the average water consumption
| per household is 12439 gallons per person per year [1].
| Sounds to me like Americans are particularly wasteful with
| their water consumption.
|
| [1] https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-
| grafiken/entwicklung-d... (figure shows liters per day, 129
| liters per day are about 12438.5 gallons per year)
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Toilets and lawns probably contribute a lot to this
| difference.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| That's 82 gallons per day. Or 372 liters. Quite a lot.
|
| A standard (inefficient) US toilet uses 1.28 gallons every
| time you flush it. Lets assume you have four people per
| household maybe using the toilet about 6 times per day, each.
| That's almost 30 gallons right there. The average shower
| takes about 15 gallons. So times four that's 60 gallons right
| there. Adds up to 80 gallons already. That's before you turn
| on the washing machine, the dishwasher, watering the lawn,
| making tea, etc. 82 sounds about right but also very
| wasteful.
|
| The question of course is could the US do better? And why
| would it? As it turns out, a lot of places treat water like
| an almost free commodity. Hence the complete disregard for
| toilet and shower inefficiencies. If people would pay for it
| by the gallon at a reasonable amount, they'd fix it. But they
| aren't.
|
| Say you'd price it a 10 cents per gallon. A 15 gallon shower
| now costs you 1.50$. Maybe you'd install some water saving
| shower head and shower bit less long. The actual price is
| closer to a 1000 gallons for that price. Hence the average
| American not giving a shit when they flush the toilet, take a
| shower, etc.
|
| Water isn't cheap to source anymore. Especially if you live
| in a desert. Taking water from unsustainable sources has the
| downside that those sources run out eventually. Especially if
| they are not being replenished naturally anymore. That's what
| is happening in a lot of places. Water isn't scarce though.
| Our planet is covered in it. All we need to do is separate it
| from salt (and our waste) and we can have as much as we want
| of it. But it comes at a price.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| I checked our water bill yesterday (Los Angeles), and found
| we average well over 82 gallons a day. I'm trying to figure
| out why. Household of 3, no lawns, lots of succulents (a
| couple fruit trees but we're not crazy about watering). So
| our water use is largely: daily shower, dishwasher, toilet,
| sink, washing machine, and reverse osmosis water faucet. We
| had a crappy tankless water heater for a few years, so I
| actually removed the water saving shower faucets and sink
| aerators. I got a new tankless, so now I want to put back
| on the water saving faucets and see how that impacts
| results.
|
| But... I was surprised. I could definitely shorten my
| showers.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| How old are your toilets? Old toilets could use as much
| as 7 gallons per flush 30+ years ago. Modern toilets use
| 1.6 gpf or less. Swapping out a 3gpf toilet that came
| with the house for a modern one made a helluva difference
| in my usage.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Reverse osmosis throws a lot of water down the drain to
| keep the filters from clogging. I'm just an hour or so
| south of you and get the water doesn't taste incredible
| out of the sink, but I got a Pur countertop water filter
| which gets the chalky taste out without wasting any
| water, might be worth a try? Reverse osmosis is pretty
| intense if your water coming out of the pipe is treated,
| it's better suited for people with totally untreated
| water IMO
| ch4s3 wrote:
| My guess would be that the RO filter is dumping a bunch.
| They seem to use 4 gallons for every 1 gallon of filtered
| water [1]. I personally do't like RO water, it tastes off
| to me and I appreciate having a. little fluoride in my
| water to fight off tooth decay.
|
| [1]https://americanhomewater.com/the-truth-about-reverse-
| osmosi...
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I lived overseas for a bit somewhere where you have to
| have an RO filter to drink from the tap. Nearly every
| filter on the market has mineral restoration packs which
| I think help with that bland water RO taste. One of the
| servicemen who changed our filters once warned us that
| the calcium in our purifier was so low that our bones
| would lose calcium. While I don't know if I believe it,
| it was interesting to learn that minerals in drinking
| water can benefit health
|
| I kind of miss making coffee with water out of that
| purifier though, it tasted noticeably better
| bombcar wrote:
| You could try reading the meter and going without one
| thing each day - but maybe the reverse osmosis filter
| flushes itself too often?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Since 32% of all of American water use is irrigation, I'd
| probably start with improvements and moves towards more
| drip irrigation. For domestic use, toilets seem to
| represent ~24% of use, so moving to dual flush toilets
| could probably make a big dent. Outdoor water use for homes
| contribute between 30% and 60% depending on region so
| discouraging green laws in arid regions is probably a good
| idea, and that seems to be happening.
| nickphx wrote:
| Homes are but a drop in the bucket for water consumption when
| compared with agricultural use.. Many states still use flood
| irrigation to water crops.
| lost953 wrote:
| That's ~900 Gal/Day which sounds pretty high for 1 or 2
| households but I suppose if they are large and have large lawns
| or something it could be reasonable. I would naively think it
| is closer to 5 to 10 households.
| [deleted]
| rtkwe wrote:
| If you take the US average of 138 gallons per day and take that
| out to a year 1 acre-foot is about 6.5 households but out west
| you probably get more water usage for lawns and things like
| cooling which is more likely to use swamp coolers than the rest
| of the US so it's possible.
|
| [0] 138 gallons per day is a little over 190k L/yr
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=138+gallons+per+day+to+...
|
| edit: 138 figure from here. Just took the google knowledge box
| answer: https://www.watercalculator.org/footprint/indoor-water-
| use-a...
| francisofascii wrote:
| So ironically, water usage is higher per household where
| water is more scarce.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's just my guess at the difference. It could also be a
| figure including other things like the per household usage
| for hydro-electric power like some other people have
| guessed in this thread. That would fit with the other
| mentions of losing hydro-electric power if the lake level
| were to fall too low.
| cesaref wrote:
| That does seem like an astonishingly high number, but I guess
| there is quite a range of water requirements across the
| country.
|
| To put this in context, it's 10x the water we use in our house
| in the UK, and I don't think we're particularly low in our
| water usage (we work out to be around 300 litres a day).
| [deleted]
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| It seems best if every household and business got a set quantity
| of water for free based on their realistic (or typical) need for
| water, and beyond that water would be priced much more
| expensively based on how much water is actually available.
|
| Shutting down hydroelectric power is really wasteful since they
| already are incurring the negative environmental effect of the
| dam, but without the benefit of getting clean energy.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Where I live, price per gallon increases significantly if you
| exceed a monthly quota (which is not free)
| ncmncm wrote:
| They could be _doing something_ about the water shortage. A good
| thing to do would be to erect solar panels over the surfaces of
| all the reservoirs involved to cut evaporation, and supply power
| from those when they are producing instead of draining more water
| out.
|
| Build out enough solar panels, and they can pump water back up at
| peak times.
|
| Desalinating water and pumping it up would be a bigger project
| involving a lot of pipe. Before that, put up solar panels to
| shade the canals, and desalinate water for where the canals lead
| to.
| ianai wrote:
| """the Bureau of Reclamation will release an additional 500,000
| acre-feet (616.7 million cubic meters) of water this year from
| the Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream on the Wyoming-Utah border
| that will flow into Lake Powell."""
|
| Per the article, sounds like they also have about 80% of that in
| an artificial lake that they'll not release for now.
|
| As someone who's lived his entire life in the southwest: this is
| bad. The importance of water to life can't be understated but can
| go unrealized if you're "in the land of plenty" of water. Lack of
| water has felled societies and started wars throughout history.
| "People will say they're going to war for all sorts of reasons
| but ultimately it's for of water, food, or resources."
| (Paraphrasing)
|
| Further, the answer is probably not to tell people to simply
| move. That's not a solution for the number of people at stake.
| Further, this is some of the most renewable energy rich land in
| the US. Solar panels and some pipes could probably push water in
| from the oceans reliably enough-levels of renewable energy.
