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How 'Virtual Water' Can Help Ease California's Drought
HughPickens.com writes Bill Davidow And Michael S. Malone write in the WSJ that recent rains have barely made a dent in California's enduring drought, now in its fourth year. Thus, it's time to solve the state's water problem with radical solutions, and they can begin with "virtual water." This concept describes water that is used to produce food or other commodities, such as cotton. According to Davidow and Malone, when those commodities are shipped out of state, virtual water is exported. Today California exports about six trillion gallons of virtual water, or about 500 gallons per resident a day. How can this happen amid drought? The problem is mispricing. If water were priced properly, it is a safe bet that farmers would waste far less of it, and the effects of California's drought—its worst in recorded history—would not be so severe. "A free market would raise the price of water, reflecting its scarcity, and lead to a reduction in the export of virtual water," say Davidow and Malone. "A long history of local politics, complicated regulation and seemingly arbitrary controls on distribution have led to gross inefficiency."
For example, producing almonds is highly profitable when water is cheap but almond trees are thirsty, and almond production uses about 10% of California's total water supply. The thing is, nuts use a whole lot of water: it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. "Suppose an almond farmer could sell real water to any buyer, regardless of county boundaries, at market prices—many hundreds of dollars per acre-foot—if he agreed to cut his usage in half, say, by drawing only two acre-feet, instead of four, from his wells," say the authors. "He might have to curtail all or part of his almond orchard and grow more water-efficient crops. But he also might make enough money selling his water to make that decision worthwhile." Using a similar strategy across its agricultural industry, California might be able to reverse the economic logic that has driven farmers to plant more water-intensive crops. "This would take creative thinking, something California is known for, and trust in the power of free markets," conclude the authors adding that "almost anything would be better, and fairer, than the current contradictory and self-defeating regulations."
For example, producing almonds is highly profitable when water is cheap but almond trees are thirsty, and almond production uses about 10% of California's total water supply. The thing is, nuts use a whole lot of water: it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. "Suppose an almond farmer could sell real water to any buyer, regardless of county boundaries, at market prices—many hundreds of dollars per acre-foot—if he agreed to cut his usage in half, say, by drawing only two acre-feet, instead of four, from his wells," say the authors. "He might have to curtail all or part of his almond orchard and grow more water-efficient crops. But he also might make enough money selling his water to make that decision worthwhile." Using a similar strategy across its agricultural industry, California might be able to reverse the economic logic that has driven farmers to plant more water-intensive crops. "This would take creative thinking, something California is known for, and trust in the power of free markets," conclude the authors adding that "almost anything would be better, and fairer, than the current contradictory and self-defeating regulations."
See, I'm a gluten-free vegan and the alomonds and almond milk were one of the few things I could eat and drink.
I think I'm gonna have my genes spliced with a plant, turn green and eat by laying on the beach. And as people walk by, they'll inquire, "Who is that little green man?"
This plan seems to forget that it takes time to grow these crops. It takes 3 years for your first crop of almonds and 8 before the tree is delivering anything like commercial quantities. These trees have decades of work invested in them and the posts suggestion of ripping out the crop is stupid.
There are lots and lots of ways to lower the water usage of both the general population and water intensive applications such as farming. Are all the irrigation channels covered? That makes a huge difference. Installing dual flush toilets, recommending low flow shower heads. South East Queensland went through an 8 year drought and people were encouraged to bring their water usage down to 200l per person per day. That may still seem a lot but it is significantly lower than the normal usage.
From there you also have to look at recycled water. What happens to the waste water once it has been treated? Using RO membrane treatment plants the water is purer then what falls from the sky, so pipe that back into your reservoirs instead of dumping it in the river / ocean.
... don't plant water-intensive crops in a drought zone? Naaa, that would require actual understanding of the situation. As it is, the only thing that will help is all those water-wasters going bankrupt. Reality is merciless.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
electric power pricing that California came up with in 2000/01?
Yeah, the free-market always finds a way...
The "virtual water" concept is unnecessary just to improve on real-water scarcity. Just price real-water properly.
...instead of enabling or encouraging farmers to become water speculators?
If the inputs are priced more accurately than the outputs should reflect these costs. If almonds take a lot of water to grow, then almonds should be more expensive to reflect the higher water prices.
Allowing farmers to sell unused water seems like an invitation for speculators to buy farms not for the purpose of farming but to just speculate in water, or worse, figure ways to manipulate both commodity markets and water supplies.
A better solution might be encouraging water CREATION through incentives for water recycling or desalination through renewable energy.
State officials have cut off supplies to water districts; their federal counterparts will soon follow suit. Some farmers who made the risky decision in past years to plant lucrative pistachio and almond trees, which require year-round watering, have had to bulldoze them. Others are fallowing farmland, or digging deeper to tap brackish groundwater, further depleting aquifers.
It sound like farmers are already being forced out of growing crops in a desert that require a lot of water.
Companies in other states that buy CA produced crops should have to send the watere equivalent back to CA.
When Hadera desalination plant was brought online water concerns were vastly alleviated.
