[HN Gopher] Breakthrough deal to prevent Colorado River from dry...
___________________________________________________________________
Breakthrough deal to prevent Colorado River from drying up
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 210 points
Date : 2023-05-22 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| exabrial wrote:
| The long term solution is to stop growing things in the fricken
| desert.
|
| Open a nuclear reactor in Canada and power greenhouses there.
| Desalinate some water while you're at it.
| rednerrus wrote:
| It's a lot easier to move water than it is to move sunshine and
| soil.
| scythe wrote:
| Much of the Imperial Valley -- which uses a lot of Colorado
| water -- is below sea level and could (in theory) be fed by
| desalinated water with very little pumping. But it's not
| economically viable. Still, quite a bit more viable than
| nuclear greenhouses!
| exabrial wrote:
| Nuclear powered Desalination!
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Is desalinating enough water to irrigate an entire valley
| less viable than nuclear greenhouses? I'm not so sure. Both
| would be extraordinarily expensive
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| It's not really viable
|
| desalination cost varies, but for the London desalination
| plant it's PS1.6 per litre[1]. I am sure that's on the
| higher end, but let's just work through the math.
|
| 1 mm of rain on 1 ha of land is 10 000 litres or 10 cubic
| meters of water. So to replace 1mm of rain in Britain,
| costs PS16. Average annual rainfall in UK ~1150 mm. So if
| you had to replace the entirety of it from desalination,
| you would spend like PS18,400.
|
| If you are growing wheat, you get like 8 or 9 tons per
| hectare and you sell if for like PS230 per tonne (these are
| very rough numbers) so your total revenue is like PS2,000
| per hectare. Out of that, your profit margin is probably
| under 10%
|
| So you will be loosing money you have to replace more than
| a couple of % of annual rainfall from desalination, and if
| you grew wheat with entirely desalinated water it would
| cost 10X as much as 'normal' wheat does.
|
| Now, typically you only irrigate high value crops, and
| wheat is a low value crop. Also you probably don't need the
| entire annual rainfall, and there might be cheaper
| desalination elsewhere. You can re-do the math with other
| crops and other desalination costs.
|
| But fundamentally price of desalinated water is too high
| for use in agriculture.
|
| 1 - https://www.energylivenews.com/2022/08/08/thames-water-
| switc...
| jefftk wrote:
| _> PS1.6 per litre_
|
| Where are you getting that? At your link I see "PS660 per
| one million litres", or ~2,000x cheaper than that.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| The estimated cost for water from the the San Diego desal
| plant is $0.32 per gallon, around 9 cents per liter.
|
| Thousands of times higher than what ag can afford tho.
| lekanwang wrote:
| The unfortunate thing is that large stretches of California
| desert (and much of the Central Valley to the north) used to be
| lake bottoms and have incredibly rich and fertile soils.
| Between that and a long growing season that's nearly cloudless,
| you get ideal growing conditions -- rich soil, lots of sun, low
| moisture (i.e. low disease load), and H2A labor -- provided you
| can control the irrigation. Ah the problems caused by mispriced
| externalities...
| mateo411 wrote:
| Most of the water that goes to farms in the Central Valley
| does not come from the Colorado river. It comes the Sierra
| and Owens Valley. The farm lands that would be impacted by
| this are in Imperial County.
| picantePepper wrote:
| Whatever trickle of water left over as it passed through
| imperial valley ends up in the armpit of Baja California
| where there is a lot of agriculture (which probably ends up
| in the US). I wonder how is Baja California going to react
| to this much needed plan for the Colorado river's supply
| xienze wrote:
| I believe the environmentalists aren't fond of desalination
| because you have to dump the extra super salty sludge that's
| extracted back into the ocean somewhere, thus increasing
| salinity levels in a particular area.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| They could repair the Bonneville Salt Flats. They have lost
| quite a bit of salt, more than 50 million tons.
|
| Edit: I bet that only covers a few years of farming use
| though.
| skybrian wrote:
| Well, not just dumped. It's diluted first. Or should be.
|
| As I understand it, San Diego's plant dilutes the effluent by
| mixing it with additional ocean water, but I don't have a
| good handle on how well that works.
| sologoub wrote:
| Are there any credible studies in the net effects of the
| added salinity vs how much water is dumped back in from rain
| run off, reclaimed sewage and other land based sources?
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| The dead sea is 10x normal ocean water salinity. If you
| remove most of the water from Pacific ocean water and pump
| the brine back in to the ocean, you are basically pumping
| water from the dead sea in to the Pacific creating a huge
| dead zone until it dilutes back to normal concentrations.
|
| It isn't the overall salinity that is impacted but local
| conditions.
| cyberax wrote:
| This is just BS. The amount of desalinated water is
| completely dwarfed by normal evaporation. If we replace _all_
| the water used in agriculture by desalinated water, we won't
| even make a dent in the global saltwater balance.
|
| Some local effects are certainly possible, but they can be
| mitigated by pre-diluting the brine.
| [deleted]
| bsder wrote:
| You simply can't desalinate water at a rate sufficient for
| agriculture.
|
| The only solution is to let the water price rise so that the
| agribusinesses quit growing crap like alfalfa.
| [deleted]
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Are there too many pollutants not to just evaporate the sea
| salt sludge until it's sea salt for cooking and sell it?
| akiselev wrote:
| Think about how much water a person uses per day compared
| to how much salt. The former is measured in liters, the
| latter in grams. Desalination produces far more brine than
| humans could ever need.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| Regardless of pollutants, agriculture uses way too much
| water for this to be practical. Average seawater salinity
| is 35 g/L, and the WHO recommends a salt intake of at most
| 5 g/day, so from one liter of water you get enough salt for
| seven people for a day. Approximating global population at
| 7 billion people, that means we could consume the salt from
| about 0.365 km^3 of water per year.
|
| Just the US alone uses about ~110 km^3 of water for
| irrigation per year.
| prottog wrote:
| The water used in irrigation eventually (and pretty
| quickly) makes its way into the ocean, so is it actually
| a big deal?
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| The water used to irrigate crops has dissolved minerals
| in it. As the water is taken up by plants (or
| evaporated), it leaves those minerals behind. This then
| raises the salinity of the soil. Eventually, the soil
| becomes too salty/mineral encrusted to support crops.
| This happened in the Middle East. What is now Iraq used
| to be the main grain growing region of the Middle East
| several thousand years ago. Over time, the salt in the
| soil rose to the level that wheat could not grow, but
| barley could. Eventually, the soil became too salty for
| barley. Today, some of the Iraqi desert shines in
| sunlight because of the salt crystals. It has never
| recovered and will never recover. California is
| progressing faster.
|
| Selenium is one of the minerals that ends up in the
| runoff of Californian agriculture. In some coastal areas,
| the selenium content is so high that bird eggs laid by
| wildlife never harden. Or the birth defects are so high
| that the hatchlings don't live.
| adolph wrote:
| Maybe it could be used for the fluid used in hydraulic
| fracturing operations?
|
| https://oilandgasinfo.ca/know-fracking/what-is-frac-fluid-
| ma...
| no_wizard wrote:
| In theory I'd rather not give fossil fuels any "leg up" as
| it where, though scientifically I appreciate where you are
| at with this, I certainly don't want it to have the knock
| off affect of encouraging more fracking
| cwp wrote:
| California has an unlimited supply of water along its western
| border. We ought to tap that rather than the Colorado river.
| chaostheory wrote:
| San Diego is already has a desalination plant and Santa
| Barbara is about to turn on their own. However, it's still
| not enough. Building desalination plants takes a lot of
| capital and time. Unfortunately, leverage is no longer cheap
| and the economy is about to suffer a deeper downturn
|
| Also, people especially farmers have been complaining about
| San Diego's pricing to pay for their plant. Still, like you I
| don't see any other long term solution since CA provides 1/3
| of the US food supply. Maybe stop exporting live stock feed
| grown from the desert (ie water) to Asia?
| no_wizard wrote:
| I know its a bit of a pipe dream, but why not raise taxes
| and pass a 1930s style infrastructure spending bill to
| compensate? Would help with the downturn that feels like
| it'll happen at any point (in earnest, for better or worse)
| by providing good jobs and solving problems all at the same
| time?
|
| We could do this with desalination, green energy projects,
| and other public infrastructure. I'd even love to see us
| subsidize fiber to homes and businesses en masse and allow
| ISPs to share the resulting infrastructure like they do in
| Europe
| Retric wrote:
| Desalination isn't cost prohibitive to build, it
| unfortunately costs an absurd amount of money to run at
| the scale farmers use water. And then you're faced with
| trying to pump that water upstream to users.
|
| The basic issue is farmers can only make money with
| practically free water they get from natural sources.