| eloff wrote:
| I was just at lake Powell a couple weeks ago. It was very sad
| to see how low the water was. Lone rock is completely dry.
| Beaches where people used to park their boats are now up 80ft
| of cliffs. I couldn't help but think I was looking at climate
| change first hand. I know it's more complex than that, but the
| feeling was unshakable nonetheless.
|
| I think for now the solution is to raise the price of water for
| agricultural users and let the chips fall where they may.
| That's the vast majority of water use in the southwest. One
| could do this in a somewhat balanced way by offering some
| financial support for said farmers. But it has to be done.
| wbl wrote:
| We do not need farms in Arizona when Michigan exists
| zrail wrote:
| I know you're probably using Michigan just as a foil, but
| Michigan is sort of a weird case. The land that's able to be
| farmed is being farmed very well. The problem is that north
| of a certain point the land is just not very arable[1] due to
| a number of factors including soil quality and growing season
| length.
|
| [1]: https://project.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/ag_regions.html
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Thirsty folks from California and the Southwest wanting more
| water to be piped in to feed their water intensive crops and
| lawns in the desert. I'm sure that'll go down well in outlying
| regions. Maybe change in meteorological patterns and population
| levels hitting critical mass without the attendant
| infrastructure are bad for water levels. Aquifers are depleted.
| Rainfall is reduced. There's no more snowmelt to bank on as
| that savings account has been drained. Wildfires, drought, and
| rising sea levels will displace significant numbers of people.
| Agriculture will shift north and east. I think California
| peaked a few years ago.
| skybrian wrote:
| It's particularly galling when many California cities have
| desalination as an option and it's opposed in many places.
| Farming is going to have to cut back regardless, though,
| since it uses 80% of the water. (Not including environmental
| use.)
| azemetre wrote:
| Why is farming an improper use of water? I mean nations
| need to grow food and not rely on other countries as their
| bread basket, that seems like good systems planning. As for
| the types of food I suppose that is a good discussion to
| have but how do you deal with the reality that beef is an
| enormous use of water over nearly every single crop?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It's a _desert_. There are way better regions to grow
| food.
| ac29 wrote:
| The central valley, where most of CA's food is grown, is
| not a desert. It was formerly mostly grasslands.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| It's a desert now. Or will be. There's no more snowmelt
| to rely on. Rainfall is down. Aquifers are depleted so
| much the ground is sinking. Someone said I'm this thread
| that San Diego isn't a desert because they get 20% more
| rain than a desert by definition. 10 inches per year is
| really not a lot to replenish your water levels.
| skybrian wrote:
| I don't think farming in California will ever go away,
| but conserving water (say, cutting back by 20%) means
| that some crops might not be grown in California anymore.
| And the farming that's done will use water more
| efficiently.
|
| (Also, regarding the "bread basket," grain is not
| typically grown out west, I don't think? That's east of
| the Rockies.)
| google234123 wrote:
| If they cut back by 5% then residential people would get
| 25% more water.
| skybrian wrote:
| This is true, but remember that averages can be
| misleading. Available water is a very spiky graph [1].
| Reservoirs balance it out some, but cities need and can
| afford _reliable_ water, so backup sources are good, even
| if they 're expensive.
|
| [1] https://d32ogoqmya1dw8.cloudfront.net/images/trex/stu
| dents/l...
|
| From:
| https://serc.carleton.edu/trex/students/labs/lab4_1.html
| rurp wrote:
| Growing food in the desert is the improper part. There
| are plenty of areas in other parts of the country that
| aren't experiencing crippling drought. That is where
| water intensive crops should be grown.
|
| Most southwest desert farming only exists because of
| government subsidies. If farmers actually had to pay
| market rate for water most farms in this region would not
| be possible.
| azemetre wrote:
| That's a good point, something I am curious about now is
| the water costs of desert farming versus cattle ranching.
| Just wondering how close the gap actually is, I honestly
| want to say desert farming uses less resources than
| raising cattle for slaughter but I'm unsure and just
| guessing from the hip here.
| rurp wrote:
| I'm not sure how they compare in terms of water, but
| cattle ranching could certainly be done with less impact
| in less dry regions as well.
|
| One unique problem to cattle ranching in the southwest is
| that many of them are allowed to free range on public
| lands. Those cattle eat a lot of native vegetation which
| leads to worse wildfires and greatly harm native
| wildlife. They also trample cryptobiotic soil, resulting
| in much worse dust storms.
|
| I wish we could move agriculture entirely out of areas
| that get less than 5" of rain per year, especially since
| so much of the country is better suited for it. Subsidies
| are sticky though, not many farmers will willingly give
| up their handouts and few politicians want to fight that
| battle.
| [deleted]
| pram wrote:
| > Further, the answer is probably not to tell people to simply
| move.
|
| Though if you consider the long-term outlook apocalyptic and
| you own a house in these states, it would be prudent to sell
| before everyone else.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The Federal government has set the precedent that they will
| bail out people impacted by climate change in the USA.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Only when it's convenient. They did change the rules about
| FEMA and insurance when it comes to floods. They also
| adjusted the flood area designations to include theoretical
| risk (ie places that have never had a flood problem).
| kingkawn wrote:
| I already know multiple people who have left southern
| California in order to beat the rush out. They consider
| themselves climate refugees.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The real solution to the water crisis is to start by admitting
| that water _is_ a scarce resource in the region that needs to
| be rationed somehow and then start working on an equitable plan
| for rationing.
|
| While water is necessary for life, a lot of the water usage in
| a suburban lifestyle is just plain wasted. To give an idea,
| when I worked at a water treatment plant, I got to see just how
| different the water consumption rates were between winter and
| summer--winter water usage was roughly half that of summer.
|
| So a simple starting point for water rationing is... ban lawns
| and watering lawns (if you don't like such bans, then I'd
| alternatively suggest changing water rates so that it's cost-
| exorbitant to water a lawn). If you want to live in a desert,
| you need to landscape your house appropriately for living in a
| desert.
|
| The next contentious point will be a readjustment of the water
| rates for agricultural perspectives. The simple truth of the
| matter is that residential water usage--especially if you
| remove lawn care from the equation--is highly recoverable as
| drinkable water, since almost all of that water goes back down
| the sewer pipes. Agricultural water usage is generally far less
| recoverable, especially if you're growing plants for export
| whose mass is mostly water (which means you are rather
| literally exporting water).
| mimikatz wrote:
| Or just raise the price of water to a market level and let
| things work themselves out. people waste and act irrationally
| when they get something for less than it should cost.
| uoaei wrote:
| And kill everyone who can't afford it?
| baggy_trough wrote:
| What nonsense! Are you worried that rich people will buy
| all the food, or use all the gasoline?
| uoaei wrote:
| It seems you have misunderstood. This point is not about
| supply of water, it is about supply of dollars in a given
| wallet. Doesn't matter how much water is in supply: if
| someone cannot meet the price, they won't have access.
|
| Any time there is a minimum price on something, people
| who cannot afford that price won't receive that thing.
| When that thing is water, they will die. Seems pretty
| straightforward to me.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| We charge for water now. I'm not aware of any poor
| Californians dying of thirst due to cost. So I believe
| your hypothesis is wrong.
| Lammy wrote:
| > I'm not aware of any poor Californians dying of thirst
| due to cost.
|
| _Lockary v. Kayfetz_ is a good place you can start: http
| s://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1121751/files/fulltext.pd.
| ..
|
| "With new construction halted and Bolinas's desirability
| unabated--or enhanced--after the moratorium, housing
| became pricier. In 1979, to create more affordable
| housing, the District allowed property owners to build
| second units on their property. Today [2007], property
| owners waiting for a chance to develop outnumber property
| owners with [water] meters, and homes can easily fetch $1
| million."
| baggy_trough wrote:
| People in Bolinas are dying of thirst?
