California has about one year of water left

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-drought-california-20150313-story.html

by nickgrosvenor • 11 years ago

320 390 11 years ago

Maybe I skimmed the article a bit fast, but I saw no mention of desalination plants, which are the obvious solution (though expensive and as far as I'm aware not implemented yet).

mariusz79• 11 years ago

It's not going to be easy to build few of them in less than a year.

joshstrange3• 11 years ago

It's amazing what you can do when you've run out of water... But you are right, it would/will be a massive undertaking. I wonder if desalination will become water's "fracking", something we only turn to due to high price of what we used before or unavailability of what we used before.

melling2• 11 years ago

I've seen complaints that it has a big environmental impact too.

digikata• 11 years ago

It looks like there are proposals, but who knows how serious that is:

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-large...

sp33212• 11 years ago

California's power grid is already stressed. Desalination takes a lot of power, so any new plants will probably have to install new power generation as well.

ars8• 11 years ago

If I were building a desalination plant I'd put the generator on site - why waste money on transmission losses?

Natural gas generators are clean enough that I don't think it would be a big problem putting one by the ocean.

toomuchtodo4• 11 years ago

You can desal with excess renewables that would normally be curtailed (wind, for example), also similar to how the aluminum industry in Iceland is there to use their cheap geothermal power.

danbruc• 11 years ago

I don't think this will work for the lion's share of the water consumption, irrigation - way to expensive to be able to sell the harvest at competitive prices.

ojbyrne2• 11 years ago

It's already happening, but they're expensive and slow to come online:

http://www.noozhawk.com/article/santa_barbara_desalination_p...

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-large...

ghshephard3• 11 years ago

Desalination is pricy for agriculture because it's a long distance to transport the water. Because of recent technological advances, they are completely reasonable for the coastal cities though. The only reason they don't get built, is to justify the huge capital expenditure, they need 25 year guaranteed contracts, and even though the cost isn't that much ($500/acre foot, $0.45/m^3 or 1000 liters), it's still more than what water costs when it rains.

So, what tends to happen in areas with variable rain, is that when a drought hits, they get constructed, and then it starts raining, there is no reason to use the $500/acre foot water from the Desalination plant, instead of the $10-$125/acre foot [1] from rain. The only places that it is economical to build them is where we are guaranteed that they will be required.

If we could be certain the drought would continue, then yes, we would have desalination plants being built all along the coast (as they are in Singapore, Dubai, etc...). Alternatively, we could just bite the bullet and say we need this type of reliability of water supply and just build them. At that point, we could end all the nonsense about "conservation" in residential areas when there is an agricultural water supply issue. None of the conservation that people are doing in residential areas is going to make a spit of difference to the California water shortage situation - it's purely political posturing.

[1] http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/r_1112ehr.pdf pg 24, footnote. ".... In 2005, under a similar deal, MWDSC did not exercise the options to purchase nearly 130,000 af because there was ample rain, and growers again received just the installment ($10 per af, versus a final purchase price for the water of $125 per af)"

wppick• 11 years ago

They should build a giant desalination plant somewhere between LA and SF like Santa Maria area which can supply LA, SF and Las Vegas through a pipeline. Each city should try and clean and recycle as much water as possible and the pipelines could keep them topped up

shit_parade5• 11 years ago

Desalination is also currently energy intensive. It is suitable for living needs, like having drinkable water, but would absolutely crush any margins when it comes to growing food.

malchow2• 11 years ago

A historical view: http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_1_california-drought.htm...

glesica3• 11 years ago

That reads like it was written by a clueless reactionary. Draining reservoirs didn't cause the drought. It caused the water supply to dry up sooner in the midst of a drought.

Then they alleged that global warming, not their own foolish policies, had caused the current crisis.

One of the most brain-dead sentences I've ever read. No one is claiming that global warming is responsible for the reservoirs being depleted. They are claiming that global warming is responsible for the fact that the reservoirs have not been replenished by rain and snow melt. It is a subtle, but extremely important difference.

malchow2• 11 years ago

@glesica I'm not sure I understand the putative difference. Can you explain more?

beat3• 11 years ago

To an extent, it's a feedback problem. Global warming causes drought, which means insufficient rainfall, which means more irrigation from reservoirs, so reservoir use does go up. Meanwhile, it also means less replenishment of reservoirs, so they don't recover.

jff• 11 years ago

They are claiming that global warming is responsible for the fact that the reservoirs have not been replenished by rain and snow melt.

Even Mother Jones and NOAA disagree with you:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/12/new-study-cal...

mikepurvis• 11 years ago

The definitive history of water development in California is this book: http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-...

It's almost thirty years old now, but the history is just as relevant, and the warnings issued similarly prescient.

ctdonath• 11 years ago

That's also available as a video documentary. Stunning history, the looming drought was inevitable.

TL;DR/DW - the only reason CA has a vibrant agricultural component is because enormous amounts of water are being taken from other states and used very inefficiently. There's a hard limit on what can be redirected, and increasing demand around those sources to keep what's being taken.

Sometimes a supply-and-demand curve has a brick wall: when demand outstrips supply, cost goes from dirt-cheap to incredibly expensive fast. This is often derided as "price gouging", but is a natural consequence of basic needs being supplied cheaply vs insufficiently. CA artificially increasing its water supply faces exactly that: natural growth of demand will slam into lack of sufficient supply, and those with the funds to purchase from the supply at near-any price will suddenly destroy the market for those enjoying necessities at barely-affordable prices.

scottm01• 11 years ago

This book is fascinating. It covers of course the history of water rights in California and the southwest, but also mismanagement of so many other areas. It's long but amazingly readable.

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

The embittering part is that it was so easy to see this problem coming 30-plus years ago, and yet here we are today all the same.

joshstrange3• 11 years ago

So what happens when they run out of water? Are there water sources that are just undrinkable that can be cleaned up; similar to fracking now being cheap enough to compete with OPEC is there no water or just no drinkable water? Can they just "ship" or "pipe" the water in from neighboring states or are they too on the edge of a draught. Is this country-wide, just Western states, or just California and can other states give up water without risking throwing them into a draught?

I know that's a bunch of questions but this article seems to raise more questions than it answers, at least for me.

tdees40• 11 years ago

My understanding is that under most scenarios water for humans is fine, but agriculture will be totally dead in California.

joshstrange3• 11 years ago

Ahh, ok they hinted at that in the article but for some reason it didn't click in my head. I wonder if the farmers will just move to neighboring states (not that it's easy to pick up and move a farm....) losing farms in California would be a huge loss:

California produces a sizable majority of many American fruits, vegetables, and nuts: 99 percent of artichokes, 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots (and the list [1] goes on and on). [0]

[0] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2...

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/files/2agovstat10_web-1.pdf

dba7dba2• 11 years ago

Which in turn means US will have to do with about 50% less vegetable/crop to consume.

emodendroket8• 11 years ago

Which would still be absolutely catastrophic considering how much of US (and world, for that matter) supplies of produce come from CA.

wmil• 11 years ago

What's far more interesting is that that will result in massive numbers of unemployed non-citizen farm workers right after Obama grants them work permits by executive order.

And that's going to happen right before the 2016 presidential election.

crpatino6• 11 years ago

Because humans don't eat, right?

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

This. What it really means is that we won't be able to grow crops in the desert which is the central valley region. And that means that prices for foods will go up, and we'll not be able to use the corn belt for just corn, or conversely growing something other than corn there will be more profitable.

It really is too bad we couldn't build a water pipeline of some scale to help folks like Boston out with their excess snow.

sp33212• 11 years ago

A lot of water in California goes to farming. They'll have to close farms, which will drive up prices of produce.

dba7dba2• 11 years ago

About HALF of produce consumed in US comes central part of California. Exact ratio depends on the type of crop though. And it takes a LOT of water for all the crop.

So it's not really the green lawns or swimming pools.

treehau52• 11 years ago

Until new farms capitalize on the opportunity to capture the market in places where there's an abundance of water.

ghshephard3• 11 years ago

There is plenty of drinking water, this is an agricultural issue.

blake8086• 11 years ago

I wish there was some way to change prices to alter demand. Maybe a "task force of thought leaders" can crack open an Econ 101 textbook and look at the supply and demand curve on the first page.

Sorry for the sarcasm, I'm just disappointed in the "reach for regulation first" approach to dealing with shortages.

sp33212• 11 years ago

You're right, if people can't afford water to drink, they're clearly not valuable enough to live. If a farm can't afford water for crops, the crops weren't profitable enough to grow anyway. And if the rest of the nation can't afford food since some foods will be scarce without California farms, they should just be more productive. No need for regulation!

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

It makes more sense to farm in places that have reliable sources of water. I don't see why we need to subsidize California's crops, especially when we have so much great soil wasted on corn. Farming, in general, in the US is fairly messed up. Perhaps this crisis will lead to a fix. Maintaining the status quo and pretending everything is okay via regulation and political corruption is what got us here. Lets not continue that.

melling2• 11 years ago

Maybe we should get our almonds from somewhere else?

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...

Maybe California wouldn't have such a problem if they didn't plant crops that required so much water?

rayiner2• 11 years ago

The first argument is specious, because the government could just pay for drinking water for people who can't afford it, like they do for food. Drinking water is a small percentage of the overall usage anyway.