| Anything that raise the average price per gallon is
| useless to them and they own most water rights. The long
| term solution is to reduce the amount of farming via
| eminent domain and rejecting all new farming operations.
| hosh wrote:
| You can grow things in an arid region (desertification has more
| to do with being unable to retain water in poor soil). Whether
| those things are what people want to buy at the market is
| something else.
|
| There are many design patterns and practices for better water
| management. Some of them are only just being implemented --
| California is now just starting to credit growers with putting
| water back into aquifers during seasons of excess rain (and
| mitigates flood risks). But there are a lot more to be done,
| including water harvesting structures that slow down water
| (converting surface water to ground water).
| idiotsecant wrote:
| this is not the first time recently i've heard about how part
| of the solution is slowing water to return some to the
| aquifer but it's _essential_ to understand that changing the
| rate of flow of water also changes sediment deposition rates,
| which can have enormous impacts on ecosystems, power
| production, agriculture, and a bunch of other things. It isn
| 't a dial you get to just arbitrarily tweak.
| hosh wrote:
| The best example of "slowing down water" would be what
| beavers do. The results are not so straightforward, even
| with taking deposition as an outcome. Beavers following
| their instincts result in complex yet resilient landscapes
| that supports woodlands.
|
| I think the pattern of simplification you are talking about
| is thoroughly explored in James C Scott's _Seeing Like a
| State_ , where complex systems are too complex for the
| governing body, and made _legible_ through
| oversimplification. Actions are undertaken on the basis of
| the oversimplication. The results are disastrous. There are
| many historical examples. I was not talking about "slowing
| down water" in that way, though I get people might take it
| that way.
|
| In areas with poor soil, increased deposition is a
| desirable thing in many cases. Extreme cases like wasteland
| and erosion that exposes bare bedrock, you need all the
| deposition you can get (until the land can support an
| ecosystem again)
|
| More importantly, the design patterns I am thinking of
| involves the accumulation of organic material. The overall
| goal and metrics isn't just slowing down water, but rather,
| restoring soil health to support an ecosystem, which in
| turn, helps regulate water.
|
| You wouldn't necessarily slow down the river. You start
| with slowing things down onsite where the land receives
| rainfall. And you definitely want to avoid having soil wash
| away to be deposited downstream.
|
| Every site is different, and requires intense observation
| and unique designs using working principles -- that's
| design principle #1 of permaculture design, "observe and
| interact".
| myshpa wrote:
| > The best example of "slowing down water" would be what
| beavers do
|
| Totally agree. Vegetation also plays a big role (esp.
| forests).
| WalterBright wrote:
| People have been terracing hillsides for thousands of years
| to turn arid areas into gardens.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace_(earthworks)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's crazy visiting China and southeast Asia, seeing
| entire hill ranges terraced (in the same way that farm
| fields would be divided in the UK or US), and realizing
| just how old those terraces are.
|
| Makes you appreciate how old of a technology farming is.
| LarryDarrell wrote:
| This is very much true in NM where I live. Agriculture accounts
| for 79% of yearly water use. We're known for our chile (63,000
| tons) but that's dwarfed by alfalfa (784,000 tons).
|
| I'm not sure what the answer is. The farmers have their own
| water rights, and as a group are pretty well politically
| connected.
|
| We could try Eminent Domain or unilaterally breaking those old
| water contracts... but that's guaranteed to make the Supreme
| Court. Given the current make up of the SC, I don't see any
| decision coming that might curtail property rights. I'm
| guessing it'll be perpetual subsidies for letting land go
| fallow.
| cyberax wrote:
| The state can prohibit growing certain types of water-hungry
| agriculture. This won't be an infringement of water rights.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The chiles only get grown there. Alfalfa is alfafa, nobody
| cares about the terroir.
| mateo411 wrote:
| The cows and the snobbier livestock care deeply about the
| terroir.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| If the court returns land to Native title that might do it
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's pretty simple, put small, but yearly growing taxes on
| "stupid to grow in the desert" crops like alfalfa. Slow
| enough to make the transition away from them reasonable for
| the farmers, but high enough to pressure them into no longer
| producing the crops.
| kibwen wrote:
| In the context of California, note that the Colorado River does
| not irrigate the Central Valley. Instead, the Colorado River is
| used to water the areas around (mostly south) of Los Angeles.
| pgwhalen wrote:
| The article has a good picture of what areas are affected.
| eschulz wrote:
| Interesting that this deal apparently only includes CA, AZ, and
| NV, and it averts the federal government imposing water cuts on a
| total of seven states which enjoy water from the Colorado River.
|
| The three states agreeing to this deal are down river (excluding
| two Mexican states that are further down river), and I suppose
| they are the ones most reliant on the river.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| the issue with water rights is that CA/AZ/NV have the most
| senior rights on the river and the highest usage of river water
| IIRC
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is incorrect. The water usage is split 50/50 between the
| upper basin and lower basin, where rights are senior to each
| pool. The upper basin states are also well below their
| allocation right now, as opposed to the southern states.
|
| I've been following this very closely for a while - the
| primary issue here is still agricultural businesses in
| California consuming more then their water rights permit.
| chatmasta wrote:
| For context, the river starts in Colorado and passes through
| Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California.
|
| I wonder why Colorado and Utah were not involved in the deal?
| If one of them had a problem with it, would they have standing
| to sue?
|
| What if, hypothetically, Colorado built a dam and stopped the
| flow of water to the downstream states?
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm sure all seven states in the compact were involved in
| this deal. They're all signatories on the compact. The way
| the compact is structured, the upper basin states (Colorado,
| Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona (a smidgen)) are
| supposed to deliver 7.5 million acre feet per year to the
| lower basin states (California, Nevada and Arizona (bulk)),
| but they can use whatever they want other than that amount;
| this amount was supposed to be about even between upper and
| lower, but it isn't. It sounds like this deal is reducing the
| required delivery by 1 million acre feet per year, although I
| don't know if that's from the original target or the lowered
| targets from the 2007 interim agreement, so somewhere between
| 6 and 6.5 million acre feet; and the upper basin states get
| the rest.
| slashdev wrote:
| I don't see how they have standing being up river. The deal
| can't affect them thanks to gravity.
|
| If Colorado wanted to build a dam, that's completely
| different and the other states would likely challenge it in
| court.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| The laws you want to learn about are called "water rights".
| Western water rights laws (which are the predominate legal
| framework in the US West) basically say "first in time, first
| in right". The people who used that water first have the
| ownership rights of that water flow.
|
| So it would be illegal in Colorado to build such a dam
| because you would be blocking the water that belongs to
| someone else.
|
| In Colorado, it is illegal to collect the rainwater that
| lands on your roof because that water would normally flow
| into a river and that river water belongs to someone else. I
| used to live in Colorado and about 10-15 years ago, there was
| a change in the state law that the media proclaimed made it
| legal for you to collect the rainfall that landed on your
| roof. They left out the conditions that the statute required:
| you had to have an existing well permit, you could only use
| the rainwater for the same purposes that your well permit
| allowed (so if the permit only allowed watering livestock,
| you could not use the water for your garden), then there was
| another stickler - there could not be a water utility
| adjacent to your property (even if you were _not_ connected
| to that water company). There were 3 other requirements, but
| those 3 were so narrowly focused that the law basically
| upheld the illegality of collecting rainfall.
| TinyRick wrote:
| These states follow prior appropriation doctrine for water
| rights, which states that upstream owners can use/divert
| water for "beneficial use". Building a dam to intentionally
| stop the flow to downstream consumers is not a beneficial
| use.
| RegularOpossum wrote:
| The vast majority of Utah relies on snow melt for water as
| the Colorado bypass most of the population so it's not as
| much of an issue.
| [deleted]
| InTheArena wrote:
| The upper basin states have already hit their targets (and
| then some) in terms of water usage. The problem is that
| California has been consuming the surplus, and there is no
| longer enough water flow to sustain the surplus.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > I wonder why Colorado and Utah were not involved in the
| deal? If one of them had a problem with it, would they have
| standing to sue?
|
| The Colorado River Compact effectively divides states into
| two buckets, the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states. The
| Upper Basin states already came to an agreement a while ago;
| the Lower Basin states only came to an agreement today.
| InTheArena wrote:
| The treaty water rights separate upper basin states and lower
| basin river states, with the capacity split. In theory,
| Colorado has almost as much water rights as California does,
| but the uper basic states have been actively managing and
| reducing their footprint on the river (unlike California, which
| has mostly been in violation of it's usage).
| bombcar wrote:
| Some of the other states are "upriver" from the Colorado and so
| they would be exceptionally unhappy about restrictions.