CA has a water infrastructure built for less than 20 million people and 40+ million now live here. CA just passed a 8 billion water bond but there is no new water in that bill, just a lot of fraud and waste but no new water.
Instead of police-state water rationing and other idiotic measures which require people to drastically change how they live and have people reporting on each other, make more water. Time to desalinate.
http://www.water-technology.net/projects/hadera-desalination/
Its amazing in the atomic-jet-space-age with internet 40 million people in the 5-6th largest economy in the world (CA alone) sit around like morons and pray for rain and "get worried" when there are solutions on the table now.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Honestly California is a perfect example of how to do absolutely everything wrong with land and resource management. Now they are all whining that they deserve everyone elses water.
Do they dont deserve anything, all the residents there caused the problems, and none of them want to do what it takes to fix the problem.
Virtual water is just a stopgap until they come up with 3D printed water.
You're victim-blaming here. The invisible hand barely had a hand in what's been happening.
"Virtual Water" as described in the article is a thinly veiled attempt to get water on the futures market. Someone is clearly trying to insert themselves as a middle man in this process to add to their own wealth. How about instead of repeatedly trying to build an oil pipeline across America we build a water pipeline network instead. Areas with excess water (think flood prone places) can send it to drought areas. Building on that, coastal areas can build desalinization plants and ship their excess to dry areas and the salt to snowy regions (my state buys road salt from a desalinization plant in South America). The US needs a new ambitious project to build jobs and create industries. This could be the next railroad or highway project that gets thousands of people back to work.
Something like 60% of the US's commercial honeybee hives end up going to pollinate the California almond crop.
Maybe they honeybees will do better if they're not made to take that trip, one less commute, maybe fewer colony collapses.
Too bad about California's produce. Food's going to get more expensive, especially almonds.
--PM
Build giant domes over the plants. Then we can recapture the water and use it over and over.
Fee Fie Foe Fum... I Smell ENRON!
ENRON. The latest wonder-tool of the late 90s, a bold new approach to the distribution and settlement policies of grid energy [or water!] suppliers. You have all been losing money trying to buy and sell your product among yourselves. Now it is time to buy and sell your product through US. We'll take a percent and you will have MORE.
ENRON. Let us make everything into a stock market, a futures market. Let us negotiate on your behalf (said to both halves at once). Let us woo you with impressive corporate speak and wooly acronyms to describe what is essentially a transparent middleman-insertion tactic.
ENRON. Tired of trying to sell your customer base on some desired tactic by disclosing said tactic to the PSC and the public? Tired of those public hearings? Let ENRON come to the rescue. Tell us what you need to happen and we'll see that back-room conspiratorial tactics can ease your pain, by making all other options seem more expensive.
ENRON. Ask us how triggered brownouts [or droughts!] and planned resource shortages can improve your bottom line [and ours]!
ENRON. Because if energy [or water!] were priced properly, it is a safe bet that people would waste far less of it. We can help.
ENRON. Because no one needs to innovate or improve infrastructure. We just need to make life suck a little more, cost more, and people will demand less. More complicated is BETTER.
This message brought to you by The Smartest Guys In The Room.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
How about thorium-based nuclear desalination? Any progress on that front?
The invisible hand works for its own pockets. Just because a situation normalizes doesn't means laws get back to normal levels.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's only one problem with this theory - we'll call it the 'Five Gallon Walnut' problem - if it takes 5 gallons to grow a (single) walnut, then why don't walnuts weigh about as much as a five gallon bucket of water? The reason they don't is because while a walnut USES 5 gallons of water, it doesn't RETAIN those 5 gallons, whe vast majority of this so-called 'virtual water' works it's way back into the environment. If the 'Five Gallon Walnut' theory was valid, with every walnut consumed, five gallons of water would disappear, never to be seen again - but that isn't what happens.
The USA should already have started a massive water engineering project on the scale of the interstate highway system. We need to be able to reclaim much more water for regions that get too much in quick bursts and move it around the country as need arises. Clean drinking water is already starting to become one of our top concerns, and it's only going to get worse. We should be planning for it now and investing in our future, but no one is even talking about it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
One would think that solar powered desalination would be an obvious choice. The fact that this is not being exploited means I am missing something obvious - probably cost.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Golf courses.
Of course, we can't do that. Can't take execs their toys away. And where would they congregate in a relaxed atmosphere to devise more ways to stay ahead of the competition, i.e. the plebes?
Can't have that. And since their greens turn into browns already with less water being available, it's about damn time those useless proles learn that thirst can be a gift, dammit!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Creating incentives to reduce waste is (obviously) a good idea, but in what sense is this 'virtual' water? I suspect that they're trying to obfuscate by not saying pricing.
The idea of virtual water is superfluous and somewhat silly. There's a real water shortage, so there has to be prioritization. Market pricing of water makes sense as part of the solution. But first you have to answer the question of who owns it in the first place. Maybe the State owns all the water rights and creates the market? Water law in the west is a mess.
I was going to make a similar post...