| Lammy wrote:
| You will find it difficult to quantify a dollar-value of
| the damage done to people who would like to live in a
| particular place but have been locked out due to
| artificial constraints on housing supply. That's why it's
| such an effective strategy.
| silisili wrote:
| Just make the first 3-4000 gallons at typical rates, and
| ramp the price way up over said threshold.
|
| Water companies already charge gallon prices by usage
| today, just not to any deterrent extent.
| bliteben wrote:
| This is how my water is priced in a place with over 80
| inches a year.
| silisili wrote:
| 80 inches of rain!?! Curious where that is! I lived in
| about 50ish inches and found that too much already.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| To do this, though, you'd have to resolve the water rights
| issue first. The vast majority of water consumption is by
| farmers who are not in the same market as residential
| consumers. There's little point in making regular people
| pay a progressive rate for water usage.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Raising rates has two points.
|
| 1) Raise the price of residential water until the cities
| can buy the water from farmers.
|
| 2) Raise the price to curtail use until cities can
| operate within their existing supply
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Sounds just like bitcoin mining/farming.
| jjav wrote:
| > Or just raise the price of water to a market level and
| let things work themselves out.
|
| This doesn't work well for something which is required to
| support life and a scarce resource.
|
| The result would be that the very rich still continue to
| water their acre of front lawn, wasting a lot of water on
| something nonproductive because money is not an issue.
| Meanwhile poor and middle class people get priced out of
| being able to afford basic usage of water to live.
| gilbetron wrote:
| progressive water rates. Figure out a decent figure for a
| person to live on in a decent manner (say 100 gallons, or
| whatever), then make that 100 gallons super cheap, but go
| above that and it rapidly gets expensive.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| On the contrary, it works very well indeed, and far
| better than a centrally planned "equitable" allocation
| system. Such a system is the very reason we're in the
| pickle we're in!
| effingwewt wrote:
| This proposal always ignores poor people. How are those
| with low/no income supppsed to afford it.
|
| We will have a housing and _water_ crisis as it will bring
| investors and speculators. It has destroyed oil prices,
| housing, land, etc.
|
| Our market is a sham. Tying essential life-giving water to
| it was a mistake.
| mywittyname wrote:
| You can have progressive water rates. Everyone gets X
| gallons of water at the current rate, then the rate goes
| up by 10 times. Then perhaps another 10x for the top 1%
| of water usage.
|
| Not doing anything makes the situation worse for
| everyone, poor people included.
|
| The good thing about a market-based approach is that it
| might allow for water to be obtained from means that are
| currently economically non-viable. Perhaps high-volume
| water users would happily pay 1000x current prices, and
| at those prices, desalination, or other alternate forms
| of water collection become viable.
|
| You might be able to give water to poor people for free.
| If there was a system where a households using under a
| certain volume of water could pay nothing, in exchange
| for freeing up water to be sold to large purchasers who
| pay 10-1000x the per gallon price.
| jjav wrote:
| > You can have progressive water rates.
|
| > You might be able to give water to poor people for
| free.
|
| This would be a lot more fair. Allocate a reasonably
| small minimum amount of gallons/month/person and that is
| very cheap (maybe not free). Then have increasing tiers
| of expensive and much more expensive usage. If someone
| wants to have an acre of lawn it should cost them
| millions a month instead of just thousands as today.
|
| Unfortunately some water systems in California have
| almost gone in the other direction to discourage
| conservation. During the previous drought they encouraged
| conservation and everyone did. Then they complained about
| not making enough money because people conserved.
|
| Instead of raising the top-tier consumption rates to
| compensate, instead they raised the base rates by a huge
| amount (base rate being the flat monthly fee they charge
| even if you use zero gallons). It's not almost $100/month
| just to be connected even if usage is zero. So a poor
| family who conserves a lot and barely uses water is still
| stuck with a huge bill.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Pretty sure this is by design when possible California
| prefers regressive taxes. Some good examples: gas tax,
| vehicle registration, highest sales tax in the country
| (7.25%) with most counties raising it even more, parcel
| taxes, etc.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| Rich people can afford to game those rules. We don't have
| a rulemaking system that doesn't eventually cede to
| lobbying where flat, even rules evolve into entire
| regulatory systems that favor the rich
| Lammy wrote:
| > How are those with low/no income supposed to afford it.
|
| They're not -- they're supposed to suffer and die in a
| way that's "their fault" or that "couldn't be helped".
| Bolinas California is a prototypical example of this,
| where a complete ban on new water hookups has been the
| excuse to prevent any new housing construction at all
| since the civil rights era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Bolinas,_California#Bolinas_Co...
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| They ignore it because it's a non issue since. We do
| progressive pricing with all sorts of stuff and the
| amount of water needed to support a household is vastly
| different than a farm or other large scale operation.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Most cities already have progressive water costs. Enough
| to drink and bathe is cheapest, and overage to water huge
| lawns and fill pools costs more per gallon.
| wswope wrote:
| This is fully detached from mainstream economic theory.
| Barring a few rural agriculturalists, people below the
| poverty line don't make a dent in overall water usage - a
| small handful of wealthy individuals and organizations
| use the vast majority of water. Pricing water
| appropriately benefits those poor, rural agriculturalists
| in the long run too, as appropriate rationing means they
| don't have to compete with their wealthier neighbors in a
| race-to-the-bottom arms war, drilling ever deeper into
| depleted aquifers and purchasing potable water for
| drinking.
|
| Not to mention the bandaid solution of subsidizing water
| only up to, e.g., the first thousand gallons per resident
| per month.
| nawgz wrote:
| Actually, poor people pay significantly (2 orders
| magnitude) more per unit water than (presumably sometimes
| corporate) farmers, who are often growing cash crops that
| make almost no impact on feeding anyone in the area.
|
| I don't disagree with the market being a fancy BS system
| to separate the working class from the wealth or
| anything, but you can't let your politics colour your
| perception in arenas you know nothing about. Otherwise
| you are ironically furthering the exact politic you
| probably hate - emotionally driven
| jdkee wrote:
| "The real solution to the water crisis is to start by
| admitting that water is a scarce resource in the region that
| needs to be rationed somehow and then start working on an
| equitable plan for rationing."
|
| A better plan would be to let the market allocate water. If
| people want golf courses, lawns, almond trees, microchip
| plants, etc. let them pay market prices for the necessary
| water.
| jjav wrote:
| > A better plan would be to let the market allocate water.
| If people want golf courses, lawns, almond trees, microchip
| plants, etc. let them pay market prices for the necessary
| water.
|
| Those who use lots of water on such things also have tons
| of money to spend on it without caring much, or at all. So
| it won't conserve any water, but it will price out all the
| poor and middle class people who can't play that game.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Progressive pricing is already a thing in other utility
| markets. Set tiers such that any single household can
| afford enough water to live and ramp up from there.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Except market driven allocation by and large works,
| despite the sheer denial going on here. Not every user of
| water is uncaring of price, and water prices demonstrably
| work. I don't understand the resistance against such a
| measure, this is probably a textbook example of where
| market-driven allocation would work well. Most people
| don't need enough water for even reasonably high prices
| to be a serious issue.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| I've always wondered this about microchip plants and their
| water usage. They need ultrapure water, so it makes sense
| that they'd need a lot of water if they're using reverse
| osmosis systems. However, for every one litre of pure water
| used, hundreds of litres of water just a shade less pure
| are produced. Can't this just be resold, since for any
| other purpose, it's still perfectly fine water.
| fooey wrote:
| I completely agree that the first step is to admit water is
| scarce and the cost of usage needs to reflect that.
|
| The Utah Governor is an alfalfa farmer though, so good luck
| getting the states upstream to do play ball
|
| https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/07/16/cox-says-its-
| ignorant...
|
| > Gov. Spencer Cox -- a farmer himself -- is calling on
| Utahns to conserve water to help save the state's farms and
| ranches. And he doesn't want to hear from anyone that the
| state's water woes can be solved by further restricting the
| flow to farms.
