[HN Gopher] The Last Drops of Mexico City
___________________________________________________________________
The Last Drops of Mexico City
Author : anarbadalov
Score : 145 points
Date : 2025-03-20 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mexicocitywater.longlead.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mexicocitywater.longlead.com)
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| mjmsmith wrote:
| Why on earth is jppullen's comment dead?
| jppullen wrote:
| Well that's not cool. Here it is again:
|
| Hi all -- I'm Long Lead's editor, John Patrick Pullen. Thanks
| for the compliments (those of you who have) and for those who
| have other thoughts, we hear you.
|
| I'm personally a big fan of reader-mode on browsers, myself,
| but at Long Lead, we think there's an opportunity for a new
| kind of journalism, one that takes time to produce and relies
| on design as much as it does editorial and art. You can't
| stuff that in a reader-mode -- and really we don't want to.
|
| We're a journalism studio. What's a journalism studio, you
| ask? Well, what's a film studio? You know -- they produce
| feature films that look great in the right or best contexts.
| Watching on a phone isn't as good as a tablet, which isn't as
| good as a TV or a projector. Similarly, our features
| journalism is built to scale (we do actually build separate
| mobile layouts) but isn't designed to leave our site. Also,
| all of them are bespoke builds made to support the reporting
| that they're housing, because every feature has its own
| needs. We work in every medium, too, from podcasts to
| documentaries to photo features like this one.
|
| We believe there's an opportunity for this kind of
| journalism, because it used to exist. Remember a time when
| magazines arrived in your inbox with gorgeous photos and
| fact-checked features that took months to make? That's what
| we're doing, but online.
|
| I hope you follow us and our work. We have some exciting
| stuff ahead. The best way to know when our next feature drops
| is by subscribing to our newsletter at
| www.longlead.com/newsletters.
|
| Thanks so much for reading!
| alephnerd wrote:
| Nezahualcoyotl/Neza, Naucalpan, and Ecatepec (the municipalities
| mentioned) are not in Mexico City proper.
|
| They along with Iztapalapa are the former slum towns. How much of
| the water crisis can be attributed to the fact that these were
| all unplanned muncipalities, with split governance between Mexico
| State and CDMX
|
| Edit: Yep, looks like only 15% of water in Mexico is allocated to
| human consumption and the rest is for agriculture and
| manufacturing [0].
|
| Now I'm curious how many seats in Estado Mexico's assembly are
| within the CDMX metro and how many are not. If majority of them
| aren't within the CDMX metro then it's the classic democracy
| dilemma you see in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Philippines, etc as
| well.
|
| [0] - https://www.axios.com/2024/11/26/mexico-water-crisis-
| claudia...
| arebop wrote:
| For comparison, about 13% of water in US is allocated to "human
| consumption" with the rest for ag and mfg
| [https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-
| school/sci...].
| alephnerd wrote:
| Good point!
|
| But American sewage systems are also functional and
| maintained/upgraded.
|
| I'm not sure how DPW-style work is funded or managed at the
| municipality level in MX.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Edit 3: My hypothesis about state impact doesn't hold (forgot
| that Mexico follows the same system as the US of direct
| governer elections plus a mix of direct and proportional
| representation).
|
| That said, now I'm curious about how public funds are disbursed
| to localities. How do local municipalities and unincorporated
| areas get services funded in Mexico?
| non- wrote:
| One thing I'd like more info on is in what ways Nestle and other
| water companies have contributed to the problem.
|
| I've long heard that they lobby to prevent the local Government
| in CDMX from providing potable water in order to protect their
| bottled water and water-delivery business, but I actually don't
| know how well substantiated those accusations are.
|
| On the positive side of things, Mexico City gets a ton of rain
| during the wet season which can be harvested with rooftop
| collectors.
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| When I lived in Oaxaca it was a massive issue with portable
| water only being available through private means from private
| springs in the nearby area. All hotels and tourist attractions
| had access to water, while the rest went without, some for
| months.
| racl101 wrote:
| I've heard from a Mexican buddy that Coca Cola is cheaper in
| Mexico than drinking water.
| pier25 wrote:
| I've never seen this
| recursive wrote:
| Coca Cola should just make a new formula that doesn't have any
| flavoring, carbonation, or sweetener. That should be even
| cheaper.
| dhosek wrote:
| They can call it Dasani and sell it for more than they charge
| for the sweetened flavored carbonated beverage.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Soft drinks get carbonation and syrup added and are bottled
| close to point of use (because that's cheaper and better than
| shipping the finished product) so they're subject to local
| potable water costs. Unless government is distorting thing that
| just doesn't make sense.
