U.S. takes unprecedented steps to replenish Colorado River's Lake Powell
reuters.com
reuters.com
Per the article, sounds like they also have about 80% of that in an artificial lake that they’ll not release for now.
As someone who’s lived his entire life in the southwest: this is bad. The importance of water to life can’t be understated but can go unrealized if you’re “in the land of plenty” of water. Lack of water has felled societies and started wars throughout history. “People will say they’re going to war for all sorts of reasons but ultimately it’s for of water, food, or resources.” (Paraphrasing)
Further, the answer is probably not to tell people to simply move. That’s not a solution for the number of people at stake. Further, this is some of the most renewable energy rich land in the US. Solar panels and some pipes could probably push water in from the oceans reliably enough-levels of renewable energy.
Most southwest desert farming only exists because of government subsidies. If farmers actually had to pay market rate for water most farms in this region would not be possible.
One unique problem to cattle ranching in the southwest is that many of them are allowed to free range on public lands. Those cattle eat a lot of native vegetation which leads to worse wildfires and greatly harm native wildlife. They also trample cryptobiotic soil, resulting in much worse dust storms.
I wish we could move agriculture entirely out of areas that get less than 5" of rain per year, especially since so much of the country is better suited for it. Subsidies are sticky though, not many farmers will willingly give up their handouts and few politicians want to fight that battle.
I doubt that would solve the problem. It would just transplant it. Cattle, pork, and chicken demand has dramatically compounded corresponding production in Brazil and deforestation. We don't need to move the rice, alfalfa, and intensive production of ruminating animals moved around like checkers pieces. The Ogalalla aquifer of the Midwest supporting multiple states' peoples and farms is also drying out. We need to rethink our water use, not move the problem around.
(Also, regarding the "bread basket," grain is not typically grown out west, I don't think? That's east of the Rockies.)
[1] https://d32ogoqmya1dw8.cloudfront.net/images/trex/students/l...
From: https://serc.carleton.edu/trex/students/labs/lab4_1.html
A farmer in california pays more for water than labor, taxes or anything else.
As for mandated minimum flow levels, would you rather the river courses run dry?
Is that from the Resnick [0] talking points memo? The Resnicks should grow their almonds back in the Middle East where they belong instead of in the CA desert.
[0]https://www.forbes.com/profile/stewart-lynda-resnick/?sh=274...
So, either the population has to be reduced, or consumption has to be reduced. But either option seems politically impossible. Our understanding of freedom is not compatible with the cold reality of constrained resources. There isn't a price mechanism capable of equitably reducing consumption, and there isn't a technological solution that's capable of scaling to demand. Something's gotta give.
There is enough water in the Southwest for a sizable population, of course. The problem ahead is how to distribute a constrained resource to that population without deferring to lobbied interests, wealthy landowners, golf-course owners, etc. That's an uphill battle, to say the least.
The U.S. went all-in on globalization. That includes globalization of food production. For 50 years the typical USian has taken bananas and coconut for granted. Coffee is a staple in every kitchen.
Produce and dairy of countless varieties are produced in California for consumers around the country and indeed around the world.
Would you argue that globalization of the food supply chain is a mistake? Do you propose that Chicago grow its own spinach? Should Saudi Arabia grow its own alfalfa? Should apples and grapes consumed in Oklahoma be grown in Oklahoma?
I suppose many people are rethinking this whole globalization strategy. From microchips to mozzarella. Economics: the spectator sport with real spectator consequences.
https://grainger.tennessee.edu/grainger-county-farmers-page/
Literally famous for tomatoes, man.
https://farmflavor.com/tennessee/tennessee-crops-livestock/w...
That said, all 70 growers combined total less than 500 acres. It's a good start.
But it doesn't prove that California "desert" is the worst place to grow produce. What is the total yield of those 500 acres? What is the price per pound? How well do they compete in the market?
Again, I hope they compete well. But I know that the tomato in my back yard cost me 5x the one coming off the truck at the local grocer.
"Globalization" would include an elimination of domestic agricultural subsidies and tariffs such that everyone is on a level playing field, which is something we have not done in our agricultural sector.
Though if you consider the long-term outlook apocalyptic and you own a house in these states, it would be prudent to sell before everyone else.
You don't have to solve the problem in a single year. You can have a 10 or 20 year target to get to zero growth. Just put a cap on building permits.
But plenty of people will scream bloody murder about that. Aren't FAANGs already shelling out millions to add housing because of shortages? Nevada is trying to pipe water in from Idaho and Utah. A Southern Nevada community that doesn't even exist yet just proposed to cut off the water to a neighboring community with thousands of residents so that the planned community could build homes.
Don't reject any solution out of hand. Population growth management is an obvious place to spend some really good thinking.
In the short term, your food will be more expensive. In the long term, people will invest in water-reduced production. Want to see fintech and crypto currency startups at YC get replaced by VF (vertical farming) startups claiming to reduce water use by 80%? Just raise the price of water by 1¢/liter. VFVC (vertical farming venture capital) will be all the rage.