As for your other points, yes. Allowing farmers to use a common resource for free effectively subsidizes them. It'd make a lot more sense for everyone to grow those crops in places like Florida instead of in the middle of the desert.

kevin_thibedeau2• 11 years ago

If a farm can't afford water for crops, the crops weren't profitable enough to grow anyway.

I suppose you're trying to be sarcastic but this is the plain truth. Government should make some effort to help people prosper. It shouldn't be propping up unsustainable business because of short term economic benefits.

zedpm2• 11 years ago

Come on, you're not even trying to engage in a rational discussion. I've seen figures that put 1,000 gallons of water at around $1.50, so even doubling the price leaves water at a fraction of a penny per gallon. At ordinary levels of consumption, nobody is getting priced out of drinking water. What starts to get expensive is washing your car, doing many loads of laundry, watering that thirsty lawn every day, taking long showers, and various other activities that use large volumes of water.

mikeash2• 11 years ago

The amount of water used for drinking is minuscule. Even for residential use, it's basically irrelevant. How high would prices hive to rise before the cost of water would cause people to literally go thirsty? Long before that point, people would cut down on showers, laundry, car washes, pools, and all the other uses of water, and prices would stabilize.

You say "If a farm can't afford water for crops, the crops weren't profitable enough to grow anyway." From context, I gather you intended this to be ironic. But I don't see why! That's a totally true and justifiable statement. There's plenty of farmland in wetter areas of the country to take up the slack. We won't starve if we decide to stop subsidizing crops in inappropriate climates by providing artificially cheap water.

jerf2• 11 years ago

In all seriousness, if California's water problems really did get to Arrakis levels of expensive where some set of people could not even afford to drink, then "they move to somewhere where water is cheaper" would actually be a good outcome. It would relieve an incredibly overloaded infrastructure. (If there was going to be nowhere to move those people, that would be a different problem, but that's not the current problem. There are many places with enough water to drink.)

I mean, this is just the "planetary carrying capacity" issue applied to a smaller area. The argument still holds, so if you accept the idea that the planet has a certain carrying capacity for a certain level of lifestyle, the idea that maybe California can not support necessarily arbitrarily large numbers of people in a given lifestyle is just the same idea. Which idea is going to win out if they conflict?

freehunter2• 11 years ago

I know you're being facetious to make a point (and it's a good point), but "the crops aren't profitable enough to grow" is a major debate in this country. Especially around crops that take a lot of resources to grow for a relatively small amount of return (like corn).

There's a huge campaign against things like growing crops in California to export to other, far away states. The main gist of the argument is that it is unsustainable in the long run. Articles like this just goes to show how accurate that is.

Again, I know you're being facetious, but again, other farms could be more productive. The US government sometimes pays farmers to not plant crops, and quite often pays farmers to plant corn instead of other, easier to grow, more productive crops. The US doesn't have to depend on California, there is a lot of fertile land not being used to its full potential right now.

tlrobinson• 11 years ago

"You're right, if people can't afford water to drink, they're clearly not valuable enough to live."

Let's do the math.

Adults need about 3 liters of water per day [1], but let's round up to 1 gallon. Where I live, in SF, a single family residence is currently charged about $5 for the first "unit" of water per month, which is 748 gallons, so about $0.007 per gallon.

Residential water prices could go up at least an order of magnitude and no one would die of dehydration. People may have to cut back on showers/laundry/car washes, but isn't that exactly what we want?

[1] http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healt...

[2] http://www.sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=168

omegaham2• 11 years ago

The first people to be hit by the price increase will be the farmers of water-intensive crops. The people will be paying much, much less.

The current situation is due to aggressive subsidy of agriculture. Get rid of the subsidies, and the problem will take care of itself. Of course, it will badly hurt California's agricultural sector, but it still needs to happen. You can't fool nature.

baddox4• 11 years ago

If water costs more, that's a signal to entrepreneurs to invest money into methods of providing water, and also a signal to everyone to conserve water, both of which are exactly what you should want if you're worried about the supply of water.

The issue of very poor people being unable to afford water is obviously important, but completely separate.

modeless• 11 years ago

Give me a break. Metered residential water servive in LA is less than a penny a gallon! There's nobody who couldn't afford water to drink even if we doubled or tripled the price. Nobody in the entire state!

bko• 11 years ago

The average American uses about 90 gallons of water each day in the home, and each American household uses approximately 107,000 gallons of water each year. For the most part, we use water treated to meet drinking water standards to flush toilets, water lawns, and wash dishes, clothes, and cars. In fact, 50-70 percent of home water is used for watering lawns and gardens.Nearly 14 percent of the water a typical homeowner pays for is never even used—it leaks down the drain. ... The national average cost of water is $2.00 per 1,000 gallons. The average American family spends about $474 each year on water and sewage charges. American households spend an additional $230 per year on water heating costs.[0]

I don't think people will be dying of thirst. It might just make more sense to let the price people pay bare some resemblance to what it actually costs to deliver the good and avert this whole catastrophe.

[0] http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/wot/pdfs/book_waterontap_full.pdf

malandrew6• 11 years ago

How realistic is it to move certain crops, such as fruit and nut trees that may take decades to grow to maturity?

A few weeks ago I did a 200km bike ride of Mount Hamilton and one of the things I saw along the way was a "nursery" that specializes in very large fairly mature trees in massive planters ready to be moved by truck (Calaveras Rd (Rt 84) just south of 680). The biggest trees had large wooden planters ~5 ft high and as with as an 18 wheeler.

Given how valuable certain trees are and the time cost of waiting for them to grow to fruit and nut bearing age, it must make sense at some point to give loans to dig up orchards and move them to better locations.

Assuming such a plan is botanically viable, my main concern is that the price shock for water takes too longer for it to make financial sense until it is too late to make the decision to move any trees worth being moved.

stdgy• 11 years ago

Wouldn't changing the price agriculturists pays for water be exactly the kind of regulation you're deriding?

Though perhaps you are referring to the price of something else?

EdSharkey• 11 years ago

I would prefer if we just remove the government distortion in price of water that drives down the price farmers have paid and force them to pay a market-driven rate. (Deregulate, then?) Perhaps if they would pay the market-dictated rate, smart farmers will get to keep their farms by choosing to not do idiotic things like plant rice patties and walnut groves in a desert.

Water is one of those scarce resources that have alternative uses. If we would just charge farmers what the water in California is truly worth, rational decision making will return to agriculture there. Or, agriculture could move to a more suitable place.

ebbv3• 11 years ago

Are you serious? You want WATER to have its price raised to reflect the realities in California? All that would do is screw all the poor and middle class people and it would do nothing to solve the shortage.

Put down Atlas Shrugged for a minute and look at reality. The whole state of California has always been on water welfare, and if it weren't life there would be untenable for anyone who wasn't extremely wealthy.

If you really think "OK, so what? People can move." You are totally detached from reality. That's not what would happen. There would be riots.

mhurron2• 11 years ago

The whole state of California has always been on water welfare

You're right, it has always been stupid to farm in California. Now it's coming back to bit people in the ass.

toomuchtodo4• 11 years ago

If you really think "OK, so what? People can move." You are totally detached from reality. That's not what would happen. There would be riots.

So, there isn't enough water, people don't want to move to where there is water, what's your solution?

Water costs, whether thats to pump it out of the ground, import it from places that do have water, or desalinate it. Someone has to pay for that. Would it not be those who use the water?

bobcostas55• 11 years ago

and it would do nothing to solve the shortage

Sure it would, it would decrease usage. You can easily subsidize poor people's water if that's a serious problem. It's a tiny amount anyway as the overwhelming majority of water usage is agricultural.

aasarava• 11 years ago

Guess who uses 80% of the water in CA? It's not the poor and middle class, it's agriculture, typically run by large corporations. Guess how much agriculture contributes to CA's GDP? 2%.

It's possible to alter the way water is used in the state in ways that benefit the residents and don't screw the poor and middle class.

timtadh• 11 years ago

From my perspective the problem with water in the US is that no one is charged for the actual water. You are only charged for the processing costs. This means that the market never acts to regulate how much water you use. People will use less water if it costs them more.

However, changing to a market system for water would never happen overnight. People are not used to paying for water and cannot move on a dime. However, long term I think it is our only solution. The midwest, who many on HN seem to have a bad impression of, has the world's largest fresh water reserve in the world (the great lakes). Meanwhile, the plain states and California will have continuing water difficulties moving forward. Long term, people are going to need to move to where there is abundant water. It is not sustainable for so many people to live in marginal areas.

One way to encourage people to move is by having market forces act. If the price of water is cheaper in the great lakes region there will be a slow but steady migration there over time. This will in turn ease the brewing crisis in the west. This isn't the only action which should be taken but we should consider (from a policy perspective) the idea of allowing market forces to act in the water market.

baddox4• 11 years ago

Sure, put down Atlas Shrugged, but pick up any economics textbook, or Google some statistics about water usage in California. I absolutely do want water's price to reflect the realities in California. It would not screw the poor and middle class, and it would solve the shortage.

cgriswald• 11 years ago

Water is already priced based on the type and quantity of usage. The more you use, the more it costs. You can raise prices for farms without "screw[ing] all the poor and middle class."