| zie wrote:
| > (excluding two Mexican states that are further down river)
|
| The Mexican states/Mexican govt don't need to, they have a
| treaty with the US govt. The US govt is required to send X
| amount of water across the border. I forget the # and am not
| willing to look it up right now. The US govt has been
| supplementing water across the border for a while now with
| wells. Nothing new here.
| hanniabu wrote:
| And I'm sure Mexico knows that the US can stop sending water
| at any point and there's not much they can do about it
| mmanfrin wrote:
| _US Law_ has firmly established that the US is beholden to
| _International Laws_ it is treaty to. If the Us were to
| stop sending water to Mexico, it would be breaking _US Law_
| as well as International Law.
| [deleted]
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| US law can change whenever the US wants it to. It's like
| saying you hold yourself accountable not to cheat at your
| diet. You can just change your diet and then you're not
| cheating it anymore.
| allemagne wrote:
| Sure, but I don't need layers of bureaucracy and multiple
| branches of government to ok the change in my diet. Let
| alone an international community who will hate me for it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is silly. There are consequences to breaking trade
| and resource agreements and countries will retaliate with
| tariffs and other means.
|
| if you gain a reputation of a country that does not
| honour agreements, no-one will be interested in doing
| agreements with you.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| That's true, but the GGP seemed to be arguing that the
| fact that treaties are defacto US law is sufficiently
| important to preventing the US from breaking an
| international treaty.
|
| I agree with you and others that the driver for abiding
| by treaties is not US law but us reputation. But that's
| the GP's point: the law is not the main driver here.
| zie wrote:
| Well, sure the US could decide to nullify the treaty. This
| would almost certainly be abysmal for Mexico/US relations.
| Suddenly when the US want's Mexico's help to do something,
| Mexico will be much less willing. Not to mention the people
| living along the border that need that water to survive.
| What will they do when they start to get really, really
| thirsty? I'm betting it won't be sitting on their hands
| waiting patiently for the US to turn the water on again.
|
| If tensions get really bad, sure the US armed forces could
| probably take Mexico in a fight, but then what? What good
| would that do the US?
|
| It would be a pretty idiotic thing to do, but sure, it's
| possible.
| vondur wrote:
| The US generally will not break treaties with other
| countries. Kinda makes us look bad if we do.
| debacle wrote:
| And I'm sure Americans own the businesses and land in
| Mexico making use of most of the water.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Sure, like the US government can break any other
| international contract they signed. This just would not
| help with further trust. There is something called
| international law, despite there is no world government.
| But states are still subject to rules, or else they will
| isolate themself.
| krapp wrote:
| Other countries don't work with the US because they trust
| us, they know perfectly well after Iraq and Snowden and
| Trump that we're not to be trusted. They work with the US
| because we're the world's last superpower, have
| overwhelming military force and enough nukes to crack the
| world open several times over. We're Darth Vader, the
| world is Cloud City, and the deal is whatever we say it
| is, and if we alter it, pray we don't alter it further.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Russia still has lots of nukes, too. Probably even more
| than you. They still discovered the international
| backslash, after blatantly breaking international law by
| invading ukraine.
| krapp wrote:
| What have they discovered? As far as I know, Russia is
| still invading Ukraine, they haven't surrendered or
| retreated. They've discovered that having nukes means you
| can get away with whatever you like, and suffer little
| more than a slap on the wrist from the international
| community. Which is what the US also knows. And North
| Korea. And China, whenever it decides to roll over
| Taiwan. Nuclear weapons mean the rules don't apply to
| you.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| " and suffer little more than a slap on the wrist from
| the international community."
|
| Russia is a international pariah now, with no more
| friends and the only states doing buisness with them are
| doing so, because russia is weak and without choice, so
| you can have favorable terms with them. Even china openly
| condemned russias aggression. They still do buisness with
| russia of course, but to very good conditions.
|
| And china just did a important states meeting for central
| asian states:
|
| https://thediplomat.com/2023/05/in-xian-chinas-xi-calls-
| for-...
|
| Basically all former soviet states and russia was not
| invited or mentioned at all. China takes what russia
| cannot hold anymore - and russia still has to smile and
| dares no criticism, because without china - they would be
| done economically. China could not have done this prior
| the invasion.
|
| And if china would try to invade Taiwan - then the
| military outcome is far from settled and china tries hard
| to avoid the political costs of a invasion. They rather
| want to strongarm taiwan into a forced "voluntarily"
| unification. Otherwise they would have invaded long ago.
| SllX wrote:
| I think the word "law" is a little misleading in this
| case: International law is more like international
| diplomacy LARPing as law.
|
| That said, never found a better word for it, so maybe
| it's correct.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Per the constitution treaties are binding with the same
| force as federal law.
| tivert wrote:
| >> I think the word "law" is a little misleading in this
| case: International law is more like international
| diplomacy LARPing as law.
|
| >> That said, never found a better word for it, so maybe
| it's correct.
|
| > Per the constitution treaties are binding with the
| force of federal law.
|
| 1) I think that's controversial, or at least not so
| simple. IIRC, there's a question in US law if treaties
| have domestic force on their own, or must be implemented
| by "enabling legislation."
|
| 2) In any case, the US Constitution can't make
| "international law" international law, at best it makes a
| treaty domestic US law.
| SllX wrote:
| Yes, but treaties are themselves extraconstitutional in
| the framework of international diplomacy. They're
| agreements between nations, and the US constitution is
| only binding on us. It gets expressed as law domestically
| but in truth, it's closer to a contract but without a
| court of law to enforce them which is why they get their
| own word: treaties.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The real answer, and the history, lies in the root of the
| word treaty. It is cognate with the verb "to treat", as
| in how one handles affairs with another.
| ccooffee wrote:
| > I forget the # and am not willing to look it up right now.
|
| I gotchu.
|
| 1944's "UTILIZATION OF WATERS OF THE COLORADO AND TIJUANA
| RIVERS AND OF THE RIO GRANDE" treaty between the US and
| Mexico established the "International Boundary and Water
| Commission" (IBWC). The text of the 1944 treaty is available
| from IBWC's website[0][1].
|
| According to the text of the 1944 treaty (article 10 deals
| with the Colorado River), Mexico is entitled to at minimum
| 1.5 million acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado
| River, and in wet years is entitled to 1.7 million acre-feet
| of water.
|
| Based on the submitted article, which says "3m acre-feet of
| water is expected to be conserved over the next three years".
| If that comes down to 1m acre-feet per year, that's 2/3 of
| the quantity of water guaranteed to Mexico.
|
| [0] https://www.ibwc.gov/Treaties_Minutes/treaties.html [all
| treaties overseen by IBWC] [1]
| https://www.ibwc.gov/Files/1944Treaty.pdf [PDF of 1944
| treaty]
| zie wrote:
| Thanks!
| bombcar wrote:
| Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting!
|
| https://www.usbr.gov/lc/phoenix/AZ100/1950/whiskey_drinking_...
|
| One of the hard things with "looking in from the outside" is that
| these numbers are just so batshit insane that we cannot really
| grasp it. An "acre-foot" is huge, and what we personally consume
| _appears_ so small (and what does "consume" mean anyway? If I
| pull water from a well and then put it back in the ground with a
| septic, how much is "consumed"?)
|
| Perhaps we need federal labelling for things that puts some
| "water used" on things so you can compare, though water used in
| some areas is critical and in others is not a bit deal at all.
| arcticbull wrote:
| The vast majority of the consumption isn't personal, it's silly
| agricultural use like growing _alfalfa_ and _almonds_ in the
| _desert_.
|
| 80% of the Colorado River water usage is agricultural. [1]
|
| Forget not drinking water or taking a shower - eat one less
| steak or skip a handful of almonds. That's where all the water
| is actually going.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado...
| DennisP wrote:
| In Arizona, it's not even the US consumption. They're selling
| the alfafa to Saudi Arabia, which won't grow it itself
| because it uses too much water.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-
| arizon...
| Dig1t wrote:
| It's actually a brilliant move on the part of the Saudis.
| They are essentially pumping Arizona's aquifer across the
| globe and the alfalfa is a convenient storage mechanism.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Saudi Arabia is doing the same with its aquifers.
|
| They also have the foresight to do it near one of its
| borders (I used to do the same thing in SimCity: shit my
| coal plants in the corner).
|
| https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Saudi+Arabia/@30.1201859
| ,37...
