Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 211 posts

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#141

Post by jfoutz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #114
jfoutz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm by no means an expert or a lawyer or someone you should listen to. But this may hint at the complexity. A lot of water rights come from Spanish land grants ~330 years ago. And those were guaranteed by treaty after the Mexican American war. So, the U.S. can do whatever it wants, but treaties are in this weird space below the constitution but above a simple bill through congress to become law. Water rights are gene…

> treaties are in this weird space below the constitution but above a simple bill through congress to become law Treaties have the force of federal law [1]. Not more. Not less. California is bound by them. The Congress is not. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause

Thanks for the clarification! my dim memories of high school civics failed me, and you helped me out.

But I think the main point - water rights are a nightmare - still stands. Endless bickering over what rules apply.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#142

Post by ajmurmann »

wolverine876 wrote: post #27
ar813 wrote: post #10

The answer to this problem lies here: “Entsminger pointed out that roughly 80% of the river’s flow is used for agriculture, and most of that for thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is mainly grown for cattle, both in the U.S. and overseas.” The simple solution would be to raise prices on water such that it disincentivizes growing water hungry crops than alfalfa for example. The west’s water crisis is less about cities…

Yes, market prices on water and beef (incorporating what are now climate externalities) would seem to solve these problems. Why isn't that being considered? Remember when conservatives, neo-liberals, and libertarians supported the market as a solution for everything? Of course, we would need a reasonable amount of water available to consumers at below-market rates.

To me charging market price for water seemed obvious and easy till the comments here pointed out what should be obvious: the farmers Steve getting their water from the faucet but from their own wells, creeks etc. So that solution is pretty hard to do on practice.

Other than disgruntled voters, I don't see an obstacle for proper beef prices. In fact I wish we could price in carbon emissions, as I wish that pretty much for every price. I personally hope we'll soon see the day where you have to pay extra at McDonald's to get a beef patty instead of cyber meat.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#143

Post by jshen »

macintux wrote: post #96
vwoolf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The desalination plant solutions a "let's do both." https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-coastal-comm... Charge market prices for water and build desalination. Create abundance.

Desalination requires energy and creates waste. Perhaps we should live within our means instead.

You are advocating for famine and war.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#144

Post by dghlsakjg »

kortilla wrote: post #50
swatcoder wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple solution > The obvious answer This community seems like its at its best when it expresses humble curiosity and its worst when it shuts the door on learning by oversimplifying deeply complex matters as though nobody else had the sense to look straight at them. Water rights carry a legacy of centuries of personal and political history and thousands of competing interests. The levers with which to control p…

Water rights are at odds with what society needs now. There is nothing complex here. Make everyone pay equally for water and the problem goes away. The people that complain that it’s way more complex than that are the ones that don’t want to pay for water.

In a quite literal sense, how?

Much of the water being discussed is in rivers and streams, which is taken as it passes through the land that uses it. It is only useful if it is in that exact waterway. There is no such thing as a market rate for water in a dry river.

If you turn it into an open market there are all sorts of weird complications. E.g. ranch A is upstream of Ranch B. Under a market system ranch A can use all of the water in the stream and just pay for it. Ranch B now doesn’t get that option since there is no more water in the stream. Rancher B can buy more water, but what good is buying water in a river that doesn’t go through your land.

So then you get to a rights based system. Rancher B has been watering his fields for 100 years, and rancher A comes along and says he wants to water his fields too. That’s fine, he just has to lay claim to whatever rancher B isn’t using.

The rights system would work fine except that nature won’t cooperate. We divided up rights for 100 units of water fair and square, so what do we do when we discover that we can only get 90 units of water.

Do you all take a 10% cut? Does the newest guy take the full cut (how it works now)?

You say it’s not complex, but millions of lives and industries worth trillions all rely on it. The current solution is a known flawed treaty that is almost 100 years old based on legal concepts that are far older. If it was so simple it would have been solved back then.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#145

Post by dghlsakjg »

kolanos wrote: post #124
coryrc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we grow a lot in the Midwest where water comes from the sky.

Where do you think the Colorado River gets its water from?

