[HN Gopher] California pledges to cut use of the Colorado river
___________________________________________________________________
California pledges to cut use of the Colorado river
Author : silexia
Score : 27 points
Date : 2022-10-06 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Just stop growing almonds. That'll save 10% straight away[1]!
|
| [1] https://californiaglobe.com/articles/blaming-almonds-for-
| cal...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Last I saw, the water for almonds and pomegranates was stolen.
|
| Growing alfalfa is as bad, and there is probably more of it.
| That could be banned.
| bergenty wrote:
| California almonds are absolutely delicious though.
| tomcam wrote:
| Really? Compared to, say, Marconas? Calfornia almonds seem
| bland to me but maybe ones from elsewhere actively taste bad
| or something?
| skyyler wrote:
| Agreed, Spanish almonds are way way way better.
| subsubzero wrote:
| A couple of ideas that California could use to reclaim water:
|
| - Desalinization! Desalinization! Desalinization! start building
| a ton of these plants all along the coast.
|
| - Reduce crops that are heavy water users(almonds etc).
|
| - Push to phase out grass yards, give residents tax breaks to
| convert to natural landscapes.
|
| - Better reclamation of gutter water(from rain) in cities, as of
| now it just all flows right to the ocean/bay.
|
| Even with all these steps I think California will still need to
| cut back, its natural state is one that is very dry, like multi-
| decade droughts kind of dry, the 20th century was abnormally
| rainy and people think that is how its always been. See here for
| more info about what California's climate has been like the past
| 2000 years:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/californias-histo...
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| > Reduce crops that are heavy water users(almonds etc).
|
| Would you extend that to include cattle? If not, why not?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Reducing water-hogging crops is the most impactful option
| (agriculture uses more than 80% of CA's non-environmental water
| use and agricultural water waste is more than 99% of CA's water
| waste), but would require state (or very likely, federal)
| legislation. With the current political climate, and the likely
| outcome of the 2022 election, this option is the least likely
| to happen.
|
| Desalinization is not a magic bullet. Plants are expensive to
| build and to operate, even taking into account the use of
| passive renewables to provide most or all of the energy. There
| are currently 11 desalinization plants in CA (mostly in SoCal),
| the largest of which (in Carslbad, the largest such plant in
| the U.S.) can only provide enough water for 300,000 people a
| year. That is 30% of San Diego's water needs. CA's population
| is approximately 39 million. To scale up to the the entire
| state, we would need more than 120 additional plants just to
| address residential water use, for a cost of at least $120
| billion (not taking into account inflation since the Carlsbad
| plant was completed).
|
| Reducing grass yards has been part of the playbook for several
| decades now. At this point, reducing grass yards amongst
| everyone except the superrich would have minimal impact because
| the rest of us have already heavily cut back.
|
| Gutter water flows to reclamation plants in most areas, but
| during storms flows directly to the ocean because the plants
| don't have the ability to handle the surge in flows. In SoCal,
| many water districts have begun using permeable asphalt to
| (re)pave streets so that rain water can absorb into the ground
| and recharge underground aquifers. A number of spreading pools
| and spreading grounds have also been built along storm
| channels, to provide areas where excess rainwater can collect
| and slowly absorb into the ground.
| joe-collins wrote:
| Desal, like wind, keeps hitting opposition from locals. This
| was a factor in the Coastal Commission's vote against a
| Huntington Beach plant, earlier this year.
|
| No comment on crops.
|
| Such a tax break was just signed into law, AB 2142, which will
| be in effect through 2027.
|
| https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/09/28/california-is-making-it-ch...
|
| https://openstates.org/ca/bills/20212022/AB2142/
|
| Reclamation projects are ongoing! Orange County has been
| recycling water since the 90s, and down here in San Diego,
| we've got a new system coming online in a few years.
|
| https://www.ocwd.com/gwrs/
|
| https://eastcountyawp.com/
| bergenty wrote:
| Water desalination + solar combo needs to happen for California.
| Couple that setup with drying flats for salt production and
| you've got a setup that has a very small impact on the
| environment.
| nomel wrote:
| > Water desalination + solar combo needs to happen for
| California.
|
| With the end of ICE vehicle sales in 2035, the need for solar
| is an understatement.
