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California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

nytimes.com

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Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#171

Post by tajen »

pjlegato wrote: post #97
chaostheory wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need food. We don't need wasteful, water hungry lawns and we can make inefficient toilets and showers a little more water efficient with some cheap mods.

Lawns and toilets are such a tiny part of water usage in California that even if you got rid of all lawns and toilets altogether, it would not make any material difference to the water shortage. All residential usage of all types in CA amounts to ~9% of water usage. Talking about lawns and toilets is a purely theatrical feelgood measure designed to make people think they're pitching in and helping. We need food of so…

Why do you add restrictions on water usage by discretionnary laws and never just put higher taxes on it?

The most useless usages of water would naturally disappear if water were sufficiently expensive. A glass of water at $0.30, a washing cycle at $8... so what? Watering some lawn for $30 a day? Ok lawnlords would finally get it.

You could say that at this price, agriculture wouldn't be possible. And, ehm, that's quite an accurate picture of the reality constraints: Given your drought, it's foolish to do so much local agriculture. You may need to do it offshore and import it, probably by ocean cargo. There's a point where petrol is "cheaper" than water, but only the rise of the water market will make the optimal optimizations.

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#172

Post by abduhl »

nitrogen wrote: post #159
Dylan16807 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when it's just random chance. An X year drought by definition is supposed to happen every X years.

What's the dividing line between a changing climate and a very highly randomly varying unchanging climate? Also, minor nit, "X year event" doesn't mean the event should happen every X years, but that over a span Y >> X, the event happens Y / X times.

Actually, an X-year event means that an event of equal or greater size has a 1 out of X chance of occurring per year which is distinctly different from for Y >> X => Y/X occurrences.

For example, a 100 year flood has a probability of occurring (or being exceeded) of 1% per year which is distinctly different from "a 100 year flood is expected once every 100 years".

The law of large numbers implies your statement but that isn't what the term X-year event means.

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#173

Post by chiph »

Crito wrote: post #146
jbritton wrote: post #132

How come I never hear any talk of building a new water pipeline from Alaska.

Because that would be ridiculous? The distance between Alaska and California is huge ; there is tons of fresh water that is closer to California than Alaska.

From what I understand, there are massive pipelines sending water to the LA basin. And the people who live where those pipelines originate are upset over sending water to what is really a desert. So going further afield in the search of water is likely to exacerbate the tensions.

And I'm not sure where'd they go that they haven't already. Las Vegas? (it has even less water) Yosemite? (probably already feeding water to the central valley) Oregon? (move construction of the Keystone XL westward?)

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#174

Post by egh »

jconley wrote: post #7
jstalin wrote: post #2

We learned yesterday that 80% of water consumption in California is by agriculture[1]. Yet this executive order does nothing to reduce agriculture's use of water[2]. It only refers to use of urban water, lawns, landscaping, and cemeteries. Agricultural users just need to submit vague "plans." 1. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/30/how-growers... 2. http://gov.ca.gov/docs/4.1.15_Executive_Order.pdf

Many farmers are getting no [0] water this year and are relying on ground water to keep trees alive or not planting seasonal crops. Others get a very small fraction of their typical allotment [1]. California water rights are complicated... [0] http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article11355200... [1] http://hanfordsentinel.com/news/in_focus/california_drought/...

No water from the federal government. Not no water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Water_distr...

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#175

Post by thrownaway2424 »

Lewisham wrote: post #153
epmatsw wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those all seem like pretty reasonable things. But how on earth aren't there already tax breaks for water efficient appliances? That seems like such an obvious and trivial improvement...

It does exist on a county/city level, Santa Cruz will give you money if you get a high efficiency washing machine.

Exactly. EBMUD runs a rebate program for clothes washers[1]. This is why it's nonsense for people to keep talking about this problem at the state level.

1: https://www.ebmud.com/for-customers/for-residential-customer...

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#176

Post by malyk »

ptaipale wrote: post #51
mjhoy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good post on marginal revolution that puts California in some perspective. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/the... > As David Zetland points out in an excellent interview with Russ Roberts, people in San Diego county use around 150 gallons of water a day. Meanwhile in Sydney Australia, with a roughly comparable climate and standard of living, people use about half that amount. Trust…

That is indeed quite cheap if water is supposed to be scarce. (I don't quite see why you're downvoted.) 78 cents per 150 gallons is $1.37 per cubic meter. Here in North Europe, where we have no shortage of water whatsoever, we pay €1.34 per cubic meter. In addition to that we pay €1.66 per cubic meter as "wastewater management fee" (and yes, you have to pay wastewater management fee even for water that you use for wa…

They probably didn't include the wastewater fee in that calculation. Here in Oakland we pay that same fee.