|
| > That's "very uninformed," Cox said. "I might say ignorant.
| ... Nobody has done more to cut back on water usage in this
| state than our farmers," whose water has been cut "between 70
| and 75% on most farms. As a result, that's dramatically
| reducing crops."
| balthasar wrote:
| The alfalfa must flow.
| jiocrag wrote:
| What do you think the animals that you eat eat? Just
| because you don't directly consume alfalfa doesn't make it
| a wasteful crop.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I totally disagree. This is the mentality of defeatism.
| Instead, we should be trying to solve "Why is this not
| abundant" and use technology to stave off scarcity-driven
| society.
|
| If this was 1960's, our society would get together, move
| earth and mountains and solve the problem. Today's generation
| of people are being taught to live a scarcity-driven life.
|
| I will vote against any politician that wants to reduce the
| QoL but giving a pass to globalisation or unnecessary farming
| in the region that cannot support it. You shouldn't be
| growing Avocados in a water scarce region.
|
| First remove your special interest groups that get a free
| pass for polluting the environment or using resources for
| their own interest by reducing citizen's QoL.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I appreciate that you point out that agriculture exports
| contain the local water.
|
| I have always found it cool when in a showerthought moment,
| thinking how kind of cool it is that I'm consuming water from
| another part of the world, as I munch on whatever produce.
| imchillyb wrote:
| Your /first/ solution is to ban US Citizens from using our
| own resource?
|
| WTF man?!
|
| Have you ever watched the program: How it's Made? This
| television program, unintentionally, showcases the massive
| water-waste that corporations perpetrate daily.
|
| How about we ban manufacturing processes that use water? How
| about we force companies that use our water to pay Citizens
| the ACTUAL VALUE of the water, and not a made-up price that
| makes their business competitive?
|
| How about we tell those companies to _go-F themselves_ until
| they have a manufacturing plan that doesn 't include our
| limited water supply?
|
| But, no, your immediate solution is to harm the Citizens...
| Again, wtf?! @Jcranmer
| r00fus wrote:
| Given that non-residential is 80% of usage, it seems like
| that'd be where we should start looking at recycling water
| usage.
| wfhordie wrote:
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Agricultural water is usually not for sale to supplement
| your residential usage. Your lawn or shower is competing
| with other residential uses, not agriculture.
| google234123 wrote:
| Agricultural water is taking a growing percentage of the
| total in California. They are focing residential people
| to have to ration
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| California has a framework of private water rights.
|
| If residential people want more water beyond what they
| own the rights to, they have to buy it from someone who
| does.
|
| It is really that simple.
| kbutler wrote:
| But agricultural water could be entered into the market
| for residential usage - the current legal structure
| incentivizes using the water for agriculture, rather than
| allowing reselling for higher-value-per-gallon uses.
|
| I was curious about the almond statistic above. Sounds
| like "1-3 gallons" is exaggerated, but that 1-gallon-per-
| almond is at least on the right order of magnitude, but
| farmers are working to reduce water use.
| https://farmtogether.com/learn/blog/dispelling-
| miconceptions...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In some cases water could be repurposed into the
| residential market, for a price. The state could buy the
| farmers lands and water rights, or buy out their
| preexisting contracts with water suppliers.
|
| The taxpayers don't want to pay for this, so the water is
| effectively off limits.
|
| Is requiring compensation for seizure the challenging
| legal structure you mentioned?
|
| The gallons per nut argument is pretty arbitrary. If you
| look at calories per gallon, nuts are better than almost
| all vegetables, most meats and many fruits. The high
| water per mass is basically a result of nuts being one of
| the most energy dense foods, and photosynthesis requiring
| water to create calories.
|
| If you want to go down that rabbit hole, you can start
| looking at the gallons per mass for different foods and
| comparing their caloric density.
|
| https://www.healabel.com/water-footprints-of-food-list/
| [deleted]
| jcoq wrote:
| 70% of the water in Arizona goes to farming. Our state ships
| hay to the Middle East. Subsidized water is a ridiculous
| subversion of market economics.
|
| Blaming this on suburban households is like pretending that
| climate change would be solved if only consumers would be
| mindful of their carbon footprints.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is not a matter of subsidized water, It is a challenge
| around private water ownership and public demand.
|
| Most western states have some form of private water
| ownership, where land owners own the water under it, like
| gold, oil, ect.
|
| Most of the population is urban, and don't have sufficient
| water ownership to meet their demands, particularly in
| times of drought.
|
| This creates a natural conflict between owners who want to
| use it for one thing, and thirsty cities who don't own the
| water.
|
| The the extent it is a the fault of suburban households, it
| is their fault for not buying the water or lands to meet
| their needs.
|
| https://mywaterearth.com/who-are-the-global-water-grabbers/
| scarmig wrote:
| If a perfect market existed in water in western states,
| the cost of a gallon of water would be the same whether
| directed to urban or agricultural uses. It clearly isn't,
| which is a pretty clear sign that there are high
| frictions facing people who want to purchase the water
| they need.
|
| A fix to this requires a change in policy.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is not the price of a gallon that is being paid, but
| the right to use a gallon for all time. There are indeed
| high frictions, mostly in the form of upfront capital
| costs.
|
| If you want to buy a farmers water, they want to be
| compensated for sunk capital and future earnings. They
| bought land, planted it, drilled wells, and have 30+
| years of future earnings, after which, they could sell
| their rights.
|
| In short, the relevant market is for the water rights,
| not the water itself.
| seandoe wrote:
| This. I live in Utah and it's the same story.
| yawz wrote:
| I believe that number is even higher in California: ~80%
|
| How much almond California produces? Given the fact that
| "one ounce of almonds requires ~23 gallons of water", do
| the math!
| scarmig wrote:
| That reminds of me of when my state made a big show of
| banning restaurants from automatically bringing water to
| your table, when 80% of our water use goes to agriculture.
| jiocrag wrote:
| Dude... farms make food lol. You don't need an extra cup
| of water without asking, but farms need water to grow
| food. This is the type of delusional entitlement that is
| ruining the planet.
| adolph wrote:
| Here is a source(ish) for the above. On the supply side:
| 41% Groundwater 36% Colorado River (limited to 2.8
| million acre feet annually) 18% In-state Rivers
| (unlimited) 5% Reclaimed Water
|
| https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts
| bogota wrote:
| It's becoming unbearable that every issue facing society is
| the consumers fault. I take a ten minute shower and I'm
| destroying the world but the farmer growing crops that
| wouldn't exist in the region without imported water is
| fine.
|
| I realize we can fix more than one thing but the arguments
| i am always seeing is stating the consumer is the biggest
| issue and it's infuriating.
| colpabar wrote:
| If they can convince us that everything is our fault,
| then we'll turn to fighting amongst ourselves, and
| nothing will change. Which is exactly where we're at, and
| not just with climate issues.
|
| Stop trusting the people on TV!
| jiocrag wrote:
| Whose fault is it?
| grapeskin wrote:
| To an extent, it is. Americans can't do much about hay
| shipped to the Middle East, but buying cheap produce out
| of season pushes markets to grow crops in unusual places.
| Less of a problem when buying in-season foods from down
| the road, but that'd mean customers also have to stop
| shopping at places like Walmart.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Americans can fix the subsidized water distribution. Why
| allow people in the Middle east to purchase US hay at a
| discount? Charge fair market price.
| jiocrag wrote:
| The difference is that we need to eat -- you don't need
| to take 10 minute showers or water your lawn. It _IS_ the
| over-consuming citizen (i.e. you) causing these problems
| at the end of the day, whether that fact makes you
| uncomfortable or not.
| syspec wrote:
| I think they alluded to that in their reply
| lesgobrandon wrote:
| revscat wrote:
| The real solution is to get rid of fossil fuels as quickly as
| possible and by any means necessary, no matter the cost.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Rationing is a very blunt instrument.