It's my understanding that the current almond tree bubble is driven by (wall street?) investors who noticed the price mismatch in water and are using it to make a quick buck, the rest of the state me damned. Of course, these funds have deep pockets and probably can lobby effectively to keep prices where they are until they cash out.
Seems very much like a variation on ENRON but with water instead of gas.
I wonder what they are defining as "water usage". If you're talking about irrigation being pulled from natural water course I can somewhat understand but something tells me they're lumping in rainfall, private retaining ponds and other sources that wouldn't make it to a cities aquifer in any case along with ones that would. Farmers should take steps to prevent water loss in a drought situation, but there are also stories a plenty of individuals, government officials and companies burning through millions of gallons to keep their lawns green and their cars sparkling.
We could just import dehydrated water. I hear the transportation cost of water, once dehydrated, is minimal. Its an obvious solution.
If water were priced properly, it is a safe bet that farmers would waste far less of it
So by adding a "tax" on things or legislation that penalized farmers who are apparently mispricing due to not calculating the water they are "wasting", said bureaucrats will ensure a) that no food is produced in California and b) the cost of living increases as fuel costs are paid to have all food imported from out of state. Well done sirs, well done.
I'm willing to bet that the genius who came up with farmers "wasting" water has never been to a farm let alone worked one.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Powdered alcohol.
Nuff said
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Here are some stats - almonds use about 10% of CA's water. Crops for human use are about 25% of all CA use (including almonds). Total agriculture water use is 75%. What's missing? Livestock. Animal agribusiness soak up 50% of all water used in CA. Why are we talking about showers and lawns when animal agribusiness out scales EVERYTHING else by such a huge margin? I outline this more here: http://veganstart.org/almonds.
This is nowhere near the worst drought in California's recorded history.
Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.
Unless, of course, those proxies are unreliable.
http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...
it's in my head
Last week's EconTalk was on water and it discusses the current usage, production structure and the resulting shortages in California. http://www.econtalk.org/archiv...
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Half a cent per gallon is 7,727 times MORE per gallon than a Los Angeles resident typically pays if they manage to stay in Tier 1 pricing all year. For facts concerning Los Angeles water rates see: https://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/fa... .
You are orders of magnitude off in understanding pricing in the water commodity market. Not that RO can't be done, just about every golf course and condo Cabo San Lucas BSC MX is watered via reverse osmosis. However, the valuations of each of those condos is in the millions per 1,000 sq ft so the investment makes sense for the developers. When the average home price in California picks up a couple more digits, RO will make perfect sense.
This solution has been brought to you by the book, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein. In the book it takes place on the moon, so water is even more difficult to get, but the solutions are essentially the same.
They're sitting right next to the Pacific ocean.
The majority of them are running around like headless chickens, fulminating about "sea level rise" while shouting "Agua! Agua!" at the top of their metaphorical lungs.
What they should do (should have done long since) is put in a series of desalination plants and some pipes, pumps. Maybe not even that much plumbing. They do have a reasonable watershed that will do the distribution for them if they put the water in at the normal source locations.
But they're too hysterical about atomic power to do the right thing.
It's like a starving person complaining about hunger when they're sitting right next to a series of cornucopias of food stretching into the interminable distance. Take a gander at the state budget and keep in mind those figures are multiplied by 1,000 (see footnote, "* Dollars in thousands"), and don't include federal funds, and that's not even considering getting private enterprise involved so things could actually be done efficiently.
The people of California deserve to suffer for the abject stupidity and incompetence of the people they elected, and their own.
Fini.
We should be paying more for water! And food! And especially especially gasoline! It's ABSURD that gas is subsidized, although I understand that stable prices are important.
Thanks for the link. Though when I take these numbers I come to a price of 0.65 cents per gallon:
Lets take the price of 4.8$=480 cent per HCF. 1HCF=748 Gallons. 480/748 = 0.65 cents per gallon. How do you come to these high numbers?
Your problem is that your approach *requires* cooperation to work, and there is a benefit for individuals not to cooperate in that scenario. What happens when your commune gets a freeloader who doesn't feel like working as hard? There's a reason that "for the communal good" fails hard every time it has been tried, from Jamestown to the Kibbutzim to, yes, the forced communization of farms in Ukraine.
So, if what you meant to say was, "humans might not be selfish if they weren't any more intelligent than ants", then I award you 50 points for making a useless but true statement.
People will always recognize the ability to profit, whether it be via direct competition or by freeloading in a "communal good" scenario. Then what happens is your kind decides to *make* their utopian society work despite their false beliefs about human nature, typically using guns and violence to force people to cooperate... "for the common good".
Communism is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people in the 20th century, all because some morons believed that "humans are only selfish because they are taught to be selfish."
I wonder how much CO2 those wicked agricultural crops scrubbed from the polluted California atmosphere...
According to your link, water is $4.832 per HFC (748 gallons), which is $0.00646 per gallon. That's more than half a cent.