Realistically, California could and should start a major water works project to import water from the east or pacific northwest.
Last year Illinois passed two laws: one prevents towns and cities from restricting vegetable gardens. If you want to fill your front yard with a hoop house, your city can't stop you. The other forces each county to establish guidelines for p2p food sales and prevents town and cities from stopping it. This needs to be adopted in other states.
How megafarmers Lynda and Stewart Resnick built their billion-dollar empire.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/lynda-stewar...
Having shrewdly maneuvered the backroom politics of California’s byzantine water rules, they are now thought to consume more of the state’s water than any other family, farm, or company. They control more of it in some years than what’s used by the residents of Los Angeles and the entire San Francisco Bay Area combined.
[...]
Their land came with decades-old contracts with the state and federal government that allow them to purchase water piped south by state canals. The Kern Water Bank gave them the ability to store this water and sell it back to the state at a premium in times of drought. According to an investigation by the Contra Costa Times, between 2000 and 2007 the Resnicks bought water for potentially as little as $28 per acre-foot (the amount needed to cover one acre in one foot of water) and then sold it for as much as $196 per acre-foot to the state, which used it to supply other farmers whose Delta supply had been previously curtailed. The couple pocketed more than $30 million in the process.
https://www.capolicylab.org/pandemic-patterns-california-is-...
Deport the 10-20 million already inside the USA and that's an even greater improvement.
IMO, golf courses in the southwest is straight up foolish. Start the ax there.
"golf courses in the southwest is straight up foolish."
Or turn them into full size putt putt with astroturf. I wonder if that's ever been done. Would be comical to see.
Agricultural and industrial usage, not so much.
Yes, you do. Or nearly so. This is not a problem that has decades to go. If Lake Powell drops below the minimum power pool (as early as 2024), the results could easily be dramatic and horrifying.
It's not even known if long-term water releases from the Glen Canyon dam are possible without using the power plant.
1.33 CCF = 1000 gallons.
So $20/1 CCF = $26.6/1000 gallons.
It's already near those rates, my water bill which I paid last week was roughly ~$20 per 1000 gallons.
That's not including the ~$100 base fee, so even if you only use one gallon a month (or even zero), the bill is almost $100.
It uses around $0.45 in electricity to pump 1000 gallons from my well continuously. Around $0.37 for 1000 gallons pumped intermittently.
While water is necessary for life, a lot of the water usage in a suburban lifestyle is just plain wasted. To give an idea, when I worked at a water treatment plant, I got to see just how different the water consumption rates were between winter and summer--winter water usage was roughly half that of summer.
So a simple starting point for water rationing is... ban lawns and watering lawns (if you don't like such bans, then I'd alternatively suggest changing water rates so that it's cost-exorbitant to water a lawn). If you want to live in a desert, you need to landscape your house appropriately for living in a desert.
The next contentious point will be a readjustment of the water rates for agricultural perspectives. The simple truth of the matter is that residential water usage--especially if you remove lawn care from the equation--is highly recoverable as drinkable water, since almost all of that water goes back down the sewer pipes. Agricultural water usage is generally far less recoverable, especially if you're growing plants for export whose mass is mostly water (which means you are rather literally exporting water).
A better plan would be to let the market allocate water. If people want golf courses, lawns, almond trees, microchip plants, etc. let them pay market prices for the necessary water.
Those who use lots of water on such things also have tons of money to spend on it without caring much, or at all. So it won't conserve any water, but it will price out all the poor and middle class people who can't play that game.
Could you please link to some studies or articles showing how it produces intended results, instead of just asserting it works?
From observation here (norcal) where rates are quite high, it is clear that the rates are already too high for poorer people and yet the rich do not see any disincentive yet to stop wasting water on lawns. It would take much higher rates to make the price-insensitive consumers to stop wasting on lawns, but at that point could any poor or middle class families afford any water?
We will have a housing and water crisis as it will bring investors and speculators. It has destroyed oil prices, housing, land, etc.
Our market is a sham. Tying essential life-giving water to it was a mistake.
I don't disagree with the market being a fancy BS system to separate the working class from the wealth or anything, but you can't let your politics colour your perception in arenas you know nothing about. Otherwise you are ironically furthering the exact politic you probably hate - emotionally driven
Not doing anything makes the situation worse for everyone, poor people included.
The good thing about a market-based approach is that it might allow for water to be obtained from means that are currently economically non-viable. Perhaps high-volume water users would happily pay 1000x current prices, and at those prices, desalination, or other alternate forms of water collection become viable.
You might be able to give water to poor people for free. If there was a system where a households using under a certain volume of water could pay nothing, in exchange for freeing up water to be sold to large purchasers who pay 10-1000x the per gallon price.
> You might be able to give water to poor people for free.
This would be a lot more fair. Allocate a reasonably small minimum amount of gallons/month/person and that is very cheap (maybe not free). Then have increasing tiers of expensive and much more expensive usage. If someone wants to have an acre of lawn it should cost them millions a month instead of just thousands as today.