If you raise farm water prices, you will find that water-intensive crops will be less profitable (even with raised prices) and farms will switch to crops which use less water.

Rationing may have the same effect, or it may instead have the effect of fewer crops being produced and prices going up.

victoro• 11 years ago

Perhaps you should crack open that Econ 101 textbook first, because that same Econ 101 textbook would likely have water as the canonical example used to explain elasticity of demand. Demand for water is inelastic, both for agriculture and home use, so letting the "supply and demand curve" take care of it would likely cause a sharp increase in price in a very short period of time, which, from a policy perspective, seems like a terrible idea that would cause panic and economic instability.

baddox4• 11 years ago

Would it cause more panic and economic instability than California having zero water next year, but at a great price?

api• 11 years ago

Agricultural and home use are inelastic, but irrigation of suburbs and similar luxury uses are not.

acslater00• 11 years ago

This is not true. Demand for water is inelastic in the short term only.

The (obvious) effect of increasing water prices over the medium and long term would be the displacement of water hungry crops such as almonds and rice, as it would no longer be economical to farm them in California. The equilibrium level of water consumption would be much lower as a result.

thrill• 11 years ago

A sharp increase in price is exactly how to gain focus. The only damage to policy will be the at-last recognition that this can has been kicked down the road by every policy setter for the last two decades.

shit_parade5• 11 years ago

Wheat and other grains, because of how water intensive they are to grow, are considered an international water trading market.

Agricultural subsidies are common and significant, especially in rich developed nations. This is for various reasons, but it does have some significant knockdown effects such as exasperating third world poverty. There are numerous complaints brought to the UN, the WTO, by various poor nations but they are generally ignored or swept under the rug.

davmre• 11 years ago

There are some obvious fixes here, like subsidizing the first N gallons/person/month (where N is some amount sufficient for basic human needs) and then charging market rate for water use above that level. You could even use a soft cliff, with a partial subsidy remaining up to 2N g/p/m, and let the generosity of the subsidy gradually decrease over time to "phase in" the adoption of market-rate prices and give people time to adjust their water usage.

BryantD2• 11 years ago

Supply and demand curves are part of the problem, though. People have talked about almonds a lot in these comments. We're growing tons of almonds because the demand for almonds is very high. They're one of the most lucrative crops you can grow. The long-term effects, as we are seeing, are bad -- but we're not making decisions on long-term effects, we're making decisions based on immediate demand needs.

This is the product of two things. First, short-sightedness. But second, and more rationally, if you need money now to keep your farm going, you cannot afford to worry about ten years down the line. It's not just irrational behavior.

Frondo• 11 years ago

"Some way to change prices" is regulation.

antidaily• 11 years ago

Just ban almonds. Problem solved.

vinhboy• 11 years ago

Maybe you were being tongue in cheek, but I kind of like this solution. Why don't we just find some non-essential crops and ban them. I am sure it will suck for that farmer, but we're not really in a position to be accommodating to every industry at this point.

wnissen3• 11 years ago

Almonds get something of a bad rap because they are moderately water-intensive (1 gallon per almond) but they are also highly profitable. So it makes sense to grow them. Rice is frequently grown using the water that is released for wildlife, so it is also reasonable to keep growing. The real problem is the forage crops (alfalfa hay) that are water-intensive and cheap. Price water competitively and your problem will be solved overnight. Naturally, the farmers using the water can't allow this to happen.

brianbreslin• 11 years ago

This could be a boon for middle eastern water companies (Israel has some geniuses in this space) for selling into California.

There are a few tactics for tackling this problem (disclaimer: I didn't read the article) - Reduction of waste (leaks, more efficient plumbing, rationing) - Desalination (only useful along the coast) - Deep wells - water extraction from the air - water recycling - what else?

emodendroket8• 11 years ago

I think in the long-term California needs to consider desalinization but that hardly seems like something that could happen in the next year.

michaelchisari• 11 years ago

If there was the political will to do so, it could come close. The actual construction is a small part of the process, compared to securing permits and such.

noobermin3• 11 years ago

So it looks like there is suddenly water everywhere in the solar system...except for California.

nosuchthing2• 11 years ago

In the absence of fresh water, it becomes a matter of the energy required to clean / desalinate / or distill contaminated water.

Abundant clean renewable energy would solve "rare" water issues.

stouset2• 11 years ago

So would magic.

We need to rid ourselves of the mythical notion of "abundant", meaning arbitrarily cheap, energy. There are only a few more doublings of global energy usage left before we heat the atmosphere significantly, not due to greenhouse gases, but by raising the equilibrium temperature of Earth as a radiating blackbody in space.

TANSTAAFL. Every resource is ultimately finite. Let's live within our limits rather than justifying our actions with unrealistic fantasizing about future technology.

ForHackernews• 11 years ago

Solution: Crash an icy comet into California. Bonus points for aiming it at the Bay Area to clear the way for new development.

TeMPOraL• 11 years ago

Great idea, this will both fix the water problem and disrupt the startup industry!

nfriedly• 11 years ago

How feasible is desalination? If they can make that work on a large scale, then there's quite literally an ocean of water available to California.

acomjean• 11 years ago

Desalination is expensive and not great for the environment, but its starting to happen.

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/533446/desalin...

akkartik• 11 years ago

Don't forget solar desal. For example, http://waterfx.co. That would eliminate any pollution.

ghshephard3• 11 years ago

Desalination used to be expensive. In the last 4-5 years ultrafiltration (UF) membrane technology for the pre-treatment process plus double pass reverse osmosis process to produce potable water has resulted in costs dropping to around $500/acre foot, ($0.50/m^3 or 1000 liters).

Completely reasonable for coastal cities, if we could be certain they were needed.

gmarx• 11 years ago

supposedly much more cost effective to clean waste water

lotsofmangos3• 11 years ago

Depends on the process. Is usually extremely energy intensive, but there are some interesting developments happening.

Direct contact membrane distillation - http://www.usbr.gov/research/AWT/reportpdfs/report134.pdf

Seawater greenhouse - http://www.seawatergreenhouse.com/process.html

CWuestefeld3• 11 years ago

I just moved to Austin, TX 1.5 years ago. We've got our own severe drought here, and I wonder what's going to happen in the long term. Was it a mistake to move here?

At least in TX, there are a couple of ways in which it's clear we're doing it to ourselves.

First, we can't keep the reservoirs full because a significant amount of water flow is earmarked for rice farmers down at the mouth of the river. That's right: rice farmers. It's clearly not a good idea to be supporting a water-intensive crop in this geography.

Second, Texas has a "right of capture" in its laws. That basically means that whatever water you can capture, you can have. There's a controversy near my town where a private company wants to drill well into the deep aquifer to pump and sell huge amounts of water, such that local homeowners are afraid their less-deep wells will run dry. And there's little one can do to insulate oneself: there's no way to stake claim to the part of the aquifer under your house, other than to be the first person to pump it all out.

I wonder how much of this stupidity is also driving CA's problems.

lsb• 11 years ago

http://calrice.org

BryantD2• 11 years ago

Almonds are a very water-intensive crop. We grow a huge amount of almonds here in California. (Most of them are exported.) See http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30052290 for one writeup.

Now, they're also a very lucrative crop, so not growing almonds would certainly affect the state's economy. But...

bashinator2• 11 years ago

Specifically, one almond takes about one gallon of water to produce.

sosuke2• 11 years ago

The droughts in Austin, and Texas, are far longer running than 1.5 years. Welcome to Austin, water shouldn't be a reason you think it is a mistake to live here.

There is a City of Austin Drought Contingency Plan: http://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Water/C...

Not Austin, but you can read an article on central Texas rainfall patterns done in Mason county on a ranch from 1950-2012 http://doublehelixranch.com/FlyGapRainTrends.html

Read about the "Record Drought" when the rain stopped in 1947 http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/current-drought-pal...

I hear the elder in south Texas talk about how everything was green and they had various fruit trees when they were younger, all that is down there now is dust and mesquite.

Edit: The Lower Colorado River Authority has a Drought Update as of March 2015 http://www.lcra.org/water/water-supply/drought-update/Docume...

CWuestefeld3• 11 years ago

A couple of other things that concern me here:

It appears that the authorities are sacrificing Lake Travis in order to keep the city lake full and beautiful. IMHO, it would be better to let the level fall there as well, to keep people thinking about the need to conserve.

I live just a few minutes from Jacob's Well [1]. Having heard stories of how this spring used to sometimes shoot 20 feet into the air, but in some recent events has stopped flowing altogether, makes concern about draining of the aquifers (not just surface water) seem quite real.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob%27s_Well_%28Texas%29

edit - spelling

valgaze• 11 years ago

That's interesting you mention rice farmers in TX because in Sacramento rice farmers are getting paid to sell not rice but water to Los Angeles.

