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Draining California

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Draining California

#31

Post by rodgerd »

sparkman55 wrote: post #12

It's not clear from the (beautiful!) article, but 4 times as much water goes to agricultural use than to municipal use in California. People won't die of thirst in California, but crops aren't doing as well. In particular, orchards spread through much of California's central valley. These are perennial plants (trees or vines), living decades in some cases. If you've mortgaged the farm to plant acres of fruit or nut t…

> People won't die of thirst in California, but crops aren't doing as well.

Who has the bigger lobby group?

Re: Draining California

#32

Post by bryanlarsen »

We live in Ottawa, Canada. Last year we had a very dry summer, so the city sent out notices asking people to please water their lawns regularly.

The Ottawa River is a major river, Ottawa is the only major user of its water, and doesn't really make a dent in the flow, especially since we put our wastewater back into the Ottawa (after treatment, mostly).

They had no concern about water security, but they did have a concern about fires. There were a couple of cases where dry lawns made it easier for fires to jump from one property to another, so they sent out the notice.

Re: Draining California

#33

Post by opendais »

vacri wrote: post #27
jwr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On every visit to the US (I'm from Europe), I find it amazing how much water gets wasted. Monster-flush toilets, vertical-axis washing machines, and the most egregious offender: hotel shower. The first time I saw those, it took a while before I realized you just can't limit the flow of water, by design.

In my travel across the US, I noticed exactly one washing line - put up in a hostel room by a Swede (no doubt they're not quite that rare, but I didn't see them). When summer comes along and the electric grid starts to fail, I hear a lot of Americans talking about the burden of airconditioning, but it's very rare that they talk about tumble-dryers, which gobble a hell of a lot of power.

Many, many people use gas tumble dryers in the US. They are slightly more upfront but 50-75% cheaper in the long run to operate.

Re: Draining California

#34

Post by snomad »

Many people will often say agricultural uses 80% of the water. This is not the whole picture.

"Nature provides about 200 million acre-feet of precipitation to California in average years. Of this total, 65% is lost through evaporation and transpiration by trees and other plants. The remaining 35% stays in the state’s system as runoff. More than 30% of this runoff flows out to the Pacific Ocean or other salt sinks. The rest is used by agricultural, urban, and environmental purposes.

About 75% of the annual precipitation falls north of Sacramento, while more than 75% of the demand for water is south of the capital city. Most of the rain and snowfall occurs between October and April, while demand is highest during the hot and dry summer months" [1]

While evaporation is part of the natural process, I question how much is self-inflicted by transporting / storing large volumes of water where evaporation will occur at high rates.

Further, while residential may only use around 10% of the roughly 49 million square feet allocated for human use, we really should consider the evaporation costs incurred from transporting part of the base 200 million square feet down south.

I have been unable to find a reliable source that measures the evaporation from the 16 aqueducts [2], let alone the 100s of reservoirs [3]. Please share if you have one.

[1] - http://www.acwa.com/content/california-water-series/californ...

[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aqueducts

[3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in_...

Re: Draining California

#35

Post by ptaipale »

vacri wrote: post #26
ghshephard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long, Long before there was any shortage of drinking water, the various water authorities would simply increase the prices of water to levels which reduce residential usage. The problem in California isn't lack of water for individual use (for the most part, there are a few small communities that are having to truck in water), it's the impact on Agriculture, which is hugely important to the economy of California, and…

In 2011, the average californian used about 326 gallons/day of water. I am gobsmacked - this is a phenomenal amount of water. This is an order of magnitude more than we use here in Melbourne. 326 gallons = 1230 litres, whereas we use ~ 230 litres per person on average. I'm genuinely puzzled by how you use so much water every day. Previously at the end of a 10-year drought and very low reserves, the government target…

Indeed. I live near Helsinki, Finland. Here the average consumption is 155 litres per person per day. That is 40 gallons. So the average Californian consumes almost ten times as much water? That's crazy.