Unfortunately some water systems in California have almost gone in the other direction to discourage conservation. During the previous drought they encouraged conservation and everyone did. Then they complained about not making enough money because people conserved.
Instead of raising the top-tier consumption rates to compensate, instead they raised the base rates by a huge amount (base rate being the flat monthly fee they charge even if you use zero gallons). It's not almost $100/month just to be connected even if usage is zero. So a poor family who conserves a lot and barely uses water is still stuck with a huge bill.
They're not — they're supposed to suffer and die in a way that's "their fault" or that "couldn't be helped". Bolinas California is a prototypical example of this, where a complete ban on new water hookups has been the excuse to prevent any new housing construction at all since the civil rights era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolinas,_California#Bolinas_Co...
Not to mention the bandaid solution of subsidizing water only up to, e.g., the first thousand gallons per resident per month.
1) Raise the price of residential water until the cities can buy the water from farmers.
2) Raise the price to curtail use until cities can operate within their existing supply
Water companies already charge gallon prices by usage today, just not to any deterrent extent.
Any time there is a minimum price on something, people who cannot afford that price won't receive that thing. When that thing is water, they will die. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Lockary v. Kayfetz is a good place you can start: https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1121751/files/fulltext.pd...
"With new construction halted and Bolinas's desirability unabated—or enhanced—after the moratorium, housing became pricier. In 1979, to create more affordable housing, the District allowed property owners to build second units on their property. Today [2007], property owners waiting for a chance to develop outnumber property owners with [water] meters, and homes can easily fetch $1 million."
This doesn't work well for something which is required to support life and a scarce resource.
The result would be that the very rich still continue to water their acre of front lawn, wasting a lot of water on something nonproductive because money is not an issue. Meanwhile poor and middle class people get priced out of being able to afford basic usage of water to live.
Actually free markets do very well for that. Free market farming in the US in 1800 was the first economy to provide a consistent food surplus.
As a counter-example, no country or society has ever managed to feed itself with collective agriculture. They always wind up starving and eating each other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
It seems to be halfway between a commune and a corporation.
Today's major consumers, on the other hand, don't present a way to capture the revenue like that, while still using the water in ways that are still nonproductive from a "why do we have to do this here" standpoint.
Blaming this on suburban households is like pretending that climate change would be solved if only consumers would be mindful of their carbon footprints.
41% Groundwater
36% Colorado River (limited to 2.8 million acre feet annually)
18% In-state Rivers (unlimited)
5% Reclaimed Water
I realize we can fix more than one thing but the arguments i am always seeing is stating the consumer is the biggest issue and it’s infuriating.
Stop trusting the people on TV!
Though water rights are probably the lower hanging fruit to tackle…except it’s chock full of political issues dating back to the Spanish territorial days.
Politicians way worse than today in many ways found ways to build out the big infrastructure projects that made the modern southwest a possibility - ie the Hoover Dam, the national highways, and power grid.
If you buy local, in-season, sustainable foods, you have a 100% chance of being 1/300MMth of the solution, not a 5% chance of being that same 1/300MMth of the solution.
And whether we are talking factories or mansions, it’s behind the big walls that you find big resource use.
Blaming “consumers” for climate change, if they are not also material stakeholders in major emitting entities, is borderline gaslighting.
This is what you're pushing for, and what we have, and it's a terrible world to live in since it lets you the producer who is knowingly doing damage to avoid taking any responsibility and just push it all to "consumers."
Whatever happened to personal responsibility applying to rapacious producers too?
I introduce a new food product, Soylent Green. It tastes great, doesn't cost much and is nutritious. It starts becoming wildly popular.
Does that mean that there was huge demand for cannibalistic products? No. There was demand for tasty, cheap, nutritious food.
If this happened in real life the ingredients label would be a list of indecipherable chemicals, proteins, and "natural flavors". What you're suggesting requires that consumers be able to understand the externalities involved in the sourcing of every ingredient as well as the manufacturing process AND then use those to override their own preferences regarding the end product.
Identifying and preventing externalities or at least making sure externalities are factored into pricing is something that governments are MUCH better equipped for than any individual.
Public companies are legally required to maximize profit. This will only be changed politically, or by changing what provides the company profit. Both lead back to the consumer.
Granted, the consumer in question may be on the other side of the earth, which isn't great for creating healthy incentives, but it doesn't change the fact that consumers need to consume less.
A lower consumption simplifies down to the equivalent to: (aj) reducing GDP per capita, or (b) reducing the number of capita (people). Structurally and morally, both of those are very difficult to manage. Ironically the argument for less “consumption” is usually made by the well-off people in wealthy economies. Weirdly war and political strife that destroys economic systems may be good for the planet (and the USA in particular wins relatively against other economies which have GDP destruction).
I would state a solvable problem as: how do we increase consumption, while decreasing resource usage? That requires efficiency, technology, and reducing the environmental cost of our economic systems. To achieve those goals needs a systematic global system that encourages those effects, while avoiding the tragedy of the commons. Politically we don’t seem to be achieving that.
Most western states have some form of private water ownership, where land owners own the water under it, like gold, oil, ect.