I can say with 100% certainty that none of it comes from midwestern rain.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#146

Post by bruce511 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #89
bruce511 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80% sounds like a lot, but is it really? Is it a lot based on land area? Ie is 80% of california land dedicated to agriculture? (honest question, I've no idea.) What about per-species? Sounds like humans are getting a full 20% of the water, all other species (plant and animal) get the rest. And I feel like you're arguing that humans should get a bigger slice? What should the right % be? Presumably not 0. Agriculture…

California's "average water use is roughly 50% environmental, 40% agricultural, and 10% urban" [1]. 80% of California's discretionary water budget is used by agriculture. This is about agricultural versus urban use. [1] https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

Thanks for the info.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#147

Post by ajmurmann »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #87
GauntletWizard wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what percentage of those agriculturally grown calories are you going to cut out from your diet to reduce those usages? How much more do you want us all to pay for food? "Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture" is very literally saying "Eighty percent of California's water feeds people". There are cash crops that use a somewhat disproportionate amount of the water, but that is in no way reflected…

Sure. But you can't ask California to solve "its" water problem while solving everyone's food problem. One of them has to give.

We can solve the food problem with not efficient crops than pistachios and almonds and nobody had to eat beef either. Of water was priced at market price crops would be chosen where that strike the right balance between hope much people value the particular food vs what else we could do with the water. All that is a pipedream though, since farmers have wells and stuff instead of getting it from the faucet like I do.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#148

Post by scythe »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #111
twelfthnight wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reference agrees with you in the short/mid term (to your credit, which you explicitly mention), but states in the long term climate change is the most important factor, regardless of demand. Taking action against alfalfa is a sensible thing to do right away, but won't address the looming crisis: > In the near-term (2012 through 2026), water demands are similar across scenarios, and the largest factor affecting t…

Serious question: Have climate scientists previously been able to accurately predict climate changes decades away on a regional basis?

In terms of temperature, yes. Early climate models correctly predicted that warming would be concentrated at the poles, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...

>Also in 1969, Mikhail Budyko published a theory on the ice–albedo feedback, a foundational element of what is today known as Arctic amplification.

This is generally confirmed by observations, as seen in the graph:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_amplification

I assume four decades should be enough. I don't know about precipitation modeling, that stuff's really hard and the variance is huge.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#149

Post by nostrademons »

Syonyk wrote: post #31
pilom wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything is possible for enough money but I don't think you understand how much money what you're proposing would cost. In electricity alone desalination costs around 3kwh/m^3. 3.7mwh/acre foot of water. Last year we got 9.2 million acre feet of water in the Colorado River of the allocated 15 million acre feet. So if we say we want to supplement flows with just 2 million acre feet of desalination water, that's 7 Pwh…

Hm. Your numbers and mine don't match by a few orders of magnitude. I came up with 2.5GW sustained, which is (2.5GW * 24h * 365) 21900 GWh ~= 21TWh/yr. Big, but not the same as your value. An acre foot is 1233 m^3, and at 3kWh/m^3, that's 3.7 MWh/acre foot. Math checks out so far. Times 2000000, that's 7400000 MWh / 7400 GWh / 7.4 TWh. I think you're off by a factor of 1000 somewhere in your math. You're looking at ~…

I get your numbers. I think OP skipped a prefix somewhere in the mega-giga-tera-peta hierarchy.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#150

Post by rootw0rm »

swatcoder wrote: post #73
kortilla wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water rights are at odds with what society needs now. There is nothing complex here. Make everyone pay equally for water and the problem goes away. The people that complain that it’s way more complex than that are the ones that don’t want to pay for water.

Should someone be able to dig a well in their own land? Draw surface water from a river, stream, or creek that passes through it? Grow crops in their own flood plains, estuaries, marshes, ponds, and lakes? The water we’re talking about doesn’t come through a pipe with a meter, and the people who have access to water have practical influence over the use, routing, safety, and quality of that water even if you try to a…

Where I grew up (near Camp Pendleton), we couldn't dig a well on our property. Nobody in the area owned the water rights on their land.
Post reply on HN