|
| What works is setting a price for water usage that lets
| supply and demand meet at a sustainable level.
|
| This would require changing many laws and regulations, which
| is probably very hard to accomplish because the powerful
| interests that benefit from the current system.
|
| Nonetheless, that _is_ the solution to strive for.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| > Further, the answer is probably not to tell people to simply
| move. That's not a solution for the number of people at stake.
|
| While I agree, we probably _should_ start telling people to
| stop moving there. The places in the US that are getting the
| largest influx of people are the same places that are going to
| be impacted the most by climate change: the West and the South.
| Some of the fastest growing cities in the nation are in Utah
| and Arizona, the exact areas we are discussing here.
|
| I used to live in Utah and now live in the Midwest. A lot of
| people I know feel strongly that they would rather live in the
| West over the Midwest for various reasons, some of which I
| agree with, but I can't imagine moving back out there and
| taking on a mortgage in the area where it seems like the water
| crisis is a ticking time bomb.
|
| I'd love to be wrong, but if the worst case scenarios are
| realized, a lot of suffering will be happening to people who
| have put themselves in the situation well after the warning
| signs became widely recognized.
| zackees wrote:
| California topped off all of their reservoirs in 2019. These
| systems of dams are designed to sustain california for five
| years, according to local farmers that i've talked to. However
| the water supply is being diverted into the ocean now because
| of insane environmental laws.
|
| A farmer in california pays more for water than labor, taxes or
| anything else.
| Arrath wrote:
| 2019, while being a wet year, did not come close to the
| monumental claim of "topping off all their reservoirs". Got
| anything to back that up?
|
| As for mandated minimum flow levels, would you rather the
| river courses run dry?
| sulam wrote:
| Do you get your news by reading signs along 99?
| warcher wrote:
| Gonna need some citations on that one big hoss. Most of the
| talk out of California lately is farmers in an arms race to
| drill the deepest well, because they're planting water-hungry
| crops like almonds like fiends (good profit margins so fuck
| the water table).
| kickout wrote:
| as they should? water where water isn't naturally should be
| very expensive from an environmental footprint. Externalities
| and all that
| anonAndOn wrote:
| > diverted into the ocean now because of insane environmental
| laws
|
| Is that from the Resnick [0] talking points memo? The
| Resnicks should grow their almonds back in the Middle East
| where they belong instead of in the CA desert.
|
| [0]https://www.forbes.com/profile/stewart-lynda-
| resnick/?sh=274...
| rurp wrote:
| The water authority in Southern Nevada recently authorized
| 800,000 _new_ housing connections. So one of the organizations
| that should be managing the water emergency is actively making
| it worse.
|
| The problem is that they make a lot more money on new
| connections than serving existing ones. So existing residents
| are (correctly) being told to restrict water, but then the same
| people saying that are turning around and greatly exacerbating
| the problem.
| snarfy wrote:
| There really isn't a lot of reason for phoenix to exist. Before
| the invention of air conditioning it was merely a truck stop
| between the texas coast and the california cost. Everything
| there is artificially put there and the only thing making it
| possible is the water. If everyone tries to stay, the price of
| water will adjust accordingly. Any crisis with the water will
| be handled by government as well as they handled covid.
| freeopinion wrote:
| As for telling people to move, that actually is a solution even
| for the number of people at stake. Look how many million people
| left California in the last two years. Just ask Boise, ID. If
| you start charging $20/CCF instead of $5/CCF to fill an
| olympic-sized swimming pool, immigration into California might
| come to a screeching halt.
|
| You don't have to solve the problem in a single year. You can
| have a 10 or 20 year target to get to zero growth. Just put a
| cap on building permits.
|
| But plenty of people will scream bloody murder about that.
| Aren't FAANGs already shelling out millions to add housing
| because of shortages? Nevada is trying to pipe water in from
| Idaho and Utah. A Southern Nevada community that doesn't even
| exist yet just proposed to cut off the water to a neighboring
| community with thousands of residents so that the planned
| community could build homes.
|
| Don't reject any solution out of hand. Population growth
| management is an obvious place to spend some really good
| thinking.
| alimov wrote:
| Yeah people moving out and people moving in. It's not like CA
| lost "millions of people".
|
| https://www.capolicylab.org/pandemic-patterns-california-
| is-...
| ParksNet wrote:
| Enforcing US immigration laws and securing the Southern
| Border should be pursued from an environmental sustainability
| angle, at least. Seal the border properly and that's 2million
| people each year we don't have to feed, house, or water.
|
| Deport the 10-20 million already inside the USA and that's an
| even greater improvement.
| pessimizer wrote:
| We could also start exiling US citizens and liquidating
| (ironically) undesirables.
| hall0ween wrote:
| This doesn't address the largest consumers of water in the
| area, as stated above. People consume far less water than
| business and ag.
|
| IMO, golf courses in the southwest is straight up foolish.
| Start the ax there.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Just because I'm a smart-ass... it actually might address
| the agricultural aspect if farmers don't have access to
| the stereotypical labor sources.
|
| "golf courses in the southwest is straight up foolish."
|
| Or turn them into full size putt putt with astroturf. I
| wonder if that's ever been done. Would be comical to see.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Human consumption if you have an ocean isn't much of a
| concern in the dry places, desalination is cheap enough for
| what people can pay.
|
| Agricultural and industrial usage, not so much.
| oasisbob wrote:
| > You don't have to solve the problem in a single year.
|
| Yes, you do. Or nearly so. This is not a problem that has
| decades to go. If Lake Powell drops below the minimum power
| pool (as early as 2024), the results could easily be dramatic
| and horrifying.
|
| It's not even known if long-term water releases from the Glen
| Canyon dam are possible without using the power plant.
| jjav wrote:
| > If you start charging $20/CCF instead of $5/CCF to fill an
| olympic-sized swimming pool, immigration into California
| might come to a screeching halt.
|
| 1.33 CCF = 1000 gallons.
|
| So $20/1 CCF = $26.6/1000 gallons.
|
| It's already near those rates, my water bill which I paid
| last week was roughly ~$20 per 1000 gallons.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Where do you live? The California Water Service Company
| tariff for 1-8 CCF is $4.269/CCF for residential metered
| service in East Los Angeles.
| tzs wrote:
| This really makes me appreciate my well.
|
| It uses around $0.45 in electricity to pump 1000 gallons
| from my well continuously. Around $0.37 for 1000 gallons
| pumped intermittently.
| [deleted]
| kk6mrp wrote:
| Building permits are already crazy expensive in California;
| you can save a lot of money by building in another state.
| pkaye wrote:
| Since farming is 80% of water use, cutting out a little bit
| of the water intensive farming will provide for any
| residential needs for some time.
| uoaei wrote:
| Yup. Orchard farmers will routinely leave their thirstier
| crops in puddles of water, leaving their sprinklers on the
| whole day because it's easier and less management than a
| smarter plan. Any exposed water that evaporates from the
| surface is effectively _wasted_ and won 't be replenished
| until the next rain- or snowfall.
| adolph wrote:
| _Meet the California Couple Who Uses More Water Than
| Every Home in Los Angeles Combined_
|
| _How megafarmers Lynda and Stewart Resnick built their
| billion-dollar empire._
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/lynda-
| stewar...
|
| _Having shrewdly maneuvered the backroom politics of
| California's byzantine water rules, they are now thought
| to consume more of the state's water than any other
| family, farm, or company. They control more of it in some
| years than what's used by the residents of Los Angeles
| and the entire San Francisco Bay Area combined._
|
| [...]
|
| _Their land came with decades-old contracts with the
| state and federal government that allow them to purchase
| water piped south by state canals. The Kern Water Bank
| gave them the ability to store this water and sell it
| back to the state at a premium in times of drought.