Also, tiered pricing is unfortunate in the way that it rewards the wealthy (who generally use the most water) for conserving a gallon of water more than it rewards the poor for doing the same thing.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Nonsense! The 'invisible hand' (rich land owners with huge water rights in this case) is the direct cause. It rations water, energy, etc to maintain high prices. All shortages are only a result of disagreement over price.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This story brought to you by the AntiWaster party of the People's Republic of California . Because we all know it's the almond tree growers who are wasting the water. Not the millionnaire Hollywood crowd decrying the 1% while filling there private pools with tyhosaunds of gallons of water per year. Oh the vinyarder's who sell there $100 a bottle wine to the Hollywood crowd. PS: Shame that most modern /. readers don't get the reference and haven't yet made it. SF once again predicts the future.
About half of California's water is used for alfalfa, hay and pasturage. Next to that, every other Californian water use is almost irrelevant - even almonds.
When you look at the numbers, it's clear water stress can only be managed by reducing consumption of animal products and restricting animal agriculture.
.: Semper Absurda
Please, please don't use the term "virtual" to describe the use of this real water.
Use iWater instead.
This story, and your comment, made me think of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
There is simply no way to allow people to flow into areas that are not capable of supporting the population. The notion of letting companies build and build and sell and sell is a disaster waiting to happen. Reducing the number of residents allowed to stay in the state and the amount of farming and industry allowed is a huge part of the solution. The idea that people are allowed to reproduce endlessly combined with capitalism is a group suicide pact. As far as a solution that might have some impact the building of salt to fresh water conversion plants can provide quite a bit of water to the farmers and homes in California. The downside is that it will raise property taxes and state income taxes to a point that poorer people will be driven out of the state. My state is forced to dump enormous amounts of water into the ocean as we have no way to store water from our frequent monsoon like rains. But all the while we have entire cities undermined due to water being extracted from the earth. Right this moment the core of engineers is dumping trillions of gallons of water from Lake Okeechobee into the ocean to ward off flooding expected in the spring rains. How wonderful it could be if we could sell that excess, fresh water to states that need it.
You mean like the half dozen existing plants and 15+ proposed for construction across the state?
There's only three plants. And they are small. And two of them are there because there's no other way to get water onto an island:
(1) Sand City
(2) Santa Catalina Island
(3) San Nicholas Islan
You are also apparently unaware that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Desalination from seawater costs about 8.5 kWH / m^2. That is a lot of power.
So use nuclear plants. Or use thermal desalination using the waste heat from existing power plants via secondary heat exchangers -- that's totally free energy that's being radiated into the environment and contributing to global warming.
Even ignoring the environmental impact, desalination is extremely energetically expensive.
You mean the "environmental impact" of lowering the sea level in the Pacific and thus offsetting the sea level rise due to global warming? That' a pretty stupid definition of "environmental impact"...
I find "virtual water" amusing.
It has only taken 10 days from the time I made a rather snarky comment thanking other states for exporting water to California in the form of cattle feedstock in a newspaper editorial, to an economist figuring out a way to make money from the idea.
My preferred solution is:
(1) Build nuclear plants
(2) Use thermal waste from nuclear plants to power one of the 6 methods of thermal desalination (Karachi, Pakistan has one; Israel has one)
(3) Quit charging so damn much for water and electricity, now that both are very cheap
Indeed, the reason hedonic and imputed values are added to the GDP - together about $6 trillion - or a spare Japan - is to keep the debt/GDP near 100%.
Or maybe it's because (in the case of imputed) we need to quantify the value of someone owning their home and living in it. Consider that if everyone owned a home, but rented it to someone else (and rented a home for themselves with the proceeds) , you would have the exact same situation as if everyone just lived in their own home. Except that without imputed value the latter would contribute nothing to GDP, while the former would contribute massively.
To remove the (artificial) fluctuations from people switching from ownership to renting, we just calculate it as if everyone was renting.
In the end all that really matters is that you calculate GDP consistently from year to year - and including hedonic and imputed values makes our measurements more consistent. All that matters is the trend.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Farmers have strong lobbying power in California. It's one of the reasons why they get water subsidies to grow water-intensive crops.
Table-ized A.I.
Anybody know if statistics like that are true?
Almond growers have to pay for the water they use? Would almonds be so profitiable then?
I somehow doubt it and fewer would be grown
Just sayin'
And they will be scorned for creating a "white elephant" when the drought breaks.The last drought here in Victoria saw the states drinking water supplies down to 10% capacity (basically the mud at the bottom), which is why they built one of the world's largest desal plants (as did almost every state capital in Oz at the time). The drought broke before it was completed and everyone started bitching it was a waste of money. When PDO flips to el-nino, the rains will come to California and the drought will return to Australia's east coast. Why my fellow Victorians think we won't need the desal plant next time is a complete mystery to me?
Note that here in Oz we have strict water rationing during a severe drought, ration levels are based on dam levels with different rationing rules for residential, industrial, and agricultural. The rationing receives overwhelming support and "neighborhood watch" style policing from society. My brother lost his wholesale nursery business to the last drought, yet still supports the rationing. Maybe I'm wrong but I just can't see that level of political and economic cooperation happening in 'freedom loving' CA.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Why does this take creative thinking? this is something other countries have been doing for years. In Australia my parents quite often sell some or all of their water license to others downstream or upstream in the river when they are rotating crops or using crops with lower water requirements. I am somewhat stunned this doesn't already happen in the US?