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| It illegal to grow alfalfa in Saudi Arabia. This was
| pointed out in all the Arizona newspapers when they found
| out about the Saudi connection.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Well _of course_ they won't grow it. They're in a desert
| and that would be ridiculous! /joke
| manquer wrote:
| Interestingly Saudi Arabia has been super wasteful of
| their water too.
|
| They have all but drained their aquifers that takes
| thousands of years to replenish in a bid to become self
| sufficient in their food supplies. Now they are taking
| some corrective action with investing more in
| desalination, reducing certain type of agricultural
| produce etc.
| prottog wrote:
| One of the theoretical advantages of an absolute monarchy
| or any other totalitarian form of government is that it
| should be able to make unpopular decisions (i.e. prevent
| the people from accessing groundwater resources) that are
| good in the long run (i.e. the aquifers don't all run out
| within a few decades). Strange how that plays out in
| reality.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> should be able to make unpopular decisions that are
| good in the long run_
|
| Well, no, totalitarianism is characterized by the
| unilateral exercise of power, and the results will vary
| wildly depending on who your tyrant is. Tyrants are
| easily as dumb as the average person; dumber, perhaps, if
| you think that absolute power corrupts one's ability to
| view the world objectively (or that those who have a
| tendency to seek absolute power might correlate with
| those who do not have the best interests of others at
| heart).
| reducesuffering wrote:
| They would've if they took the Chinese approach to
| gradually improve the standard of living organically
| through productivity improvements and education. Saudi
| Arabia instead immediately skyrocketed their standard of
| living far past what the population can do productively
| without oil. Populations don't take well to huge standard
| of living decreases that are inevitable when oil $ runs
| out to subsidize everything in the state enormously.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> They would 've if they took the Chinese approach to
| gradually improve the standard of living organically
| through productivity improvements and education._
|
| Well, since the topic is authoritarianism, note that the
| Chinese approach resulted in a few tens of millions dead,
| which is worse than what the Saudis have managed so far:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Of course, I meant the Deng Xiaoping reforms
| grumple wrote:
| Farmers seem to disagree with the "almonds bad" narrative:
| https://farmtogether.com/learn/blog/dispelling-
| miconceptions...
|
| In addition to the reasons they list, I'd like to point out
| that Almonds are actually native to the desert in Iran and
| the Levant. I've found them in the wild while hiking in the
| desert in the middle east.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is one of those "but where does the water _go_ "
| questions that have to be answered to determine the true
| effect.
|
| Eg - if ten gallons per almond is true, and one goes to
| evaporation and nine into the aquifer it's much different
| than if five evaporate, four run off into the ocean, and
| one sinks into the ground.
| Infernal wrote:
| >eat one less steak or skip a handful of almonds
|
| At least in the case of Arizonan desert alfalfa, this is a
| result of sweetheart lease deals offered to Saudis with no
| limits on groundwater access, who are effectively exporting
| Arizona's aquifers in the form of livestock feed.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-
| arizon...
| markfeathers wrote:
| As I understand their water rights were recently revoked:
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| states/arizona/articles/202...
| Dig1t wrote:
| >has rescinded drilling permits
|
| This is just saying that they had the right to drill MORE
| wells revoked, presumably they already have wells that
| will continue to pump water out of the ground.
|
| >reported that the new wells would have pumped up to
| 3,000 gallons (11,000 liters) of water per minute.
|
| That is an insane amount of water.
| bombcar wrote:
| The entire flow of the Mississippi:
|
| > At Lake Itasca, the average flow rate is 6 cubic feet
| per second. At Upper St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis,
| the northern most Lock and Dam, the average flow rate is
| 12,000 cubic feet per second or 89,869 gallons per
| second. At New Orleans, the average flow rate is 600,000
| cubic feet per second.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| Utah has a similar problem. The governor has an alfalfa farm
| yet has gotten on TV to demand that Utahns pray for rain. 80%
| of Utah's water consumption is agricultural. If the governor
| wanted to reduce Utah's water problem, he should start by
| putting his money where his mouth is, and stop growing such
| an abusive crop.
|
| Unlike Arizona, it appears that much of Utah's alfalfa crop
| gets exported to China.
| rektide wrote:
| As horrible usages of water ad those are, it seems like
| significantly more water is used on also very inefficient
| meat production.
|
| I would love a better breakdown of what exactly California &
| the west's agricultural water usage is.
| njovin wrote:
| This article has a good breakdown of where the Colorado's
| water goes.
|
| TL;DR:
|
| - 55% goes to livestock feed (hay, alfafa, etc.) - 11%
| cotton - 14% other food crops - 4% thermoelectric power -
| 4% commercial & industrial - 12% residential
|
| I'd be further interested to know how much of each of those
| are exported (the article mentions that a 2020 study
| estimated 10-12% of all US livestock feed crops are
| exported).
|
| It seems ridiculous that we're putting the economic
| benefits of exporting these crops against the long-term
| sustainability of citizens living in the region.
| thc-27182 wrote:
| [flagged]
| aardvarkr wrote:
| I'm fully onboard with this. Silicon manufacturing is one
| example that consumes an insane amount of water (100's of
| thousands of gallons each day) but has to ultra purify it for
| their processes and then returns it back to the city water
| supply cleaner than when it came in. The water treatment plant
| has to have the capacity to feed it but to say that the water
| was "consumed" is a misnomer.
| tomp wrote:
| If it's so clean and pure, why not just reuse it?
| bombcar wrote:
| Or bottle it. appleSiliconRunoff would sell like ...
| bottled water!
| bluGill wrote:
| > If I pull water from a well and then put it back in the
| ground with a septic
|
| Get your septic system fixed if this is happening. Septic
| systems are supposed to evaporate the water into the air, not
| put it back into ground water.
|
| Of course you won't actually see it working like that in a
| properly functioning system. However that is how it should
| work.
| bombcar wrote:
| How do they evaporate into the air?
| https://www.epa.gov/septic/types-septic-systems "conventional
| system" is the one I know most common, and I've never seen an
| evapotranspiration system.
|
| Ah:
|
| >Evapotranspiration systems are only useful in specific
| environmental conditions. The climate must be arid and have
| adequate heat and sunlight. These systems work well in
| shallow soil; however, they are at risk of failure if it
| rains or snows too much.
|
| So it's a desert thing, I am not in a desert.
| silisili wrote:
| I am in the desert, and still haven't heard of this.
| Everyone out near me has a leach field.
| dboyd wrote:
| Leach fields are not uncommon:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septic_drain_field
| jiggyjace wrote:
| As someone who grew up in Phoenix and just bought a house here,
| I've been trying to responsibly educate myself in terms of how
| big of a crisis this might be. But I've found that a lot of
| comments, headlines, and judgment calls on this topic are just
| hilarious. Mainly because it's one of the simplest topics with
| which to find appropriate historical context and data. I'll show
| two examples.
|
| Picking apart this particular headline, perhaps a few of us are
| wondering how close the Colorado River is from drying up? My
| subjective measurement is that a river drying up would constitute
| 5% of its average discharge, or even less. The USGS tracks
| multiple key indicators on the Colorado River, including
| discharge at certain gauges along the river. From 1952 to 2022,
| the average is about 5,900 cubic feet per second. The worst year
| in the history of tracking the Colorado was 21 years ago, 2,417
| cubic feet per second, or 40% of average discharge. That's 8
| times what I would personally qualify as a dried up river.
| Compare that to the mighty Mississippi, which averages 208,833
| cubic feet per second each year. Now their worst year was 1956,
| 93,990 cubic feet per second, or 45% of their average discharge.
| So the Mississippi is statistically fairly as variable in its
| discharge as the Colorado river, albeit with much more water. And
| anyway, that's only 9 times my personal qualification. I know
| these aren't universal measurements, but I hope this allows me to
| prove a point. The Mississippi River and the Colorado River
| aren't all that different in variability, and neither of them are
| even close to drying up. But it's the cities that are closer to
| the Mississippi River that are actually having water problems --
| not Arizona (e.g. Jackson, MS had a water crisis where the
| National Guard was mobilized to help 150k residents with drinking
| water just last year). [1]
|
| In the last two decades, the SW has been experiencing extreme
| drought, and all the while it's one of the fastest growing
| regions in the US. For example, since the 1950s, Arizona has
| grown from 700,000 to over 7,000,000, all while using less water.
| Yep, it's true. Remember that when people point to more
| neighborhoods, golf courses, and "cities in the desert" as the
| reason for this 'crisis'. [2]
|
| With all that being said, my personal judgment is that there's a
| very real drought that is just about to conclude, as seen from
| recent projections of El Nino, heavy snowpack and rainfall this
| winter in the region, and water conservation technology improving
| at an exponential scale. The Southwest will continue growing,
| especially due to immigration from South America and Mexico and
| recent onshoring due to the China/Russia crisis into the next few
| decades. And the water situation is going to be fine the whole
| way.
|
| [1] -
| https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/annual/?referred_module=sw&a...
| [2] - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-
| environme...
| cloudripper wrote:
| Cadillac Desert [0] remains as relevant as always.
