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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

#71

Post by remarkEon »

thepasswordis wrote: post #63
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…

Here's the worst part: we aren't even growing this for ourselves. These are farms owned by the saudis, and we're growing it and exporting it.

Citation? I'd love to read more about this.

Edit: ah, I see you linked it downthread thanks.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/02/453885642/sa...

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#72

Post by COGlory »

creatonez wrote: post #16
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…

> But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not. It's simply usage. See Figure 2 on page 10 [1]. > [1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad... I don't trust that a 2012 report is up to date on our latest climate modelling, or even that this is a climate-adjusted projection at all. Actual data past the point of publishing has not followed this g…

That figure is simple supply and demand. It shows supply staying roughly steady, and demand increasing drastically every year. Climate has nothing to do with that calculation (although it's possible it's exacerbating it, this was going to be an issue regardless).

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#73

Post by swatcoder »

kortilla wrote: post #50
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…

Water rights are at odds with what society needs now. There is nothing complex here. Make everyone pay equally for water and the problem goes away. The people that complain that it’s way more complex than that are the ones that don’t want to pay for water.

Should someone be able to dig a well in their own land? Draw surface water from a river, stream, or creek that passes through it? Grow crops in their own flood plains, estuaries, marshes, ponds, and lakes?

The water we’re talking about doesn’t come through a pipe with a meter, and the people who have access to water have practical influence over the use, routing, safety, and quality of that water even if you try to assert legal control over them.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#74

Post by COGlory »

stickfigure wrote: post #53
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…

> 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.

600,000 immediate American casualties (not to mention the slaves) is not a great example here, of something being "simple"

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#75

Post by cwalv »

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…

> This isn't something cities could or should solve by switching to (expensive) desalination

In 2015, the Southern Nevada Water Authority completed a "3rd straw" into Lake Mead to safeguard water availability, at a cost of $817M [1], which is enough to cover the power costs to desalinate Nevada's CO river allotment for ~23 years. It's been a while since I looked into it, but I once ran the numbers and the cost of that 3rd straw was comparable to the cost of building a solar power plant that would generate enough electricity to cover the desalination for NV's allotment as well.

Notes:

Nevada's allotment of water from the Colorado River is 279k acre ft / yr (actual use is 242k acre ft / yr in 2021) [2]. There are desalination systems available that require 3452 kw / acre ft [3]. Southern Nevada wholesale rate of $.37 / MWh [4].

[1] https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn/the-third-straw.htm [2] https://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/News/Blog/Detail/lake-mead-wa... [3] http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/water.html [4] https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/nv-energy-introduce...

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#76

Post by yes_really »

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?

> Setting cost aside for a second, is there any reason not to do something like this?

The cost would be so massive that, even if the answer to that question is "no", we shouldn't do it.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#77

Post by jakear »

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...

> salt discharge being pumped back out into the ocean and raising salinity levels around there to significantly damage ocean life, would prevent them from approving the plan

Offshore oil platforms with annual spills coating the beaches? Go for it!

Massive ports with dozens of container ships anchored off shore dumping who knows what for months? Perfect, ship it!

Putting salt back into the ocean after taking it out and producing water for people to drink? Nah man, what if the ocean gets too salty?

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#78

Post by LanceH »

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…

We can start by rolling back the modern entrenchments that have only made it worse. I would be absolutely shocked if this were only a 200 year old problem and there wasn't modern legislation basically gifting free water to special interests.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#79

Post by ABeeSea »

dendrite9 wrote: post #55
staticautomatic wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So change the laws.

Re: Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

#80

Post by joe_the_user »

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…

But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not.

Sure, you have a whole host of local disasters caused by local mismanagement (agricultural water use, failure to prevent fuel build-up in forests, etc). And the local mismanagers point to climate change to say "don't blame us".

However, when discussing these things in the large, you have people pointing to the local mismanagers and saying "don't blame climate change", which is pretty much the reverse sort of bullshit. Of course climate change has made these already bad problems worse. Of course, the first way the problems of climate change appear is this making bad problems worse thing. What else would you expect? That climate change appears in a nice, neat way that lets you exclude other causes? Ha (except that results aren't funny at all).

And this mutual finger-pointing works well to prevent anything being at any level.

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