| xdc0 wrote:
| That's a myth. In many parts of Mexico, if not everywhere,
| water treatment is bad and drinking tap water is not advised,
| so you buy purified water.
|
| It cost around 10 pesos (50 cents) to fill a 19 liter (5
| gallon) jug. That's cheaper than a single 12oz can of coca cola
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| https://larevistadelsureste.com/chamula-el-pueblo-que-mas-co...
|
| "A key reason for the rise in consumption is its availability
| and, in many cases, its lower cost compared to drinking water.
| In many rural communities in Chiapas, access to safe drinking
| water is limited, local stores are well-stocked with Coca-Cola,
| and the company's marketing campaigns have ensured that the
| drink is always within everyone's reach."
| rzz3 wrote:
| It's simply not true. Not in any place I've ever seen in all
| the years I've been in Mexico.
| eckmLJE wrote:
| I kept hoping they'd provide a reference of Tenochtitlan.
| Possibly the most striking thing I learned when visiting Mexico
| City.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan
| articlereader wrote:
| they did!
|
| >Mexico City was built on top of what used to be a large body
| of water, which would make its water shortage appear ironic if
| it wasn't so tragic. In the early 1300s, the Mexica (or Aztecs)
| settled on an island in the middle of what used to be a huge
| lake called Texcoco, the largest among five intertwined lakes.
|
| But after the arrival of the Spaniards, the city started to
| expand, and the urban sprawl caused the lake system to dry up.
| By the early 20th century, the rivers feeding the once-rich
| lake zone were put into pipelines to make way for motor
| vehicles. Very little is left of the lakes, while the rivers
| have become practically invisible.
| eckmLJE wrote:
| Thank you! I scanned the text and scrolled through all the
| pics, and searched for `tenoch` and didn't get any hits. "The
| urban sprawl caused the lake system to dry up" glosses over a
| super interesting sequence of decisions that led to the
| disaster.
|
| More reading for anyone interested
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mexico_City#Floodin.
| .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Texcoco#Artificial_drai
| na... https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2022/09/mexico-citys-desage-
| of-160...
| articlereader wrote:
| good read, thanks for sharing!
| ck2 wrote:
| How are we doing with next-gen solar desalination?
|
| Or has all science been defunded at this point?
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2022/solar-desalination-system-inexpens...
|
| I know some US warships have massive desalination plants onboard,
| are they nuclear powered? Can we use the new micro-nuclear-
| reactors to power those for cities?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Do data centers need to use fresh drinking water or can they
| use water with some salt in it (I'm guessing not because the
| salt corrodes?). They could at least use gray water?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Data centers don't need any water. They can reject heat
| directly to the air. If the price of water were high enough,
| that's what they'd do instead of evaporative coolers. This is
| a fake problem driven by clickbait headlines or, at worse,
| mispricing of water.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ok, granted, I'm guessing they are just working with
| different capital costs (to build air-based cooling; i.e.
| via a huge air cooling tower). But I'm sure there is a
| place where data centers could be using subprime water for
| cooling economically without artificially low water prices
| (the issue then would be capital costs for transporting and
| using subprime water).
| collingreen wrote:
| > Data centers don't need any water.
|
| Is this using "need" to only mean "there is no possible
| alternative in any design"?
|
| Your statement -implies- datacenters don't use water for
| cooling or, if they do, it isn't enough to cause any
| problem.
|
| How do you square this with the fact that lots of
| datacenters DO use water for cooling? Yes, if water was
| prohibitively expensive businesses would find alternatives
| - that's what prohibitively expensive means so I'm not
| adding anything more than a tautology here.
|
| Similarly does your claim that at worst this is a
| mispricing of water mean that they DO use water and it
| drives the cost up? Isn't that the point here, that
| businesses driving up the cost of water is bad for the
| people that also need (your definition of "need" above)
| water?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Water is a slightly cheaper way to reject heat if you
| have unlimited almost free water. I don't think you'd use
| water for cooling if you had to pay residential water
| rates instead of like agricultural rates for water. It's
| not at all a showstopper to just dump the heat into the
| air without using an evaporative cooler. It just costs
| somewhat more. Compared to the capital cost of an NVidia
| GPU server, the cost is small.
| cicloid wrote:
| that was also my understanding. Nearby Mexico City, in a
| semi-desertic area (Queretaro), there are a high amount of
| data centers, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have a region
| there.
