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The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

practical.engineering

211–216 of 216 posts

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Norcal spent decades wagging fingers at SoCal about this. There were books like Cadillac Desert. Meanwhile, San Francisco drinks clean glacier water that a valley in Yosemite was destroyed to provide this and they refuse to repurpose a downstream damn that has enough capacity to do it. Physician, heal thyself.

Can you clarify what you mean by: “they refuse to repurpose a downstream dam” California has insufficient water storage to meet demand, it’s not like we have huge dams lying around that we leave empty when there is water available to fill them. You might be referring to Don Pedro dam - but we are already filling that up (modulo what we need to keep empty for flood control). SF has some contractual right they could po…

There is and have been entire plans that address this, including in the last real attempt that almost went anywhere. You add things like groundwater recharge. I have groundwater recharge in the basin I live in. But today, in 2026, reductions elsewhere already exceed the capacity of Hetch Hetchy by an order of magnitude.

California has rewilded the Trinity River, resurrected Mono Lake, and has protected a lot of its special places. Voters have voted to tax themselves for state parks. I know that the environment, especially aside from climate issues, just aren't sexy right now. But it still matters to me. I remember the Southern California skies in the 1970s. It's not perfect now, but the improvement despite the increase in people and cars is something to celebrate too.

The only people who oppose this are the rate payers in the place that externalized the cost of the Hetch Hetchy on the world.

Some of the environmental word today might just shout slogans and prattle on with pseudoscientific babble, but there have been a lot of serious people in these efforts, just like with the other cases I mentioned.

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a nitpick but the words you are looking for are “dam”, “dammed”, and “damming”. Damning is a very different thing entirely.

Not really inaccurate in this case, though. It's a huge loss.

Thank you for that grace, it was totally just a typo. And when I re-read it I was embarrassed, but your putting it this way gave me a chuckle.

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the sort of low quality reply that made me think twice about commenting. Every time I mention it it's another set of poor quality, no thought, drive by responses and downvotes. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122 Why do you think it's good to let the productive agricultural land of CA lay fallow? Why do you want areas in the east to go without proper flood control? Why do you think national food security is no…

I’m not a fan of people who say a comment is low quality because someone disagrees with them. I’m not going to engage any further with this discussion.

Disagreement is not the reason. You responded that you thought it was preferable to depopulate the most productive state in the nation. Come on man.

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#215
post #75
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're wrong. Every time someone says we can't do high speed rail it makes me very sad. And as far as Seattle goes... my commute is substantially affected by the I-5 closures. It's somewhat shocking to me that we allow infrastructure to decay as much as we do. I'd be happy about the light rail expansion if they weren't talking about delaying the Ballard line indefinitely. :(

The commute is slow because the light rail is slow. It's the wrong technology for commuter rail and there are too many stops. (I'm assuming you live north). (more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47457884 )

My commute is via car. The light rail will not speed it up, but I may do it anyhow because it's more relaxing.

My point is that closing two lanes of the interstate for over a year is a failure of maintenance, rather than anything about light rail vs. driving.

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#216
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owens valley, where LA "steals" water from, is on the eastern side of the Sierras. NorCal, including Sacramento, is on the western side of the Sierras. So unless they planned on pumping the water over/under the mountain range that surrounds it in every direction except for towards LA, that water was never available for any NorCal city to use.

The California Aqueduct delivers water from the western Sierras through the Central Valley and to Los Angeles. This is likely what NorCal refers to when they say SoCal is 'stealing our water'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct Would be interesting to see the relative amounts of use by LA and by agriculture in the Central Valley though.

The Los Angeles Aqueduct delivers water to LA.

The California Aqueduct is used for farmland in the central valley.

Two different things.

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