Have they tried pumping large amounts of oil into the ground to push the water out?
-Dave
If you've been through California's central valley, you know that it's not a desert. We're talking about some of the most fertile farmland in the world. More than half of the USA's fresh produce comes from California. Just the almond market alone is $2.8 billion a year. Despite that, California's central valley is also one of the poorest, least educated populations in the USA.
Given all that, is "screw the farmers" really the best solution here? Maybe we should make more fresh water? This isn't theoretical. The largest water desalination plant in the western hemisphere is being constructed in San Diego. It "only" took 18 years of regulatory and legal wrangling and $1 billion of financing. We need about another dozen of these plants to make a real impact on the statewide water supply. Now that the regulatory and legal framework is set, increasing the cost of water to construct additional desalination plants and related infrastructure would make more sense than choking agriculture out of the state.
This story, and your comment, made me think of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
The Hydraulic Empire was touched upon by James Burke in Connections S01E01: The Trigger Effect. The water stuff begins about ~28 minutes in, but don't cheat yourself out of what comes before. I consider this single program to be the finest hour ever filmed for television. It inspired in my me as a boy a lifelong love of infrastructure and concern for our continued species-survival as modern humans.
Energy is the thread that runs through everything now. With an ocean and technology and applied energy... fresh water is possible, on any scale. It just depends how determined we are to extract it. Every major source of fresh water in North America is presently guarded by peoples who will fight to the death to preserve their own land and way of life. Even the tapping of 'unlimited' deep geological reservoirs of water is fraught with unintended consequences. The only way to really solve the problem is to bring into existence something completely new that changes the game. Whether we be enslaved by access to water, to energy or the parasitic economy and the tax man, the breaking of these bonds are turning points of history.
"Every time mankind has been able to access a new source of energy it has led to profound societal implications. Human beings had slaves for thousands of years, and when we learned how to make carbon our slave instead of other human beings, we started to learn how to be civilized people. Thorium has a million times the energy density of a carbon-hydrogen bond. What could that mean for human civilization? Once we've learned how to use it at this kind of efficiency, we will never run out. It is simply too common." ~Kirk Sorensen, Thorium Remix 2011
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Nanotechnology membranes dropped the power consumption to 3kWh/m3,
with kWh averaging 15 cents....
That isn't a bad solution at all
If you consider,
that on Disneyland you will pay US$5.00 per half litter......
If the coast cities do desalt,
much more water will be available to the valleys (farmers)
with better irrigation tech. (almost nonexistent in the valleys, where plantation techniques still last century, to say the least)
We could manage the the drought.
But, if you add the politicians.......
Forget....
It won happen!
"The 'invisible hand' (rich land owners with huge water rights in this case)..."
Sorry, you're misusing terminology. The "invisible hand" is the effect of the market - of people freely competing to efficiently allocate resources between alternative uses. When you instead refer to "owners with huge water rights", you're outside the market: "water rights" are a government largesse, not a market.
No, they control the market. The land owners are the invisible hand. Enron did the same thing with energy. There is only a "free" market amongst the owners of the resources. They set the price and we pay it. It's not supply and demand that sets the price of oil either. It is dependent on the value of the currency in the purely speculative commodities markets. "Supply and demand" is a grade school fantasy.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
But what would be the effect of doing the same on Greece's GDP? Apples to apples.
That's right! Stop using water for people to wash and drink and start giving it to farmers to irrigate vital walnut crops instead.
Follow the logic and tour the inside of your own ass!
Your math is bad. I pay $3.80 per HCF in Ventura, CA - and that works out to $0.005 per gallon (748 gallons per HCF). And I know Ventura is about 70-80% of the cost of water in the LA basin, so they're paying even more.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
But couldn't people just not farm in California or other natural deserts?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
California has more water than Israel. Israel actually does a great job or water preservation by watering individual plants with a drip irrigation system that runs water in a plastic hose along the run, and where there is a plant, They install a tee connection with a controlled drip to the plant area. They also mulch. Israel reduced wasted water consumption by more than 80%. Works for fruit and vegetables, exterior and greenhouses.
You just can't continue to do wide area spraying, as we see on youtube and on TV.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
It's called cost/resource shifting. California has had decades to spend on water infrastructure and they have done nothing. NOTHING!!! Instead over 100 billion for a choo-choo. The state is to large to manage in it's given size and there are way to many competing interests. The state needs to be dissected into more manageable chunks.
This would make farming unviable and expensive in California. Farming is California, and it also provides fresh food for most of the country. I couldn't imagine what the price of tomatoes will be if this happens.
Instead of playing a shell game with numbers, they could sit down and face the fact that there is clearly too many people in the area, and either invest in desalinization or move to places with more water, like, say, Michigan.