|
| I would think they only need cheap electricity,
| connectivity and in the case of Mexico, far away from
| seismic activity.
| thfuran wrote:
| Evaporating a gallon of water eats about 2.5 KWhr. Buying a
| gallon of municipal water costs me about 0.6C/, or about 2%
| of the equivalent amount of electricity. AC is efficient,
| so say we'd only have to increase water prices by about
| 500% to make it not worth it to use evaporative cooling.
|
| Your claim is that increasing the price of a basic utility
| by several hundred percent to prevent a company from using
| a huge amount of it is a fake problem? That sounds like
| complete bullshit to me, and I don't even live in a city
| that's collapsing into the ground due to aquifer overuse.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| If you are literally drawing so much from the aquifers
| that the city is collapsing into the ground, I think the
| water probably is mispriced.
|
| And there's no reason you have to charge industrial users
| of water less than residential users if the real price
| (meaning the cost to replace that water) is higher than
| the residential price. 0.6C//gallon is less than I pay
| and I live in a wet city. I pay about 2C//gallon. So for
| industrial electricity rates of 5-7C//kWh, A/C is
| approximately a wash vs using residential water for
| cooling.
| thfuran wrote:
| >If you are literally drawing so much from the aquifers
| that the city is collapsing into the ground, I think the
| water probably is mispriced.
|
| Cool story. But every human needs water, and no data
| center needs water. Why should every person have to pay
| more to live just to prevent Amazon from breaking the
| world for a tiny increase in profits?
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Asianometry made a video on exactly this:
| https://youtu.be/aNNt9O70ASc?si=U2VSh5W3r6rfdA34
| hylaride wrote:
| The economics of desalination can be complex, but the TL;DR is
| that in most cases it's only economical when there's no
| alternative for potable water and not industrial/agricultural
| use (though that doesn't stop some places from doing it anyways
| for security or too much money reasons, particularly Saudi
| Arabia).
|
| Desalination also doesn't help inland areas like Mexico city,
| as there'd also be large costs to pump the water from the
| coasts - Mexico City is 2200m above sea level.
|
| The only nuclear powered surface vessels left in the US fleet
| are the Aircraft Super-carriers, and their water is created for
| supporting itself - ~5-6K sailors and any that's needed for
| operations (cleaning, steam launchers on the Nimitz, etc).
|
| Nuclear micro-reactors are still a ways away and are probably
| not a viable option for developing countries - Mexico currently
| has only one nuclear power plant. There is probably a future
| for nuclear powered desalination for coastal cities in arid
| areas, but it won't help everywhere.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Is it actually cheaper to power this with nuclear plants
| (especially micro-reactors that don't really exist in
| production) than just deploying a lot of wind/solar/batteries
| to do it?
| hylaride wrote:
| We don't know because nobody is mass building any nuclear
| reactors right now (micro or traditional - it's one of the
| main reasons there's so many cost overruns with anything
| being built right now). There's also no mass scale example
| of renewable desalination, either. It's almost all bespoke,
| so it's mostly theoretical.
|
| If climate change continues and water becomes something to
| fight over like oil was in the 20th century, then we may
| finally see traction on both fronts.
| tristanb wrote:
| Desalination plants produce a lot of brine, which you need to
| dispose of. You can't just put it back in the sea without
| killing marine life. It's not a simple problem to solve.
| pkaye wrote:
| I've heard Mexico City has a lot of leaking water pipes so
| updating that infrastructure might be better. Also to do
| desalination, they need to be close to the ocean. There are
| SMRs close to being in production (NuScale Power is one) but
| solar power might be another cheaper option.
| charlie0 wrote:
| CDMX is massive and very old. I can only imagine updating the
| infrastructure is going to be cost prohibitive. Still, it
| needs to be done.
| pier25 wrote:
| I live in Mexico. About 30 mins from where I live, Amazon and
| others have built data centers (presumably for AI) which consume
| water. This is affecting agriculture in a region that is already
| suffering from drought.
|
| https://www.context.news/ai/thirsty-data-centres-spring-up-i...
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Genuinely curious, how much water do data centers consume? I
| would think they might need a good amount of water at startup,
| but any use would be in a closed system. Am I misunderstanding
| their water use? Do they lose a lot of it to the atmosphere
| somehow?
| physhster wrote:
| Some data centers use evaporative cooling, in outside
| chillers. The water use is fairly high.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Is there a reason the price of the water can't be equal to
| marginal cost of getting more water, so the net effect of
| the data center is zero?
|
| Water can be piped in from elsewhere, can be made from
| reverse osmosis from even briney aquifers or seawater or
| even sewage. Is this really an unsolvable problem or is it
| just a mispricing of the water? This makes me skeptical of
| stories like this.