Most of the population is urban, and don't have sufficient water ownership to meet their demands, particularly in times of drought.
This creates a natural conflict between owners who want to use it for one thing, and thirsty cities who don't own the water.
The the extent it is a the fault of suburban households, it is their fault for not buying the water or lands to meet their needs.
A fix to this requires a change in policy.
If you want to buy a farmers water, they want to be compensated for sunk capital and future earnings. They bought land, planted it, drilled wells, and have 30+ years of future earnings, after which, they could sell their rights.
In short, the relevant market is for the water rights, not the water itself.
This is the definition of delusional entitlement — not understanding how food supply works in the US then bitching about the consequences for a system that feeds you.
How much almond California produces? Given the fact that "one ounce of almonds requires ~23 gallons of water", do the math!
That's right, the first laws in Arizona were about water and grabbing someone's water rights is some messy law.
Yes, we need to be talking about some drastic solutions in the area, yes, but it's not as simple as it seems from the outside.
The Utah Governor is an alfalfa farmer though, so good luck getting the states upstream to do play ball
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/07/16/cox-says-its-ignorant...
> Gov. Spencer Cox — a farmer himself — is calling on Utahns to conserve water to help save the state’s farms and ranches. And he doesn’t want to hear from anyone that the state’s water woes can be solved by further restricting the flow to farms.
> That’s “very uninformed,” Cox said. “I might say ignorant. … Nobody has done more to cut back on water usage in this state than our farmers,” whose water has been cut “between 70 and 75% on most farms. As a result, that’s dramatically reducing crops.”
If this was 1960's, our society would get together, move earth and mountains and solve the problem. Today's generation of people are being taught to live a scarcity-driven life.
I will vote against any politician that wants to reduce the QoL but giving a pass to globalisation or unnecessary farming in the region that cannot support it. You shouldn't be growing Avocados in a water scarce region.
First remove your special interest groups that get a free pass for polluting the environment or using resources for their own interest by reducing citizen's QoL.
What works is setting a price for water usage that lets supply and demand meet at a sustainable level.
This would require changing many laws and regulations, which is probably very hard to accomplish because the powerful interests that benefit from the current system.
Nonetheless, that is the solution to strive for.
WTF man?!
Have you ever watched the program: How it's Made? This television program, unintentionally, showcases the massive water-waste that corporations perpetrate daily.
How about we ban manufacturing processes that use water? How about we force companies that use our water to pay Citizens the ACTUAL VALUE of the water, and not a made-up price that makes their business competitive?
How about we tell those companies to go-F themselves until they have a manufacturing plan that doesn't include our limited water supply?
But, no, your immediate solution is to harm the Citizens... Again, wtf?! @Jcranmer
Ah yes, the age old strategy of exporting externalities. Manufacturers will just relocated to greener pastures my friend, our regulatory system is just a net cause of pollution if it drives manufacturing to developing countries.
I have always found it cool when in a showerthought moment, thinking how kind of cool it is that I'm consuming water from another part of the world, as I munch on whatever produce.
What works is letting the price rise until demand equals supply. Then the market will allocate it to the most productive use.
Rationing == central economic planning, which never works.
The market will allocate it to the most profitable use, as markets do, which isn't the best use of the resource for people outside the capitalist class, who are the people who most need access to water.
Water rates in Seattle are 3 cents per cubic foot. Do you really think some is going to be able to hoard enough water to make a glass of water cost a dollar?
This is far too simple of a take in my opinion. The problem being that pollution from concentrated populations in the desert regions causes air quality problems without sufficient vegetation. If you turn Denver into an even bigger parking lot, then you end up with something even more unlivable.
Eventually, I think this will inevitably cause a migration out of desert areas. It used to be a crazy idea to build a city in the desert. We’ve somehow forgotten that trying to sustain large populations there is extremely volatile.
The problem is that they make a lot more money on new connections than serving existing ones. So existing residents are (correctly) being told to restrict water, but then the same people saying that are turning around and greatly exacerbating the problem.
It's not just people that at fault, but an agricultural sector that has no limits on its consumption do to the money and politics involved.
I think for now the solution is to raise the price of water for agricultural users and let the chips fall where they may. That's the vast majority of water use in the southwest. One could do this in a somewhat balanced way by offering some financial support for said farmers. But it has to be done.
Michigan couldn't replace that during the winter. So it's more of an issue that we would have to decide to only eat vegetables seasonally. No green leafs in winter. Or build vast greenhouses I suppose.
While I agree, we probably should start telling people to stop moving there. The places in the US that are getting the largest influx of people are the same places that are going to be impacted the most by climate change: the West and the South. Some of the fastest growing cities in the nation are in Utah and Arizona, the exact areas we are discussing here.
I used to live in Utah and now live in the Midwest. A lot of people I know feel strongly that they would rather live in the West over the Midwest for various reasons, some of which I agree with, but I can't imagine moving back out there and taking on a mortgage in the area where it seems like the water crisis is a ticking time bomb.