|
| The state of water security is California - and the US West more
| broadly - is a fascinating history problem in my mind. I focus on
| California due to the enormity of its investments to attempt to
| sustain its massive population. And within California, I think a
| lot responsibility for the current state of affairs falls on the
| head of Los Angeles.
|
| The City of Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power serves a
| population of over 4 million. Only 13% of that water is from
| local/recycles water supplies. That approximates to a natural
| water supply that can sustain around 500,000 people. To sustain
| the current and forecast populations, ~40% of water is pulled
| from the SF Bay Area Delta and another ~40% is pulled from the
| Eastern Sierra. The remainder is pulled from the Colorado River.
| From my last study of the subject over a decade ago, effective
| desalination strategies were still forthcoming.
|
| The survival of Los Angeles - and the broader Southern California
| region - is heavily dependent on these outside sources. And each
| sources has it's own threats and challenges.
|
| Receiving water from the Bay Area Delta is the result of the
| State Water Project (SWP) - which happens to be the single
| largest energy consumer in the state of California (it takes a
| lot of juice to pump all that water up and over the mountain
| ranges that separate Southern California from the Central
| Valley). One threat that water/government agencies have been
| concerned about is the affect of a major Bay Area earthquake on
| the SWP and on the water supply of Southern California. If the
| levees scattered throughout the Bay Area Delta were to fail in
| significant quantity, salt water would be pulled in from the
| Pacific and would contaminate 40% of Los Angeles's fresh water
| supply (affecting over 1.6 million people). To avert this
| potential crisis - there have been talks for 20-some years to
| build a tunnel and divert the SWP-bound water from the Delta. The
| State of CA has put forth plans to proceed with the tunnel bypass
| [1] - at an estimated cost of 16 billion.
|
| Then we have the Eastern Sierra - which, again, contributes
| nearly 40% of water to Los Angeles. The historic extraction of
| water from that region has resulted in a least one massive
| (mostly) dried lakebed (Owen's Lake) [2]. It should be pointed
| out that this dried lakebed became one of the single largest
| sources of particulate pollution (PM-10 - sand/dust) in the
| United States. While Owen's Lake is no longer the largest single
| source, Mono Lake (also in the Eastern Sierra) now is. While that
| lake has not been drained, is has had it's natural water sources
| diverted to supply Los Angeles (I can dig for those data points
| if need be). The extraction of water in that region has been
| directly attributed to the desertification of the landscape and
| the changing of the ecosystem.
|
| Beyond the situation with the Colorado River, California has much
| to grapple with. Balancing decades of unruly development and
| population growth is an issue that will need to be handled for
| generations to come.
|
| For a 'fun' read on the development of Los Angeles, check out the
| aptly named book, "Reluctant Metropolis" [3].
|
| [0]: https://archive.org/details/cadillacdesertam00reis/
|
| [1]: https://www.deltaconveyanceproject.com/
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake
|
| [3]: https://archive.org/details/reluctantmetropo0000fult
| gen220 wrote:
| Really appreciate the thorough deep dive! In your research, did
| you find any populous corner of California, the American SW, or
| the U.S. in general that has a _good_ story to address problems
| like these?
|
| Out east, it seems like upstate NY has a decent shot at long-
| term water security, depending on how thirsty NYC becomes and
| how influential that thirst is in the scheme of NY state
| politics.
| MarcScott wrote:
| John Oliver did a pretty good piece on this -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtxew5XUVbQ
| xavxav wrote:
| [flagged]
| smeyer wrote:
| I don't think the metaphors would be evaded by using metric
| units, though. Would 4 Teraliters been more useful to much of
| anyone?
|
| Converting it to gallons, liters, or any other common unit of
| volume probably leaves most people without a sense of relevant
| scale unless you use a metaphor (e.g. how many households it
| could sustain for a year) or otherwise tell them how much water
| the states use (e.g. including a percentage of total usage).
| goda90 wrote:
| It's a point of reference. I'd argue it's unnecessary, but
| people still use points of reference in the metric system.
| Sure, a hectare is simply 100m by 100m, but people will still
| use their personal memory of a space they know when thinking
| about a hectare or a kilometer, or whatever. People understand
| scale relative to something familiar.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| " _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article
| or post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| kdmccormick wrote:
| Hacker News always comes through with the hard-hitting
| analysis.
| burkaman wrote:
| If it instead said 3.7 billion meters cubed, you wouldn't need
| an analogy to understand how much that is?
| [deleted]
| vanattab wrote:
| Do such quantitative metaphors not exist in countries using the
| metric system?
| [deleted]
| kiliancs wrote:
| While I'm on board with metric, this technique is used in
| countries where the metric system is the only system too,
| because our intuition fails us at scales that we are not
| accustomed to, no matter the unit, and for other reasons.
| xavxav wrote:
| On its face I'm not against using analogies to explain scale,
| but its not like i really have an intuitive grasp on the size
| of a 747 or a football field's volume. It also helps to
| remember that 1m^3 is 1000L which allows you to transform
| this into much easier (at least to me) analogies.
| bsimpson wrote:
| > Of these savings, 2.3m acre-feet will be compensated by the
| federal government
|
| I'd like to know more about what that means.
|
| The whole problem is that there isn't enough water. How does the
| federal government magically supply 76% of the shortfall?
| jmyeet wrote:
| So this seems like a stopgap measure so it's not done yet. I'm
| disappointed to see how people will equally bear the cost of this
| given we all know what needs to change here: we need to reduce
| agricultural usage. Although cutting off gold courses will
| propbably help too.
|
| Farms have a "use it or lose it" system for water allocation,
| which leads farms to grow water-intensive crops to keep their
| allocation, most notably alfalfa. We just need to stop growing
| such crops.
|
| One bone of contention: while climate change is obvviously very
| real, neither it nor a "historic drought" is the cause of the
| problem. The problem is, quite simply, overuse based on
| unrealistic projections of water inflows to the Colorado River
| basin (see Figure 2 [1]).
|
| Blaming it on climate change is washing hands of responsibility.
| Poor modeling and mismanagement is the real problem.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad...
| freeopinion wrote:
| You make a very simple statement without any real
| justification: "We just need to stop growing such crops." I'm
| guessing that you have all sorts of justification for this and
| assume that those justifications are well-known and generally
| agreed. But for those of us less educated, what is the
| justification? Why shouldn't agriculture be given priority in
| these regions?
|
| Why is water different than land in this regard? When a
| developer wants to put up a new subdivision, they buy property
| from the current owner. Why shouldn't water shares be the same?
| jmyeet wrote:
| There are various measures of water usage for various crops.
| Commonly you have "water usage per kilogram of crops" and
| "acre feet of irrigation water per acre of farming land" but
| these aren't that useful (IMHO). A far more useful measure if
| "water usage per kilocalorie" since that's really waht
| matters and this varies a ton from food source to food source
| [1].
|
| The "use it or lose it" system of water rights for
| agriculture in the Colorado River basin creates warped
| incentives, which is to maximize water usage rather than the
| economic value of the crop or the calorie content of that
| crop.
|
| It's clear we can use a ton less water and still feed people
| in a way that's economically viable for the farmers. But no
| one wants to give up the water because once it's gone, it's
| gone.
|
| This situation has real impacts where some in California, for
| example, were floating the iea of using desalination to
| provide potable water for people rather than the far cheaper
| and more obvious solution of just using less water on water-
| intensive crops.
|
| All of this is just superficial responsibility shifting.
|
| [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/scarcity-water-use-
| kcals
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| In Utah, 80% of water use goes to agriculture. And farmers
| pay about 1% of what residential customers pay for water.
|
| As a nation, we have this fantasy of turning the desert
| green. The book _Cadillac Desert_ lists our national
| obsession with massive water projects that never pay for
| themselves and that always require massive tax subsidies.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-
| Disappearing...
| dymk wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado.
| ..
|
| Alfalfa and almonds are thirsty yet we grow them by the
| square mile in the desert. It doesn't take much googling to
| realize this is not a smart thing to do in a drought area.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| If you eliminate 100% of suburban water use you will still
| have a water problem. If you want a land analogy, it would be
| like looking at people in San Jose and saying they're the
| reason for a lack of farmland in California.
|
| Plentiful and subsidized year-around food is a security issue
| on the federal level - but when compared to other industries
| it brings in comparatively little for the states involved.
| You can't reasonably expect a few water starved states to
| export the majority of its water via crops while sacrificing
| its own economic prosperity for the sake of the broader
| country.