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| Government usually, same as it is with Nestle in the US.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Water is fungible. If they need to pipe in 1 gallon of
| water, who pays the extra cost? The entity that used the
| last gallon? The entity that used the most? Nah. It's
| averaged out across all users.
|
| You also cannot scale up these alternative sources at
| will. They need to be sustainably commercially viable.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Right, so just make Amazon pay whatever is a commercially
| sustainable price. This shouldn't be particularly hard.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Deregulation is good, they said. Don't be an alarmist,
| they said.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| ? Yeah, actually, deregulated water would mean Amazon
| would have to pay the full price instead of a subsidized
| price for water.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| And if it turns out that Amazon would still "win" the
| price fight over the people who lived there before Amazon
| came there, it's all good?
|
| And who owns the water? Anyone with a plot of land who
| can access the watertable? Anyone with a plot of land
| next to a river? What about those downriver from that
| plot?
|
| "Deregulation" is as meaningless as "defund the police".
| If you scratch the surface it can mean anything between
| total anarchy and "keep only this specific set of laws
| that I believe are good".
|
| What's needed is regulation which promotes a wanted
| outcome.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| That means _everyone_ pays the higher price. Water is
| fungible. You can tax them if you want. But you can't
| expect market forces to do it.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| >> Water is fungible
|
| I call bullshit & shenanigans on this. Water is not
| money. A certain grade of crude oil can be fungible, but
| what about after it's used?
|
| There are many types of water: potable clean water being
| essential to human existence, but other less pure types
| can be used in agriculture and industrial applications.
|
| Once water is used, or before it can be reused,
| processing and transportation is necessary, and that
| represents significant cost. The cost of processing or
| transporting money is negligible enough to make it really
| fungible and usable. Water is heavy, wet, and more
| volatile than that quarter in your pocket!
| samatman wrote:
| The existence of various grades of a commodity says
| nothing about whether that commodity at those grades is
| fungible. Mostly it implies the opposite, in fact.
| hwillis wrote:
| > the price of the water can't be equal to marginal cost
| of getting more water
|
| Increased demand by definition means consumers will pay
| more for the same quantity. Even if the marginal cost was
| flat it is in the producers interest to raise prices.
| You're essentially asking why markets have to do what
| markets do.
|
| > Water can be piped in from elsewhere, can be made from
| reverse osmosis from even briney aquifers or seawater or
| even sewage.
|
| Do you think that costs the same as pumping water out of
| a lake or water table?
|
| > is it just a mispricing of the water?
|
| ...You think a drought is a mispricing of water? As if
| water was more expensive, there would be no shortage? A
| draught is a mis- _cost_ of water; when water becomes
| more expensive than is sustainable.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| > Is there a reason the price of the water can't be equal
| to marginal cost of getting more water
|
| The market is typically not a great place to solve
| conflict. Unless you're the richer party, of course.
| betaby wrote:
| I'm not aware of any single one like that in Mexico.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| Jesus christ. We're a nation run by toddlers.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Most data centers use evaporative cooling towers, they're
| much more efficient than a closed loop system.
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| This source is specifically about AIs water usage:
| https://savethe.ai/water/
|
| > Having it generate a 100-word email consumes about 500ml of
| water (17 oz).
|
| > 10 to 50 queries consume about 2 litres of water (1/2
| gallon).2
| yimby2001 wrote:
| Right, but you know that's not true.
| cicloid wrote:
| I would imagine you are talking about Queretaro. Google and
| Microsoft also have data centers there.
|
| This is a thing that has been more than a decade in the making,
| mostly because Queretaro does not have seismic activity and is
| only a couple of hours north of Mexico City.
|
| While the water sources are completely different, both regions
| are prone to intense water seasons and, in the last couple of
| years, intense droughts.
|
| More specifically, Queretaro is a semi-desert, so this behavior
| is a bit more expected.
|
| Aside: Coming from personal experience I don't think that
| current agricultural methods are the best and are pron to
| wasting water, at least what I remember from Queretaro
| pier25 wrote:
| Yes, Queretaro state (not the city).
|
| If you check the link in my comment these are not the data
| centers close to the city which everyone knows but newer ones
| in Colon.