Evidently many of these folks will probably end up making more $$ selling water than rice

See: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drough...

kyrra2• 11 years ago

The 2011 drought destroyed the Austin water reserves. Check the lake level in 2010/2011 vs where we are today[0]. For those that don't know, in 2011 we had record temperatures and little water which led to a few wild fires. The Bastrop wildfire [1] burned 34,000 acres of land destroying 1650 homes. There was also a smaller fire (160 acres) in west Austin in the Steiner Ranch development destroying 25 homes. Temperature wise, Austin had 90 days with temperatures >= 100 degrees that summer.

The area hasn't recouped its loss in water from that drought yet, and it will likely take a very long time for that to happen. Also, the Lower Colorado River Authority is the one that dictates where the water ends up, so they try to balance it for everyone that uses this supply (which is why Lake Travis is still so low).

For fun, Lake Travis had a island that would appear in the middle sometimes depending on water levels, called "Sometimes Island". Since the drought, it's been jokingly renamed "Sometimes Peninsula"[2].

[0] http://travis.uslakes.info/Level.asp

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastrop_County_Complex_fire

[2] http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/no-boat-needed-to-g...

pnut• 11 years ago

Not related to water per se, but I've lived in Austin for over 6 years now, and can confidently say it was a mistake to move here for me.

Where do you go when you want to get out of town? Big Bend? New Orleans? Sure, 8 hours later... And beyond that, what? So much cultural desolation, for hundreds of miles. May as well be in a moon colony.

Texas, where dreams go to die.

Of course, these are my personal feelings, so downvote away. If you moved here because it's cheap, like most people do, like I did from the Bay area, you'll find a cheap existence, as in, you get what you pay for.

driverdan2• 11 years ago

It seems you've forgotten we have an airport.

kyrra2• 11 years ago

3 other large cities within a 3 hour drive (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio). The Gulf coast is also around 3 hours away. Not close, but it's something.

perturbation• 11 years ago

Dallas and Houston are a bit of a hike (4 and 3 hours, respectively), but San Antonio is only an hour away. I find that there's plenty of stuff to do in Austin itself anyway. (Heck, SXSW is going on right now.)

I have a theory that a lot of people move to Austin expecting it to be somehow hermetically sealed away from Texas; if you don't like Texas, you will eventually not like Austin. What do you like about the Bay area that you miss in Austin?

jseliger• 11 years ago

Was it a mistake to move here?

People are moving to the South in general because housing is cheap there—as Matt Yglesias discusses in The Rent is Too Damn High: http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0... :

There is another option besides denser cities or more sprawling ones: People can just relocate to other cities altogether. And increasingly, that’s what Americans have been doing. If the only way to afford a place in a safe neighborhood in some metropolitan areas is to bear the enormous costs of long commutes, those are just cities with little if any housing that’s truly affordable. The natural choice is to go to the cities that aren’t choked with these problems.

As Forbes magazine put it, “It’s no secret that the Southeast and Western United States are booming. The costs of living and doing business there are often cheaper than in big coastal cities.” People have to go somewhere, and by and large they’re going where it’s cheap. That’s why between 2000 and 2010 the Dallas and Houston metropolitan areas each added about 1.2 million people, dwarfing the approximately 500,000 each added by the much bigger New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago metro areas. But this kind of boom driven by a low cost of living is a particular kind of boom. The relatively sluggish population growth in New York City and its suburbs during this period wasn’t a repeat of the urban collapse of the 1970s. The financial services sector at the core of the region’s economy was, for all the (oft-deserved) opprobrium it’s attracted over the past several years, one of the decade’s major money-making success stories. The city’s specialization as the main headquarters of American journalism and publishing seemed relatively unaffected by the sweeping technological change reshaping media. The crime drop of the 1990s that turned the city’s momentum around in the first place continued. A wave of gentrification swept through the Lower East Side, vast swathes of Brooklyn, important parts of Queens, and even Hoboken and Jersey City across the Hudson River.

But while this kind of gentrification demonstrates the continuing appeal of the Big Apple, it represents only a small net increase in the population. The people moving in are largely replacing other people who are moving out as rents go up. Some of this is due to working-class families moving out of now-expensive neighborhoods. Other times, it is the cycling of twentysomething professionals out of the city as they start families and want more space. In both cases, the city can prosper without its population increasing very much.

By contrast, the “booming” cities of the Southeast and the western United States aren’t necessarily booming in the sense of getting rich. The ten metropolitan areas with the fastest population growth between the 2000 and 2010 censuses were, in order, Palm Coast, Florida; St. George, Utah; Las Vegas, Nevada; Raleigh, North Carolina; Cape Coral, Florida; Provo, Utah; Greeley, Colorado; Austin, Texas; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; and Bend, Oregon. That geographical distribution supports the idea of a boom in the Southeast and West. But it’s striking that in 2009 all ten of these metro areas had per capita personal incomes below the national average of $40,757. Indeed, only Cape Coral was even close.

It may be a long-term mistake, but the localities that control building height, parking minimums, and so forth have ensured that people move to the desert states.

Shivetya2• 11 years ago

What has happened before will happen again. California had similar issues with mild winters and the reduced water associated with them back in the 1930s. [1][2] The difference now of course is that there are a great many more people there and a great many more farms.

The Bureau of Reclamation is pretty much at fault for the lack of water available for human consumption because of mismanagement and prices below the cost which encouraged over development of farming.

The current drought can likely be traced to changes in the Pacific Ocean dating to 1976 [3]. As in, we have more than time enough to see something was changing.

What can be done? Rationing won't solve it all. The states need to have more control over the water that the Bureau of Reclamation currently controls. They are in a far better position to understand their needs and cooperate amongst each other instead of using the weight of Washington politics to force a way.

First and foremost priorities have to be set and reasonable prices for the cost of water need to be assigned. Yes this will likely mean a reduction in farming but it is artificially propped up now by unrealistically low water prices. People also need to understand conservation and large lawns should either be restricted or the water use for such maintenance needs to be surcharged.

The key is better use of resources and not redirecting the problem which is more mismanagement than natural causes.

note, I haven't read much on site #2, but they consolidated nicely some NOAA charts which make it easier to view.

[1] http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/061/mwr-061-09-0251.pdf [2] http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2015/01/california-dro... [3] http://icecap.us/images/uploads/More_on_The_Great_Pacific_Cl...

malandrew6• 11 years ago

The way I see it water consumption for household and business uses that are not farms should be on a per person basis, going up exponentially at each strata of consumption.

This would not be unlike how the desirable island of Fernando de Naronha controls limits tourism, while still keeping it accessible. IIRC, every day you are on the island you pay a fee, but each day you stay the fee increases until it gets so expensive that even the rich feel it. The island is limited to 420 tourists at a time.

http://www.ilhadenoronha.com.br/ailha/taxadepreservacao_em_n...

Likewise, for water a person might pay a nominal rate per gallon for the first 40 gallons in a day, then the price doubles for the next 40, then doubles for the next 40, etc, etc. until it's literally unaffordable by even the rich.

This would also have the nice side effect of limiting yard size, which would curb urban sprawl.

pyrocat3• 11 years ago

The other difference is the ground water reservoirs are significantly more drained now than in the 1930s.

rjett• 11 years ago

Disclaimer: I have no clue if what I'm proposing is realistic or not, but:

Perhaps the federal government should step in and gradually step down the level of subsidies given to farmers in California and gradually increase subsidies given to NEW farmers in other, more water rich parts of the country. This would have the effect of moving farms to more sustainable locations in the country. Sure, the types of crops produced would change and consumer demands would have to shift with that, but that isn't the worst thing in the world.

Another solution is to allow utilities to drastically increase water prices for communities that import most of their water anyways.

All in all, both solutions are geared towards population displacement in unsustainable locations. Just as New Orleans is probably destined for another Katrina, SoCal is probably destined to be a desert despite the demands we've put on the land in the last century.

j_baker• 11 years ago

The Midwest would make a good alternative place to grow. It won't be as prone to droughts and will have a longer growing season due to climate change.

Either that or giving farmers a subsidy for growing crops that require less water. Our huge Almond industry is a giant water-guzzler.

malandrew6• 11 years ago

Almond Trees at maturity seem to be small enough to be movable to new locations (12-33 ft high, 12 in trunk)

shit_parade5• 11 years ago

Much of the Midwest draws from the Ogallala Aquifer which is also under severe strain and has been overdrawn for nearly a century, many describe the water as 'fossil' water because the aquifer took many hundreds of thousands of years to grow to the size it has become and it's replenishment rate is significantly lower than our current demands.

The Colorado river is also running dry, sometimes it does not even make it to the ocean, which is a basic sign of environmental health -- when rivers run dry significant changes occur rapidly. The Rockies which feed this river has had lower annual snow pack than expected for many years running now.

New agricultural land in the US will be coming from the north as the climate continues to become dryer and warmer, already Canadian farmers have experienced a renewed vigor and development. Unfortunately there will likely be some land and water use competition between fracking as well as the Canadian Boreal forest, one of the largest and most pristine wildernesses in the north american continent.

quaunaut2• 11 years ago

The problem is, this turns places that already have severe unemployment issues into 2008-era catastrophy. The entire central valley is based off of farming.

malandrew6• 11 years ago

    other, more water rich parts of the country

My main question is: What are these other water rich part of the country that aren't already fully exploited for agriculture? Are there maps published somewhere that tell people where they can move to to establish farms elsewhere?

ars8• 11 years ago

The US has lots of young forests that grew after people abandoned the area that used to be farmed.