I'd love to be wrong, but if the worst case scenarios are realized, a lot of suffering will be happening to people who have put themselves in the situation well after the warning signs became widely recognized.
What about telling people to stop building in these areas? Last time I looked they were still building new housing developments in Las Vegas! Of course, I also think people should stop building in Miami because of the ocean level rising.
and not via fruit.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Science-Be-Dammed-Ignoring-Inconvenie...
What I find infuriating is:
1. Water rights for agriculture are a particular problem. As if we don't subsidize agriculture enough (eg [1]);
2. There really should be more water restrictions and there should've been for years already; and (this is the big one)
3. We're making consumers (further) subsidize agriculture by funding and paying for expensive desalinated water.
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2021-10-10/colorad...
The argument being made here is that rather than some current conditions being considered "drought" compared to what's "normal", current conditions ought be considered "normal", as the current definition of "normal" does not accurately reflect what is in fact normal for some of these areas.
This ignores the fact that both projections and actual flow are trending downward. If the problem were just bad data, we would be just as likely to have a surplus as a deficit.
> Apportioned water in the Basin exceeds the in the Lower Basin despite recently approximate 100-year record (1906 through experiencing the worst 11-year drought in the 2011) Basin-wide average long-term historical last century. However, there have been natural flow2 of about 16.4 million acre-feet periodic shortages throughout the Upper (maf).
Note the increasing consumption from Figure 2.
[1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad...
edit: after reading some other comments, it's perhaps inaccurate to say that we're giving agriculture the water. And it sounds more like they bought it years ago at a ridiculously cheap price and are still benefiting from that.
This is similar to the issue regarding forest fires in the West cost. A huge factor is mismanagement of controlled burns in the forests. However, years of record drought absolutely do increase the probability of a forest fire.
Rather than falsely say "it isn't", it's better dismiss the false narrative that this is completely unavoidable because of climate change. With much better water management we could have postponed the impact of climate change quite a while.
The bigger issue is that climate change is being used as an excuse to mask decades of mismanagement of water resources in this region. I also agree with your point that the real conversation should be entirely "what are we going to do about agriculture in deserts and regions that are soon to be deserts?"
Cadillac Desert. A history of how all the dams came to be.
The Emerald Mile. Things got pretty perilous at Glen Canyon Dam owing to it being too full at the wrong time of the year. In the midst of this, three guys decide to take advantage of flow levels we're unlikely to see again in our lifetimes to set an all time record for running the Grand Canyon. This is on my personal list of the greatest true stories ever told.
Down The River (or anything else by Edward Abbey, really). The titular essay is about a trip down the Colorado. Abbey was an ardent critic of Glen Canyon Dam for flooding Glen Canyon. Better known for writing The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire, but Down the River more specifically deals with the Colorado.
"In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez “cuts” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that its lush arcology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist with her own agenda, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north. As bodies begin to pile up, the three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger and more corrupt than they could have imagined, and when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink."
"The film was inspired by the California water wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century, by which Los Angeles interests secured water rights in the Owens Valley"
Somehow we would get lots of rain or snow fall in the mountains, then state lifts water restrictions, and we end up with low reservoirs again.
Another issue is that Los Angeles would issues fines for high water usage, that's not enough when wealthy people can pay the cost, the consequences for wasting water need to be much higher.
(edit:Typo)
2nd Edit: Water restrictions should be applied to the agriculture sector (since it accounts for ~80% water consumption), that wasn't very clear in my original comment.
I agree in spirit though.
We have seen an increase in reservoir capacity over the last 20 years in SoCal though. San Diego seems to be doing fairly well, water wise, with toilet to tap and desalination.
We really need a national water grid(https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122) though. Climate change is coming. We need infrastructure for moving large amounts of water around the country so we can continue to grow food in the sun belt.
Almonds and alfalfa are the two that seems to come up the most often, but I'm not pretending to have done my own research.
I wonder how feasible it would be to have the federal government get California to relinquish some of its rights to the Colorado River in exchange to help fund desalination plants. Then the Colorado River can go more towards providing water to landlocked states in the southwest that don't have such an option.
Flood safety, food security and more gravity storage for renewables. Yeah, not worth much at all.
California and the lower basin states already overconsume their allotment of water from the Colorado River, some years by a lot.
Colorado and other upper basin states are tired of it, and are evaluating what legal approach makes the most sense to force a stop to excess water releases into the lower basin.
Jesus, what happened to HN?
For decades, southwest states have put up billboards in rust belt states to entice workers to move in order to keep workers filling their economies. Much to do was always made about the great climate. So if climate is an economic advantage, so is easy access to water.
These large bodies of water are not just for irrigation, they are the method for which much of the nation's harvest of grain is moved to eastern ports. It still is used to move the raw materials for steel production. Tapping the Great Lakes to support California's insatiable thirst will only drop the lakes to a level where shipping becomes unprofitable.
Climate change is already making food growing possible in some formerly unlikely locations. I'm exactly at latitude 42 degrees (it runs right through my living room). Not a mile from my home, they grow broccoli and other vegetables right up until December 1, unheard of twenty years ago. They are now on the second planting of lettuce a week into May.