| cicloid wrote:
| For all intents and purposes, Colon is considered to be
| part of the ZMQ (Zona Metropolitana de Queretaro)^1
|
| Funny thing the english wikipedia article does not even
| mention it. But yeah, Each of those Cloud providers, have
| at least 3 buildings distributed on multiple industrial
| parks in the metropolitan area and I'm not even mentioning
| the ones from Kio Networks, IBM (SoftLayer). We are one
| step away from having one from OVH and Hetzner.
|
| The only data center I know that is in the middle of the
| city of Queretaro is the one from Triara (aka Telmex, one
| of the many companies from Carlos Slim). Most of them are
| in the outskirts of the urban area.
|
| 1. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zona_metropolitana_de_Quer
| %C3%...
| oldgregg wrote:
| Also Valle De Bravo is the Hamptons of Mexico
| lorenzowood wrote:
| "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi
| uAdoofus wrote:
| Interesting article.
|
| Terrible craftmansship in the HTML/CSS department.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It works well on my phone in dark mode whereas webpages like
| this usually don't.
|
| What exactly are you calling terrible?
| metalman wrote:
| Mexico city is doomed, to what exactly and when, is an open
| question, and perhaps it's where it's position on the doomometer
| compared to anywhere else, is pertenent. It serves "us" as a
| distraction of our own doomomedness and why not, my Mexican
| friends, are (jovialy) derissive about any number of things
| happening in, redacted, redacted, gringredacted, places.
| davidw wrote:
| Just casually throwing in 'overpopulation' when in so many
| places, water for actual human needs like drinking, bathing and
| even washing clothes, is a tiny fraction compared to much more
| wasteful things like grass, America's largest crop.
|
| I live in a dry bit of the American west and municipal usage is a
| small fraction of water usage (about 8%). Agriculture is often
| not very efficient because of old water rules that give water to
| things like hobby farms when real farms downstream don't get what
| they need.
| dralley wrote:
| While that's true it has very little to do with Mexico City's
| specific issues. It's at 7300 feet elevation surrounded by a
| ring of mountains that keep out a lot of the rain and moisture,
| and there's already not that much agriculture going on given
| the limited space.
| davidw wrote:
| I don't know anything about water allocation and provisioning
| in Mexico City, but the article itself doesn't limit itself
| to Mexico city either:
|
| "It exemplifies a future that cities worldwide could face if
| global warming and overpopulation continue."
|
| The city where I live is, I'm sure, very different from
| Mexico City, but we have reduced our water usage while the
| population has grown, thanks to things like xeriscaping. I
| imagine things are more difficult in Mexico City because
| there is less money, and orders of magnitude more people.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > we have reduced our water usage while the population has
| grown
|
| I don't know where you live, but if it is a city like most
| others, you've likely reduced your per-capita water use,
| but not total water use. This is certainly true of most
| cities in the American west. They have made impressive
| (above 30%) reductions in per-capita water use, but they
| have (in many cases) grown by more than that.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| 100% this. or 95%. When you say "grass, America's largest crop"
| I assume you are referring to lawns, but actually I think your
| last point is the crucial one: "...municipal usage is a small
| fraction of water usage (about 8%). Agriculture..."
|
| California has plenty of water for it's people. If you add up
| ALL residential, commercial and industrial use, including all
| outdoor landscape watering, baseball fields, golf courses, etc
| - it all adds up to around 10-20% of the water used (depending
| on rainfall).
|
| Where does the rest (80-90%) of California's water go?
| Agriculture. Half the produce of which is exported to other
| states and countries. Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near
| it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert? And about
| half of that rice is exported, much to Asia (!!)
|
| California is rather like Saudi Arabia, with the farmers
| pumping out all the water and selling it in the form of
| agricultural produce.
|
| But take a shorter shower please! And you don't really NEED to
| flush that toilet.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| I kind of understand this argument, but I kind of don't. Does
| this argument prefer that there is less food production in
| California?
|
| > It supplies one-third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters
| of its fruit and nuts. California is the country's biggest
| milk producer, producing nearly 20 percent of the nation's
| milk. And of all crops grown in the U.S., 19 of them -
| including almonds, pistachios, walnuts, raisins, olives,
| plums and table grapes - are grown only in California.
|
| - https://www.perkins.com/en_GB/campaigns/powernews/features/
| c...