| According to an investigation by the Contra Costa Times,
| between 2000 and 2007 the Resnicks bought water for
| potentially as little as $28 per acre-foot (the amount
| needed to cover one acre in one foot of water) and then
| sold it for as much as $196 per acre-foot to the state,
| which used it to supply other farmers whose Delta supply
| had been previously curtailed. The couple pocketed more
| than $30 million in the process._
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yep. All other discussions are fiddling around the edges
| while you still have farmers casually spraying water in the
| hot air as it is cheaper than pipes.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Then raise the price of water. I don't get a Nobel Prize
| for this. It really just earns me a Captain Obvious
| sticker.
|
| In the short term, your food will be more expensive. In
| the long term, people will invest in water-reduced
| production. Want to see fintech and crypto currency
| startups at YC get replaced by VF (vertical farming)
| startups claiming to reduce water use by 80%? Just raise
| the price of water by 1C//liter. VFVC (vertical farming
| venture capital) will be all the rage.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You're assuming farmers are paying for water the same way
| residential consumers do. "Just raise the price of water"
| doesn't work without first reforming a lot of law.
| ausbah wrote:
| I think the recent bouts of inflation show that people
| don't take large price hikes kindly
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| In a country where major companies get governments to
| fund their factories while they spend billions on stock
| buybacks that is unlikely to be allowed to happen.
| ericmay wrote:
| Well that's it. Pack it up. There's no solution as long
| as government can be bought by companies.
| bushbaba wrote:
| ...and if you stop farming in california. Inflation will go
| up.
|
| Realistically, California could and should start a major
| water works project to import water from the east or
| pacific northwest.
| pkaye wrote:
| Only alterantive is to cut back some of the corn/soybean
| production in the midwest and grow some of the other
| crops grown in California. If that doesn't work, like you
| said, we can import water but other states need to
| cooperate and the federal government should chip in some
| funding. You can't just tell Californians to suck it up
| and figure this out by themselves when the state has >10%
| of the population plus many essential crops and
| industries.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I don't think there is a need to cut back on corn/soybean
| production. But we definitely need to be growing more
| fruits and veggies in the midwest.
|
| Last year Illinois passed two laws: one prevents towns
| and cities from restricting vegetable gardens. If you
| want to fill your front yard with a hoop house, your city
| can't stop you. The other forces each county to establish
| guidelines for p2p food sales and prevents town and
| cities from stopping it. This needs to be adopted in
| other states.
| peachtree2 wrote:
| Almonds in California use so much water it could feed 56 cities
| the size of Los Angeles (back-of-the-envelope math from
| publically available sources)
|
| It's not just people that at fault, but an agricultural sector
| that has no limits on its consumption do to the money and
| politics involved.
| kk6mrp wrote:
| They do limit water consumption actually.
| tzs wrote:
| Since only something like 0.03% of that water actually ends
| up in the almonds, you need to track what happens to that
| other 99.97% to determine the actual impact of almonds.
| curiousgal wrote:
| animal_spirits wrote:
| If you don't want to start a flame war then don't start a
| flamewar. This is not relevant to the article
| curiousgal wrote:
| My point is that if people are fighting something that is
| so inconsequential to their own personal lives, imagine how
| hard they are going to fight the things that do affect
| them.on a daily basis. The very same things that need to be
| done to tackle climate change.
| mmmpop wrote:
| Hello, you must be new here.
| perihelions wrote:
| It was a good illustration of
|
| - _" Apophasis... is a rhetorical device wherein the
| speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it,
| or denying that it should be brought up. Accordingly, it
| can be seen as a rhetorical relative of irony."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis
| 0x7265616374 wrote:
| For crying out loud, please be informed and limit the
| hyperbole. _States_ are putting severe limitations on
| abortion - despite any attempt to conflate, it 's not in fact
| a "ban." Even if Roe is overturned, that's not outlawing or
| banning abortion. Rather, it would return the decision to the
| purview of the states. If/when a state actually outlaws or
| bans abortion outright, _then_ you could storm the message
| boards with the ban-alarm. But until then, please, please
| stop with the hyperbole.
|
| What people don't seem to understand about climate change -
| or any major macro-civillization-affecting situation - is
| that humans are by nature _reactive_ rather than _proactive_.
| This will likely not change in your lifetime, so you can
| dispense with the "because X we'll never take action on Y."
| Humans will never collectively act until there is compelling
| enough reason to do so. And that likely means catastrophe on
| some macro level. Until then, the issue will be patched and
| duct-taped and small-balled, and confirmation bias will
| abound.
| suture wrote:
| mikebonnell wrote:
| Several states have laws that would in fact create an
| immediate ban is Roe v Wade is overturned.
|
| Specifically, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and South
| Dakota. Idaho, bans would start 30 days after Roe v Wade is
| overturned. Several other states, the Attorney General just
| needs to say yes and abortion is banned.
| cronix wrote:
| Yes, individual states are choosing for themselves via
| their duly elected legislatures and governors how they
| want to handle it if the ruling is overturned. Just like
| some states place limits on gun magazine capacities. They
| believe it's best for them, and absent a national law,
| they can.
| mikebonnell wrote:
| Agreed, absent Roe v Wade the states must choose for
| themselves. I was hoping to clarify that:
|
| "States are putting severe limitations on abortion -
| despite any attempt to conflate, it's not in fact a
| "ban." Even if Roe is overturned, that's not outlawing or
| banning abortion." was incorrect as several states have
| put in place abortion bans if Roe v Wade is overturned.
| jdhn wrote:
| >I don't mean to start a flamewar but in a country where
| abortion is being outlawed
|
| 1. If you're worried about starting a flamewar, then don't
| start one.
|
| 2. Abortion isn't being outlawed at the federal level, its
| simply being returned to the states.
| Arrath wrote:
| Agreed 100%, unfortunately.
| yes_i_can wrote:
| irrational wrote:
| > the answer is probably not to tell people to simply move
|
| What about telling people to stop building in these areas? Last
| time I looked they were still building new housing developments
| in Las Vegas! Of course, I also think people should stop
| building in Miami because of the ocean level rising.
| salmonfamine wrote:
| I don't think "just move" is the answer either, but the fact
| remains that the region cannot sustainably support its current
| population (much less a growing population) given current
| levels of consumption.
|
| So, either the population has to be reduced, or consumption has
| to be reduced. But either option seems politically impossible.
| Our understanding of freedom is not compatible with the cold
| reality of constrained resources. There isn't a price mechanism
| capable of equitably reducing consumption, and there isn't a
| technological solution that's capable of scaling to demand.
| Something's gotta give.
| apcragg wrote:
| There is plenty of water in the south west, we just use most
| of it to grow animal feed in the desert. Even worst, much of
| that water is subsidized by the US Government which allows
| farmers to grow that animal feed in the high plains where it
| would be economically infeasible otherwise. We have
| engineered this problem to the benefit of a small number of
| ranchers and farmers and seem determined to blame it on
| everybody else.
| ianai wrote:
| Agree. In LV they've got huge water works to recycle all
| water. It's a known that the water almost exclusively
| leaves the system when it's evaporated or used to water
| plants. And there are tight restrictions on residential
| use.
| freeopinion wrote:
| The benefit is arguably not just to a small number of
| ranchers and farmers.
|
| The U.S. went all-in on globalization. That includes
| globalization of food production. For 50 years the typical
| USian has taken bananas and coconut for granted. Coffee is
| a staple in every kitchen.
|
| Produce and dairy of countless varieties are produced in
| California for consumers around the country and indeed
| around the world.
|
| Would you argue that globalization of the food supply chain
| is a mistake? Do you propose that Chicago grow its own
| spinach? Should Saudi Arabia grow its own alfalfa? Should
| apples and grapes consumed in Oklahoma be grown in
| Oklahoma?
|
| I suppose many people are rethinking this whole
| globalization strategy. From microchips to mozzarella.
