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California declared drought free for first time in seven years

reuters.com

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Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#151

Post by yellowapple »

gdubs wrote: post #133
jedberg wrote: post #130

They need to completely change the way water in California is billed. Right now rates keep going up as we get better at conservation, which disincentives conservation. At the same time, in areas with a flat rate, people use way too much water. When Sacramento had a flat rate, you'd see people turn on their hose as they left for work and let it flood their lawn all day, running into the street, to keep their lush gree…

It’s agriculture. Personal conservation should be incentivized, but unless we make radical changes the price will have to go up as water trends towards scarcity. For people who conserve, their rates should increase more slowly. But we have to address agriculture and stop externalizing the true cost to the environment. What agriculture has accomplished is astonishing , but it’s just not sustainable in any number of di…

Mandatory aquifer recharging would be a good first step. One of the big problems is that California can't adequately take advantage of these wet winters because the reservoirs can only hold so much and the ground can only absorb water so fast, so a lot of water ends up getting into the rivers and escaping back into the Pacific (or sits in ephemeral lakes/ponds/wetlands until it evaporates). If we helped along the process of getting water back underground (which should be readily doable, e.g. by pumping water back down into wells), that'd significantly lessen the strain we've put on our aquifer systems.

Step two is to significantly beef up our reservoir system. We should be able to capture way more of our winter rainfall than we currently do. That'll be a pretty big help to farms and cities further south (i.e. in the more arid half of California).

Step three is to stop pussyfooting around building desalination plants. If Israel can go from being constantly on the verge of drought to having a giant water surplus, then there's no reason we can't do the same with California (especially since we have way more room to build 'em :) ). California's adjacent to the single largest body of water in the world; it's ridiculous that we ain't taking advantage of that.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#152

Post by jshen »

pdonis wrote: post #132
jshen wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always cringe when I hear markers and water in the same sentence. I’m not sure what exactly you mean by “markets” but the history of water rights in CA is a great lesson highlighting how spectacularly “markets” can fail to handle water.

As I understand it, the history of water rights in CA, and indeed in the US west generally, is a history of lack of markets; it's all been political maneuvering by various factions to make sure they aren't the ones who go short when the water gets divided up. There has never been an actual market to allocate the limited supply of water to the highest value uses. If there were, agriculture in much of CA wouldn't exist…

How do you determine who owns water in the first place.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#153

Post by 0xffff2 »

c_r_w wrote: post #84
0xffff2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in places where water is more plentiful that's not a particularly deep well.

Hmm maybe it was deeper. I remember being shocked at the time, but my memory of the scale may be significantly off. It was discussed in the context of "there is barely any water in this aquifer these days."

Maybe it was 900 feet? That would be more in the range of "shockingly deep, but quite possibly necessary in California".

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#155

Post by weej »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #147
mrfusion wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought California. Has the best climate in the country?

It does. Given that everyone has their own idea of 'best', California has climates that span desert to rain forest and pretty much everything in between. As long as you locate to the area that most closely approximates your personal definition of 'best' you win.

I didn't realize that temperate rainforest go all the way down to the NW of California. Coming from Seattle, WA that's pretty cool. (the more you know). :-)

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#156

Post by bdamm »

exhilaration wrote: post #102
bdamm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is generally legal to collect rain from your roof, assuming local HOA rules allow it. But you won’t likely get much quality water from that. Better would be greywater collection and recycling.

He's asking because in some states it's illegal to collect rain water, it belongs to someone else. Colorado, for example, only recently legalized rain barrels - but limits it to only 2: https://source.colostate.edu/extension-offers-fact-sheet-on-...

I was reluctant to state it completely because California's constitution itself limits water rights. It would be unconstitutional to cover your entire property with a giant roof and capture all the water, thereby eliminating the creek downstream of your property and denying the downstream users of their riparian rights. However this is not the use I believe the OP was looking at.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#157

Post by jedberg »

yellowapple wrote: post #151
gdubs wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s agriculture. Personal conservation should be incentivized, but unless we make radical changes the price will have to go up as water trends towards scarcity. For people who conserve, their rates should increase more slowly. But we have to address agriculture and stop externalizing the true cost to the environment. What agriculture has accomplished is astonishing , but it’s just not sustainable in any number of di…

Mandatory aquifer recharging would be a good first step. One of the big problems is that California can't adequately take advantage of these wet winters because the reservoirs can only hold so much and the ground can only absorb water so fast, so a lot of water ends up getting into the rivers and escaping back into the Pacific (or sits in ephemeral lakes/ponds/wetlands until it evaporates). If we helped along the pro…

I think the main reason we don't have desalination plants is because they have to be on or near the ocean, which is the most expensive property in the state. No one wants to ruin their view or have a big industrial machine near their home. Basically, I think NIMBYism keeps us from having Desal.

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#158

Post by pfdietz »

jshen wrote: post #150
pfdietz wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that if resources were reallocated by a market, literally EVERYONE would be better off. The current situation is not Pareto-optimal. To put it another way: if the users being asked to conserve water could just pay farmers to use their water, both would come out ahead. The farmers would get more value than from using it for farming, and the other consumers would get more water for a lower price than from altern…

I love market based economies, but not the idea that markets solve all problems. You said something about “their water”, and that’s the problem. Going back to the history of CA water rights, there is no clear concept to determine who owns water. If I buy the house on the river upstream from your house on the river, who owns the river water? I went to college in CA and had to take a bunch of CA history classes. I high…

Are you saying there are no water rights in the current system? If there are, what's wrong with being able to trade them?

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#159

Post by chipotle_coyote »

weej wrote: post #155
ChuckMcM wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does. Given that everyone has their own idea of 'best', California has climates that span desert to rain forest and pretty much everything in between. As long as you locate to the area that most closely approximates your personal definition of 'best' you win.

I didn't realize that temperate rainforest go all the way down to the NW of California. Coming from Seattle, WA that's pretty cool. (the more you know). :-)

I've half-joked in the past that the Pacific Northwest starts on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It really is true that by the time you're a couple hours north on the coast, though, it's a pretty profound difference: foggier, rainier, cooler but moderate (i.e., lower highs but higher lows).

Re: California declared drought free for first time in seven years

#160

Post by gdubs »

pdonis wrote: post #135
gdubs wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this is just flat out wrong. Yes, drought and fire have always been a fact of life for California. But if you map the frequency and severity of fires alone, it’s on a remarkably upward trajectory over the past two decades. It’s climate change.

Over the past two decades, yes. But humans have been in California for a lot longer than two decades. Over all the time humans have been in California (which is basically since the last Ice Age at least, possibly longer since we don't know exactly when it was first settled by Native Americans), what we're seeing now is probably well within the range of variation. We can't know for sure because we don't have 12,000 ye…

Yes, but this is the same argument people make about how you can’t attribute a given hurricane to Climate Change (although science has becoming more capable of those kinds of attributions in recent years).

Yes, climate fluctuates. Yes, there have plausibly been years of drought and fire in centuries past that would rival recent years. But absent the specific data you say is lacking, if you believe that climate science is generally correct, then more drought, more warming, more fire is the obvious trend. Not just California, but the entire world.

Regardless of whether similar events have happened in the past, there’s an obvious reason for the dramatic uptick between the 1970s and today: CO2 in the atmosphere, put there by humans.

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