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's a lot of crops that are grown in CA that are not
| native to the area, and require a lot of water to be viable
| in that area. Trying to grow a crop native to monsoon areas
| in a dry area is just unsane.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| And growing a human in that area? Would it not also be a
| drag on the area? At what point does blame the plants
| become blame all alien life including human?
|
| (Not referring to your comment, I feel often people tend
| to handwave themselves out the equation).
| dylan604 wrote:
| A person can live in that environment on much less water
| than the crops. Just growing different crops would
| consume less water.
| njarboe wrote:
| There is a reason 80%(?) of the world almond crop is
| grown in California. It has a great climate for almonds,
| a lot of land, and water to support the trees. We need to
| trade something for our IPhones besides the promise of
| future dollars (debt).
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| I don't think that's true unless they're living in
| extreme poverty.
| netsharc wrote:
| From the survival of civilization scale, most of "almonds,
| pistachios, walnuts, raisins, olives, plums and table
| grapes" are probably luxury items that we can ill afford.
|
| Sure it's a balancing act between "save the planet!" and
| "save the economy!". Guess who's winning so far?
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Strange because you are naming staples that are
| concentrated sources of nutrition and energy that can
| indeed ensure survival, and components of "trail mix" for
| this very reason.
|
| Certainly if you wanna supplant them with other crops
| that support something other than European style cuisine,
| go for it, but if you propose to take away nuts, olives,
| and grapes then you may be a racist or bigot, and we'd
| sooner die than change in that regard.
|
| Fact: a major component of the Ukrainian conflict is that
| nation's ability to supply wheat products to the rest of
| Europe.
|
| I believe that a certain philosophical viewpoint was
| raised by some sci-fi authors, to the effect that wheat
| and other staple crops are the most intelligent sentience
| on Earth, because they successfully domesticated human
| beings, who give them all the best land, water, and
| doting TLC to become fruitful and multiply.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Fact: a major component of the Ukrainian conflict is
| that nation's ability to supply wheat products to the
| rest of Europe.
|
| This situation came with the territory. By contrast,
| California's agriculture is 100% dependent on massive
| hydroengineering projects.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| Tax water for agricultural usage enough to fund
| desalination plants for their water use. The market
| participants should then adapt by switching to less water-
| intensive crops, or paying the tax and getting the
| desalination plants.
| grantsucceeded wrote:
| pretty sure there is no salt water in the central valley
| either.
| rcpt wrote:
| > tax water for agricultural use
|
| Yeah good luck with this one
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Does this argument prefer that there is less food
| production in California?
|
| Yes. This scale of agriculture in CA is not historical, and
| is driven by hydro-engineering projects of huge scale
| throughout the American west that began in the 1940s. The
| Bureau of Reclamation's fever dreams were fueled by two
| decades near the turn of the 20th century that were some of
| the wettest in a thousand years, and this has led to a
| crazy situation that is not sustainable in the long term
| (perhaps not even in the medium term).
| throwanem wrote:
| > California is rather like Saudi Arabia.
|
| Perhaps the key insight required to explain the 20th century.
|
| It has the force of truth: now that I see it put so simply, I
| struggle to understand why no one has been able to do so
| before.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| It is a key insight, indirectly. The power of a falsehood
| to sway emotions on
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Cadillac Desert posits this about most of the American
| West, it was sparsely populated prior to the widespread
| usage of pumps for water and dam program (to generate
| electricity to pump reservoir water) of Bureau of
| Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers. Those power plants
| and population growths might have fueled American
| productivity in WW2 but it also was a subsidized
| consolidation of farms under large corporations and rich
| individuals when it was meant to help smaller farmers. It's
| an older book with a 2017 update.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| > California is rather like Saudi Arabia
|
| More true than you may think: the first two syllables rhyme
| with "Caliph" and the Spanish Conquistadores always had
| grand designs on such huge tracts of land, including naming
| the capital city after the Eucharist.
|
| The Reconquista was accomplished at the same time Columbus
| sailed, and Reconquista II: Electric Boogalo has been
| underway for a hundred years...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| When talking about grass, they might be talking about
| alfalfa, which is grown in California for use as animal feed.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado.
| ..
| davidw wrote:
| I'm being a bit tongue in cheek. But we really do dump a
| lot of resources into lawns
| https://legacy.geog.ucsb.edu/the-lawn-is-the-largest-
| irrigat...
|
| That's fine if it's a place for, say, children to play, but
| most of them do not get used that way.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| A big part of depletion of the Ogallala aquifer is due to
| domestic policy to include corn in just about anything -
| including fuel.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol,
| which is naturally almost a desert?