And our consumption is not so modest because we'd be short of water; clean water is the one natural resource we have in abundance here. A drought in the sense of California (or even Britain) is just completely unknown thing here.

By the way, the consumption of water is higher in blocks of flats than it is in detached houses. This is because in detached houses each family or household pays for their own water, but in condominium houses the bill is typically shared among all the flats and the paid out in the maintenance fee.

This applies often even to hot water, so there have been cases where a single old man tells his neighbours that he lets hot water run through the sink just so that he gets even with the family with three small children in the neighbouring flat.

Re: Draining California

#36

Post by hughdbrown »

ghshephard wrote: post #28
seanflyon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably what you meant by "We just use ridiculous amounts of it" but I expect that most farms could not continue to operate while paying $0.12 per barrel.

Most Farms stop being economical north of $2000 per acre foot. ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-24/california-water-pr... ). There are 326,000 gallons in an acre-foot. So, Most Farms can't pay much more than 2000/326000, = $0.006/Gallon. $0.75/cubic meter = .75 / 264 = $0.002/Gallon. It's within range - but, once again, it's not the cost of generation, but the cost of distribution that gets expensive. The Sier…

Barrels, gallons, acre-inches, acre-feet. This is why I find the metric system so much preferable: only liters and cubic meters (1000 liters).

Re: Draining California

#37

Post by blahedo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #32

We live in Ottawa, Canada. Last year we had a very dry summer, so the city sent out notices asking people to please water their lawns regularly. The Ottawa River is a major river, Ottawa is the only major user of its water, and doesn't really make a dent in the flow, especially since we put our wastewater back into the Ottawa (after treatment, mostly). They had no concern about water security, but they did have a con…

The Great Lakes region is a whole other thing. In fifty or a hundred years, it's cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Ottawa, and even Detroit that will be booming---because they will still have bountiful access to clean freshwater.

Re: Draining California

#38

Post by ghshephard »

vacri wrote: post #27
jwr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On every visit to the US (I'm from Europe), I find it amazing how much water gets wasted. Monster-flush toilets, vertical-axis washing machines, and the most egregious offender: hotel shower. The first time I saw those, it took a while before I realized you just can't limit the flow of water, by design.

In my travel across the US, I noticed exactly one washing line - put up in a hostel room by a Swede (no doubt they're not quite that rare, but I didn't see them). When summer comes along and the electric grid starts to fail, I hear a lot of Americans talking about the burden of airconditioning, but it's very rare that they talk about tumble-dryers, which gobble a hell of a lot of power.

We had controlled rolling grid outages in the United states when an combination of poorly thought out deregulation and the machinations of Enron (who organized for the shut down plans in the middle of peak usage) drove the wholesale cost of electricity into the stratosphere.

There is a pretty major water crisis in the western states, particularly California, but very little in the way of "electric grid failures."

Re: Draining California

#39

Post by mhb »

jwr wrote: post #20
ghshephard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long, Long before there was any shortage of drinking water, the various water authorities would simply increase the prices of water to levels which reduce residential usage. The problem in California isn't lack of water for individual use (for the most part, there are a few small communities that are having to truck in water), it's the impact on Agriculture, which is hugely important to the economy of California, and…

On every visit to the US (I'm from Europe), I find it amazing how much water gets wasted. Monster-flush toilets, vertical-axis washing machines, and the most egregious offender: hotel shower. The first time I saw those, it took a while before I realized you just can't limit the flow of water, by design.

Where did you go? Some places have plenty of water. We don't all live in California.

Re: Draining California

#40

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

snomad wrote: post #34

Many people will often say agricultural uses 80% of the water. This is not the whole picture. "Nature provides about 200 million acre-feet of precipitation to California in average years. Of this total, 65% is lost through evaporation and transpiration by trees and other plants. The remaining 35% stays in the state’s system as runoff. More than 30% of this runoff flows out to the Pacific Ocean or other salt sinks. Th…

What does evaporation have to do with anything? When people are talking about the drought and competition of water, they are talking about the net water available, not what is lost through natural processes.
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