I had a joke that hit well: "California is in a drought? Who would have thought it doesn't rain in a desert."
California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
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Re: California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
#32The dams in california were built years ago for a smaller population and since then they've only removed them. If we simply built like the people who first came to california did we would never have water shortages again. Any water shortage is a 1:1 failure of the state to do the clear and obvious task needed.
Water policy isn't as simple as you might think. Dams aren't a magical fix, they cause a lot of issues (like crashing the salmon populations, etc.). They're expensive to build and maintain, and the water you store in a big reservoir doesn't magically stay in place - you lose a lot to evaporation and you lose a lot that ends up going into the groundwater system. A much bigger part of the problem is western water law, where water rights are assigned based on prior appropriation and are lost if they aren't exercised. That leads to a lot of bullshit, like people growing very water hungry crops (alfalfa, rice) in the middle of the desert.
The reason we don't build like the people who first came to California did isn't because we're stupid, it's because we've learned a lot of lessons the hard way. If you're interested in some of the history I'd recommend Cadillac Desert, which is about western water in general, but which focuses a lot on California (including the machinations that the movie China Town was based on).
Re: California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
#33And is the only state with no drought right now. Although they way they figure it is a bit biased -- it's based on how much water there is compared to historical values, so it's easier to be "drought free" if you've been in a drought for a while.
Yeah hey but for real. The news is focused on California droughts all the time, but my part of flyover country is very, very dry. Like ponds that have never been empty are dry, sort of thing. It's getting bad. . . And we grow all your food. Between this and all the political nonsense that's happening right now, I feel like a passenger that's noticed the car is out of control while the driver is still opening his beer…
California actually produced the most food of any state. :). But I know what you mean, the water is just as critical in the middle of the country as it is on the edges. Water is critical everywhere, and this problem is just going to get worse and worse.
Re: California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
#34And is the only state with no drought right now. Although they way they figure it is a bit biased -- it's based on how much water there is compared to historical values, so it's easier to be "drought free" if you've been in a drought for a while.
Yeah hey but for real. The news is focused on California droughts all the time, but my part of flyover country is very, very dry. Like ponds that have never been empty are dry, sort of thing. It's getting bad. . . And we grow all your food. Between this and all the political nonsense that's happening right now, I feel like a passenger that's noticed the car is out of control while the driver is still opening his beer…
> And we grow all your food
Well, not all of it, California leads IIRC.
Re: California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
#35People shouldn't really be celebrating anything here. Wet winters just mean that the much more important snowpack isn't happening:
> Recent storms have brought snow to the Sierra Nevada mountains, but the state’s snowpack remains below average. According to the Department of Water Resources, the snowpack now stands at 89% of average for this time of year.
> Much of the West has seen warmer-than-average temperatures and relatively little snow so far this winter. The snow in the Rocky Mountains remains far below average, adding to the strains on the overtapped Colorado River, a major water source for Southern California.
Refilling the reservoirs is nice and all, but this is still essentially a payday loan out of the future.
One of the complexities of global warming is that it makes weather more extreme in all directions. It can be true that the same stretch of ground can be more susceptible to flooding in the same year it's more susceptible to drought.
Re: California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
#36The dams in california were built years ago for a smaller population and since then they've only removed them. If we simply built like the people who first came to california did we would never have water shortages again. Any water shortage is a 1:1 failure of the state to do the clear and obvious task needed.
If you look into the actual design capacity of our municipal water systems, many of them were designed for far larger populations. The EBMUD, for example, intentionally secured 325 million gallons per day in upstream capacity because that was 10x the needs of the service area in 1929. Implicitly they assumed that the service area would grow to 4 million people, but it never did, primarily because of zoning. Today EBMUD delivers only about 120 MGD. We could more than double the service area population without water issues.
Re: California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
#37I had a joke that hit well: "California is in a drought? Who would have thought it doesn't rain in a desert."
I don't get it.
It does rain in deserts, of course. But most of California is not a desert anyway.
Re: California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
#38People shouldn't really be celebrating anything here. Wet winters just mean that the much more important snowpack isn't happening: > Recent storms have brought snow to the Sierra Nevada mountains, but the state’s snowpack remains below average. According to the Department of Water Resources, the snowpack now stands at 89% of average for this time of year. > Much of the West has seen warmer-than-average temperatures a…
That is basically doomer nonsense. Of course we can and should celebrate the lack of drought, even if there is some mathematically more optimal way for the precipitation to be falling.
Re: California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
#39The dams in california were built years ago for a smaller population and since then they've only removed them. If we simply built like the people who first came to california did we would never have water shortages again. Any water shortage is a 1:1 failure of the state to do the clear and obvious task needed.
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Re: California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
#40The dams in california were built years ago for a smaller population and since then they've only removed them. If we simply built like the people who first came to california did we would never have water shortages again. Any water shortage is a 1:1 failure of the state to do the clear and obvious task needed.
The new Sites Reservoir and capacity increase of the existing San Luis Reservoir are both expected to start construction this year. Several other recent proposals like the Pacheos Reservoir have been cancelled due to cost but it is not the case that California is doing nothing re: new water infrastructure.
Sites Reservoir isn't going to do a damned thing for municipal water systems in most of the state. You have to remember that there is not such a thing as a statewide municipal water policy. Every city or region has its own thing going on. The Sites capacity is dedicated to its investors, so depending on where you live it could be a helpful resource, or it could be irrelevant.