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As Drought Worsens, California Orders Record Water Cuts
New submitter GordonShure.com writes: The State of California has made an unprecedented move by uniformly restricting water supplies across the entire state as demand outstrips supply. Farms are most affected, though food prices aren't anticipated to rise in any hurry: imports from out of state continue apace. Notably, this is a problem Silicon Valley hasn't much helped to solve.
Will this move induce meaningful modernization upon the infrastructure supporting the state's thirty-eight million residents? Or will things continue to be corn, corn, corn for the time being?
Will this move induce meaningful modernization upon the infrastructure supporting the state's thirty-eight million residents? Or will things continue to be corn, corn, corn for the time being?
It's not the produce, it's the livestock.
The reason we can't (easily) solve this is really simple. There isn't enough water. If southern California wants to look afar for water they have to look at the Columbia River, which is the nearest river that seems to have abundant water. Believe me, Oregon will put up a big fight if SoCal tries to ram through the kind of infrastructure to move water through Oregon.
All the other water in most of the west is already spoken for. SoCal really has two choices. One, desalinate. Two, get along with the limited water that is available. There aren't any decent other choices.
It isn't partisan bullshit. It is a really big problem with no good choices. SoCal can't just steal water from other users. In the western US water gets used by somebody, and somebody owns just about all the water rights.
Because of its climate, warmth, and near-year-round sunlight, CA grows 99% of all US almonds. It also grows 99% of US walnuts. 95% of US broccoli, 92% of US strawberries, 91% of US grapes, 90% of US tomatoes. 74% of all US lettuce. And it's one of the major reasons we have such things year round.
So. Given the above, it's sorta, kinda, maybe in the best interests of everyone involved (not just Californians) to figure out how to get water to one of the places best suited to using it.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
**sighs**
CA uses 38 billion gallons of water per day. Well, as of 2010 they did. It may be more now. Or less. But not a lot more or less. So in the vicinity of 13.9 TRILLION gallons of water per year
The EPA says that fracking accounts for somewhere between 70 and 140 BILLION gallons of water per year for the whole USA. Of that, maybe 5% is used in places where the water could be sent to CA instead. Of course, that would mean that Utah (which is a desert) would have to ship some of its water to California. Likewise Nevada (which is also a desert)....
So, if we were to stop fracking anywhere that the water could be sent to CA instead, and send the fracking water to CA, CA would get enough extra water to operate for FOUR HOURS of CA's normal use.
In summary, no, CA's problem isn't fracking, and won't be fixed by stopping fracking....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
veganstart.org
Oh yeah, that looks like a nice unbiased source. For example, it omits to mention that 2/3rds of the water that goes into animal feed is "green water", i.e. rain and other renewable sources. In other words, animal-based foods require large amounts of water, but it's mostly renewable water. In order to say that getting rid of lifestock would actually help the problem, you'd need to look at how much water would be required for foods to replace meat and dairy entirely, and where that water would need to come from (it doesn't help the problem if you replace lifestock with plants if those plants end up requiring more water from aquifers than the lifestock does).
BTW here's the full report (PDF warning) on water usage in California if anyone is interested in more numbers.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
It was before my time but I have family in both California and Oregon and the way I understand it from them, California proposed this decades ago (1960s?) and one of the reasons Oregon turned it down was that they concluded that the California politicians and by extension the federal government could not be trusted to stay within the bounds of any agreement so it is better to prevent any such project starting than to fight it later when they altered the deal.
Look, the cost of the electricity to desalinate water is worth FAR more than the cost of the crops that a farmer could grow with it.
It seems this is an economic problem and not a humanitarian concern.
Let the price of water reflect the economic reality, and if it DOES cost more for water than the value of the crops, then either the farmer will increase the price they require before selling their crops Or the farmer will produce more valuable crops, or the farmers will produce less crops, until the supply of crops falls, and a new price equilibrium is found on the price of crops.
If water desalination is done, then don't differentiate pricing between desalinated and water from other sources...... when pricing water, just average out the cost of water from all sources, And make sure that all consumers of water pay the same price per gallon.