If you ever go for a walk in the woods and wonder why the trees are all so (relatively) small, that's why.

There is plenty of room for more farmland. You will have to cut some trees, but that's always been the case.

jbattle• 11 years ago

Michigan (lower peninsula)? Seems to have a lot of undeveloped (forested) land. But I haven't done any actual research so may be badly wrong.

Also if CA agriculture becomes less productive & more expensive then many other parts of the country now become more competitive for agriculture (not cheaper - just worth putting into production)

acdha2• 11 years ago

I think simply phasing out water subsidies would be a huge win. I've read a fair number of reports suggesting that, while not great, the situation would be considerably improved if farmers had an incentive to invest in more efficient irrigation techniques or switch to more drought-tolerant crops. The catch is that it costs money and that's risky if you're the first one in the industry doing it – if the government announced that, say, the current subsidies would be reduced 10% a year starting in couple years that'd send a message to everyone that it's safe to take out loans because all of your competitors are going to have to do the same thing.

ThrustVectoring• 11 years ago

There's a related issue of perennial, tree, and more orchard-like agriculture rather than seasonal crops. These farmers cannot reduce their water consumption without suffering massive losses - they're price insensitive on water to a large extent, and their choices are irrigate or go bankrupt.

IIRC, avocado trees are a big culprit for California's future commitment to consuming water for agricultural purposes.

ojbyrne2• 11 years ago

Judging by the number of protest signs (Water = Jobs, etc) I see every time I go through the Central Valley, and the increasing acreage that seems to be returning to desert conditions, this seems to have been happening for a while.

jonnathanson4• 11 years ago

My understanding is that California is so ideal for agriculture because of its climate (with the water scarcity being the big liability, the can we've been kicking down the road for decades). Other states, either individually or collectively, do not have the year-round, Mediterranean, relatively predictable climate to take on the load that California would drop. This includes not only total square acreage of arable, mild farmland, but also a bevy of specific crops that cannot be grown reliably in other states. (There are certainly wetter states, but they have seasonal extremes that make X, Y, Z crops very challenging.)

When it comes to agriculture, California is in the rare position of being a jack of all trades and master of most. That is, until the water runs out. Then it starts to look more like the mild, but semiarid desert it was before we engineered it to run on various, unsustainable water sources.

That being said, the subsidies have certainly placed us in a predicament -- a wildly unstable dependency -- that will be extremely tough to unwind. Something has got to change on that front, and quickly.

bradleyjg2• 11 years ago

There are other places in the world where these crops can be grown. People in those countries will be more than happy to trade us almonds, rice, bananas and the like in exchange for things we are great at producing like software and music.

It's a win-win.

surfmike• 11 years ago

We can still grow crops in California without water subsidies. In places where water is more expensive, like Israel, farmers invest more in water-saving technology in their farms. And probably grow less water-intensive crops like rice.

BrainInAJar• 11 years ago

(There are certainly wetter states, but they have seasonal extremes that make X, Y, Z crops very challenging.)

Then perhaps we as a culture should stop eating X, Y and Z so much.

guelo• 11 years ago

I'm not sure how you're imagining this would work. Are you suggesting the feds build giant canals across the Sierra Nevada and then across hundreds of miles of Nevada desert? To where?

Jtsummers3• 11 years ago

GP is suggesting that farming move to where the water is. By cutting subsidies, farmers or farm operators have less incentive to operate in regions suffering from droughts and more incentive to operate in a fiscally and ecologically sound manner.

protomyth3• 11 years ago

If the rest of the country could grow the same crops as "America's Salad Bowl" we would. California is ideal for those crops and without the large population would be fine.

It is probably past time to actually push desalination plants or convince a lot of people to move somewhere else.

wnissen3• 11 years ago

The people consume only a fraction of the water and it's dishonest in the extreme to say that things would be "fine" without them. Each ton of alfalfa in California consumes more water than a family uses in a year and yet sells for $200. There were 13 million tons sold last year. If we got rid of the low-value forage crops, the people (who would pay a hell of a lot more than $200 a year) would have more than enough water.

Crito2• 11 years ago

Many of the water-greedy crops being grown in California with their water subsidies are hardly important for the country. Almonds are not a staple crop; they are not necessary for our society and should not be valued highly enough to justify the Californian water used to grow them.

If it is a matter of farmers needing almonds to remain profitable enough to grow more important foods, then we would be better served by giving them free money, rather than cheap water for almonds.

madaxe_again2• 11 years ago

Well, given that their problem is an excess of sunshine, solar powered desalination plants strike me as excellent insurance against these conditions.

pyrocat3• 11 years ago

Please not WA. We have enough Californians moving here and driving up prices already.

refurb6• 11 years ago

What would happen if the gov't did nothing?

1. Water would become more scarce in California. Not everyone would get what they need.

2. Price of produce would go up, since there is a smaller supply.

3. We'd start to import more produce (either from outside the country or other states) because the price is the same or lower than the new, higher CA price.

4. Other farmers, who don't grow what CA grows, would start to because it's more profitable as prices rise.

The gov't doesn't really have to do anything. That's the beauty of the free market.

abruzzi• 11 years ago

But farmers aren't the only consumers of water, so is everyone that lives in CA. The issue as I see it is the drought combined with agriculture combine to drive the price of water up and it's unlikely the corrective (forcing farmers to migrate out of state to water rich locations) will happen before critical levels are hit for servicing residential populations and their needs.

CoffeeDregs• 11 years ago

I'm puzzled at the down votes you're receiving. I think you have a valid point and I generally have a similar perspective, but, in this case, it overlooks a significant externality: the destruction of the environment as rivers are pumped dry and (albeit, artificial) reservoirs run dry. Further, your solution could make the additional extraction of water quite profitable, which would further the destruction.

The straightforward solution is to internalize the externality via a progressive tax on water usage. Then, as you said, the free market can regulate itself.

Note: I'm not a fan of taxation, but it can be a good solution to managing externalities.

Shivetya2• 11 years ago

but government is doing something, they are pricing water too low currently artificially incentivizing farming and over use of water

anigbrowl3• 11 years ago

The government is not an independent entity. Farmers (by which I include agribusiness corporations) vote and donate heavily to political causes. Further, the government is not a monolithic entity; you have the governor, various other elected officials, and then all the legislators in the assembly and state senate, plus all the people that California sends to Congress Washington DC. There are a lot of people who live in inland California whose economic well-being depends directly or indirectly on agriculture. As long as they participate in the political process, government is going to serve some of their interests because they keep electing people to vote for that.

This is the big trouble with libertarians right here. You keep being politically marginalized because you don't seem to appreciate that government is not some alien thing imposed from without, but the distillation of multiple (and often competing) collective interests. Just as 'war is a continuation of politics by other means,' politics is is a continuation of business by other means. Your 'free market' solution is only going to function if you exclude a bunch of people from the political process because their continued participation has become a major inconvenience for everyone else. As someone with technocratic inclinations I sometimes wish we could do that, because I think the farming lobby frequently epitomizes greed and stupidity. But shutting farmers out of politics would be a huge violation of our constitutional design, not to mention political suicide.

emmanueloga_• 11 years ago

Let me see if I get this right: if the government doesn't do anything, the beautiful free market will automatically redistribute a scarce resource evenly between all the interested parts. Got it!

In any case, 2), 3), 4) doesn't seem to produce any beautiful fix for 1) in your list, apart from maybe stabilizing produce prices.

smacktoward• 11 years ago

This reminds me of a conversation I had a while back with some other folks like me who had grown up in Ohio. We were talking about what sort of program would help turn around Ohio's brain drain to the states of the South and West, which has been going on in various degrees since the collapse of the industrial Rust Belt.

My thought was that, in a few decades, you won't need a program to make living in Ohio attractive; all you'll have to do is say "Ohio is a place where free water falls from the sky" and people will come running.

pimlottc• 11 years ago

Access to enormous amounts of fresh water in the form of the Great Lakes may very well be the Rust Belt's ace in the hole in the coming decades...

mc322• 11 years ago

Farms work on thin margins, so jacking the price on them might not be the first step to take.

A few things we can do:

Increase rates to households.

Fix the delivery system to residences so that we don't lose approx 30% to leakage

Invest in desalination and make it a viable alternative

Incentivize drip irrigation where applicable (ie. almonds, but not rice)

Of course increased water conservation.

anigbrowl3• 11 years ago

Too goddamn bad, maybe it's time some more farmers went bankrupt. Reducing household water usage is not going to be enough to offset the hugely wasteful consumption by agriculture. My water bill is not too high, but I have to say that I am not too enthused about watching it go up this years after we cut my household usage by around 30% over the last year. I didn't see a corresponding drop in the bill because most of the sum is fixed charges for delivery and sewage treatment, and my actual metered usage is the smallest part of the bill. So despite putting a lot of effort into conservation I'm being asked to further subsidize the most wasteful users of water in the state.