| ParksNet wrote:
| Hopefully we can eliminate lawns as a mainstream American
| concept. Landscaped pollinator gardens are so much easier to
| maintain, require less fertilizer and pesticides (and runoff),
| require less water, and are better to look at!
| bergenty wrote:
| I don't know about the better to look at part. It takes a lot
| of work to manicure a pollinator patch to look good.
| worstestes wrote:
| Sure, it's a great idea and I'm onboard... however agriculture
| uses approximately 80% of the Colorado River's water. Let's not
| pretend that personal water use for lawns has nearly as much
| impact as water demanding crops and inefficient allocation to
| livestock farms.
| decentrality wrote:
| Seeing the Lake Powell level decline ( and knowing that also
| means electricity, not just water shortfalls in the future for
| the Western Coast ) it does seem all this conservation and
| logistics thinking might have had a chance to be meaningfully
| effective if it started around 2010 at the latest, and been
| completed now, or within 5 years. Best get ahead of this rather
| than chase the target.
|
| Anyone who traveled through "The Dust Bowl" or the Salton Sea as
| mentioned, or looked at the end of the Colorado River, which now
| does not make it to the Gulf of Mexico, knows that California in
| particular is on a knife's edge when it comes to water, and
| electricity.
|
| Needs to be a paradigm shift here, and one that is sustainable
| from the start, rather than micro improvements and figuring out
| things that are decades past being common sense.
|
| - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-colorado-r...
|
| - https://www.kpbs.org/news/2018/feb/19/few-weeks-colorado-riv...
| bergenty wrote:
| Reducing usage of any kind should be a non starter (unless it's
| inefficient use like high flow taps and large flush tanks). The
| argument should always atleast start at how do we maintain
| current water supply without drying out our sources. Desalination
| plants + solar + salt drying flats seems like a no brainer for
| California.
| tomcam wrote:
| > Desalination plants + solar + salt drying flats seems like a
| no brainer for California.
|
| You'd think so. And yet...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-reject...
| bergenty wrote:
| It's the last bit that's causing the problem. A lot of
| desalination plants dump highly concentrated saline solutions
| back into the ocean. Pump those out to salt pans and you're
| also producing salt.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It should be easy to mitigate any environmental impact. A
| long, leaky pipe for effluent, and extracting only a fraction
| of the water pumped in before exhausting it, would eliminate
| any problem.
|
| Probably they planned to cheap out and just dump the brine at
| the shore.
| Cipater wrote:
| Reading up on the Colorado river on Wikipedia I came across this
| interesting claim;
|
| "the Colorado is so intensively managed that each drop of its
| water is used an average of 17 times in a single year."
|
| Sadly I don't have the knowledge to put that in context.
| [deleted]
| silexia wrote:
| Why not simply use pricing to ration use? This is by far the best
| method of distributing any resource of good or service.
| eesmith wrote:
| The best method is when the rich get water and the poor don't?
|
| What happens when a Native American village that's been around
| for 800 years can't afford its water supply because a nearby
| factory prices them out?
|
| (Even better, the US might have promised to uphold that water
| right under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.)
|
| When rain falls on my land, who do I pay, and how much? What
| about water from an aquifer?
|
| If I decide to dam all the water from leaving my land, is that
| okay?
|
| Can Colorado decide to dam divert the entire Colorado River
| from reaching downstream?
| iudqnolq wrote:
| > What happens when a Native American village that's been
| around for 800 years can't afford its water supply because a
| nearby factory prices them out?
|
| > (Even better, the US might have promised to uphold that
| water right under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.)
|
| That's what's happening right now. CA growers get more than
| their agreed share, essentially for free. Native Americans
| get essentially none of their agreed share. Mexico gets
| literally none of their agreed share (that is, the river runs
| bone dry before it gets to them).
|
| That's the whole problem. The agreed shares add up to far
| more than 100%, and right now some states - especially CA -
| are benefiting disproportionately from the allotment.
| sn0wf1re wrote:
| > The best method is when the rich get water and the poor
| don't?
|
| Give each citizen / resident a basic water allowance that
| they don't need to pay for (or do it by tax rebate) and
| charge high prices for usage above that. If rich people can
| afford to pay prices that would be comparable to desalinating
| water and trucking it to their house, let them have a lawn.
| This is how Carbon taxing in Canada works, everyone pays X%
| and it is offset for poorer people by giving them money
| several times per year (some provinces give an equal money to
| each person rather than based on income).
