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Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

latimes.com

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Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#51

Post by gedy »

ericbarrett wrote: post #38
jmyeet wrote: post #6

At least this article notes that the vast majority of water usage is agriculture. This isn't something cities could or should solve by switching to (expensive) desalination to effectively subsidize agriculture. Most notably, alfalfa is mentioned here as farmers are going to have to switch to less water-intensive crops. Decreasing alfalfa production may well impact the ability to feed cattle. In the short term, that's…

I drove into Sacramento last year in late summer. There are flooded rice paddies just outside the city. Rice paddies! In California! In the middle of a historic drought!

No no it's because you are flushing your pee and have a patch of grass in front of your condo. Gotta regulate that first before we talk about inefficient farming. /s

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#52

Post by swatcoder »

ericbarrett wrote: post #38
jmyeet wrote: post #6

At least this article notes that the vast majority of water usage is agriculture. This isn't something cities could or should solve by switching to (expensive) desalination to effectively subsidize agriculture. Most notably, alfalfa is mentioned here as farmers are going to have to switch to less water-intensive crops. Decreasing alfalfa production may well impact the ability to feed cattle. In the short term, that's…

I drove into Sacramento last year in late summer. There are flooded rice paddies just outside the city. Rice paddies! In California! In the middle of a historic drought!

FYI: Sacramento is a natural delta and most of the water you saw still continues on through the water supply.

While one can always suggest more economical uses of water than any particular use/crop, the reality of what’s going on there might be different than your intuitions.

https://rice.ucanr.edu/Water_Use_by_Rice/

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#53

Post by stickfigure »

swatcoder wrote: post #29
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…

> 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 carry a legacy of centuries of personal and political history and thousands of competing interests.

So did slavery, and we managed to get rid of that.

Doing the right thing is really not that complicated, it just requires political will.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#54

Post by bombcar »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33
joshuaheard wrote: post #28

Too bad the California Coastal Commission just denied the permit for a desalinization plant in Huntington Beach at the site of a decommissioned steam plant and reusing some of its infrastructure. It would have provided water to several Southern California cities. https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-coastal-comm...

> would have provided water to several Southern California cities It blows my mind that it's simpler to build, in one of the most water-blessed parts of our planet, a desalination plant, than it is to get farmers to quit growing literal fodder. Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture. Eighty percent.

Meanwhile the rain here is used to make corn that's turned into ethanol and shipped to California to run the tractors farming alfalfa to feed the cows. Seems we could cut out some middlemen here.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#55

Post by dendrite9 »

staticautomatic wrote: post #44
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…

Notwithstanding the farm and ranch lobbies, what part of raising prices isn’t a simple solution?

The question of who owns the water right is important. The doctrine for water usage is different in the western US and the eastern US. Some of this is due to geography, and some due to the history of settlement. Here are a few useful links that discuss the differences. https://nationalaglawcenter.org/overview/water-law/ https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/03/an-introduction-to-water-l...

https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/whose-water-is-it-...

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#56

Post by thehappypm »

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…

How is something a cow eats possibly a cash crop?

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#57

Post by bombcar »

Syonyk wrote: post #21
no_wizard wrote: post #3

Could we feasibly just run desalination stations from the coasts and pipe the water - like oil - to fill up these reservoirs? Setting cost aside for a second, is there any reason not to do something like this?

I mean, if you don't care in the slightest about cost of the plants, the energy required, the land needed to run the giant tunnels... maybe? It's probably technically possible within the constraints of "I have a full country's resources available and can demand they be used to satisfy my absurd requirements and won't face huge blowback for using resources this way." But you can pencil it out. Cuts next year are 2-4 m…

And if you're doing mega projects on that scale, you'd just pipe water over the rockies from the midwest or divert the Columbia down the California coast.

Or cut into the Gulf of Mexico and flood Death Valley.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#58

Post by gedy »

googlryas wrote: post #46
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…

What is so complex about eminent domain? Just force the sale of water rights back to the government for a fair price. It will sting a little bit, but sting far less than pretending like only 15% of the water in the western US actually exists.

Politicians are afraid of getting voted out, and frankly many of their constituents prefer to ban this or that symbolic thing in residential usage that scratches their control freak itch.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#59

Post by thepasswordis »

As long as we're still turning the Arizona desert into an alfalfa field for the Suadis, I won't believe that we're in a water crisis and certainly won't be doing anything that effects my life in any negative way to "remedy" this: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/02/453885642/sa...

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#60

Post by bombcar »

bushbaba wrote: post #26
no_wizard wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s other ways to mitigate that cost. Israel for instance runs many desalination plants from if I recall correctly solar power. We could do the same with solar and wind. Never the less, yes, because I believe cost can be managed and figured out over time, where as I don’t know what other mitigating factors would be the consequence of such a choice

Israel also recycles 90% of it's water. It first goes to urban use, then it's recycled for agriculture. California could do the same. https://www.waterworld.com/wastewater/article/16202781/israe...

If only the cities were before the farms instead of after - reuse of city water for agriculture is a great idea.
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