Animats• 11 years ago

Water use in California is mostly agriculture. Almond, rice, and hay production in California is going to stop. Rice and hay can come from elsewhere. Almonds are almost entirely from California, and they come from trees, so no place else can pick up the demand quickly.

kin• 11 years ago

This is an opinion article, but the situation is without a doubt fact. However, next year I feel the only impact on me will be produce cost. Everything in this article tells me this is mostly an agricultural issue. What is rationing going to do when farms are pumping 2/3 of our ground water? It just buys more time for the inevitable unless someone finds a solution.

rodgerd• 11 years ago

Maybe stop growing rice in a desert? Let gasp other parts of the country or double gasp world sell food to Americans?

clientbiller2• 11 years ago

Instead of an oil pipline, why not a water pipeline?

whyaduck• 11 years ago

If you look at a map you'll see that there are large mountains and long distances between where the (fresh) water is and California's Central Valley.

ars8• 11 years ago

We use FAR more water than oil. A pipe large enough for oil would not even come close for water.

clientbiller2• 11 years ago

more than 1 pipe?

sandworm3• 11 years ago

I blame golf.

Really. I learned to play on an OIL course. They mixed oil and sand to create a fairway and we carried around a piece of astroturf to place under the ball (see http://www.panoramio.com/photo/22230833). A grass course in a desert (ie most every course in california) is a totally unnecessary waste of water.

When they stop spending water on golf, THEN we can talk about rationing water for household use.

(Fyi, the airbase that picture was THE airbase for the first gulf war. The f117s would land there at night. Seeing a black triangle open white landing gear on approach was like something out of the x-files.)

bcherry• 11 years ago

Golf courses account for probably not more than 0.5% of all human water usage in California annually.

Human water usage in CA is about 80% agricultural, 20% "urban". "Urban" covers all residential, (non-agricultural) commericial, landscaping, etc. Of the "Urban" usage, about 60% is residential, with indoor usage as the majority. Residential landscaping (lawns, pools, etc) uses at least 3 times as much as all commercial landscaping (golf courses, parks, etc).

sandworm3• 11 years ago

I made no claim that it was a huge contributor. I use it as an example of needless waste. Only once we are willing to deal with the truly frivolous uses of water (golf, fountains etc) can we hope to deal with more utilitarian uses.

And I totally dismiss logic dictating that we must only deal with the largest and most contentious contributors to a problem before all others. That is only a delay tactic.

crpatino6• 11 years ago

Golf courses account for probably not more than 0.5% of all human water usage in California annually.

Great! That's half percent point gain of a life-constraining resource at the cost of a little non-essential entertainment for a small minority of people.

It's the same when you are trying to make a tight budget. First you cut off all the stupid impulse purchases. Then you figure out how much of each useful expense you are able to sacrifice. And only then you decide if you can or cannot afford one single hedonic purchase per month to keep up the morale.

dchichkov• 11 years ago

Please excuse my ignorance in that area, but what is happening to water after it had been "used" for landscaping? Does it disappear from local ecosystem, like water that went into sewer, or does it stay locally and come back as fog/rain/dew/etc?

munificent• 11 years ago

According to this [1], irrigation—which includes both golf courses and agriculture—accounts for 60.7% of California's water consumption. According this [2], golf courses account for 1%.

It's impossible to make progress without having facts.

[1] http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/ [2]: http://www.golfdigest.com/blogs/the-loop/2014/04/california-...

Flip-per• 11 years ago

Warning: strong language and opinion

I'm glad each time climate change consequences hit the US instead of other countries that contributed way less, like Tuvalu.

You consider this rude? Fair enough, I consider it rude to destroy the planet we are living on, at least in a way that makes it habitable for humans. Of course other countries are not innocent either, but the (institutions of the) US stand out in many ways.

We need as much pressure as possible for the three big climate-relevant conferences in 2015 (Paris et cetera), this will be the best chance we get for the next couple of years. If drinking water or water to grow plants runs out maybe some people start to care finally. We all can be fucking glad if any of the upcoming changes turns out to be reversible. I'm afraid that few will be (keyword tipping points).

minikites• 11 years ago

I live in rural New York and I have mixed feelings about fracking for similar reasons. Why should we push environmental problems onto other people? We should be the ones to deal with them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_the_Nig...

A UNDP report states that there have been a total of 6,817 oil spills between 1976 and 2001, which account for a loss of three million barrels of oil, of which more than 70% was not recovered.

happyscrappy3• 11 years ago

The sad truth is that the US will be fine. Few countries are as well positioned for rapid change as the US. Sorry.

nemothekid• 11 years ago

I'm unsure if we can safely assume that California's recent drought troubles are the cause of climate change, and not the fact that California really is a giant desert.

If anything human intervention made California livable.

dragonwriter4• 11 years ago

I'm unsure if we can safely assume that California's recent drought troubles are the cause of climate change,

Literally no one has argued that California's recent drought troubles are the cause of climate change. (The result of, OTOH...)

and not the fact that California really is a giant desert.

The Central Valley is a giant desert, but California's water problems aren't because the Central Valley is a giant desert, its because the water received by the rest of California have been far below the historical norms for several years.

Now, consuming lots of water -- e.g., by shipping lots of water from other places to the desert for agriculture -- makes California more sensitive to droughts than it otherwise would be, to be sure.

waterlesscloud3• 11 years ago

I believe recent scientific studies have said the California drought is not caused by climate change.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/12/new-study-cal...

BashiBazouk2• 11 years ago

I believe the most recent theory is that the drought cycle is normal but the severity of the drought is influenced by climate change.

ars8• 11 years ago

The drought in California has nothing to do with climate change.

If drinking water or water to grow plants runs out

If anything climate change will make more water not less. (Higher temperatures mean more evaporation.) The water would just be in a different location, not that there would be less of it.

mitchty• 11 years ago

Yep, the drought should be thought of more as a return to normalcy for California. We have been living under an incredibly wet period of California the past 100 or so years. We were wrong to think that was the norm.

Climate change will impact things but climate change is not the cause of Californias problems. All this has happened before and all that jazz.

JimboOmega2• 11 years ago

The sad truth is that the net outcome of this drought will probably hurt those in less developed countries more than Americans.

Californians will not go thirsty or not be able to take showers; there's enough water for municipal supplies.

Agriculture will, however, take a hit. While the valley produces a huge amount of produce, it is still a small part of the overall California economy.

Prices will go up for vegetables which will need to be produced elsewhere. Americans won't really notice. SV will keep on humming. But in other places the prices for food will go up.

Remember the 2007-8 food price crisis? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%9308_world_food_pric...

Most Americans don't.

happyscrappy3• 11 years ago

That is not a very satisfying answer for people hoping for America's demise.

puredemo2• 11 years ago

Whatever dude. The vast majority of climate change comes from Brazil destroying their rainforests, it has little to do with the US.

If drinking water or water to grow plants runs out maybe some people start to care finally.

No, water will simply become further commoditized, as Nestle is already doing today. And instead of the bottom Billion suffering it'll be the bottom 5 Billion.

The US will still mostly be fine.

dragonwriter4• 11 years ago

The vast majority of climate change comes from Brazil destroying their rainforests, it has little to do with the US.

Brazil's destruction of its rainforests to create land to raise beef for export actually has more to do with the US than you might think.

I mean, why do you think that is a profitable (in the short run, anyway) thing to do?

ziyadb• 11 years ago

Just to add my 2 cents.

I'm based in Saudi Arabia, and considering the deserted climate and environment, there are literally no persistent water sources (aside from a few select wells that are over-exploited by bottled water manufacturers).

Desalination is currently (as of 2015) being used to supply 50% of Saudi Arabia's water needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_...

So yes, it's feasible, and just FYI, it is provided free of cost.

Someone1234• 11 years ago

Great point.

When people talk about California's water problems they make it sound as if there isn't an easy solution, but there is. The real core of this entire issue is not the methods but more the cost, it is ultimately a conversation about saving money NOT about some finite limitation on water in real terms.

California could solve this issue with a pen stroke, it just might hurt their farmers, which is really what all the concern is about. If water doubled or more in price (which is realistic), that is expensive for farmers who need a ton of the stuff for their crops. So will supermarkets pay 30% more or will they look abroad?

I actually think even with a higher water bill, it will still be cheaper for US retailers to buy US produce. Shipping that stuff by ocean isn't exactly cheap with the price of oil. I think where it would hurt US farms is their exports to Europe in particular, Europe is in a geographical position to buy from either the east or west, both by ocean. So if US/California crops go up in cost they might just buy them from someone else.

But let us not pretend that either shipping water in from other states OR just distilling water isn't an option for California, because it is. It just might hurt farmers and make them less internationally competitive.

BashiBazouk2• 11 years ago

This is part of what is needed. Water rights in California are as old as the state and extremely convoluted. Those with the older water rights have a practically guaranteed supply and generally irrigate in remarkably wasteful ways. Breaking the old water rights and increasing the price of water would push farmers to move to Israeli style computer controlled drip irrigation rather than current methods of just spraying tons of water over the field. Gov Brown was talking about bring that technology over and pushing it hard into farming...

brianwawok• 11 years ago

Feasible for human drinking but I assume not farming (citation required). Which goes along with the story of "People in cali are not going to die of thirst, but a lot of farmers might go bankrupt"

ugh123• 11 years ago

I don't know what you mean by "feasible". Saudi Arabia neither has the population (28mil vs 38mil) of California nor the Farming needs (I don't have numbers on Saudi farms but i'll guess its somewhere near zero).