Flip side, people in other areas, e.g. Michigan, do not want a bunch of people living outside their means in cities to come in and take their nice things. However, I imagine said states with water wouldn't object to companies moving in to share in the resources where they won't leave the ecosystem.
No one is saying anything about taking. The water would be bought.
We'd run an aqueduct from parts of the country with so much water they wouldn't even miss it to other parts that are literally desiccating the aquifers to such an extent that the land is heaving inward due to the collapse of pressure.
That is whole regions of some parts of the country are literally deflating like shriveling melons... the land is heaving inward because the well heads are sucking all the water out of the soil and it is causing the ground to settle.
That is a dryness that people in Michigan will never suffer. Everyone could drop a well in their backyards in Michigan and you wouldn't drain the soil. Not so in the American South West. The water is being exhausted because idiots have zoned too much land for development without building complimentary infrastructure.
It isn't just water.
It is power, roads, schools, hospitals, etc. The idiots are zoning growth like crazy and investing nothing in infrastructure.
And so we get brown outs, water shortages, traffic jams, failed schools, and over worked hospitals.
Pretty much everything they could have fucked up was fucked up.
The old city fathers of Los Angeles were not this foolish. They thought long term and made sure to get the resources the city needed to sustain growth. This activity was at times ruthless. Look up the Owen's valley situation if you want to see what LA was capable of back then. Also, look at the Hoover dam. Bought and paid for by the City of Los Angeles in return for a large share of the water in perpetuity.
That is how the city fathers of LA made the desert bloom. They knew they needed water and they invested big money in making it happen. They pumped rivers right through LA. Some of the most impressive water projects in US history.
And since their time there has been little interest in maintaining those stockpiles. And as a result... only one year of water is left. If the weather does not dump rain on the Los Angeles water system, the city is going to have to ration water. It is too late for them to do anything at this point. Whether rationing happens is down to chance.
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An example is almonds. Almonds now use close to 10% of water used in California. One almond takes approximately 1.1 gallons of water to create it.
So: Why, in the midst of drought, are California farmers planting *more* almonds? The answer, paradoxically, is because water has become more expensive. The water projects are not delivering water to California farmers, so California farmers have a choice between a) not growing crops (and thereby losing their farm, since no crops means they can't pay the mortgages they took out on their farm equipment and/or farmland to expand in earlier more optimistic times), or b) drilling wells. Drilling wells that in some cases are a thousand feet or more deep. The water from these wells is ridiculously expensive for two reasons: 1) the simple cost of drilling, and 2) the large amount of electricity needed to haul that water (at 8 pounds per gallon) up that 1,000+ feet of pipe to the surface.
In fact, the water from these wells is so expensive that if the farmers used it to grow a low-water-use crop like wheat they'd lose money. Most low-water-use crops like wheat or corn have a relatively low price on the commodities market, a price that will not pay for the cost of the well and the electricity to pump water out of the well. So, paradoxically, expensive water has caused farmers to instead grow almonds -- one of the only crops that sell for a higher price than the cost of the water needed to grow them, yet also one of the most water-thirsty crops on the planet.
And now you know the side of the story you don't get from the Libertarian free market think tanks and their notion that expensive water would cause water usage by farmers to decline. What matters to farmers is *not* the absolute cost of the water. What matters to the farmers is the *marginal* cost of the water -- the difference between what it costs to obtain the water, and what income they get from using the water. When water was cheap but in limited supply, farmers grew crops that were water-thrifty because the price of those commodities was enough to pay for the water. Now that water is expensive but they can pump as much as they wish from the ground (until the aquifer runs dry, anyhow!), the California farmer's slogan becomes "drill, baybee, drill!" and the almond trees go in.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Buying vs. taking is basically the same thing, except it makes those who took too much in the first place look slightly better. Next, the dryness. Yes, we do feel it. Not to the extent of others, but people have to spend egregious sums of money to have their wells redrilled when they feel the effects of drawdown. Now, all this water does make its way back into the system. Y'know, basic water cycle and stuff. But what happens when you take it out of the system? It's... gone. And doesn't come back. Water that worked in a system for thousands of years suddenly moves away, drying it out. And to what? An out of control system that's burning up all the water it can get its hands on? Rather than having one fucked system, you'd be creating two by delaying the inevitable. Now, let's look at real solutions rather than simply saying "They have too much, give it to us". The solution isn't to shuffle numbers, or stick it to farmers, or to say "I want that, give me that." Stop the zoning, invest in infrastructure to maintain your water, or other processes that don't burn other systems. Encourage growth to other areas that can maintain that kind of population, not to a desert that has completely outgrown its bounds. As for the infrastructure and traffic, the power just went out again, I'm not sure my UPS will last for the rest of this post, and I have to go get my wheels realigned. It isn't a picnic here either.
As to buying and taking being the same thing. It is only the same thing in that something is removed... but for what it is worth something would be provided for you its place. Detroit is said to need money. Its water if economically positioned and plentiful would be a source of revenue.