|
| > When rain falls on my land, who do I pay, and how much?
| What about water from an aquifer?
|
| Some places already don't let you keep rainwater without a
| licence and the government has the right to see how much and
| what you are doing with said water. Similarly for aquifers,
| put a meter on it, big fines if you get caught bypassing the
| meter.
|
| > If I decide to dam all the water from leaving my land, is
| that okay?
|
| Nope. Not only is this hoarding of resources you might not
| have legal right to possess (see above about rainwater), but
| depending on the size of your reservoir it can pose a safety
| risk to those downstream.
|
| > Can Colorado decide to dam divert the entire Colorado River
| from reaching downstream?
|
| There is the Colorado river treaty that legally prevents
| this. From a practical standpoint it ridiculous.
| advisedwang wrote:
| There would be a lot of losers switching from the water rights
| system to a market. Essentially everyone who uses water now
| would have to pay for something they're getting for free now.
| This would put many farms etc out of business, raise taxes for
| municipalities etc. The only winners would be folks that want
| more water and now can buy it.
|
| As such it's politically untenable.
|
| Of course there's the question of who gets the revenue. All the
| states on the colorado would have to agree (very hard!). Does
| it go into general revenue? Is it split across current water
| users to mitigate the raised prices (and if so, how long do
| they have the right to free money)? Does it go to
| municipalities so they get free water?
| lazide wrote:
| Who exactly is getting anything free?
|
| Folks are divvying up allocations of a untreated, variable
| natural resource among themselves that they need to pipe
| somewhere, maintain storage for, treat, and then deliver.
| Which is expensive.
|
| I don't see anyone involved here with a meaningful City
| literally built ON the Colorado. Everyone is a significant
| distance away.
|
| That isn't free.
|
| As your last point notes as well - who would we even 'pay'
| for a natural resource anyway? Burn the cash in giant piles
| as an offering to the gods? Arguably they're the ones who
| should get it. Alternatively - Pay the feds? Pay themselves?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I mean, sure, if you're happy with charging people more the
| more they use. Otherwise, you are hurting people who aren't the
| cause of the problem. Municipalities and individuals are using
| a severe minority of the water compared to agriculture; the
| problem wouldn't go away if you cut them out of the system.
|
| Just using price without thinking about who's paying would lead
| to massive corporations and conglomerates which can afford it
| continuing to abuse the resource while smaller orgs and
| individuals who can't suffer.
|
| Which is why price is a bad method for distributing a resource
| for which equitable access matters (eg it's more important for
| homes and hospitals to have water than it is for other
| businesses to have water).
| yellowapple wrote:
| > I mean, sure, if you're happy with charging people more the
| more they use.
|
| Are you saying we shouldn't be happy with such an
| arrangement? Charging people more the more they use seems
| maximally fair.
|
| > Just using price without thinking about who's paying would
| lead to massive corporations and conglomerates which can
| afford it continuing to abuse the resource while smaller orgs
| and individuals who can't suffer.
|
| Only if we consider the payment alone. That money doesn't
| need to disappear into a void; it could be paid out as a
| citizens' dividend (a.k.a. UBI) and thus outright _subsidize_
| smaller orgs and individuals. If you use more than your equal
| share, you pay more in water taxes than you get back in
| dividends; if you use less than your equal share, you get
| back more in dividends than you pay in water taxes. Hard to
| get more fair than that.
|
| > it's more important for homes and hospitals to have water
| than it is for other businesses to have water
|
| I'd say food is right there beside those two categories -
| especially since both those categories themselves depend on
| food.
| lazide wrote:
| It makes no sense because there is no single aquifer, nor is
| there any economic way of connecting all aquifers in the state.
|
| Most of the state has aquifers which have plenty (an excess) of
| water, and these are drawn on by wells sunk by the owners of
| the property.
|
| Others have no aquifers, or fossil aquifers being drawn far
| more rapidly than they are being replenished - often by folks
| who own the land under them, and paid for the wells.
|
| Then there are seasonal sources and water storage (aka rivers
| and dams), but depending on the timing of a specific storm (or
| not), they'll usually have too much or too little water some of
| the year, and the inverse other parts of the year.
