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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

#281

Post by seventytwo »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #255
bigiain wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting the same dollars per gallon? Because I callus also see a reasonable argument to charge for water in percentage or person that per gallon. As the article mentions, some people are perfectly happy to pay more money. Which’d be fine if there was a guaranteed supply with enough for everyone. But that’s not how the water supply in CA is today. Poor people should not die of dehydration just because rich…

The prices should not go up a lot, because if they did, farming would become unprofitable. E.g., tomato farming produces around $4000 worth of produce per acre and year[0], and requires 2.5 feet applied water. ($4000/acre)/(2.5 feet) = 0.5 cents/gallon. If the water got that expensive they'd need to stop growing tomatoes, since just the water would already cost more than the produce would be worth. By contrast, resid…

Noooo… tomatoes would just get more expensive to the point where demand balances out. You need to think beyond the first effect. All of this stuff ripples through the entire market.

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

#282

Post by seventytwo »

panzagl wrote: post #220
1_1xdev wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half measures still do _something_ They did reduce plastic pollution, as you admit. Was it the most effective regulation to pass to reduce plastic pollution by the greatest possible amount? Not at all

I was visiting San Diego soon after the fees went into effect and they were dealing with a cholera outbreak because the homeless no longer had plastic bags to defecate into. So you have a miniscule effect on plastic pollution in exchange for a large effect in a different area.

That is a wild unindented consequence.

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

#283

Post by seventytwo »

CitrusFruits wrote: post #16
twblalock wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agriculture is also a small portion of the state’s GDP and we could do without some of the most water-intensive crops, such as almonds. There won’t be food insecurity or famine if we cut back on almonds.

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…

Water rights are a giant problem in the west.

I suspect the few feral govt will have to step in at some point to completely re-do the system.

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

#284

Post by nradov »

kortilla wrote: post #110
b112 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't take away rights, I don't even understand how you can tell someone they cannot access water. That said, instead you make it illegal in... say, 5 years, to irrigate certain crops without drip feeding. You also provide grants to convert people over to it, for free. Of course, it's still very expensive to maintain all that infra, it clogs, needs to be monitored, etc, but if the whole state has to do it, at lea…

> 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.

Society isn't paying subsidies to water rights holders. Water rights are property rights. Legally they can't just be taken away. You can complain that it shouldn't be that way, but that is the legal reality.

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

#285

Post by seventytwo »

aatharuv wrote: post #275
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.

Not all agriculture is required, and certainly not in naturally arid regions like southern CA.

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

#286

Post by ec109685 »

Aren’t there secondary costs to not watering lawns and whatnots? What happens to trees that were used to drawing from the ground replenished with sprinkler water?

Also, at least some of the water for lawns goes back into the aquifer, effectively recycling it.

At the end of the day, all water, even water used for irrigation or watering lawns is recycled.

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

#287

Post by seventytwo »

megablast wrote: post #238
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

We need agriculture. We don’t need lawns and pools.

We don’t need all agriculture, and it’s the biggest user.

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

#288

Post by nradov »

Bud wrote: post #99
b112 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't take away rights, I don't even understand how you can tell someone they cannot access water. That said, instead you make it illegal in... say, 5 years, to irrigate certain crops without drip feeding. You also provide grants to convert people over to it, for free. Of course, it's still very expensive to maintain all that infra, it clogs, needs to be monitored, etc, but if the whole state has to do it, at lea…

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.

Legally speaking, water rights are one type of property rights. Those rights can be taken away, but the owners must be compensated at fair market value. The state government can't just arbitrarily seize private property.

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

#289

Post by colinmhayes »

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.

Because the farmers don't have to pay for the water they use...

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

#290

Post by vilhelm_s »

seventytwo wrote: post #281
vilhelm_s wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prices should not go up a lot, because if they did, farming would become unprofitable. E.g., tomato farming produces around $4000 worth of produce per acre and year[0], and requires 2.5 feet applied water. ($4000/acre)/(2.5 feet) = 0.5 cents/gallon. If the water got that expensive they'd need to stop growing tomatoes, since just the water would already cost more than the produce would be worth. By contrast, resid…

Noooo… tomatoes would just get more expensive to the point where demand balances out. You need to think beyond the first effect. All of this stuff ripples through the entire market.

You can still grow tomatoes outside California though, surely production would shift to a place with cheaper water? And if the prices are too high people would stop buying tomatoes.

I agree that the prices would not be exactly the same, my point is just that these prices are still extremely low. You don't need to fear people dying from dehydration (like the comment above suggested).

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