| xp84 wrote:
| Driving through the Central Valley on a regular basis, it's
| interesting the entirely different beliefs/expectations about
| water that seems to drive politics there. There are signs
| everywhere railing against the state government for "dumping
| our dam water into the ocean" which is apparently a political
| memeification based on a Trump quip. It makes it sound like
| from the perspective of the Central Valley farming interests,
| California's cities should just shut off water to homes and
| businesses, plus allow rivers to be completely run dry by
| farming to the point saltwater flows inland in the delta, to
| make it possible for farms to always get unlimited cheap water
| to grow their choice of crops. The signs also say "Is growing
| food wasting water????" as though the choice is to either allow
| unlimited irrigation, or end all farming, ignoring the option
| that they 'spend' water on crops within a realistic budget even
| when that doesn't allow full maximization of crops every year.
|
| It seems like this lack of realism due to people's desire for
| very simple good-guy/bad-guy partisan narratives will continue
| affecting internal CA water politics, which are based on the
| Sierra Nevada-sourced water that flows in the California Water
| Project to Los Angeles.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If you are curious and want to learn, Central Valley in
| California and Farmers have a lot of legitimate grievances.
|
| Wanting unlimited water is a pretty biased take.
|
| The start of the whole issue was that many Central Valley
| Farms and counties raised bonds to put in aqueducts and
| entered into purchase agreements with the state of
| California. The California legislature then passed
| environmental regulation and stopped providing the water. In
| many instances this water was already paid for, or the state
| decided that farmers must continue to pay while the state
| doesn't hold up their side of the contract.
|
| The farmer's position is that the state needs to fulfill it's
| half of the contract or buy its way out of the obligations it
| made.
|
| A similar legal battle is playing out all throughout
| California over groundwater. In those cases, the state passed
| environmental regulation bypassing the eminent domain
| process.
|
| I know dozens of families that have lost their life's work
| and savings overnight because the state thinks it found a
| loophole to stop them from using water without using eminent
| domain to buy it.
|
| The closest analogy for the groundwater situation is if you
| owned a farm in a migratory bird path and the state passed a
| law for minimum roosting land. Then, instead of buying your
| farmland, they made a law that you aren't allowed to step
| foot on it.
| cmh89 wrote:
| > In many instances this water was already paid for, or the
| state decided that farmers must continue to pay while the
| state doesn't hold up their side of the contract.
|
| Do you have citations for this?
|
| >The closest analogy for the groundwater situation is if
| you owned a farm in a migratory bird path and the state
| passed a law for minimum roosting land. Then, instead of
| buying your farm and land, they didn't compensate you but
| said you aren't allowed to continue using it as you have
| been.
|
| isn't this how literally all laws prohibiting something
| work? The government generally doesn't prohibit something
| if no one is doing it. Why should the government buy their
| land?
|
| For example, the government built the interstate highway
| network of which all of those central valley farmers need
| to ship their products by using the law to seize land and
| then changing the character of millions of acres of homes
| from quiet and peaceful to loud and toxic. They did not
| generally buyout homeowners who were not necessary to build
| the road despite fundamentally changing how they were using
| their property.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I will try to find some decent citations. There are
| several legal cases and settlement for the former.
|
| >isn't this how literally all laws prohibiting something
| work? The government generally doesn't prohibit something
| if no one is doing it. Why should the government buy
| their land?
|
| No, this isn't how things generally work. It is one thing
| if a highway changes the character of your neighborhood,
| but another if the state makes you move out and
| demolishes your house to build the road. This is the
| second scenario.
|
| In the case of groundwater, the state recognizes farmers
| as the owners of the water rights (so they are not being
| taken away), but limits farmers from exercising those
| rights. Simultaneously, they allow other groups without
| the water rights to use it.
| cmh89 wrote:
| > It is one thing if a highway changes the character of
| your neighborhood, but another if the state makes you
| move out and demolishes your house to build the road.
| This is the second scenario.
|
| It is very obviously not. I'm just pointing out that your
| 'bird' analogy doesn't work because the government makes
| laws and policy that affect how existing property owners
| can use their land all the time.
|
| >In the case of groundwater, the state recognizes farmers
| as the owners of the water rights (so they are not being
| taken away), but limits farmers from exercising those
| rights. Simultaneously, they allow other groups without
| the water rights to use it.
|
| If you want to find some specific examples, that would be
| helpful. The state also recognizes my rights to the car I
| own but can make policies on how I use my property
| including outright banning my use of it. Water rights
| aren't god given like the Central Valley farmers would
| like you to believe. They fall under the jurisdiction of
| the State of California and the United States of America.
|
| I personally think the Central Valley farmers should stop
| looking for handouts, show some personal responsibility
| and adapt to reality instead of asking Uncle Sam to bail
| them out again.
| xp84 wrote:
| I'm not saying there is no cause for grievance - only that
| it doesn't look like the discussion is being had in good
| faith.
|
| The urban water districts, especially Southern California,
| paid for the 444-mile California Aqueduct to get water from
| the mountains to the cities. During the last half of the
| twentieth century this had more supply than needed, so they
| were happy to sell it for cheap to Central Valley farmers
| under the condition that they don't grow permanent crops
| like trees, because eventually the urban water needs were
| going to increase and they'd need to keep more of the water
| that they'd paid to transport.
|
| What did they actually do? For one thing, planted orchards.
| (I'm assuming the miles and miles of felled orchards I saw
| last week alongside the 5 are related to this particular
| thing.)
|
| Now, the farmers of the Central Valley may have contractual
| grievances if the State has done as you say -- and I don't
| claim to invalidate those, but (A) the fishermen who want
| salmon to still exist have just as much of a right to a
| living as they do, and the self-serving bias of the farmers
| is obvious here. And (B) they have no inherent right to
| that water, as it comes from up in the mountains. I'd say
| the districts who paid the cost to build the water project
| _should_ have first dibs. The farmers who are loudest right
| now seem to see water costs the same way restaurant owners
| view minimum wage: "It _must_ be low enough to make my
| personal business model viable, and if it 's not, I'm being
| oppressed." Nobody owes them favorable costs, any more than
| Apple is owed cheap semiconductors or Tesla is owed cheap
| batteries. As reliable Republican voters, it's
| disappointing that they oppose a market economy so much.
|
| As far as I can see, I think that as long as there is a
| marginal dollar that could be made by the farmers if only
| water were cheaper, their politicians will be
| disingenuously arguing that the cities are robbing them of
| their water and trying to get more. No matter how fair the
| arrangements are, or how many concessions are made to them.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Thank you for the thoughtful responses. I think we agree
| on logic, but differ on some of the facts. That is to
| say, I would agree with your logic and conclusions if I
| held the same inputs.
|
| The first difference is that you characterize the urban
| water districts as the primary payers. My understanding
| is that many agricultural cities and counties also put
| money and bonds for various water projects with the
| intent to use it for agricultural uses.
|
| I have also never heard of any conditions on trees or
| crops, so I am genuinely curious where that is coming
| from.
|
| In general, I am for letting the water price vary with
| market demand, or as dictated by contractual agreements.
| This is admittedly very complicated because the supply
| and allowed participants is dictated by policy. That is
| to say, fishermen and environmentalists aren't buying up
| the water in the market, they set limits on how much can
| be sold and to whom.
|
| I actually hear very little from farmers auguring that
| the cities are robbing them of their water. They seem to
| see the conflict more in terms of ag vs environmental
| groups, and take city use for granted. Urban dwellers
| seem to see the conflict more in terms of city vs Ag,
| with environmental use taken for granted.
|
| I don't think your restaurant example is a charitable or
| accurate description of farmers (or restaurants for that
| matter). Nobody is owed anything, but people can be
| reasonably upset if they think their government is
| actively working against their interests. A farmer might
| be mad that the state prioritizes smelt over his
| livelihood or cancer treatment.In some sense it's a
| central function of government to pick winners and
| losers, and it sucks being on the losing side. A
| restaurant owner might be mad about minimum wage hikes
| while the city prevents more housing that would alleviate
| such need, seeing themselves as a victim of bad policy.
| It doesn't feel good being if your life is selected as a
| necessary sacrifice for the greater good. People
| obviously have huge biases about what the greater good is
| when it opposes their livelihood, but let's not pretend
| policy is free of flaws either.
| amflare wrote:
| [flagged]
| callalex wrote:
| You are doing exactly what the comment you replied to is
| talking about. Extreme hyperbole helps nobody, and
| compromise is required when it comes to businesses that
| exploit any natural resource.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Central Valley farmers are in this predicament because they
| spent the last 20 years railing against climate change
| instead of implementing water-saving techniques for the
| megadrought that everyone knew was coming.
|
| While residents have cut back on their water use by 50% or
| more in SoCal, Central Valley farmers _increased_ their
| water use over the past 2 decades. Agriculture now
| represents 80%+ of the water use in CA, but only about 3%
| of its economy.
|
| If they were growing food with all that water, people might
| give a damn. But they're not; they're growing alfalfa for
| export to feed pigs and livestock in other countries that
| are smart enough not to waste their water on feed crops.
| padjo wrote:
| The fish are close to extinction, humans are struggling to
| water their lawns.
| dymk wrote:
| It's understandable until you consider that you live in the
| same food web as those fish, and ecosystems are a little
| more complex than "Divert all the top-level resources to
| humans".
| cmh89 wrote:
| Forget the food web, other people also exist, which is
| incredibly hard for central valley farmers to understand.
| I'm not sure the workers of the decimated pacific fishing
| industry would quite agree that the fish are 'random'.
|
| It really comes down to living in a society with
| competing interests. Society has decided that protecting
| the last salmon is somewhat important. I say somewhat
| because central valley farmers are HEAVILY subsidized by
| the state and federal government and still to get to take
| the lions share of the water to grow water intensive
| crops on the desert heat.
|
| What's that old saying? "When you are used to privilege,
| equality feels like oppression".