There are a number of desalination plants along the coast of California and a few more scheduled to be built. However they're very expensive to build and to operate and their yield isn't where it should be.

Supplying 50% of Cali's water via desalination is not at all feasible

gdulli• 11 years ago

They'll have enough salt to last forever!

driverdan2• 11 years ago

So yes, it's feasible, and just FYI, it is provided free of cost.

Nothing is free of cost.

marcusgarvey• 11 years ago

How this gets dealt with will be very telling for the larger environmental disaster the world is facing due to prices not reflecting their true costs.

shit_parade5• 11 years ago

Agriculture uses the vast majority of water but most farmers pay very little, sometimes nothing, and sometimes they 'own' water rights which can be very valuable and often worth more than any of the land they farm upon.

Farmers have been overdrawing from rivers and groundwater for decades and the US government has been very slow to respond. Promises of 'smart meters' or 'water markets' are often delayed with time tables being pushed further and further back. Meanwhile the government also hands out large subsidies to grow a wide variety of crops, most recently the federal government has encouraged corn for biofuel, more corn is being grown for biofuel than is being used for livestock (and effects of carbon usage for biofuel is likely 0 or even negative once you take in effect it's entire life cycle). Typically ever pound of beef takes 7 pounds of corn, pork is 5 to 1, poultry is around 3 to 1. Again, we grow more corn for biofuel than we do for livestock because of government subsidies.

If anyone spends anytime at all on this issue they quickly learn that farmers are a powerful lobby, that the agricultural bill is essentially a large handout to a small, tiny, group of people. One reason this occurs is because every state gets two senators, and many middle states are essentially empty but for farmers and their communities.

Government has been mismanaging water usage for decades in the US and yet the first thing people suggest is for the government to come in and fix the problems they created, the amount of cognitive dissonance this takes is staggering.

shit_parade5• 11 years ago

I also want to add one more thing, 'farmers' as a category is not your salt of the earth, homespun family anymore. Most crops being grown are actually produced by large multinational conglomerates, the fact that people picture the downtrodden poor of the dust bowl whenever someone uses the word farmer is a triumph of marketing.

frandroid• 11 years ago

" A recent Field Poll showed that 94% of Californians surveyed believe that the drought is serious, and that one-third support mandatory rationing."

There is a major problem, and damn if I'm going to make any personal sacrifice to help solve it.

coldcode• 11 years ago

Rationing for people does nothing since its only 10%. Rationing for ag kills farms and ag products which you then have to get from somewhere else. Unless you are a big farmer there is nothing you can do.

masterleep• 11 years ago

We can hope that 2/3 of Californians realize that mandatory rationing is a bad idea. A far better idea is to use the price system, as we do for almost all other commodities.

andlarry• 11 years ago

Most of the water is used by agriculture. You can take all the 2 minute showers you want, changing how the megafarms use all that water would have the most impact.

Of course, there's this idea that the farms are the historical yeoman-type, so it's rare to see solutions involving agriculture dicussed.

http://californiawaterblog.com/2011/05/05/water%E2%80%94who-...

When you examine water use within the interconnected network of California that feeds farms and cities, use is roughly 52 percent agricultural, 14 percent urban and 33 percent environmental.

bearclough• 11 years ago

Does anyone have any good intel on nuclear powered desalination plants. I know desalinated water is about the most expensive around but for keeping the population with enough drinking and washing water.

The agricultural impact is huge and requires more water than the people do. But, I wonder if desalination would help supply water to the populous.

Teknoman117• 11 years ago

Honestly we should probably start building desalination facilities statewide so that we can begin to supplant the natural supply. The one being built in San Diego is a few months away from coming online and it will be providing 33% of the city's water supply iirc.

I know people have talked about it in the past, but usually the response is "but they are an eye sore if I go to the beach." Well, what would you rather do? die of starvation and dehydration or have a desalination plant near your beach?

nathanm412• 11 years ago

The waste brine water is pretty toxic to the environment. Nobody believes that this will cause people to die of dehydration. Worst case scenario, if you look beyond the severe inconvenience factor of having to regulate when you can water your lawn, or if you can fill your pool, lots of farmers would lose their jobs. Almonds and rice won't be able to continue under these conditions. Beyond that, there is plenty of water to go around to keep people hydrated.

entwife• 11 years ago

Regarding California agriculture, and specifically growing the produce and vegetable crops that California supplies the rest of the country. An excellent model for urban agriculture, Growing Power of Milwaukee and Chicago, provides such vegetables grown in city greenhouses (lettuce, tomatoes, greens, etc.). They do it year-round in Chicago. Some of the heat comes from compost, worm bins, fish tanks. There are several offshoot businesses (e.g. Eco City Farm here in DC) replicating their model. Growing Power offers training several times a year. So hopefully other places - urban brownfields - will take up some of the agriculture production from California in view of the water problem.

ck2• 11 years ago

Burning gasoline produces water (yes, it does).

Not suitable for drinking but maybe it could be reclaimed to water crops.

Alternately it would be nice if there was a leap in desalination technology where it would take a tenth of the power.

ryguytilidie• 11 years ago

In the Bay Area, things don't seem that bad. However, I drove from LA to SF and holy wow. Everything along I5 is just a dustbowl. Farms are empty with big signs saying that there are no jobs because there is no water.

However, its hard not to blame the farmers themselves. We consistently hear that it takes a gallon of water for a single Almond, yet here we are and farmers aren't looking for new crops that use less water, it's simply "give us more water" as if this is realistic...

gkanapathy• 11 years ago

Well, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/science/space/suddenly-it-...

lotsofmangos3• 11 years ago

If we ever manage to actually run out of fresh water or power on a planet that has an incoming 89 peta-watts and is mostly ocean, then if there is a galactic civilisation, we will enjoy brief celebrity as the latest species to win whatever passes for a Darwin Award.

dataker• 11 years ago

I must be cursed.

I spend my time between San Francisco and Sao Paulo(Brazil). Although Brazil has natural resources, Sao Paulo has been experiencing a severe drought for several months. Many residents only have water between 7am-1pm and it doesn't seem to get any better. Actually, regulators have been trying to come up with water rationing and limit its usage to two days a week.

I hope CA doesn't have to go through the same thing.

http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/02/no-one-is-quite-sure-...

madaxe_again2• 11 years ago

Acre-feet? Can someone translate this into furlong-leagues? Or preferably, y'know, an SI fluid measure like litres?

phkahler• 11 years ago

Seems a good time to post this: http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world...

It a TED talk about reversing desertification with farming practices. Not applicable to every crop, but here you go.

harmmonica• 11 years ago

This thread is long so this comment will likely fall pretty quickly, but this page is pretty telling in terms of usage by sector: http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108

1. Environmental 50% 2. Ag 40% 3. Urban 10%

(btw, this is particularly topical when my landlord just informed us he'd be swapping our shower heads for lower-flow ones due to increased costs in Southern Cal (bringing a toothpick to a gun fight?))

The thought process for how to decrease use, though, would be: 1. Can we tap into environmental use and, if so, how much, or is that verboten? 2. If no, which ag can we forgo with the least human/economic impact? 3. If no easy answer looking at both human and economic impact of ag, which ag can we forgo with the least human impact (e.g., if none of us had an almond ever again, would the world be worse off for it? That makes killing almonds purely economic) 4. If there's not enough from 1-3, then we've probably gotten to a life-threatening lack of water and so we get rid of crops that have the least "nutritional" value (i.e., crops that are best at sustaining life are the ones we keep) 5. If we still can't support life, looks like it's time to desalinate, create a pipeline from east or move

Of course, even though it's a drop in the bucket, we should just immediately save the 5% that's used for urban and residential landscaping (see article; ~50% of urban use is landscaping) because there's nothing "essential" about that even though there would be an economic impact (and a whole lotta angry golfers).

lightblade• 11 years ago

What is preventing is from building canals from the Northeast to California? They are having devastating snowstorm s and we having draught. It make sense.

danans• 11 years ago

The Mississippi River system and the Rocky Mountains?

paulsmith• 11 years ago

the technology and expertise exist to handle this harrowing future. It will require major changes in policy and infrastructure that could take decades to identify and act upon. Today, not tomorrow, is the time to begin.

Someone should, I don't know, start a startup or something.

tracker15• 11 years ago

We have oil pipelines stretching thousands of miles... why don't we create a water pipeline, sending fresh water to the southwest? I've never really understood why this wasn't an obvious thing started 80+ years ago. We created roadways, and a fairly complex electricity grid... water transfer has been a critical thing forever, and something we haven't really addressed on a national level.

Not only that, but hydrogen as fuel stores would be a very realistic scenario if water wasn't so scarce in locations where solar/wind is so ideal.

Domenic_S• 11 years ago

They're called aqueducts, and California has quite a few, typically sending water from northern california/the Sierras to Los Angeles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Aqueduct

tracker15• 11 years ago

I'm talking about actual pipelines from the midwest/southeast to the southwest U.S. ... much larger scale projects... I know we transport water across states, but I'm talking across the country.