|
| That's not really accurate. Much of California is
| Mediterranean climate, including all of Sacramento county.
| Yes, there's some desert in California, but most of the
| agriculture happens elsewhere; but it depends on what you
| mean by 'almost a desert', a lot of the central valley is
| classified as arid and that's where a lot of the agriculture
| happens. A lot of people also live in (different) arid parts
| of California though, maybe they should move to where fresh
| water is easier to access :P
|
| Also, the terrain means it's relatively easy to move water
| from the north around the central valley, but difficult to
| move it from the north or central valley to the greater LA
| area. Elsewhere in the thread, people claim water is
| fungible, and it mostly is, but location is important, and
| moving water in Bakersfield to Los Angeles is non trivial.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_California#/media/F.
| ..
| labster wrote:
| GP's statement you quoted is entirely inaccurate. The
| natural state of California's Central Valley is a wetland,
| which is how settlers found it in the 1800s, full of
| swamps, fish, deer, and lakes. And then they set to the
| work of draining all of the swamps so they could grow
| things there. It's an unnatural desertification, and if the
| dams and waterworks were removed, it would return to the
| marshland. Even now, the rice grown near Sacramento is
| grown in land that is periodically flooded by the river.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol,
| which is naturally almost a desert?
|
| Rice benefits from flooding for weed control (because it is
| unusually flood resistant), but doesn't consume a lot of
| water (the water from flooding is available for downstream
| use.)
|
| If you want to complain about water-intenaive crops in CA,
| the issue is almonds, not rice.
|
| Also, while there are parts of CA that are desert or "almost
| desert" (desert or semi-arid climate), the area around
| Sacramento is hot-summer Mediterranean.
| rcpt wrote:
| The issue is animal agriculture, not almonds.
|
| For example cow milk uses more water in absolute terms, and
| more water per calorie, than almond milk.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I'm not so sure. A quick Google search came up with
| wildly varying amounts of water to produce a gallon of
| almond milk, from 23 gallons of water to ~1600:
|
| https://milkyplant.com/en-us/blogs/the-
| latest/environmental-...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/05/ditch-the-
| almon...
|
| These were just two of the several sources I found, at
| each extreme. There was similar variation for cow milk.
|
| Considering that it takes roughly 1 gallon of water to
| produce 1 almond, and that 23 almonds wouldn't fill even
| an 8oz cup, I'm guessing that the higher end of the
| spectrum is probably more accurate for almond milk.
|
| It also looks like almond milk has half the calories per
| gallon of skim milk and 1/4 that of whole milk.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I think soy milk tastes better than almond milk
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Some responders have challenged my assertion that Sacramento
| is a desert. I concede the point - it's actually classified
| as Mediterranean.
|
| That said, rice consumes a lot of irrigation water:
|
| "In California, there is very little to no rainfall during
| the rice growing season, so this is not usually considered in
| water budgets. On average, about 5 acre feet/acre (AF/ac) of
| irrigation water is applied to a rice field during the
| growing"
|
| https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiceTestSite/files/328501.pdf
|
| Also, rice is not a particularly big water consumer compared
| to other crops - it's just one that came to mind. You could
| pick from dozens of others - Almonds, pistachios, etc.
|
| California simply uses a LOT of water to produce a LOT of
| food, about half of it being exported.
| yimby2001 wrote:
| Are you saying California shouldn't export food? It's one
| of the best food growing environments on the planet.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| I think he is referring to Golf Courses:
|
| "Golf courses in the US occupy roughly 2 million acres, which
| is larger than the state of Delaware but smaller than
| Connecticut."
|
| "California almond growers use between 4.7 to 5.5 million
| acre-feet of water annually, representing roughly 14.4% to
| 16.75% of the state's agricultural water consumption"
|
| WHAT THE H#$%?
| samatman wrote:
| That water grows 77% of all almonds, worldwide.
|
| Is there some better use for roughly 15% of California's
| water consumption?
|
| Are you sure?
| zdragnar wrote:
| Yes, leave it in the ground. It isn't a renewable
| resource on any relevant time scale.
|
| If you want almonds, grow them elsewhere, or switch to
| desalination.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| The almond lobby is incredibly powerful in California, too.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Okay, it may seem strange to rob the homeland to feed the
| world, but think geopolitics.
|
| Firstly, the water mostly doesn't leave california. If
| they're exporting dried rice and almonds and things like
| that, most of the irrigation water is staying right where it
| was used, correct? You say water is consumed, as if it goes
| away or vanishes? Evaporated water or underground water is
| also water.