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Long term, does this effectively mean just more expensive produce
| for LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix regions while agro
| business in the rural farming areas suffer? I assume population
| increases will be mostly unaffected because of the relatively
| smaller fraction of usage compared to agro.
| yboris wrote:
| _Biden Admin Boosts Big Oil's Colorado River Scheme_
|
| https://www.levernews.com/biden-admin-boosts-big-oils-colora...
|
| Really problematic stuff going on.
| njovin wrote:
| Environmental issues aside, allocating $80m in bonds so that a
| private company can increase profits seems insane.
|
| > The largest oil producer in the Uinta Basin, Finley Resources
| (which operates in Utah through its subsidiary Uinta Wax), has
| been promoting the project while claiming it cannot afford to
| contribute to construction costs
|
| So they can't build it and presumably can't maintain it, so we
| should foot the bill and hope nothing goes wrong?
| causi wrote:
| I'm interested to see the details of the deal. With the Supreme
| Court ruling on the Colorado Compact that basically lets all the
| other states wither up and die before California has to go from
| watering its golf courses every three hours to every six hours,
| I'd be very surprised if they're cutting the same percentage as
| everyone else.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| California could care less if the Colorado Compact is changed.
| Their use of it is limited to a small area south of LA. Mostly
| for farming. Which they shouldn't be doing there anyway.
|
| It's states like Arizona that will have the problem. I lived in
| Scottsdale. Saw the writing on the wall and we sold the
| Scottsdale place for an insane amount of money. Having said
| that, if you can get a place just inside the border of the city
| of Phoenix, you'll probably be good. Phoenix has been socking
| away water forever and has about 70 to 100 years worth of it
| under the city. As a matter of water availability, I'd stay
| away from places out in the suburban areas though. If you've
| been paying attention down there, you probably kind of already
| know that if it comes to a head, Phoenix will take care of
| Phoenix. Places like Scottsdale, Mesa, or Tempe would be
| expected to solve their own problems.
|
| I firmly believe things are gonna get heated out in Arizona if
| the drought persists. No pun intended.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Counterpoint is that imperial valley farming is very
| productive because the climate is great for many crops other
| than the lack of water.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is generally the case for hot deserts - with
| sufficient water, most would turn into lush jungles.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| How does Phoenix manage to store water?
| e44858 wrote:
| They pump water into wells to fill up the aquifer.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| But how do they stop folks with other wells from just
| pumping it all back out immediately?
| cdchn wrote:
| "I drink your milkshake."
| mech422 wrote:
| SRP does a lot of interesting stuff to store it. PHX gets
| water from 3 rivers - salt, verde, and Colorado. The Salt
| and Verde contribute 52%, and the Colorado River 38%.
| Reclaimed water accounts for 8% of the city's water supply,
| and groundwater the remaining 2%.
|
| (note: the reclaimed water is interesting - Palo Verde nuke
| plant uses PHX's reclaimed water for cooling the (still?)
| largest nuclear power plant in the country.)
|
| SRP uses large ponds/takes to 'recharge' the aquifers under
| PHX, as well as maintaining reservoirs.
| blululu wrote:
| The small area in the South you are talking about has more
| than half the State's population and is the largest
| constituency of the Colorado Compact. While the Imperial
| County claim is the bulk of California's claim to the
| Colorado, the water finds its way to cities as well. Thus
| California has a very large stake in the Colorado Compact
| (arguably the largest in terms of people and served and
| dollars made). If these people don't get water from the
| Colorado, they will look for it in the northern half of the
| state. It is cheaper and easier to collectively defend the
| very legitimate claims to the Colorado than to try to
| reallocate the state's other water resources.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > California could care less if the Colorado Compact is
| changed.
|
| It's behavior everytime the issue comes up suggest you are
| very wrong.
|
| > Their use of it is limited to a small area south of LA.
|
| No, its not; while most of it is used in the Imperial Valley,
| L.A. (by far the largest city in the State) itself also uses
| it for about half of its municipal supply, (as does San
| Diego, but I guess that could technically be considered part
| of the "small area south of LA".)
| mech422 wrote:
| I live in Mesa - Scottsdale will be less impacted then the
| rest of the state. SRP serves Mesa and Scottsdale as well as
| PHX. There's an unincorporated area north of Scottsdale,
| that's already screwed - and people are still buying houses
| there! I think PHX Metro will be fine, but the rest of the
| state doesn't have the resources PHX does.
|
| PS - and due to there being less agriculture in the area now,
| PHX metro is down to 1950s levels of water usage.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/us/arizona-water-rio-
| verd...
|
| https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-
| ed/joannaallhands...
| p_j_w wrote:
| >Their use of it is limited to a small area south of LA.
| Mostly for farming. Which they shouldn't be doing there
| anyway.
|
| People say this all the time, but where else do you propose
| this be done? Where's the empty land that can be as
| productive as the Imperial Valley? If you want to stop
| farming there, we're going to have to reduce our population
| or it'll happen naturally in an unpleasant way.
| m463 wrote:
| makes me think of "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi
| cdchn wrote:
| I'm surprised this isn't the top comment.
| buzzert wrote:
| By law, anyone who wants to sell or lease land in Scottsdale
| needs to prove that there's a water supply for at least 100
| years[0].
|
| Is that phony or something? What was the writing on the wall
| that you saw that made you leave Scottsdale? Curious as a
| Phoenix-native who maybe one day might want to move back to
| the valley.
|
| [0]: https://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/water/water-supply
| shagie wrote:
| There is some interesting stuff with Scottsdale and water
| going on now.
|
| https://www.azfamily.com/2023/05/16/arizona-legislature-
| pass...
|
| https://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/Assets/ScottsdaleAZ/News/News+
| I...
|
| https://kjzz.org/content/1847190/scottsdale-wants-
| governor-v...
|
| https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-
| ed/joannaallhands...
| mdasen wrote:
| https://www.abc15.com/news/region-northeast-
| valley/scottsdal...
|
| Looks like it was just vetoed by the governor today.
| shagie wrote:
| So _now_ now.
|
| > Posted at 11:35 AM, May 22, 2023 and last updated 52
| minutes ago
|
| Thank you for the update on this.
| buzzert wrote:
| I looked into this and saw this as well, but Rio Verde
| Foothills is a tiny community far northeast of
| Scottsdale. It seems like more of a political issue
| (i.e., people who aren't paying taxes to the city are
| benefitting from the city's management of water
| resources), than a technological issue.
| shagie wrote:
| * * *
| bilbo0s wrote:
| No. Anyone who wants to sell or lease _subdivided_ land has
| to prove that. Not only that, but if the development gets
| water from Scottsdale, then it does not have to prove a 100
| year reserve.
|
| Scottsdale is confident, (or, at least, shows outward
| confidence), in its ability to provide water for 100 years
| because of its three pillars. One, that the Salt River
| gambit will always pay off. Two, that Scottsdale's water
| from the Colorado will never run dry. And three, that if
| all else fails, I mean, hey, Phoenix is sitting on an
| ocean. They can't leave us out high and dry can they?
|
| With respect to two and three, we had zero confidence.
| Additionally, our faith in the ability of Scottsdale's
| leaders to effectively manage unexpected events with 1 was,
| limited.
|
| I'm not saying move out of Scottsdale. I'm saying for us,
| it was too much risk and inconsistent with sustainability.
| I believe for a place like Scottsdale to become
| sustainable, _somebody_ has to move out. Not saying who
| that should be, but mother nature is clearly signaling
| limits on our growth ambitions. Not all places in Arizona
| are unsustainable. Tuscon, Sedona, Phoenix proper. Etc.
| There are lots of places in Arizona that I think have put
| forth credible plans to manage their growth in the face of
| uncertain water security. But climate, geography and a
| failure to get out in front of the issue long ago has just
| put other areas in a precarious spot. That 's just reality.
| buzzert wrote:
| Thanks for the reply.
|
| I do hold out some hope for technology in solving this
| problem. In theory (albeit at great cost), we could build
| a desalination pipeline from San Diego/Baja California to
| Arizona, and there's also the Source water panel[0] which
| pulls water out of the air, and seems like a potentially
| good option for residential water usage.
|
| [0]: https://www.source.co/
| prottog wrote:
| Which part of the country (or the world) did you move to, out
| of curiosity? Is it one with a much more stable outlook on
| water supply?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Wisconsin on Lake Michigan.
|
| But again, if you can get a place in the border areas of
| Phoenix proper, I think that would be the ideal for the
| average person who lives in Scottsdale. We are from the
| Midwest, so.
|
| I suspect the water under Phoenix is at least part of the
| reason developers got to places like Biltmore and Arcadia
| so many years ago. They're always one step ahead. But there
| is also the north Phoenix area bordering Scottsdale. I'd
| recommend that for the well off, but not wealthy. Still
| close to Kierland Commons area, and Scottsdale Rd is right
| there. (Although I'd bet even that area will still run you
| close to a mil for anything decent right now. And the
| prices there will only rise in the future if the water
| issues persist.)