However, we are getting ahead of ourselves. In all likelihood your water is not well placed and we wouldn't want it in the first place. What is more the militant politics of the region make it a poor partner for any long term relationship.
Connecting to the great lakes in general would be an interesting proposition. If we drained the lakes at the same rate they filled, then you shouldn't notice the difference. Some tributaries of the lakes might ebb but that would be the extent of it.
But again... if the politics are not stable then it would be unwise for people so far away to rely upon your region for the water they need to live. You could say yes today and then tomorrow extort a higher price when we are dependent on your water.
A poor partner.
It is further sad that so many are mindlessly turning against nuclear power. It is a reasonable solution to the problem in that one could get huge sums of carbon free electricity along with an inexpensive desalination plant all in one. Oh well. Hopefully in the generations to come that ignorance passes.
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It takes about a gallon of water per almond. I don't think there's nearly enough grey water for what they need.
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You seem to be flip-flopping about whether you want the water or not. Set aside partnerships and all. The great lakes are seeing an unusual decline in their water level, which may not sound like a big deal, but when you consider they hold 20% of the world's fresh water, a decline in water level ends up being a lot of fresh water.
Now, on to partnerships. Its not just Michigan that would need to be a part of the deals. The lakes are not Michigan's alone, though we do indeed touch four of the five. They happen to be international waters, which means you also have to talk to the Canadians about the water, as well as all the other states who touch the lakes. The militant politics, as you put it, have been trying to keep the system free of invasive species, and they are failing despite their efforts. Zebra mussels have moved in, after hitching a ride on bilge water form cargo ships. Fish population is down due to the mussels filtering the water and making it more difficult for the fish to hide and spawn. Asian carp pose a massive threat to the lakes, and they are creeping ever closer, where they will wreck the system with no natural predators to maintain population. That is a massive system to get wrecked, which will have a cascading effect across the whole area. And you wonder why we are so 'militant'.
Now, nuclear. This is exactly what I am talking about. Local desalination is a solution I can get behind, as it doesn't remove water from remote systems, and hand the problem to others. Unfortunately, we still have so much fear, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding nuclear, thanks to the mismanagement of Chernobyl and Fukushima. There'd have to be a big push for nuclear, pointing out how safe the energy really is and how far the technology has come. I do however see an opportunity to regain its popularity by restarting in California. It's the place where people think of when they think 'new' technologies, and introducing new reactors like the GE Prism there could be a big step forward for clean energy.
As to flipflopping, you can't make an arrangement like this with someone that is going to pull the rug out from under you later.
You cite Detroit which is not a place I said anything about prior to that comment and while they have water and a need for money... they have a need mostly because they've systematically driven away business. The city is know to be corrupt, crime ridden, facing massive population decline, and is known for unreasonable radical politics.
That doesn't sound like someone I want to do business with... I'd rather do business with someone more rational.
As to the great lakes seeing a drop in level, then I'm certain I don't want to spend billions to pipe that water only to be told by the EPA etc that I can't have it. Fuck that entire idea. The pipes will have to run elsewhere. Or again... nuclear reactors with desalination plants...
OR growth has to be restricted in the west until such time as they find a way to make up the shortfall.
Their current plan of "fucking the farmers" only works so long as the farmers have water. And never mind the fact that they'll have annihilated one of the most productive and profitable farming industries in the US basically just to cover up for the incompetence of the cities.
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Let's expand our comments and do a quick find for the word 'Detroit'. Aside from this comment, there are only two other occurrences, and they are both your comments. Please stop using ad hominems and strawmen, especially since you complained to someone else about using the latter yourself. We get it. Detroit dug itself into a really crappy corner. We have to live with it on a regular basis.
Now, as for the pipeline. I'd be very surprised if any sane person would undergo construction of such a pipeline before consulting the necessary agencies. I'd be even more surprised if the project didn't get shut down before they got anywhere close for not checking in.
Those solutions that you listed are perfectly acceptable in my mind, as they are not the numbers game that is 'virtual water', and they don't shunt the strain to remote systems. If anything, they may provide opportunities for tech advances.
As to word searches, you're right. I was convinced you brought it up... so my bad.
The point was not to specify any region but to cite that there are regions with more water than they know what to do with and other regions that could really use it.
You don't like the idea of exchanging resources?... Then why should anyone send you food? Shouldn't you grow only your own food?
We share resources all time and we mediate this exchange with money. You want my apples? They're 70 cents a pound.
Simple as that. There's nothing unreasonable about a given region importing a good or service from another region at a mutually agreed upon price.
As to pipelines getting shut down by the EPA, there's no legitimate reason for them to do that in literally every circumstance. There are circumstances where they would be obligated to shut it down. But don't tell me there is no place in the north west where there is insane amounts of fresh water or the north east where there is likewise a lot of water.
That water is there and saying none if it can be touched without damaging the local ecology begs the question of how the people living there access any of that water given that apparently it is impossible for them to drink any of it without damaging the local ecology? Ehm?