Here's my last bill:

WATER SERVICE CHARGE: 29.38 WATER FLOW CHARGE 7 UNITS @2.91: 20.37 SEISMIC IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM SURCHARGE: 5.48 WASTEWATER TREATMENT CHARGE: 34.17 SF BAY POLLUTION PREVENTION FEE: 0.40

That's for 83 gallons of day for 3 adults over the last two months. Yeah, we have room to improve for sure!

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#177

Post by lerouxb »

aetherson wrote: post #82
mtrpcic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desalination is expensive because of the cost of power, but what is being proposed is not just "we should desalinate", but is "Why don't we make better use of the power opportunities," such as a desalination plant with solar panels and/or generators for waves/tides. We could offset the electrical cost of desalination if the plants could help generate their own power. Why not pass water through turbines before desalin…

Solar power is more expensive than fossil fuel power. The solution to "desalinization is too expensive" is not to say, "But what if we used a more expensive form of power to do the desalinization?"

Maybe for base load, but desalination can run intermittently during sunlit hours only. You only have to stay ahead on average..

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#178

Post by Crito »

chiph wrote: post #173
Crito wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that would be ridiculous? The distance between Alaska and California is huge ; there is tons of fresh water that is closer to California than Alaska.

From what I understand, there are massive pipelines sending water to the LA basin. And the people who live where those pipelines originate are upset over sending water to what is really a desert. So going further afield in the search of water is likely to exacerbate the tensions. And I'm not sure where'd they go that they haven't already. Las Vegas? (it has even less water) Yosemite? (probably already feeding water t…

Oregon would make much more sense than Alaska.

The distance between Los Angeles and the southernmost point of Alaska's panhandle down the side of Canada^ is comparable to the distance between Los Angeles and New Orleans. Terrain aside, it'd make as much sense for Los Angeles to tap the Mississippi.

Really what California needs to do is suck it up and build desalination plants. They are used in many other parts of the world, despite what some Californian pundits claim about the cost of desalination. Leaching off neighbors is not a long-term solution. Californians need to break themselves of that habit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars).

^(And I suspect you'd need to go way further north in Alaska than that to find a Californian-sized fresh water supply...)

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#179

Post by anigbrowl »

AesopHimself wrote: post #158
jstalin wrote: post #2

We learned yesterday that 80% of water consumption in California is by agriculture[1]. Yet this executive order does nothing to reduce agriculture's use of water[2]. It only refers to use of urban water, lawns, landscaping, and cemeteries. Agricultural users just need to submit vague "plans." 1. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/30/how-growers... 2. http://gov.ca.gov/docs/4.1.15_Executive_Order.pdf

Does this %80 include the water footprint for raising livestock? It would be interesting to know the relative price in water of a small Niman ranch steak compared to a single serving of California-grown almonds. Is the drought an argument against eating California-raised livestock since it isn't necessarily as location-dependent as certain agriculture?

I certainly think so.

Re: California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal with Drought

#180

Post by BrianEatWorld »

bottled_poe wrote: post #72
olliej wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trees they're trying to keep alive have ridiculously high water consumption, almonds for instance consume 10s of litres of water for each _individual_ almond. They need to stop growing trees like that in a desert, which is what they're doing. The wells they are digging are tapping into the underlying aquifers that are the last resort, so they are in fact getting _free_ water while complaining about the cost. In e…

Maybe those agricultural business won't be able to grow anything anymore and go out of business. Not to worry, we can always import almonds from other countries which lack any kind of environmental policy. But at least we will be able to continue Building Great Apps (TM).

Almonds originally came out of countries like Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy. All of which are members of the EU, which in most cases has stricter environmental policies than just about anywhere else in the world.

The problem with your statement is that, in this case, we are that country lacking suitable environmental policy. If almonds weren't brought to California, they would potentially be more expensive, but they would also be grown in regions where they naturally occur and under laws that are more strict than our own.

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