Climate change is going to take that market away from these states whether they have water or not.
It's hard to take you seriously when you suggest we're going to drain the great lakes. Do you think the only supply of freshwater the west could tap is the great lakes?
The breadbasket of the US, the great plains, is also prone to water insecurity. This isn't just about the west. Climate change will bring unpredictable change and we need a way to move water around. You never know, you could be living under a drought in 20 years. Will you still fight water redistribution then?
I'd like to see some napkin math on this. You don't have to provide all the water for Ag, you just need to supplement local shortfalls. No one is assuming rainfall in the western US will drop to zero.
> We can't even keep up with badly needed electrical transmission
Oh gosh I guess we should just give up then. Oh well, we tried. Let's all commit mass suicide now. Sorry but this modern, visionless attitude nauseates me. I'm sorry you've believe so much of modern media that you've given up hope.
Water storage is electrical storage(gravity based). Pumped hydro can even out renewable energy and allow it provide base load.
> That's like type 1 civilization class of engineering project.
What? Like the interstate highway system?
There is a mechanism for government sizing property, but they do have to pay for it.
Water Conservation at The Oasis: https://www.oasisatdeathvalley.com/who-we-are/sustainability...
Hydrogeology of Lower Amargosa Valley (see Fig. 1 in report): https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/sir20185151
Moreover, the crops with the highest water usage are not at all the most economically valuable.
The real issue is that the true cost of the water is not passed onto the agricultural farms.
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-...
An entire continent with a shortage of California pistachios does not mean people starving in the streets and the world economy imploding. It means a handful of really unhappy pistachio plantation owners and millions of people happily eating Georgia peanuts (only half of which are artificially irrigated, they get plenty of water from the sky) instead.
Unfortunately, the pistacho farmers are wealthy and connected, so they can shift the narrative to "turn off your expensive city water while you're brushing your teeth" while they draw more in an hour than years of toothbrushing would use.
If you're farming in a desert and using 2020s technology to destroy the ecosystem, the fact that 1800s governments, lacking any ability to accurately measure the health of underground aquifers, allowed you to use a windmill to pull a little water out of the ground is completely irrelevant.
We live in a fucking desert with cactuses part of the native flora. Why are we watering Kentucky blue grass?
Colorado resident.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_coastal_sage_and_ch...
And in the desert, most people don't have grass lawns.
For comparison a 20'x20' lawn uses about 120 gallons/day.
One acre of alfalfa requires ~12k gallons/day and sustains 0.4 to 0.8 heads of cattle.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/water-footprint-food-...
But yeah, it's the people not turning off the faucet while brushing their teeth that are the problem! Who do they think they are? Don't they know we're in a desert?! /s
Agriculture costs are incredibly complex. The true cost of food is socialized, in the form of free/cheap land and water, subsidies, tax breaks, and fixed prices. I don't want to pay the true dollar price for food any more than the next person. I recognize that there's a societal benefit in socializing/externalizing the cost of food production.
That shouldn't stop us from acknowledging the true cost and trying to fix it. If we're looking to conserve water, the very first place we should be looking is agriculture. Maybe we shouldn't be growing rainforest crops in the desert. Maybe we shouldn't be draining our reservoirs and aquifers for crops that are exported. Maybe agribusinesses making record profits should feel the pain of higher water costs before we tell people they can't take a shower.
The fact that people now wish that the water was collectively owned by the state, does not make it so.
If people want water to be collectively owned, they need to collectively purchase it and buy out the farmers.
In the past, cities did just that. Like in the California water wars when LA went to the owens valley and set up shell companies pretending to be farmers and used them to purchase all the private rights, then turned the area into a barren wasteland. [1]
In some instances where farmers are not using their own water, they have contracts with the state to provide X gallons at Y prices. If the state wishes to break those contracts, they need to pay for breach of contract.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars#Obtainin...
There is already some math in the thread regarding how its almost 2 magnitudes more of water use for a cow for a month over a lawn for a year
Example from the article: "326,000 gallons (1.23 million liters), is enough water to supply one or two households for a year."
No! That is enough for >16 households a year in this rich part of northwestern Europe [0]. In a naturally dry area, consumption should be substantially less, not 16 times more.
Lowering residential water consumption to these reasonable levels gives an immediate 18.80% savings on total water consumption. That's nothing to sneeze at.
Forcing responsible water use upon non-agricultural users might also encourage a critical look at agricultural water consumption.
[0] https://www.vmm.be/data/gemiddeld-leidingwaterverbruik-gezin...
... is incorrect, by at least a factor of 10.
From the relevant wikipedia article [1]:
"Many homes in Sacramento didn't have water meters until recently. They now are gradually being installed after [...] law mandating meters statewide by 2025." In other words: we pretend to care a little, but actually, we don't.
The famous French saying is more honest: "Après nous le déluge". Loosely translated: "We'll be long gone before the flooding starts.". Both very applicable and not at all...
