How California Is Winning the Drought

An anonymous reader writes: California is in its fifth year of drought; the past four years have been the driest four-year period in recorded history, and the hottest as well. There have been consistent worries about how it will affect California's residents and its economy — but somehow, the state still seems to be doing fine. "In 2014, the state's economy grew 27 percent faster than the country's economy as a whole — the state has grown faster than the nation every year of the drought. ... The drought has inspired no Dust Bowl-style exodus. California's population has grown faster even as the drought has deepened."

The article makes the case that California is pioneering the water preservation and governance techniques that will be helpful elsewhere in the country if the global climate continues to warm. "The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California now supplies roughly 19 million people in six counties, and it uses slightly less water than it did 25 years ago, when it supplied 15 million people. That savings — more than one billion gallons each day — is enough to supply all of New York City." The article notes, however, that this resilience won't last forever — if the drought continues for several more years, California will be in trouble despite their water-saving tactics.

Comments

Re:People isn't the issue, farming is

[phantomfive]

Farmland gets 80%

I don't know where you're getting that number, it's no more than 60% in a good year. In bad years, it's less.....farmers only got ~20% of their normal allocation this year, and have been restricted for the past several years.

Re:Still surprised Cali put plastic in their water

[jklovanc]

They are different plastic. The balls are probably made from ABS. The issue with water bottles is the BPA which softens the plastic. There is no BPA in the shade balls. There are some plastic water bottles that are accepted because they are BPA free.

Re:People isn't the issue, farming is

[phantomfive]

Yes, there are plenty of ways to improve California's water situation. It's more a failure of management than a lack of water.

Re:There is no reason for any drought to continue

[thinkwaitfast]

sometimes energy, neither of which falls out of the sky.

The overwhelming amount of energy on the planet (well over 99.99999%) does in fact fall out of the sky.

Nonsense

[Karmashock]

Everything is fine until it isn't.

The Greeks were fine with their debt until the Germans came to collect.

The American colonies were fine until they rebelled.

The situation with the housing market and banks was fine until it wasn't.

So saying "Cali hasn't imploded yet" is not the same thing as saying they're fine.

As to the economic arguments... the bullshit on the economic statistics is well understood at this point and basically everyone knows they're full of shit besides the willfully ignorant. So we'll just skip over that.

On the issue of the drought, the issue is that they have not linked GROWTH with infrastructure. This is why we get brown outs, over crowded schools, over worked police departments, water shortages, and hellacious traffic.

Anyone ever play sim city back in the day? It was a game of balancing things that increased your resources with things that were needed to supply the things that produced your resources. It was about managing land, tax revenue, water, power, schools, police.

Okay... so what happens if you just build lots of houses and don't build power plants, don't build water aqueducts/reservoirs/treatment plants/desalinization plants, schools, hospitals, police stations, or transport?

That's basically what happened in california. They okayed development project after development project... EVERYWHERE... and in no sense linked that to infrastructure.

So radically increasing the population did not correspond to an increase in water resources.

What is the solution? Link the two.

Say "zoning for new housing/business/etc must not exceed literal construction and activation of relevant resources required to sustain that development."

So if you want to build housing for another million people, then I want to see somewhere in there that you've expanded water and power resources for an additional million people. And if it isn't on line... NOW... then I'm not zoning land for use by another million people.

Now here someone is going to say something profoundly stupid like "well where are they going to go!?"... well... anywhere. Arizona, Texas, Montana... it doesn't really matter. There are plenty of places for people to go. And if you want those new developments THAT badly... then build the fucking power plants and reservoirs and aqueducts and schools and highways and police stations... Or go fuck yourself. Saying "we don't have the money to do X or Y or Z right now"... fine... then when you do we can build the infrastructure and then you can have your development. But if you don't have it, then you can't built the infrastructure and you can't have the development.

Suggesting otherwise is somewhere between short term exploitative thinking where someone does things that are against the long term interests of the state for short term profit... and childishness/ignorance.

The developers and politicians are mostly liars or too self interested to care what happens. And the public mostly is just too stupid to know what is going on.