|
| Secondly, you're giving jobs and supporting the local
| economy. Farmers purchase supplies, capital goods, they pay
| property taxes, and first and foremost they employ people.
| They employ large workforces. All that revenue they received
| from selling wherever they sell is stimulating local
| economies.
|
| Lastly, exporting food is great international relations. What
| country will attack you when they depend on you for food?
| What nation will not be grateful for receiving such basic
| sustenance from overseas? And if we would go to war, and if
| you want to shut down all this agriculture, what will we eat
| on the home front? If we can't import food, we'd better have
| infrastructure to support our own needs. Any nation [state,
| county, city] that produces excess food is more likely to
| withstand siege, blockade or attack.
|
| Liquor and soda bottlers can pivot to producing and
| distributing hand sanitizer or bottled water. If beer or Coke
| is bad for you, keep drinking it anyway, because you never
| know when that industry will become indispensable.
| Reubachi wrote:
| The "real farms" (Ie beef, dairy, grains, corns) you mentioned
| are absorbing on the order of 80 percent of the water, not
| commercial and private lawns/grass.
|
| Hobby farms with several cows and a shop that sells maple syrup
| consum eabout 1/10000th a percent of water as for example con-
| agra suppliers, nestle etc.
|
| There is the constantly rotating story of "this one small
| family farm in colorado uses more of california's water than LA
| county". That is a LARGE conglomerate farm which is part of the
| corporate farm problem, not mom and pop farms.
|
| I assure you;In the USA specifically, your families ability to
| eat and provide food for the things we eat WILL be more
| important in the long run than bathing or washing clothes,
| until we decide that beef proteins aren't the msot sustainable.
| hgfrujbguijh wrote:
| that sounds a lot like where i live (bend, or)
| davidw wrote:
| That's where I am
|
| https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/update/2021/5/5/droug.
| .. is really informative.
| eddof13 wrote:
| Been in Mexico almost 7 years- it's common knowledge, you don't
| drink the tap water, ever. The destitute who can't afford bottled
| water might be the exception.
| 4fterd4rk wrote:
| The majority of the world has non-potable tap water.
| jajko wrote:
| Try drinking tap water in Africa, India, Bangladesh, most of
| South America and South Asia, in fact most of the 3rd
| world... good luck. Ie India had (maybe still has) high
| infant mortality due to water-transmitted diseases. Once you
| can't effectively 100% separate waste water from natural
| water table or other sources for drinking, everything becomes
| contaminated.
| arrty88 wrote:
| Will any of the feet of snow that dropped on Colorado Cali and
| Utah make it down to CDMX supply basins?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| no, even if we removed every dam and didn't consume a drop of
| water, it would not reach CDMX by natural means.
| marianaenhn wrote:
| Mexico City is having a serious problem right now
| josu wrote:
| An important detail that the article has somehow left out.
| Texcoco, one of Mexico City's main lakes is salty. The Aztecs
| built a system of dams to separate the salty waters of the lake
| from the rain water of the effluents.
| erickhill wrote:
| My goodness my eyes really must suck. Had to zoom into that
| article multiple times in order to read it (especially the photo
| captions).
| hotep99 wrote:
| I live in Mexico City and a large part of this is the odd
| compulsion that chilangos have to put concrete over absolutely
| everything. It rains but there is very little unpaved surfaces to
| absorb any of that water and return it to underground sources.
| I've had friends and family members inexplicably rip out nice
| gardens at their houses and replace it with paved surfaces. My
| in-laws have a large yard that only has a few square meters of
| unpaved ground left. My street has flooding problems during
| intense rains every couple years in large part because no water
| can be absorbed anywhere and if the small street drains get
| clogged with branches it is a disaster.
| _ache_ wrote:
| Ok, so nobody seam to talk about the privatisation of water in
| Mexico.
|
| It is at the root of the problem. Coca Cola is the most known
| absurd operator of this industry. National water is too cheap and
| used by private company for nearly nothing. Vicente Fox was a
| president of Coca Cola company in Mexico before becoming the
| president of Mexico, you can guess the << colonisation >> was
| easier by that. (Coca Cola isn't alone, it is just the most
| known, Danone, the French company is also plundering Mexico water
| for example, AI datacenter too, ...).
|
| Coca cola is known to be responsible for the drying of Monterrey
| and San Cristobal de Las Casas.
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