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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

#181

Post by MichaelGG »

matznerd wrote: post #17
krisroadruck wrote: post #10

I simply do not understand california's water shortage problem. They are by a frickin ocean. It's sunny nearly all year round. Solar powered or wave powered desalination is a fairly straight forward solution to this problem.

Why desalination isn't the answer... http://blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/why-isnt-desalination-th...

Why aren't they simply boiling the water, nuclear powered? That article says membrane desal leaves half the water extra salty, is that right? Does boiling it leave that much? I'd imagine there'd just be a concentrated, mostly-solid byproduct.

I'm probably wrong else everyone would already be doing this. OTOH, many people and places seem to be going against nuclear power, so perhaps it isn't just a technical issue. At any rate, that article just left more questions than answers.

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

#182

Post by demiraven »

marricks wrote: post #166
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…

The figures I found put it more at 1 gallon per almond. They aren't even the largest culprit, yet they get talked about so much. No one seems to want to mention the biggest spenders in terms of water, meat and dairy. This handy article, http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/from-lettuce-to-beef-wh... puts into comparison water taken up by each food source. Meat and dairy are way up there. If you want to compare by sou…

The pacinst.org document is great. Thank you for the link. Your point is spot on about animal agriculture, and well-supported by the PDF.

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

#183

Post by kemiller »

hammock wrote: post #130
jconley wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is all straw man, but interesting stuff... Many crops use much more water than Almonds [0], I guess they're just fun to pick on. It'd be interesting to see a calorie/water comparison of many foods. Also, my family's farm spends more money on well water than the government supplied water due to the high cost of electricity for pumping. I do agree that a real market for water might help. The root of the pro…

Here it is for the foods mentioned in the article: Watermelon......... 8.2 cal/gal Almond............. 7.0 Head of broccoli... 5.9 Cantaloupe......... 3.7 Corn cob........... 1.5 Source: USDA

Do you really mean cal/gal? Corn has fewer calories per gallon of water than watermelon? It's not gal/cal?

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

#184

Post by kemiller »

chaostheory wrote: post #86
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

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.

We do need food, but much of what California farms produce is exported, often to places with plenty of water. It doesn't make sense to export water from an arid state in a drought. If the water's real economic value were priced in, that would not be so bad.

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

#185

Post by lowbloodsugar »

tajen wrote: post #171
pjlegato wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 qui…

Capitalism???? In America???? You've clearly not met our government. The Free Market is for poor people.

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

#186

Post by primroot »

colordrops wrote: post #168
BrainInAJar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

food shortage leads to revolution. The real problem here is we tried to turn a desert in to our national bread basket.

Unnecessary and inefficient foods are farmed in California. There is a huge margin for improvement in land and water use before we come close to food shortage.

I believe that if there were a way to measure agricultural productivity besides profits, arguing in favor of less environmentally damaging agriculture would be much easier. I had to endure Atrazine polluted tap water (Panama) for my birthday last year for the first time, (officially) due to negligence of a sugarcane producing corporation. Suddenly we are faced with the difficult dilemma of having less gin and sugar or polluting the drinking water of 5% of the country.

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

#188

Post by Balgair »

Ahhh, water. The one thing that The West hasn't got and that we all need. I grew up in the Bay Area and honestly, it is great to see a bunch of people on HN who are not from here trying to wrap their minds around this. Make a De-sal plant! Make Markets! Almonds cost too much water! (By the way, the correct pronunciation is Amm-ond when they are off the tree, AL-mond when they are on it, as you "knock the 'll out of them").

There are no politics in The West unless you talk about water politics. Full-stop.

Sure, abortion, gay marriage, budgets. These are all distractions from the real nitty gritty politics of The West. From Nebraska to Califronia, it is ONLY about water. The history of The West can largely be written by the history of how to control the water in The West, and who is doing the controlling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars This should give a barest introduction into the viciousness and fingernail clawing politics of water out here.

So, welcome to the REAL politics of The West. Now things matter.

EDIT: By the way, pro-tip: Up your water usage today. They usually calculate these percentage reductions based on the last month's water usage, hence the April 1st date. Whatever you do, use more water and pay the bill. That way you don't end up with an allotment of 8 gallons per day or something crazy. You need to be able to cook spaghetti if things get bad. I remember the late '80s and the drought then. Rule was: If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down; much to the outcry of public health workers. Note this, things have gotten bad before in Cali, and that was the result; things are much worse now and the results will be much worse.

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

#189

Post by markvdb »

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?

http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-pla...

"beef, about 145,000 gallons per ton"

"Changing one’s diet to replace 50 percent of animal products with edible plants like legumes, nuts and tubers results in a 30 percent reduction in an individual’s food-related water footprint. Going vegetarian, a better option in many respects, reduces that water footprint by almost 60 percent."

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

#190

Post by kemiller »

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 is in drought too, actually, though it is not nearly as bad as California. The trouble with Oregon is that there are mountains in the way — the very same mountains that keep all the rain in Oregon, as a matter of fact. So to sell their water to California, they'd have to pump it over the top, which would negate anything you'd save vs desal. Keystone XL only works in the great plains.
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