[HN Gopher] California's current water rights and investment
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California's current water rights and investment
Author : luu
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-05-19 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (onthepublicrecord.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (onthepublicrecord.org)
| rcpt wrote:
| How much for a billboard on I-5 that says "60% of the state's
| water for 2% of the economy"
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| The California[1] Water Rights system is staggeringly
| inequitable, and is really an indictment of "democracy", where
| large, entrenched power bases vote just for the selfish
| interests, preventing progress towards a better managed, more
| equitable system.
|
| There's a good lesson in there about politics and power, which
| I'm not experienced or eloquent enough to express.
|
| [1] likely not limited to just California!
| nradov wrote:
| Which votes are you referring to? Unfortunately this is largely
| a property rights issue so not much has even come to a vote. In
| theory state legislators could give the government greater
| statutory authority to seize water rights under eminent domain
| and pay compensation to rights holders, but the budget impact
| would be huge.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| also fun fact: I recently learned during a visit to the Hoover
| Dam that its primary purpose isn't power but managing water
| flow to the downstream (water-)rights-holders. Power is a side-
| effect.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| It's not limited to California. It's most of the western
| states.
|
| The problem with trying to reform it is that the state courts
| have found that prior appropriation created a vested property
| right. Once declared by a state such a right is protected by
| the Fifth Amendment (as incorporated by the Fourteenth
| Amendment.) So it's very difficult/expensive to unwind this
| mistake.
| dataflow wrote:
| Is "just compensation" not a mechanism for doing this here?
| JamesLeonis wrote:
| (2009)
| rcpt wrote:
| Water rights haven't changed
| calme_toi wrote:
| Thie reminds me Chinatown, which is inspired by California water
| wars.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_(1974_film)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars
| nateberkopec wrote:
| The bit about Sacramento not having water meters is particularly
| mad.
|
| Driving through the Imperial Valley was a big wake up call for me
| as to the dire state of the water situation in California. We are
| transporting water hundreds of miles to grow food in the middle
| of a desert.
|
| The old incentives and laws are clearly not going to be enough
| for the future, particularly on the Colorado. As usual, no one
| acts until the crisis is here on our doorstep.
| npunt wrote:
| Transporting water to grow food isn't default a bad idea, if
| growing in one place is better than another and makes up for
| the transportation costs. Growing in warmer climates means
| crops are less likely to be lost due to frost, and it allows
| greater variety of crops to be available at different times of
| the year.
|
| Water management is a huge deal, and we're doing it terribly.
| Lots of variables to balance, not just water but also
| resilience to changes in weather, variety available in
| different seasons, efficient water usage, crop rotation & soil
| usage, etc. Hard to say definitively any given practice is
| absolutely good or bad without a broader context of where it
| fits in the overall package.
| ruffrey wrote:
| The article is incorrect about the water meters.
|
| I lived in Sacramento city limits for 6 years. We most
| definitely had metered water.
|
| In fact I had a friend, also in sac city, who had a broken
| water pipe. It was underground and not visible. The bill for 1
| month was over $3,000. It was metered. (Luckily, some grant
| program paid/reduced the bill)
| skybrian wrote:
| The article is from 2009 and more water meters have been
| installed.
|
| > [E]very customer within the SSWD service area will have a
| water meter by 2025 as mandated by State law. In February 2004,
| the Board approved a Water Meter Retrofit Plan which outlines
| the criteria used to determine when an area within the District
| will receive water meters. For more information on the Water
| Meter Retrofit Plan go to sswd.org.
|
| https://www.sswd.org/departments/engineering/capital-improve...
|
| > Sacramento County Water Agency has approximately 90% of our
| customers with water meters. We are currently on our last phase
| of new meter installation in Laguna with plans for completion
| by the end of this year.
|
| https://waterresources.saccounty.gov/scwa/Pages/Water-Meteri...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Why is it mad? From a system perspective, what benefits would
| they get from meters? Energy saving from not having to purify
| and deliver the water, granted. But from a state supply
| perspective all that water comes from and returns to the big
| river.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Well, most of the efficiency analysis of water systems relies
| on meters in some way. This makes fairly intuitive sense...
| if you don't have any tracking of what you actually deliver
| to the end-user, it's hard to know what the actual in-out
| balance of the system is. For example, one of the most
| important operational metrics for municipal water systems is
| the non-revenue water portion. This is the difference between
| flow out of the water treatment plant and cumulative meter
| readings---and it indicates water that is lost in several
| different ways, most significantly (in most cases) leakage
| throughout the distribution system. This can be very
| substantial, as much as 30% in poorly maintained systems. I
| see an article estimating the non-revenue water in Sacramento
| at 10%, which is not terrible but still higher than many
| well-run water systems. But what's really problematic is that
| a spokesperson for the water department emphasized that this
| is a rough estimate because of the lack of meters on about
| half of their user connections.
|
| The lack of meters makes it basically impossible to perform a
| "water audit," a best practice for water utilities that helps
| to quantify and---more importantly---locate leakage and
| equipment problems that lead to non-revenue water. It makes
| reducing the non-revenue portion very difficult since there
| is no real accounting of where losses occur. This makes costs
| higher for everyone, and also means that some of the water
| extracted from the river is taking an uncertain return path
| that greatly increases risk of contamination by urban
| pollutants in the vadose zone. It also makes it difficult to
| quantify some non-return dispositions of water like
| evaporation, not only for the utility but for customers.
|
| Indeed, the 10% estimate they are producing right now is
| based on modeling of river extraction and return rates and
| aquifer levels. So they are basically trying to estimate
| their non-revenue based on the difference between what they
| take out of the river and what they put back in, but that is
| very difficult and gives little information on where the
| actual problems are.
| Kalium wrote:
| From a system perspective, the system functions better when
| everyone is incentivized to measure and ensure efficient use.
| That water both comes from and returns to the big river in
| time does surprisingly little to mitigate the basic limits of
| how much water is going in and out at any given time.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Please speak in concrete terms. Which inferior rights
| holder would get more water, and how much more, if
| Sacramento City had more meters?
| Kalium wrote:
| I don't think there _is_ a simple concrete answer to
| that, because that answer lies on the far side of quite a
| few uncertainties. The answer is probably a number of
| them, because after investing in metering and efficient
| usage the City of Sacramento would likely use
| significantly less water.
|
| If nothing else, the big river would have more water.
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(page generated 2023-05-19 23:02 UTC)