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Comment by fblp | Hacker News Reader

The facts are scattered throughout the article but here's one of the more shocking: "In San Bernardino, Calif., Nestlé has long paid the U.S. Forest Service an annual rate of $524 to extract about 30 million gallons, even during droughts".

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And I'm sure the Coca-Cola plant down the road pays $524 as well, but for some reason plain water (which is basically the same product minus carbonation and sugar syrup) is somehow a unique moral catastrophe.

30 million gallons is about 92 acre ft of water. California uses 70 million acre ft of water per year. Alfalfa in California uses 5.3 million acre ft/year. So this plant uses 1/10 the amount of water a very small farm would use. It is hard to imagine it but 30 million gallons is a very small amount of water. If the article said "In San Bernardino, Calif., Nestlé has long paid the U.S. Forest Service an annual rate of $524 to extract about 92 acre ft of water, even during droughts" people would think "That's not much".

For those like me for whom "acre ft" means absolutely nothing, it's about 5,172Hhds[1]. Just kidding, it's 1,233 cubic metres, so 92 acre feet =~ 113,500m³.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogshead

It sounds a bit weird but the first large irrigation projects were used for farming. When you irrigate your fields (measured in acres) to a depth of about a foot each time, it is the natural unit for large water use. Why switch?

Who the hell would "irrigate" their fields to a depth of 1 foot? That's not irrigation, it's a literal flood!

Unless you're growing rice in a paddy I guess?

The CEO claims that water should be treated more like a commodity yet they are happy to exploit this. Perhaps it is because if this kind of exploit that he feels so strongly about water as a commodity.

Where is the exploitation? A permit costs $524, so they pay $524.

How hard do you think they lobby to keep the permit $524?

I don't know, how hard?

Do you think 30 million gallons is truly worth $524?

I really have no idea how much untreated water is worth at the source. I now how much it costs me when it's treated and pumped to my house, but I don't know how much the raw water is worth.

If it's worth more than that, maybe the agency selling permits should charge more. It's hardly Nestle's fault if they paid the required fee for their use.

30m gallons of water is truly worth nothing to people who have plenty of water, and truly worth billions of dollars to people who are dehydrated. In other words “true worth” makes no sense; it depends on context.

One day I'll try learning about California water rights... or perhaps ignorance is bliss for this one.

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