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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

#221

Post by astrocyte »

duderific wrote: post #213
astrocyte wrote: post #203

A state with questionably the highest concentration of some of the most intelligent people in the U.S and some of the dumbest politicians in the U.S. Question : What were all of the Californian's doing when the state was running out of water for years? Why do you elect bozos? Too busy making apps to be concerned with where you're going to get water from? Ever wonder where all that tax revenue goes? Apparently not to…

Zuckerberg is not a leader of anything except Facebook, so it seems kind of silly to expect him to do anything about it. California actually passed a bond measure last year to improve the water situation[1]. It's easy to sit back and say how dumb everyone is, but I would say most states don't do so well planning for events that may or may not happen every 40 years. [1] http://www.acwa.com/spotlight/2014-water-bond

As I recall, this drought has been ongoing for 5 years+. It is easier to be myopic it seems. Best of luck. I'm sure when the water finally runs out, everybody will want to get a word in

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

#222

Post by acveilleux »

kemiller wrote: post #183
hammock wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Could just mean water melon soak up water very fast and are good at retaining it.

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

#224

Post by [deleted] »

dataker wrote: post #105
bdamm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the classic naive geek. All it would take to implement your plan is: 1) Become dictator of all California via military coup. 2) Create water monopoly that has rights over all water sources. 3) Regulate said water utility. Totally reasonable.

That's not the implementation of something like that. Actually, apart from military coup, your plan looks exactly like the current system. I can't tell if that was an irony...

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by dllthomas »

pkaye wrote: post #49
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…

Do you think if the state gave incentives to use more efficient water usage methods would help. The reality is agriculture is 80% of water consumption while 2% of the state GDP. It would be more efficient for farmers to conserve water and everyone else pitching in to subsidize it.

I frequently see water consumption compared to %gdp, but I don't think this is actually very meaningful. Shifting 10% of the water from agriculture to software isn't going to improve software one iota. The water should be where it's going to be doing the most good.

That's not to say that farmers don't need to conserve more - the 80% alone means that's where we should be looking for efficiency wins (whatever portion of gdp), and letting them draw down shared aquifers without paying their neighbors is a clear tragedy of the commons situation.

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

#226

Post by chaostheory »

seanflyon wrote: post #215
chaostheory wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a point. I just thought water bottlers like Nestle, who continue to use CA water for bottled water, are considered different from agriculture. Besides I feel that people are missing my main point, which is what's wrong with going after low hanging fruit? Reducing our water intake in the form of lawns and in the bathroom is neither a major inconvenience nor is it a financial burden. In fact, it saves people m…

Low hanging fruit mean the most impact for least effort. You are talking about inconveniencing almost all the people so that a few can avoid any changes at all. We should just charge more for water for both residential and agricultural use and let people vote with their dollars on how big of an inconvenience it is to them.

> You are talking about inconveniencing almost all the people

That's the thing, it's not a huge inconvenience. I'm not handy and I was able to easily install devices to both the shower and toilet to reduce water usage. This law would also force home owner associations to cut down on water waste for lawns. I really don't see the inconvenience unless I'm missing something.

> We should just charge more for water for both residential and agricultural use and let people vote with their dollars on how big of an inconvenience it is to them.

I totally agree. I'm just saying that a step in the right direction is better than nothing at all.

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

#227

Post by vizeroth »

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…

The cost of water for residential use in California is already pretty ridiculous in many areas. As already mentioned many, many times, the problem is basically that there are multiple systems in place which subsidize water use in agriculture and it is, more or less, going to be a disaster for everyone else in the state.

About the only things I could do to reduce my own water use at this point would be to drain the pool (or maybe build a structure around it to reduce evaporation), replace the hot water heater, and reduce personal hygiene to nearly-unacceptable levels. The best part, though, is that none of that would reduce my water bill by a significant amount for at least six months (because most of the bill is a calculated charge for sewage treatment based on the previous year's water use), and the city will probably still find a way to justify power-washing the trolley station every other week.

Even better, though, is that most of the agriculture in California is certainly not local in any sense of the word (other than the sense that it happens here). The majority of the agriculture is for export, either to the rest of the U.S. or the rest of the world, because you can't import climate, but you can import water (or force everyone else to do so while the corporate farms suck up the groundwater) and labor.

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

#228

Post by vizeroth »

vijayr wrote: post #220
mark_l_watson wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 you are exactly right on this. It takes about 10 times the water and 10 times the energy to eat mostly meat. I would argue that a mostly vegetarian diet is healthier also. One problem is that it takes some degree of skill to cook a delicious vegetarian meal, but is fairly easy to make a tasty meal out of meat.

Meat consumption is a hugely unpopular topic. Take just this HN thread for example. There is way more discussion on crops like almond, than on meat and dairy industries. Meat and dairy consume way more resources than any crop/food grown for human consumption. We can water our lawns less, and take showers once a week. It will not make much of a difference until we eat less meat. Same goes for sea food too. We are lite…

Seriously, the article was about almonds. That's why the discussion is more focused on almonds than meat and dairy, or even some of the crops people are more aware of in California's agriculture, like strawberries, grapes, or avocados.

If agriculture receives almost no restrictions on water use from the state while residential use is slashed, it puts the burden on the people with the least impact. Sure, go around and cite people for watering their lawns and washing their cars, but I'm paying through the nose for water that was imported across state lines and they're planning to implement toilet-to-tap while the corporate farmers are sucking up the groundwater and using it to grow cash crops for export.

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

#229

Post by vizeroth »

williamcotton wrote: post #140
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 Central Valley is not and has never been a fully arid desert. While the southern San Joaquin Valley does indeed get very little rainfall, the mountains that drain in to it normally get plenty of water. Tulare Lake, once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi, was right in the middle of the driest parts of Kern and Tulare counties. The lake has even reappeared following a period of unusually high…

The Central Valley has never been a fully arid desert as long as there were not farmers there diverting the water. When they created a desert (in the 1800s), the federal government stepped in and diverted water from even further north and east. Of course, the farmers didn't do it all on their own, as lakes were drying up in California before they got here.

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

#230

Post by tajen »

vizeroth wrote: post #227
tajen wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The cost of water for residential use in California is already pretty ridiculous in many areas. As already mentioned many, many times, the problem is basically that there are multiple systems in place which subsidize water use in agriculture and it is, more or less, going to be a disaster for everyone else in the state. About the only things I could do to reduce my own water use at this point would be to drain the po…

> systems in place which subsidize water use in agriculture

Once this is said, lawmakers can complain all they want about depleted water resources. It sounds like "let's take water from citizens and give it to farms"...

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