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Comment by kerneloftruth | Hacker News Reader

California could easily build reservoirs, but they don't -- which makes the constant water fear mongering annoying. Reservoirs would capture much of the rainfall which isn't absorbed into ground water, and currently flows to the sea. The reservoirs would create new habitat for wildlife.... the downsides are few, if any.

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The major downside is total inundation of all of the valleys filled in by the reservoir. The 20th century is littered with dams whose headwaters have completely destroyed unique natural environments, eg Hetch Hetchy [1]. They are technically “easy” to build if only speaking to their constructibility, but dams are incredibly charged from an environmental perspective.

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

Imagine if instead of every building having parking spaces, we required a mandatory water store and used that non-potable water for watering green spaces, flushing toilets, etc. Doesn't remove the impact of agriculture but it does make residential areas more resilient in times of draught. But that would require public transit and California is rather lacking in that regard. Even LAs plan for metro expansion is going to take 30-40 years.

This is a phenomenally poor idea which effectively outlaws cities.

Which reservoir sites could be built that aren't?

Most of the good sites for building reservoirs in California are already taken. You could dam the Smith River, but that isn't going to be popular.

Same thing goes for the Los Angeles River - replacing the channelized aqueduct with a meandering set of flood plains that recharges an aquifer would require removing large chunks of residential, commercial, or industrial land.

Don't know why you're getting downvoted for this and it's absolutely true. Cue the pedants nitpicking every word of the story below. We could do so much better here but we choose otherwise despite the highest state income taxes in the country.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...

That really baffles me about CA. The quality of services and amenities doesn’t seem any higher there - in fact in many cases it seems lower than low tax burden states. Where does it all go? Is it too simplistic to say the government is mismanaged and has unqualified workers spending massive budgets? Or is it that public workers are lazy/coasting? Something else?

One possible cause is that municipal workers (cops, teachers, firefighters) require much higher salaries due to the higher CoL

If it's to be believed, 40% of our budget is spent on education, 25% on health and human services, and 7% on prisons...

https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2008-09-EN/BudgetSummary/SUM/1249...

But also, people are really triggered by rain reclamation for some reason. They're not saying why though which is weird.

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