| Economics: the spectator sport with real spectator
| consequences.
| [deleted]
| rurp wrote:
| The fact that the US grows a lot of food domestically
| seems completely counter to what you're saying. Growing
| food within the US has a lot of benefits but doing so in
| the middle of the desert is the worst possible spot.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Prove it. Start a tomato farm in Tennessee and challenge
| Musk and Bezos with your fortune. Replace tobacco with
| carrots in North Carolina and see how it goes.
| justin66 wrote:
| > The U.S. went all-in on globalization. That includes
| globalization of food production.
|
| "Globalization" would include an elimination of domestic
| agricultural subsidies and tariffs such that everyone is
| on a level playing field, which is something we have not
| done in our agricultural sector.
| salmonfamine wrote:
| We agree here. By "consumption," I'm not just referring to
| residential consumption.
|
| There is enough water in the Southwest for a sizable
| population, of course. The problem ahead is how to
| distribute a constrained resource to that population
| without deferring to lobbied interests, wealthy landowners,
| golf-course owners, etc. That's an uphill battle, to say
| the least.
| apcragg wrote:
| For sure! Even Buy-and-dry schemes seem to be struggling
| with political backlash and those landowners are being
| fairly compensated in voluntary transactions. It's not
| going to be pretty when the junior water rights holders
| are cut off for good.
| peachtree2 wrote:
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I think they shouldn't refill the lake until they've searched for
| human remains. There have been a couple of stories in the news
| about people finding such things.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| 2018 HN thread on the ongoing "drought" out west:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18098899
|
| Link is this Atlantic article:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/how-the-we...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If I'm reading correctly, Lake Powell has a capacity of 25M acre-
| feet. They're going to release an additional 0.5M acre-feet that
| feeds into it. That sounds pointless.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > Some experts say the term drought is inadequate because it
| suggests conditions will return to normal.
|
| One or two hundred years does not normal make. The fact is, this
| area is now returning to normal. The dams, water supply, etc.
| were all based on overly optimistic / false assumptions.
|
| If gov / leadership don't have the wherewithal to break this down
| for the masses, we're never going to get honesty and transparency
| about climate change.
| agomez314 wrote:
| I have read recently that the southwest is experiencing the
| beginnings of a long drought that's been cycling for thousands of
| years. Is this true? And if so, perhaps the best measure is to
| adapt and move elsewhere, as civilizations untold have done so
| for a million years.
|
| EDIT: I read about it in the following paper:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01290-z
| simonsarris wrote:
| Yes, California has had droughts lasting ~220 and ~140 years
| before.
|
| _The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet periods
| like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the
| rule in California for at least the last 3,500 years, and that
| mega-droughts are likely to recur._
|
| _The South American drought was of "horrendous proportions,"
| said Dr. Kolata, and it destroyed Tiwanaku's agricultural base.
| The empire's cities were abandoned by about 1000. Dr. Kolata
| believes that the raised fields could no longer support the
| cities, and archeological evidence shows that the fields were
| abandoned between 1000 and 1100. The political state collapsed,
| the population dispersed and, with agriculture no longer
| possible, the people relied on raising alpacas and llamas._
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/19/science/severe-ancient-dr...
| antognini wrote:
| One of the root causes of the dysfunction of water policy in
| the West is that expectations around water availability were
| set in the early 20th century which turned out to be
| historically anomalous. Long term water agreements between
| states and with Mexico were based on assumption that those
| water levels would continue. Now we are seeing reversion to
| the mean, but it takes a long time for water policy to be
| updated.
|
| There is a saying that water policy in the West is 21st
| century needs on top of 20th century infrastructure and 19th
| century law.
| kokanee wrote:
| Is the implication here that we should wait another 3,500
| years for our reservoirs to return to their former peak
| levels? I'm not sure that trends from a geological time scale
| are helpful in current public policy debates on natural
| resource shortages or climate changes.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> I have read recently that the southwest is experiencing the
| beginnings of a long drought that's been cycling for thousands
| of years. Is this true? And if so, perhaps the best measure is
| to adapt and move on, as civilizations untold have done so for
| a million years.
|
| Can you site a source? I'm not even skeptical, but if that's
| true it would be nice to stop blaming climate change.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| Periodic variation can work in tandem with a changing mean.
| Think of a sine wave multiplied with a line of non-zero
| slope.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| "resonance" or x sin x
| slg wrote:
| >if that's true it would be nice to stop blaming climate
| change.
|
| Events can have multiple causes. Whether there are millennia
| long natural cycles happening doesn't disprove human caused
| climate change.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| He didn't say it disproved climate change, the question was
| whether incrfeased C02 was the cause of this particular
| issue.
| slg wrote:
| They said "it would be nice to stop blaming climate
| change". Climate change is still to blame even if it
| shares the blame with other causes.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| While this is true, the parent has a point. Politicians and
| Media are quick to blame Climate Change for any crisis,
| since it's a great way to deflect blame on to individuals
| instead of government institutions that failed them. The
| Colorado River situation is a great example of a
| mismanaged, centrally-planned government program gone
| wrong. If water were being priced appropriately, market
| forces would correct the issue.
| slg wrote:
| Are you saying that people would be more likely to blame
| the government if the cause of the drought was entirely
| natural compared to if it was caused by human action?
| agomez314 wrote:
| from a quick google search:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01290-z
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Not really, there are cyclical droughts there, but the flow
| rate of the Colorado river is currently at about the historical
| norm.
| [deleted]
| arrosenberg wrote:
| That seems like a telephone-d version of the actual factoid?
| When the Army Corp of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation
| built dams and resevoirs on the Colorado, they set baseline
| numbers for those facilities that were overly optimistic
| because they were doing the work during an unusually wet
| decade.
|
| I'm not sure how we could even know, with any level of
| certainty, that there are thousand year drought cycles or how
| they work. It's true that the Colorado is oversubscribed and
| the whole Southwest is fairly unsustainable as-is.
| wrycoder wrote:
| You analyze tree rings to estimate growth. Yes, it's
| confounded with temperature.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I did a calculation to get a sense of the enormity of these
| numbers and to consider what it would take to replace this water
| release with desalination. The release is 500,000 acre-feet, or
| about 163G gallons (326/000 gal/af). According to Wikipedia, the
| Keystone Phase III pipeline can deliver 700,000 barrels/day, or
| 29.4M gallons/day (oil barrels are 42 gallons). Setting aside the
| 7% flow rate differences between water and oil, an equivalent
| pipeline would take over 5,500 days, or over 15 years to deliver
| that much water.
|
| Or to put it another way, the 7.5M acre-feet per year deliverable
| in the Colorado River Compact would take over 225 pipelines to
| achieve the same flow rate.
|
| So, for desalination to have any significant impact, we would
| have to build a huge number of desalination plants and pipelines
| and provide massive power for the plants and the energy to pump
| all that water uphill.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline
|
| https://usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/faq.html
|
| https://www.regoproducts.com/PDFs/liquid_flow_conversions.pd...
| rurp wrote:
| One factor to consider is that coastal California cities
| currently pipe in a huge amount of their water from distant
| locations. If they ramped up desalination it would lower the
| overall amount of water travel by quite a bit.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Coastal California cities are also anti-local power
| generation and anti-nuclear, which means the cost of
| desalinating billions of gallons of water is going to be
| through the roof. Our electricity cost is double-triple that
| of places like NYC and Chicago.
| juanani wrote:
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Anyone who wants to know more about the situation on the colorado
| river should read Science Be Damned: How Ignoring Inconvenient
| Science Drained the Colorado River [1]. The Tl;DR is that water
| is doled out by a multi-state compact that used several years of
| historically high water flow as it's basis. Over time, normal
| river flow rates were bound to deplete the reservoirs.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Science-Be-Dammed-Ignoring-
| Inconvenie...
| downrightmike wrote:
| Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOQ0FHxeRTs
| samschooler wrote:
| If anyone wants to dive deep into the water rights and history of
| hydrology + politics in the Colorado River Basin, I highly
| recommend Where the Water Goes by Davin Owen. The books starts at
| the headwaters near Rocky Mountain National Park and follows the
| river down to the Gulf of California. It addresses every major
| issue, water right and major construction project along the way.