What we shall tell the children?
[0] http://www.irwd.com/images/pdf/save-water/CaSingleFamilyWate...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Urban/resi...
Aside from hypocrisy and optics, this isn't really a problem. I don't like it for the same reason I don't like cash bail and other areas where the rich can buy a free pass, but it has a negligible effect on water use. 80% of California's water is used by agriculture and another 10% by other industries, leaving 10% for residential use, of which rich people filling pools and watering lawns is a drop in the bucket. As usual, business has succeeded in externalizing costs, and through effective lobbying and marketing, has managed to convince the public that it's their selfish behavior that is the problem.
[0] https://www.gainesville.com/story/opinion/2021/08/24/douglas...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201203025513/https://fruitgrow...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/07/honeybee...
Off by one error.
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2020_Ag_Stats_Review...
My family and I suffered enough from our 3rd world country and without any major resources managed to survive and do well enough for ourselves. You with your massive resources should be able to do something else. Sorry not sorry.
Given that this is the case, it about as difficult as nationalizing land and homes to deal with the housing crisis.
Or to put it another way, the 7.5M acre-feet per year deliverable in the Colorado River Compact would take over 225 pipelines to achieve the same flow rate.
So, for desalination to have any significant impact, we would have to build a huge number of desalination plants and pipelines and provide massive power for the plants and the energy to pump all that water uphill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline
https://usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/faq.html
https://www.regoproducts.com/PDFs/liquid_flow_conversions.pd...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/317824/where-the-wa...
2. This is literally a debt in clean water that will be repaid by generations to come, as the article mentions. What is being done to make sure it can be repaid? Not just the first year or so of water restrictions, but a sustainable plan to reduce consumption.
Overall this reads like they just kicked the can upstream, down the road.
John Wesley Powell warned us about this more than 140 years ago [0].
I strongly recommend that everyone living in the western United States read at least the introduction[1] to Beyond the Hundredth Meridian[2]. The introduction is more relevant now than it was when it was written 67 years ago, itself 75 years after the publication of Lands of the Arid Region.
Previously:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28907254
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27910098
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18098899
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26964166
0. https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/70039240/report.pdf LANDS OF THE ARID REGION John Wesley Powell 1878
1. https://erenow.net/modern/beyond-the-hundredth-meridian/1.ph... Bernard DeVoto 1954
2. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West ISBN:9780140159943 Wallace Stegner 1954
Build out enough solar panels, and they can pump water back up at peak times.
Desalinating water and pumping it up would be a bigger project involving a lot of pipe. Before that, put up solar panels to shade the canals, and desalinate water for where the canals lead to.
* Watering of non-native grass lawns should outright be banned
* Unsustainable agriculture, like growing baby spinach in the desert during winter, should be forced to pay unsubsidized rates for water, which should be transferred to the consumers of the product
* People living in the desert should have to pay unsubsidized rates for water for consumption
One or two hundred years does not normal make. The fact is, this area is now returning to normal. The dams, water supply, etc. were all based on overly optimistic / false assumptions.
If gov / leadership don't have the wherewithal to break this down for the masses, we're never going to get honesty and transparency about climate change.
Imagine finding this on the shore!
https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/homicides/police-believe...
>Las Vegas police provided more details Tuesday morning in the discovery of a body at Lake Mead National Recreational Area.
Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said they believe the body found in a barrel Sunday was a man who died from a gunshot wound.
“We’re going to expand our time frame of the murder to the middle to late 1970s to early 80s,” he said Tuesday morning, citing the clothes and shoes the man was wearing.
Spencer said officers discovered the shoes the man was wearing were sold at Kmart and manufactured in the middle and late 1970s.
The barrel was found Sunday near Hemenway Harbor because of dropping water levels in the lake.
Spencer previously said it is possible the barrel was dumped in the lake from a boat.
“The water level has dropped so much over the last 30 to 40 years that, where the person was located, if a person were to drop the barrel in the water and it sinks, you are never going to find it unless the water level drops,” Spencer said in an interview Monday. “The water level has dropped and made the barrel visible. The barrel did not move….It was not like the barrel washed up.”
Did anybody else find this number astounding? That's 3370 litres PER DAY per household. Assuming this numberis accurate, this is not people living in condos. This is people watering their lawn daily, filling their backyard pools, liberally washing their cars every week. I think the water crisis will be an easy fix as soon as the immediacy of the problem causes people to accept higher pricing. No other incentive will eliminate the lunacy which is watering lawns and every-backyard pools in the deserts of Utah, Nevada, and Southern California.
[0] https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/...
[1] https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3611
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/surfs-water-main-break-...
This is a religious statement, same as writing "god is great" after a statement. Climate change, sure I'm on board and I think we need to act to address it. News articles just throwing in these random "praise the lord"s in their writing serve nobody, make any case for action weaker, and undermine the credibility of the reporter and news service.
If you're reporting on a study about that fine, if you're just writing about how the reservoir is low, no need to add some hallelujahs to your article.