|
| Also, water has vastly different levels of utility and
| availability depending on purity and the time it is needed
| among other factors, which directly impact the actual costs
| involved in delivering it.
|
| Someone getting bulk (untreated) water that is overflow from a
| dam during spring flood season has made tradeoffs that make no
| sense for someone in the city who needs smaller amounts of
| drinkable water, but must have it 24/7/365 - and those
| differences drastically reduce the cost to deliver it.
|
| And lastly - who is paying this money to whom?
|
| Right now, everyone pays the water district that has either
| bought the land and sunk the wells, or who turns around and
| pays various different water sources for the water (all at
| different prices based on quality and time of year) and then
| treats it as necessary based on those factors for the customer.
|
| Depending on the time of year and circumstances, the actual
| marginal cost for a gallon of water can vary from free to very
| expensive, and can vary completely at the same time of year for
| different people in different parts of the state.
|
| And since there is no one party who owns, delivers, or controls
| water, there is no one person who gets paid anyway.
|
| What's the proposal - every gallon must cost $1?
|
| What about folks on their own private wells? Do they send a
| check to the state franchise tax board if they don't otherwise
| need to pay anyone? Do they get to deduct the maintenance and
| electricity costs they currently pay themselves?
|
| Who is going to even check a 'meter' there, since they
| literally don't have one now?
|
| Even when they're in Redding, and it's literally a rainforest?
|
| California has incredibly diverse and often rough terrain with
| widely different rainfall, geological conditions, and ability
| to support life of all kinds. From the Mojave desert, which is
| one of the driest deserts in the world (2-6 inches of rain per
| year), to Tahoe averaging 52", to the lost coast
| [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Coast] / Redding area which
| gets 100-200"/year (yes, 8-16ft of precipitation per year).
|
| And over a distance, and with large mountain ranges, that make
| it difficult and prohibitively expensive to arbitrarily move
| something as heavy as water around in random ways. It's over
| 1000 miles from North to South, 500 east to west, and almost
| 15,000 feet of elevation difference in the state.
| Arrath wrote:
| Water rights are such a sticky subject and require a
| comprehensive overhaul, as is I fear there is no 'simple' way
| to go about pricing the use under the current framework.
|
| How many stakeholders are there with water rights to the
| Colorado river across the various states, and how many of them
| would need to buy-in to a pricing structure to get it adopted
| for all?
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I wonder how long some of these water rights will survive. It
| seems that the Public Trust Doctrine may be used to cancel
| some (all?) long-standing rights. My thought is that water
| rights are a way to allocate water that _doesn 't yet exist_
| in the Colorado River. Exercising these rights is a present
| and future danger to the public interest. It's not like
| mineral rights over "stuff" that has been in the ground for
| millions of years.
|
| > courts have used the public trust doctrine to minimize
| preexisting private property rights, as was done by the
| California Supreme Court in the famous Mono Lake case. In
| Mono Lake, the City of Los Angeles had secured water rights
| in Mono Lake's nonnavigable feeder streams under the state's
| prior appropriation water rights allocation system. However,
| the city's water diversions were adversely affecting the
| ecological integrity of this second largest California lake,
| revered as a "scenic and ecological treasure of national
| significance." Faced with a classic confrontation between
| public and private water rights, the court held for the
| public, saying the public trust doctrine prevented any party
| from acquiring vested property rights to appropriate water in
| a manner injurious to the interests protected by the trust.
|
| http://www.velj.org/illinois-central-and-the-public-trust-
| do...
| silexia wrote:
| Everyone simply should pay the same price per gallon.
| Businesses that have been abusing the system to get nearly
| free water will yell and scream, then go find something more
| productive to do.
|
| Water rights should not be rights and usually aren't
| rights... Water is owned by the state. The state should just
| be a utility that charges whatever price it desires to
| achieve the goals it has. If it wants to reduce water use,
| raise the price.
| mcny wrote:
| Exactly. "first in time, first in right" is absolutely
| bonkers. It might make sense when the resource is limitless
| but not when we are running out of water.
|
| I think Colorado should just say screw it and keeps all the
| water for itself if California farmers continue to hold
| everyone hostage and demand a ransom.
| tru3_power wrote:
| Not only that- but the claims to the water extend beyond just
| US states. Mexico also has a guaranteed amount of water it
| has claim to from the Colorado river as well.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-06 23:02 UTC)