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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

#271

Post by UncleEntity »

thfuran wrote: post #197
UncleEntity wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason they've done this is to use our water instead of theirs. I’ve spent some amount of time in Saudi Arabia and they don’t have a lot of water there for them to use. I also take issue with the term “our water” like you have some “manifest destiny” to seize someone else’s property rights because you feel you are more entitled to it than the current legal owner. They thought ahead, bought property/water r…

I always regret that I didn't plan ahead enough to be king of the world so that no one would have any moral right to disagree with my legal right to do whatever I want.

Seriously?

You think someone acting within all legal bounds is immoral because they are using a resource in a manner you disagree with?

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

#272

Post by karaterobot »

SantalBlush wrote: post #248
LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're often counterproductive. People feel accomplished, and finished with the half-measures and they often don't bother investigating the results or the ongoing requirements.

I'm not sure that this is true. Maybe you could give some evidence that this is the most common outcome.

The evidence is that the major sources of plastic pollution were not put under further regulation subsequent to the regulation of this minor source of plastic pollution, even though the threat they present has not diminished.

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

#273

Post by lazide »

arrosenberg wrote: post #258
lazide wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use different water systems. There is no single ‘water system’ or water source in the state. A senior rights holder has rights on a specific source of water . Water itself is ‘free’ until there is no more - minus the infrastructure costs to get it where you want of course, which can be zero to insanely expensive depending on the source of water. City dwellers are paying for the infrastructure to get clean, drink…

Nah, thats just a completely revisionist history. All of these works projects were funded by federal dollars or city dollars, including the infrastructure to get it to the farmers. They pay a fraction of the delivery cost the cities pay. All the purification and recapture facilities are built and paid for on top of that. Western farmers have never, ever paid a fair price for the water they use.

That's bullshit, at least in California. Most of the problem water usage from Farmers, for example in the central and antelope valley, has been from private wells on private property they themselves sunk, or an equivalent small co-operative they were a member of did. They've been tapping huge underground fossil aquifers that way for nearly 100 years now, to the point it's been collapsing. No canals required. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence]

It's estimated the ground has permanently sunk ~ 28 ft. from this alone.

Before this started, the water table in the Antelope valley was at ground level in many places, with literal artesian springs popping up. It's now well over 2500 ft below ground level.

The Delta Mendota canal (finished in '51) was an extension and redo of a number of existing canals that were there far before. The army corp of engineers did a lot of the work then - but it wasn't that new. And this was all water just a few feet above sea-level and that would shortly become seawater if left unmolested.

Most of these original Canals from the Sierras existed before the concept of a state water organization existed. Some of them existed literally before the state did, and were from Spanish colonization/slavery. They weren't as mechanized or as large scale, but they were there.

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

#275

Post by aatharuv »

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 is required. We gotta eat food. Having big lawns with water guzzling lawns isn't needed.

Of course, we need incentives for efficient use of water by ag too.

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

#276

Post by fennecfoxen »

lightsandaounds wrote: post #241
dontlaugh wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US civil war was primarily over different modes of production, not slavery directly. The British working class was forced to pay the former slavers until a few years ago, while the former slaves got nothing. That was in no way just or good or useful.

Why are you trying to white wash the civil war? It was fought over slavery. That is what the declarations of independence signed by the confederate states actually say. They spell it out. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...

Whitewashing the Civil War as grandparent post did was in error, but don’t let the evils of slavery blind you to the leadership’s more immediate, stated war goal: to preserve the Union. Freeing slaves was an ancillary matter at best.

If the actual explicit bona fide war goal was freeing the slaves, Reconstruction would have been a lot less oppressive and its Jim Crow regimes would have faced more obstacles.

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

#277

Post by Bud »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #217
Bud wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "you don't take away rights" even mean? And why say such a thing? Of course rights can, and should, be taken away, if they don't make sense anymore. And these particular rights clearly don't make sense anymore.

The Colorado River is the source of water for a huge chunk of Southern California, six other states (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming), and Mexico. You're not going to change that unilaterally without causing an international incident.

Several huge incidents are going to occur regardless of what we do. That is already baked-in to this situation.

That includes fantasies about pretending that we can do nothing. Which we can't.

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

#278

Post by ErikVandeWater »

Siddarth1977 wrote: post #259
wudangmonk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they have ever added one of these useless restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing. They blame the lawn, and you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points. I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. Meanwhile even if no g…

Agricultural use of water is actually productive though. Most of us prefer having food to starving. Having a lush, green front lawn in the desert however helps no one (and actively harms the natural plants and animals that belong in a given climate). Additionally, while some water issues are over very large areas (eg, piping water from Colorado River to LA) lots of places have far more local water issues, where a giv…

Productive is relative. Certainly the most water-needy crops can be grown in countries (or states) with more abundant rainfall than that of California. The water used for those crops grown in California has a better purpose down the line..

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

#279

Post by icelancer »

Siddarth1977 wrote: post #259
wudangmonk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they have ever added one of these useless restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing. They blame the lawn, and you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points. I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. Meanwhile even if no g…

Agricultural use of water is actually productive though. Most of us prefer having food to starving. Having a lush, green front lawn in the desert however helps no one (and actively harms the natural plants and animals that belong in a given climate). Additionally, while some water issues are over very large areas (eg, piping water from Colorado River to LA) lots of places have far more local water issues, where a giv…

> Agricultural use of water is actually productive though

Depends on what food is being produced. Some foods are significantly more water intensive than others [0] or are inefficient to grow in droughts [1]. Perhaps cutting back on non-essential crops that require tons of water would be a method to meet halfway?

[0]: nuts primarily, you may recall the hullabaloo about almonds which is somewhat inaccurate about them specifically, but true about nuts generally

[1]: asparagus is very inefficient as well

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

#280

Post by icelancer »

vippy wrote: post #118
karaterobot wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it goes: make people feel better by imposing visible but ineffective restrictions, meanwhile allow the worst offenders to continue operating as usual. So much of environmental regulation works by acts of meaningless public guilt and contrition: cf. bans on plastic shopping bags and drinking straws. Of course I mean "works" in the sense of operation, not in the sense of success, because in the meantime thin…

I don't know where you live, but I see many fewer plastic bags drifting like so many tumbleweeds since the imposition of plastic bag fees and taxes where I live.

This is a great example of regulations that feel good but are probably net negative. Paper bags require more energy and are worse for the environment than plastic bags on net [0][1]. Reusable bags are improperly sanitized and typically quite dirty, something that was pretty relevant in 2020 (and theoretically going forward). [2]

[0]: https://ecomyths.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/scho0711buan...

[1]: https://cascade.uoregon.edu/fall2012/expert/expert-article/

[2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-plastic-bag-ban-backfires-1...

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