As to international bodies of water, what you're saying is that I can build a city of 10 million people on the banks of that lake and drink from it liberally. But I can't pipe the water somewhere else for 10 million other people to drink it? How does that make any sense?
As to general environmental bullshit, I come from california and believe me we have more than our fair share of that shit. My family had some land a few years back that we wanted to zone for development. It used to be farm land but cities have encroached so we wanted to turn it into warehouse space.
Anyway, we got some bullshit from the EPA about Ferry Shrimp. Basically these microscopic creatures that live in water. There were some tire ruts on the property and they were trying to say that the whole parcel of land had to be declared some sort of protected space because ferry shrimp were living in the tire rut. I shit you not.
So I have a very low opinion of the EPA unless I know otherwise because I've personally see them pull some really slimy bullshit.
This sort of behavior is also not helping anyone. If want to be a society that is able to build things including that infrastructure then people need to be reasonable. Don't just cite environmental concerns as a proxy to shut something down. Because it makes people like me not respect that defense. The boy has cried wolf too many times. And that means when a real environmental issue crops up, I won't be there for you to back you up against some evil corporation because I'll have stopped listening because I was lied to, extorted, and bullied by assholes one too many times.
Just what is... choose your battles.
As to desalination being the only thing you're in favor of... its too expensive even with the nukes. An aqueduct would deal with the problem along with restraining expansion so it is inline with existing resources. Desalination is at best a side benefit of nuclear power. But the real point is electricity. You don't really produce Los Angeles amounts of water from such operations.
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There's a difference between food and mass quantities of water. I don't know how much they talked about it in your school, but they hammered it home here about the water cycle. I can drink the water here with no problem, because when it leaves my body in its various forms, it returns to the source from where it came. In my case, it comes from the Huron river, gets treated for chemicals and pathogens, is piped to my house, then consumed in various ways. After that, it either evaporates as sweat, where it rains over the area, or goes down a drain, where it is processed at another plant to clear any chemicals and other unwanted matter, then sent back into the Huron. This entire process all happens and remains, for the most part, within the Great Lakes drainage basin. It's perfectly okay for me to drink water and water my lawn with this water since it all returns to the basin.
Now, move that water out of the basins of the great lakes. Can it return? No. It's gone. The cycle is broken, and slowly bleeds off. It will appear as if it has no effect even for a long time, but it will have an effect eventually.
As for the EPA, they are bullies. Technically speaking, sections of my neighborhood should be classified as a swamp and protected as such because the drains in our area would be better served working as bridge pylons, and we hope that they don't catch wind. And for the environmental static, I live in Michigan's own section of California, Ann Arbor. Have to say though, it is fun watching people try to justify their purchase of solar panels when they're not effective for half the year.
As to the difference between one product and another... not really.
I don't really care if you're talking about labor or steel or grapefruits.
They all have a local cost that is offset by the export price.
If I am running water through my crops you seem to think that this water is going into my local aquafer. Not really. Most of it evaporates. Its gone. And when I export those grapefruits, the value of them is the sum of all the resources that went into produce them. My capital, my labor, the labor I hire to help me, the water, the fertilizer, the pesticide, advertising, various logistical expenses, insurance, etc. And when all is said and done... I can make a profit at 70 cents a pound.
The labor that went into those grapefruits... Gone. The capital? Sunk into the operation and the opportunity value of it is at least gone. The land... used for that purpose and none other. The water... it ran over my fields, some of it soaked into the ground by no one is going to see that water again until it goes through the water cycle. At which point the person that does see it is as likely to be in Florida if not farther away. That water is going to get blown around, at some point get pushed up into the upper atmosphere, and then condense there into water droplets as the temperature falls... and only then come back to earth. Which could be damn anywhere.
So you want to talk about school? So now you're going to try and brow beat me? Okay.
*takes gloves off and cracks neck*
Throw the science at me. Hit me with your best shot.
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The problem is not that the water is moving into another basin, it's exactly as you described. Gone. The water you put in evaporates, and is gone. That becomes water that can't recharge the tributaries. Water that can't refill the great lakes.
But all this is talk. You seem to be a person who prefers concrete evidence. So, allow me to redirect your attention to another nation who decided diverting water was no big deal, and the fruits of their labor. The country is the Soviet Union, and result is the Aral Sea. They too diverted water, albeit rivers, to the desert to grow crops. What was the result? Salinity in the Aral sea jumped tenfold while the water collapsed to a fifth of what it was before they began. Now, the sea itself has become a desert, with regular dust storms whipping through. The rivers themselves dried up, with no water to recharge them, crops began to fail with a lack of water and rising CO2 levels. This is why Michigan, seven other states, and Canada have all decided the water should not leave their basins. Of course, your farm is so important. So never mind, let the construction begin.
Water isn't locked like that. The water that goes into the great lakes comes as much from canada as anywhere. Where do your rain and snow storms come from? Your notion is that they only form over your lake and there is no introduction of water from outside the system which is absurd.
The atmospheric water that ultimately feeds your system comes from far beyond your area. Most of the water in the west coast comes from the pacific ocean. Your water is not appreciably different.
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