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The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

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Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#161

Post by missedthecue »

fmajid wrote: post #60
CitrusFruits wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talk with my friend who works in water law a lot about this, and he always comes to basically the same conclusion as this. Almonds and pistachios are a huge waste of water. The problem is that farmer's water rights are constitutionally protected (California constitution). You need a super majority in the California senate to do anything about it, and that's not going to happen anytime soon. IMO I think we should ta…

Pistachios are a high-value crop, and other places under drought like the La Mancha region of Spain are also switching from olives and wheat to pistachios. Compare this to alfalfa, an ultra-low-value crop the Saudis are growing in California because they bought senior water rights, then shipping to Saudi to feed cows, essentially laundering water. Agricultural water is heavily subsidized in California, and the absurd…

How is that laundering water? Do you mean arbitrage?

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#162

Post by arrosenberg »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #145
kortilla wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't take away rights, I don't even understand how you can tell someone they cannot access water. What’s difficult to understand? Why should society be subsidizing these senior water rights holders? Nobody is saying they can’t access water, they should just fucking pay for it the same way the rest of the world does.

They do pay for it. Their use of water is profitable, for them. Whether it is profitable for society as a whole is a different question.

They barely pay for it. Most of the people holding these rights pay an absurd fraction of what a city-dweller would pay for the same amount. That's the only reason it's profitable for the farmer.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#163

Post by snickerbockers »

hadlock wrote: post #3

In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban use ranges between 8-13%. https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF... Agriculture is effectively unrestricted by law in their water use. I think we may be targeting the wrong group

Agriculture produces something useful, a lawn does not

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#164

Post by s0rce »

hadlock wrote: post #3

In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban use ranges between 8-13%. https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF... Agriculture is effectively unrestricted by law in their water use. I think we may be targeting the wrong group

I think the best strategy is laid out for the Colorado basin by the Southern Nevada Water authority and could be applied across the American west, see the suggestions at the end with the first being the most important

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22136304-2022-8-15-n...

Create new beneficial use criteria for Lower Basin water users, eliminating wasteful and antiquated water use practices and uses of water no longer appropriate for this Basin’s limited resources.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#165

Post by patwater10 »

hadlock wrote: post #3

In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban use ranges between 8-13%. https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF... Agriculture is effectively unrestricted by law in their water use. I think we may be targeting the wrong group

Eh there's a lot of nuance within those broad categories: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-d...

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#166

Post by patwater10 »

halffaday wrote: post #53
ars wrote: post #2

I wonder what it will take for people to start leaving the state. And it's going to be the wealthy who leave first.

I think net domestic migration is negative for California, so it’s already happening. For perspective, I live in Arkansas and my family and I live in a 2000sf single-family home on 0.5 acres. Our mortgage is <$800/mo. My income isn’t significantly different from my coastal counterparts.

Nice

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#167

Post by mjgerm »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #134
NelsonMinar wrote: post #17

What's old is new again. The restrictor device described here is more or less the same as the "miner's inch" that defines water rights in parts of California. At least in Nevada County, some tracts of land include rights to "miner's inches" of water. A miner's inch was customarily the amount of water that'd flow through a inch diameter hole in a wooden board that was used as a sort of valve at the irrigation ditch. I…

Am I doing my math right? 11.22 gallons per minute works out to 1/2 a million gallons a month or so. That seems like an insane amount of water.

6 million gallons/yr / 40 inches/yr (average annual rainfall in NY) = 5.5 acres

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#168

Post by s0rce »

snickerbockers wrote: post #163
hadlock wrote: post #3

In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban use ranges between 8-13%. https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF... Agriculture is effectively unrestricted by law in their water use. I think we may be targeting the wrong group

Agriculture produces something useful, a lawn does not

This is true at a fundamental level in that we need food to eat but there is a really strong argument that a huge fraction of the agricultural water use in the American west is not "useful" or at least should pay market rate. Examples include flood irrigation which could be readily converted to drip and reduce water usage or growing animal feed (particularly for export), simply stop doing these here and do it in places with more water.

This is basically a straw man, no one is saying to stop growing food to save water, but we can save a lot of water without anyone starving. Beef would be more expensive and some other countries would lose cheap imported feed (alfalfa, teff, etc).

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#169

Post by s0rce »

dehrmann wrote: post #57
twblalock wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the sacrifice should be shared by all water users, and homeowners are far from the primary consumers of water. When agriculture uses most of the water, and the most water in agriculture goes to luxury foods like almonds and pistachios, it’s ridiculous to be investigating homeowners while not asking farmers to reduce consumption.

> luxury foods like almonds and pistachios "Luxury foods" oversells them a bit. The retail price per pound is close to ground beef.

Beef also uses a ton of water, probably more than almonds.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#170

Post by s0rce »

baragiola wrote: post #71
hadlock wrote: post #3

In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban use ranges between 8-13%. https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF... Agriculture is effectively unrestricted by law in their water use. I think we may be targeting the wrong group

Doesn't agriculture uses its own underground water that is usually not used for human consumption?

mostly no, although they do use wells but aquifers are drying up leading to salt water intrusion and subsidence. Further, most underground water can be more easily treated for drinking than surface water.
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