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/317824/where-the-wa...
| eatonphil wrote:
| Thanks! Cadillac Desert is also on my list on the topic.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Lake Mead, downstream from Lake Powell, will now be denied even
| more water. The vertical drop in the water level has been
| incredible. But the horizontal recession helps to drive the point
| home. The shoreline has moved more than 15 miles.
| warcher wrote:
| In Utah (home of lake powell) 80% of our water goes to
| agriculture, which in turn provides.... 1.6% of state GDP. The
| overwhelming majority of that state GDP goes to cattle and the
| feeding of cattle. Not just meat, but the most water intensive
| form of meat you can eat.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| willswire wrote:
| __Lake Mead, formed by Hoover Dam in the 1930s and crucial to the
| water supply of 25 million people, has fallen so low that a
| barrel containing human remains, believed to date to the 1980s,
| was found in the receding shoreline on Sunday.__
|
| Imagine finding this on the shore!
| mercyandgrace wrote:
| Two Sundays ago:
|
| https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/homicides/police-believe...
|
| >Las Vegas police provided more details Tuesday morning in the
| discovery of a body at Lake Mead National Recreational Area.
|
| Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said they believe the body found in a
| barrel Sunday was a man who died from a gunshot wound.
|
| "We're going to expand our time frame of the murder to the
| middle to late 1970s to early 80s," he said Tuesday morning,
| citing the clothes and shoes the man was wearing.
|
| Spencer said officers discovered the shoes the man was wearing
| were sold at Kmart and manufactured in the middle and late
| 1970s.
|
| The barrel was found Sunday near Hemenway Harbor because of
| dropping water levels in the lake.
|
| Spencer previously said it is possible the barrel was dumped in
| the lake from a boat.
|
| "The water level has dropped so much over the last 30 to 40
| years that, where the person was located, if a person were to
| drop the barrel in the water and it sinks, you are never going
| to find it unless the water level drops," Spencer said in an
| interview Monday. "The water level has dropped and made the
| barrel visible. The barrel did not move....It was not like the
| barrel washed up."
| chasd00 wrote:
| Imagine being the one that thought "no one will ever find this
| at the bottom of the lake!"
| exabrial wrote:
| Address the root problem:
|
| * Watering of non-native grass lawns should outright be banned
|
| * Unsustainable agriculture, like growing baby spinach in the
| desert during winter, should be forced to pay unsubsidized rates
| for water, which should be transferred to the consumers of the
| product
|
| * People living in the desert should have to pay unsubsidized
| rates for water for consumption
| ryantgtg wrote:
| What about things like Nestle siphoning off 58 million gallons
| a year from public land near LA for nearly no cost in order to
| bottle Arrowhead water?
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| That's roughly enough water to grow 50-100 acres of alfalfa.
| There's a million acres of alfalfa grown in California. And
| more of other water intensive crops. Yeah it's shitty but
| it's not a root cause, it's a rounding error compared to
| agriculture.
| exabrial wrote:
| I hadn't even heard of that, but that's ridiculous. Definite
| outright ban of water exports, no exceptions!
| TameAntelope wrote:
| What crazy off-the-wall things could the US do, if the crisis got
| to a critical juncture? Is there some kind of "moonshot" way of
| moving large amounts of freshwater across long distances that
| would solve this problem?
| diebir wrote:
| Many people and myself included, would love to see Lake Powell
| drained. It serves little purpose and we would be better without
| it. As a bonus, we'd get wonderful Glen Canyon back.
| ur-whale wrote:
| "acre-foot"
|
| I mean it's not Beard-seconds but not far off.
| loufe wrote:
| >"One acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons (1.23 million liters), is
| enough water to supply one or two households for a year"
|
| Did anybody else find this number astounding? That's 3370 litres
| PER DAY per household. Assuming this numberis accurate, this is
| not people living in condos. This is people watering their lawn
| daily, filling their backyard pools, liberally washing their cars
| every week. I think the water crisis will be an easy fix as soon
| as the immediacy of the problem causes people to accept higher
| pricing. No other incentive will eliminate the lunacy which is
| watering lawns and every-backyard pools in the deserts of Utah,
| Nevada, and Southern California.
| jeffmc wrote:
| Domestic use (lawns, showers, toilets, etc) is a small percent
| of the overall water use in the west. For example, in Colorado
| 89% of the water usage is for agriculture and only 7% is
| municipal and industrial
| (https://waterknowledge.colostate.edu/water-management-
| admini...). So, we can rip up as many lawns and install as many
| low flow toilets and it is barely a drop in the proverbial
| bucket.
| artificial wrote:
| California's water use is dominated by agriculture[0]. 10% of
| the water is urban use, how much of that is commercial vs
| residential? Average is around 100 gallons (~370 liters) per
| day or much less, depending on the season) Higher prices are
| already a reality. The cycle is reduce usage, not enough money
| being made, a water main blows in DTLA [2] since they're 100
| years old, increase rates, repeat.
|
| [0] https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-
| Website/Files/Documents/2019/...
|
| [1] https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3611
|
| [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/surfs-water-main-
| break-...
| zrail wrote:
| I can't be sure but I _think_ what that's referring to is _all
| the water_ that a household uses including externalities like
| the water used to grow their food.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| 1. This doesn't seem to have been done out of any natural
| conservation considerations, but rather electricity generation
| considerations. Not saying the latter isn't important, but it's
| still sad that that seems to still be the only considerations
| that matter.
|
| 2. This is literally a debt in clean water that will be repaid by
| generations to come, as the article mentions. What is being done
| to make sure it _can_ be repaid? Not just the first year or so of
| water restrictions, but a sustainable plan to reduce consumption.
|
| Overall this reads like they just kicked the can upstream, down
| the road.
| [deleted]
| flerchin wrote:
| Market forces anyone? Scrap the historical allotments, and have
| the potential users bid for water. Pay to play seems like the
| best medicine here. The actual price for a gallon will round to
| nothing for a consumer, but the ag users will have to figure
| things out that they should have figured out long ago.
| gloriana wrote:
| We could decide to dig big inland seas using nuclear weapons.
| We'd essentially create Mediterranean Sea habitat across
| southwest by bringing up the Gulf of California (what forms Baja)
| at Puerto Penasco and creating lots of internal coastal areas
| with ready access to fresh water. I would guess it could take
| 5-10 years for the earth moving, and 20-30 for detox, and 20-30
| more years for habitat re-equilibration.
| justin66 wrote:
| The Salton Sea, but with radioactive fallout!
| artificial wrote:
| Great topic for a game, Fallout meets Sim City.
| hyperion2010 wrote:
| It's that time again!
|
| John Wesley Powell warned us about this more than 140 years ago
| [0].
|
| I strongly recommend that everyone living in the western United
| States read at least the introduction[1] to Beyond the Hundredth
| Meridian[2]. The introduction is more relevant now than it was
| when it was written 67 years ago, itself 75 years after the
| publication of Lands of the Arid Region.
|
| Previously:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28907254
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27910098
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18098899
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26964166
|
| 0. https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/70039240/report.pdf LANDS OF
| THE ARID REGION John Wesley Powell 1878
|
| 1. https://erenow.net/modern/beyond-the-hundredth-
| meridian/1.ph... Bernard DeVoto 1954
|
| 2. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the
| Second Opening of the West ISBN:9780140159943 Wallace Stegner
| 1954
| jiocrag wrote:
| ITT: Software developers mad at farmers because they don't
| understand that their sustenance comes from farms.
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