Mz2• 11 years ago

Yeah, California already gets a portion of the Colorado River. http://www.mwdh2o.com/mwdh2o/pages/yourwater/supply/colorado...

So it's been done. The crux of the problem here is that the history of the state is all about thinking like you do -- "let's just import more water" -- instead of finding ways to live within our means in terms of available water out here. So Californians like to have their own pools and like to plant grass in their yards and like to grow Rice in the freaking desert and then whine when long term drought threatens some "crisis" which is basically artificially created. There are lots of ways improve what we are doing without trying to import yet more water. For long term sustainability, that's what we really need to focus on. My understanding is that the Colorado River is already so chopped up and whored out to the water needs of the west that it is a pathetic trickle, instead of a roaring river, by the time it reaches the ocean (somewhere in Mexico, IIRC).

There are real world limits here on "just import more." And that is a big part of the problem here. It's a desert. We need to learn to live like residents of a desert. That's the only long-term, sustainable solution.

tracker15• 11 years ago

I wasn't intending to bring more from the Colorado river.. I was meaning more from the midwest and southeast where there is flooding most years... A lot of that could be siphoned out without too much affect on those regions... we have the ability to move water much farther distances.

For that matter, look at the northern europe and scandanavian research into water purification.. we should also be working towards this effort.

cpursley• 11 years ago

If water were priced correctly, this would not be a problem. Charge what it is worth and people will conserver.

zach• 11 years ago

It's fascinating to see the many reservoirs we were supposed to have built by now. The engineers of the 1950s and 1960s had a lot of big plans that were all supposed to be in place decades ago (look at the gray squares on the map):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project

A lot of people will say "the environmentalists" stopped them, but really it was that lawmakers gave environmental concerns only one effective tool -- enforcing standards via litigation.

The task of resolving environmental concerns was pushed out of the political and economic arena into an adversarial process that takes a huge amount of paperwork, lawyer time and calendar time to resolve.

Exactly like the Republicans with Proposition 13 (a California initiative which required supermajority voter approval for taxes), once you take fundamental powers away from the legislative and executive branches, you really limit the potential effectiveness of the government. And now California's infrastructure is a mess.

xaqfox• 11 years ago

" you really limit the potential effectiveness of the government. And now California's infrastructure is a mess." Following that same point, you also limit the potential ineffectiveness of the government and apparently that is what the people wanted. Your argument also assumes there is not such thing as too much power in the hands of "the legislative and executive".

mark_l_watson• 11 years ago

All water subsidies should be terminated and the cost of food should reflect the amount of water used to grow the food.

Too bad our special interest controlled government prevents this.

beefman• 11 years ago

Israel has built its first four desalination plants in the last 10 years. They now provide 40% of the country's potable water. The newest plant (Sorek) is the world's largest, producing over half a million cubic meters a day at a cost of $0.68 per cubic meter.

Edits:

I'm unable to find data on Israel's net import of calories. I suspect it's substantial, but 85% of their agricultural water supply is treated urban wastewater.

I'm part of a family of four living near Berkeley, CA. We'd need 50" of rain a year to be self-sufficient on our 4000 ft^2 property, which is about twice what we get. I have no problem commandeering runoff from some place in the Sierras. But it'll have to be 8,000 ft^2, because what hits this lot (and every other lot in the neighborhood) goes straight into the bay.

declan2• 11 years ago

80 percent of the developed water supply in California is used by agriculture. About 6 percent is industrial and commercial. That leaves 7 percent residential landscaping, and 7 percent residential non-landscaping (showers, washing machines, etc.). Source: http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/where-we-...

Even if residential landscaping or non-landscaping water usage dropped by a quarter immediately, which seems rather unlikely, that's close to a rounding error compared to the amount of water to turn our near-desert into an agricultural breadbasket. Put another way, more water is used for almond farming alone in California than all residential landscaping or residential non-landscaping: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...

The drought is real, but I would take op-eds like these more seriously if they acknowledged the above figures. And the fact that some cities like Sacramento still don't have everyone on metered water -- flat rate! -- and meters won't be fully installed until after 2025. Source: http://portal.cityofsacramento.org/%20Utilities/Conservation...

malkia2• 11 years ago

It looks like it won't help much, but landscaping should stop. Double stop. Triple stop.

No need to waste water in there, and comply with neighbor whatever regulations.

VanillaCafe• 11 years ago

I agree with OP. Solve the big problems first. If at some point landscaping ranks as a top consumer of water, then solve it. Attention and effort is a resource -- spend it where it has the most impact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

the_watcher3• 11 years ago

There's pretty lucrative incentives for adjusting landscaping to reduce water consumption - I grew up in the Palm Springs area (which, ironically, is one of the few parts of California that can water itself - the golf courses have to buy their water from outside sources, but there is a large aquifer out there), and there's been a major move towards desert landscaping to take advantage of it.

the_watcher3• 11 years ago

Related to this: California is one of the largest producers of rice (one of the most water-intensive crops in the world) in the United States. Rice (and other water intensive crops) shouldn't be grown in places that have water issues.

aero142• 11 years ago

Texas is also recovering from a 10 year drought and was growing rice up until last year. It's just crazy.

jqm3• 11 years ago

Everyone keeps blaming nuts, and they do use a lot of water, but Alfalfa is the biggest agricultural user of water in the state.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-pla...

swimfar2• 11 years ago

How is 7% close to a rounding error? Especially when, in the case of landscaping, it is not a necessity and is almost completely for aesthetics[1]. If someone said they had money problems and it turns out they spend 7% of their income on makeup/barber visits/tanning salons, would you not point those out as possible expenses to reduce?

Just because residential usage is not the main source of the problem doesn't mean people should just not care about it at all. I'm not implying that everyone take 30 second showers. I just think it's important to be conscious of your water usage and reducing it when it makes sense. Addressing multiple sources of the problem simultaneously is possible. Also, sometimes it's possible that you're able to reduce the smaller portion more than the larger portion, so you should never focus only on the large numbers.

[1] Okay, neither are almonds, but I think you understand what I mean.

declan2• 11 years ago

How is 7% close to a rounding error?

I didn't say 7% was a rounding error. I wrote "a quarter" of 7%, which is rather different.

Mz2• 11 years ago

There are things that could be done both for residential use and commercial use that could reduce how much water is needed without causing a catastrophe.

Many years ago, as a kid, I read an article about experiments in the Middle East to create a small basin for individual plants (like trees) that would be the right size for holding rainwater and keeping it hydrated without risking root-rot.

Think about how a shower is slightly slanted such that all the water goes to a drain in the corner. Instead of a drain in the corner, you have a plant in that corner. The basin is just a depression in the soil, with mounded up slow walls made from soil.

In the residential sector, you can google "earth ships" for ideas about things currently available that would put less stress on California's water supplies.

cdnsteve• 11 years ago

California agricultural statistics: http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/

California's top-ten valued commodities for 2013 are:

Milk — $7.6 billion

Almonds — $5.8 billion

Grapes — $5.6 billion

Cattle, Calves — $3.05 billion

Strawberries — $2.2 billion

Walnuts — $1.8 billion

Lettuce — $1.7 billion

Hay — $1.6 billion

Tomatoes — $1.2 billion

Nursery plants— $1.2 billion

SilasX• 11 years ago

Almonds use 10% of the water[1], and we're risking a empty aquifers for them when they're 0.3% of state GDP?

[1] My only source on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whyenot

[2] 2013 GDP: ~$2 trillion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California

wavesounds• 11 years ago

Why don't we run a water pipeline down from Oregon? In Portland they have so much water that their drinking fountains literally do not have an off switch. We run pipelines for oil all over the country, would it be that hard to run one for water?

crpatino6• 11 years ago

The pipeline is expensive, and can move only so much volume per second.

You'd need basically and artificial river. Then, there's landscape constrains. And Oregonians will veto any decision about their water siphoned to California anyways.

MattHeard• 11 years ago

My back-of-the-napkin calculation tells me that watering an acre of alfalfa uses the same amount of water as having a nine-month shower with an inefficient flow.

If a Pigovean tax of 1c/gallon was applied to California, an 8-minute shower would cost about 20-40c more while an acre of alfalfa would cost an extra $20,0000.

ilaksh• 11 years ago

Hydroponics?

aceperry• 11 years ago

This is definitely concerning. I used to wash my car and truck about every week or two when they were new. Today, I haven't washed them in over two years. During the last "big" storm in the bay area, I was hoping to go outside and wash my truck during the rain. I was down with the flu and couldn't do it, but didn't miss much. I don't think I could've washed the truck, unlike many years ago when I actually washed my car during a rainstorm. The other day, I rinsed off some bird crap from the side of my truck, it was a huge mess but I used the leftovers from a plastic bottled water. Just trying to conserve water. I feel sorry for Uber/Lyft drivers who have to keep their cars clean.

openloop• 11 years ago

So maybe crops have to change. Surely the epicenter of science and engineering can figure out a responsible way to harness solar desalinization. A bond could be offered with a nominal return to investors.

Jaymoon85• 11 years ago

Not that anyone cares about follow up to obvious click-bait, but the LAT issued an apology admitting the headline was misleading.

www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0320-drought-explainer-20150320-story.html

California has about one year of water left

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