40M People Rely on the Colorado River. It’s Drying Up Fast
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Okay, so much for my suggestion of making illegal Las Vegas golf courses and lush Phoenix lawns. But at what point is California told to quit growing alfalfa for export, and to quit with the flooded rice paddies[0]? It's a serious question: does CA just keep growing such things until the tap literally runs dry, or are restrictions put into place before it gets that bad? What's the end game? Because it seems obvious that the situation isn't going to get better.
I'd be careful to imply blame on a single state, when it is a large part of the population that relies on the output. There are certainly ways to target water waste in agriculture, but the whole nation has a stake in successful water management.
The thing is to my knowledge California is just cheaper/better because full sun and up until now you could just pull water from the ground and grow your crops.
IMO we need more urban and suburban gardens to supplement, and we'll have to just relocate some crops away from California and other drought-prone areas. Tough times ahead for some.
And as much as even I despise the suburbs, I think they're prime for retrofitting. We have a lot of land, we just need changes to zoning, a little more density, and more emphasis on the local community which can come from the former. Like why can't we all grow a few crops (nothing crazy) and just trade once/week at someone's house?
I think in the future we might see either community greenhouses, more local farming, and/or more suburban gardens and even greenhouses (HOAs permitting).
The thing is that the current model is basically export water in the form of crops from California because as you said it's much cheaper, but that low cost comes at the expense of water and the environment, a low cost to which Californian farmers are probably not bearing and certainly society in general isn't. Really we're exporting water from a arid locations to places like the Great Lakes. That's not to include transportation costs via cheap oil/energy.
It's just not sustainable long-term.
HOAs. The same entities that insure every waterway for miles is forever polluted with residential runoff.
The result will be one of two things: either the farm industry will back down and adjust, or the corruption of the legislature through lobbying will be exposed in spectacular fashion.
https://calmatters.org/environment/2021/05/drought-rural-lat...
Oh wait, we are depleting that at the rate of 18 Colorado Rivers per year. We are such a greedy species. We need some major changes to support the same number of people on this planet.
https://www.popsci.com/how-la-gets-its-water/
I tried to figure out where the water goes, but a complete answer eludes me. If it does indeed go to crops, maybe we need to rethink where we grow crops, much less how.
Sure, many of the crops grown in the west are ill suited to our climate. That said, there is a bigger solution to the problem which produces a better outcome for everyone.
What does it being for export have to do with anything? Only 0.005% of the water used to grow alfalfa actually ends up in the alfalfa.
Okay, then. Let's see what happens when all businesses leave, especially tech, when California is going to resemble frontier living again.
This seems a bit alarmist and detached from reality.
> A majority of the water used by farms — and thus much of the river — goes to growing nonessential crops like alfalfa and other grasses that feed cattle for meat production. Much of those grasses are also exported to feed animals in the Middle East and Asia.
Had the precipitation levels of the 1905-1930 period actually been the norm, then perhaps the dreams of "water + sun = a green eden" might have been viable. But they were not, and we're now facing a huge set of difficult choices, which the article lays out very well.
But as the article points out, there are multiple ways to address the problem.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4785
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122-national-smart-water-grid
Yes, there are wasteful water practices that need to be addressed as well.
Yes, there are ecological impacts that need to be accounted for.
We need to think big. Our generation doesn't seem to have that sort of vision anymore. We need to prepare for a changing climate and a larger population. A water grid provides our nation with food security and helps mitigate a major effect of global warming.
In California, we already spend 4.2% of the state's power on pumping water. This percent will increase if the water has to run uphill and/or cross mountain ranges. http://ww2.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/06/10/19-percent-calif...
https://www.sdcwa.org/projects/san-vicente-pumping-facilitie...
Particularly you site the pumps near the renewable and they wouldn't necessarily need to be "on grid".
Sure, that means you generate less hydropower in the downriver dams, but overall I think it's a wash(pun intended).
I personally have 0 hope for it. We're an entire generation removed from the Cold War, an era where governments actually did shit. And in the 30 years since, it's done nothing but shatter trust in every way (and in new ways!) imaginable.
Maybe it would be cheaper to build water pipelines + green powered desalination + pipe water from the great lakes or wherever it's in abundance. Especially if we can't or won't move crops? It seems like that growing environment artificially watered does improve yield?
Maybe it will happen if we accurately price water, just like we need to with oil, so that the incentives actually align with the bad consequences of the status quo.
I wish the infra bill spent most of the money on green energy and plans like this. Spending it on cars and fortifying against floods and weather seems like a losing battle if we don't fix the underlying driver of this chaos.
By establishing a national water grid, you reduce the likelihood that the Great Lakes will be damaged by water use. You allow the Great Lakes to be replenished if there is ever a climate driven drought. You allow water to be taken from the mouths of all of the great rivers in North America, reducing the burden on any single one of them.
“Why are the people of the Colorado river so paranoid about their water” might have been a theme 60 or 70 years ago. I guess the answer is: because once that exploitation starts, it will only intensify in the future.
/s
Vegas should take back it's water and make SoCal figure out the whole desalinization thing with NorCal.
If you leave them no other choice, people will innovate pretty fast.
Body of water immediately west of them.
WHAT IF they were to build large scale desalination projects capable of providing irrigation-grade water?
Just a thought.
Does it matter at this point?
Most experts don't seem to think there will be enough precipitation over the next decade to refill existing reservoirs let alone replenish the almost wiped out aquifers. This isn't a case of 1 or 2 rainy seasons making up for what is lost.
If the US wants to continue growing into inhospitable areas and growing crops in areas where water is unavailable, serious work needs to start on desalination efforts.
It will be expensive. There will be an environmental impact. It will take years to build as the US no longer can do public works quickly.
Desalination is the only long term solution for the US west if you do not want to limit land use.
No comparable situation exists for most of the US southwest.
It seems like a very smart idea for coastal regions of CA and perhaps even parts of OR too.
More pointedly: the capacity of our society to graciously absorb climate refugees of every sort is very limited. NIMBYism is a very poor predicate for accepting large numbers of displaced and relatively poor migrants.
C.f. attitudes to Dust Bowl farmers for one precedent.
A friend pointed me to Chico (CA) as an interesting test case. The rapid shift from gracious "Christian" charity to increasingly right-wing hostility, in the face of large intake of people displaced by wildfires (or fear thereof), is a canary.
It is a good time (now) to contemplate how this is going to amplify Fox-fueled xenophobia, tribalism, dehumanization of political opponents, and increasingly open organized domestic terror and violence in de facto Brown Shirts.
The Water Knife is a mediocre novel, but a relevant sketch of how bad things might in theory get, wrt water in the American west should aridification accellerate. As it may well.
It's not too early to begin organizing a rational response. We prepare for earthquakes; this one is all but certain.