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Most of the water California gets from the Colorado is funneled
| into the imperial valley for growing food (in a literal desert,
| not a hyperbolic one like most of California), which has
| extremely senior water rights.
| blululu wrote:
| Imperial County receives a lubricous allotment from the
| Colorado River, but it is a better use than most of the
| claims to this water. The Central Arizona project, for
| instance, requires a coal plant to pump water uphill into a
| (even hotter) desert. Much as golf in the desert is a
| wasteful use of resources, golf courses generally pay market
| rate for their water and don't require federal subsidies to
| turn a profit. This is more than you can say for a lot of
| Colorado River water.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Since this always comes up I feel obligated to point out
| golf courses don't use near as much water as people think.
| They can use a lot of reclaimed and grey water for grass
| and ponds.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Gold courses are the equivalent of "welfare queens". They
| don't really matter much in the big picture but look bad
| and are often used for political purposes.
| m463 wrote:
| but you hear about golf courses in vegas using 300
| million gallons of water a year and it sounds like a lot
| of water.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Yeah but the point is they may "use" that much water, but
| not even close to that much is coming out of the rivers
| and reservoirs. Of course there may be some less
| sustainable golf courses which do use that much, and
| those should be fixed, don't think many folks would
| debate you there.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Which is hilarious because a real numbers look at Vegas's
| water use and they're a case study in near perfect water
| usage and conservation- yes, even with all their
| ridiculous pools.
|
| It's amazing what can be done with good planning and
| design.
| jubjubbird wrote:
| Navajo Generating Station, which was the largest coal-fired
| ppwer plant in the western U.S. and powered CAP pumping
| stations, closed in 2019 along with the accompanying coal
| mine.
| [deleted]
| causi wrote:
| Right, and the problem with water rights seniority is that
| the amounts were allocated based on 16.5 million acre-feet
| per year when the modern average annual flow is 11 million
| acre-feet.
| rconti wrote:
| In fact, I saw a source (I forget where, sorry) that said
| this 16.5 million acre-feet estimate was calculated a time
| of historically large river flow. So it's not just that the
| flow is going down, it's that the original projection was
| based on an unrealistic target, even back then!
| somat wrote:
| I always found it puzzling that the distribution is a fixed
| value rather than a ratio.
|
| Especially the Colorado river. An infamously volatile
| river. Most of the time it is a rather small desert river.
| but when it floods it floods something awful.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Over allocation is not a problem with water right seniority
| itself. Seniority dictates that when there isn't enough to
| go around, the last in is first out.
|
| The problem/challenge is that those with the least
| seniority don't like being cut off.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That's exactly the problem with seniority. You
| overallocate and the highest seniority levels get
| everything. Basically there is no need for allocation at
| all.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Keep in mind the imperial valley's massive use of water
| _predates_ the Colorado River Compact.
|
| Think about it this way: you move somewhere and you're
| using 50 gallons per day of water. An agreement comes up
| that says you can keep doing that. 10 million people move
| in after and there's now a water problem. Were you over-
| allocated 50 gallons per day?
|
| You could look at it two ways: you should sacrifice to
| help everyone else. Or, screw everyone else they
| shouldn't be here anyways.
|
| My general opinion is that while there's benefits to
| growing food in the imperial valley, they don't outweigh
| the benefits of not having to move tens of millions of
| people out of the southwest - that's like throwing
| trillions in development into the trash. California has
| access to the ocean for desalination, and other southwest
| states don't. The best thing for the country as a whole
| would be for California to ween itself off the Colorado
| River. But I don't think that's going to happen, at
| least, it won't without a fight.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| My opinion that the seniority should be settled once and
| for all in terms of date and volume.
|
| Once this is done, parties can work towards solutions.
| The southwest states and users can start buying rights
| from California and farmers.
|
| One reason there is so much fighting and acrimony is that
| each party thinks they can get more water for free by
| convincing a judge they deserve or need it more.
|
| This is further complicated by the fact that the best way
| to demonstrate need it to increase your dependence and
| set yourself up for even worse disaster if you don't get
| what you want.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| "Think about it this way: you move somewhere and you're
| using 50 gallons per day of water. An agreement comes up
| that says you can keep doing that. 10 million people move
| in after and there's now a water problem. Were you over-
| allocated 50 gallons per day?"
|
| There was a time when factories could pollute legally as
| much as they wanted. Then things change and they had to
| adapt. We can't have people insist on water rights that
| were given at a different time. They have to adapt.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't understand your position.
|
| Are you saying that the problem with seniority is that it
| clearly solves the allocation debate and overallocation
| problem?
|
| Which part do you object to?
| scythe wrote:
| >Are you saying that the problem with seniority is that
| it clearly solves
|
| Sarcastic quips like this do not promote a productive
| discussion. The commenter above is probably arguing that
| the oldest use is not necessarily the most valuable, and
| relying on stack allocation fails to make the most
| economically effective use of a limited resource.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I wasn't being sarcastic. They replied the following in a
| discussion about seniority causing allocation problems.
|
| >Basically there is no need for allocation at all.
|
| They might be saying what you did, but it was far from
| clear to me. If so, my response would be pretty
| straightforward:
|
| Seniority settles the question of rights. Buying and
| selling of rights and water is a very clear and effective
| way of putting them to the most effective economic use.
|
| If a potential user wants water and can put it to better
| use, they can simply buy it. If they are the city or
| state, they can even use eminent domain to force the
| sale.
| mikem170 wrote:
| > I don't understand your position.
|
| It could have been the case where the seniors were only
| given their rights because it was assumed there were 16.5
| million acre-feet, and not 11 million.
|
| Or perhaps the juniors only agreed because they thought
| there would be 16.5 million acre-feet.
|
| Or the federal government may have allowed senior rights
| to continue to exist for so long because they thought
| there would be 16.5 million acre-feet.
|
| The idea of senior water rights, not sharing such an
| important resource, is inherently unfair. The senior
| people did nothing to earn more water than anyone else.
| They didn't put the river there.
|
| It seems there are better factors to consider when
| deciding how to distribute the water at this point than
| treaties based on bad data, signed a long time ago, when
| things were a lot different than they are today.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Seniority doesn't and shouldn't rely any flow assumptions
| or the agreement of juniors.
|
| I would argue that seniority systems are the most fair,
| because the junior parties are the ones that drive the
| scarcity and create the problem.
|
| On a small scale, If a family has been living off a
| stream for 100 years, and someone wants to move in an use
| the stream, in makes sense that the newcomer doesn't get
| access if there isn't enough for both. Similarly, it
| makes sense that the newcomer go without if there is a
| shortage.
| ska wrote:
| I suspect in general if 'they were here first' is the
| only tool in your policy toolbox, you are going to have a
| bad time of it with growth and resource allocation. It
| works pretty ok with symmetric situations, but most
| situations aren't.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by being the only tool in the
| toolbox. There's a long list of policy tools once you
| establish ownership. For example, if I want to turn your
| house into a public park, I can raise a tax to buy it
| instead of just taking it from you.
| ska wrote:
| You argued that "seniority systems are the most fair" and
| I pointed out they often don't work that well. I'm not
| sure why you brought in eminent domain, but agree that it
| can be a more reasonable way to resolve the friction,
| rather than just screwing someone over.
|
| In general water rights (even moreso than mineral, air,
| etc.) are notoriously hard to get "right", and nobody
| seems to have managed so well that it's the obvious
| approach to follow.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| It does seem like a percentage or sliding scale is needed.
| Likely it didn't seem like something worth considering many
| decades ago
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-22 23:01 UTC)