If say, climate scientists were predicting a 5% decrease on rainfall over a 10 year period, and the rain completely stopped over that time, we could rightly say the hypothesis was bunk. However, to suggest that probabilistic causality is incompatible with scientific claims, I would say you need to need to re-read your philosophy of science.
Yes, you should always read a "very probably" with any claim of fact for any empirical claim (this is the problem of induction), but yes, you can say that "this weather event is (very probably) the result of climate change," if it fits in nicely with the probabilistic predictive model.
If chance of drought increases 10%, then you can say this drought is 10% likely to be caused by climate change.
If you observe 110 events and expected 100, you can say that this likely supports your theory.
At no point can you say "this drought right here was caused by climate change".
What causality means is framework dependent.
If we are making accurate predictions within a consistent framework, it is perfectly reasonable to use a sense of causality within that framework.
If the chance of drought is increased 1%, can you still claim that every one of them is caused by climate change?
At what point do you think someone becomes a liar or misleading? Is there any threshold in your mind?
I'm making the important point that "definitive claims" are only definitive within the the framework in which they are made.
>If the chance of drought is increased 1%, can you still claim that every one of them is caused by climate change?
Again, we can and we can't. We have a seemingly reliable framework that would suggest that every one of them is cause by climate change. There ought to be builtin error bars, but if the probabilities are falling under the predictions, it's reasonable to say there is a causal link. It's also reasonable to have concerns about noise. The concept of definiteness ultimately just breaks down for all empirical claims. That's not to say that we don't use the term all the time, it's just to say that the term "definitive" is effectively a heuristic for "very probably" in the frame we are using.
>At what point do you think someone becomes a liar or misleading? Is there any threshold in your mind?
Again, I have a lot of sympathy about this point. There is a dance between what may we believe and what must we believe. The claim in the frame of we may believe that this drought was caused by climate change is reasonable. The argument against the claim that we must believe that the drought was caused by climate change is generally problematic and generally unreasonable. We can know in the sense that it's falls out from the prediction, but we can not know in the sense that there are error bars and noise and there will be probabilistic events that fall outside of our model's level of precision.
Right now, predictions about climate change made by institutions with academic reputations have shown to be very accurate. If we have predictions that are shown to be completely inaccurate or involve a nonsensical framework, then yes, i would say "lying or misleading" is reasonable. This is especially true for post-hoc justifications for these inaccurate predictive results. This happens all the time in the world of finance, but it rarely happens in the world of science because most of the time scientists are actually seeking the best model of understanding. There was a bit of push back against Einstein, for example, but generally speaking, the scientific community goes with the frameworks that best explain the phenomenon.
The Navajo reservoir has 800,000 acre-feet of water which can't be released due to the high placement of an intake pipe. If that intake is exposed, water to several small cities and part of the Navajo reservation (unfulfilled decades-long promise, still in-process) ceases to flow.
Apparently it's a design flaw made in the name of cost-savings.
https://twitter.com/edmillard/status/1520915847316836352 https://twitter.com/edmillard/status/1520914733674553344
This is mind-blowing. Is this true? Each house in American (roughly) uses this much water? I assume it's certainly not an issue in, say, Ohio where my monthly water bill I think has never exceeded $25 - but there's just no way this is sustainable in places out west prone to drought, right?
Am I over-appreciating this seemingly large number?
> "We are never going to see these reservoirs filled again in our lifetime," said Denielle Perry, a professor at Northern Arizona University's School of Earth and Sustainability.
Water supply planners estimate that a typical household needs 0.4 -0.5 acre feet of water per year (approximately 150,000 gal) to satisfy the demands of a home and landscape.
In my experience, with a family of 4, a lawned landscape is gonna take up about 50-70% of your water use in SoCal. This is based upon living in a couple of places down here.
Also, pools are a giant red herring. A noncovered pool would take up about 5% of that above water budget. Once you cover it it consumes basically no water (once filled).
Note that drought tolerant grasses use upwards of 60% less water than standard lawns. And subsurface irrigation uses upwards of 70% less water. Still not a good idea to have tons of the stuff, but if you want a small patch of it you can do so without blowing the water budget. Most people don't do this though.
I live in New England and haven't watered my lawn since it was established and rarely water gardens. Even if things can get a bit brown during the summer, they come back.
I mean, if you are able to keep your water use that low, congrats and keep it up. We could all use more people like you. In reality, I'm guessing you are using a bit more than that however.
The water usage rates are pretty much noise for all but the poorest families.
A standard (inefficient) US toilet uses 1.28 gallons every time you flush it. Lets assume you have four people per household maybe using the toilet about 6 times per day, each. That's almost 30 gallons right there. The average shower takes about 15 gallons. So times four that's 60 gallons right there. Adds up to 80 gallons already. That's before you turn on the washing machine, the dishwasher, watering the lawn, making tea, etc. 82 sounds about right but also very wasteful.
The question of course is could the US do better? And why would it? As it turns out, a lot of places treat water like an almost free commodity. Hence the complete disregard for toilet and shower inefficiencies. If people would pay for it by the gallon at a reasonable amount, they'd fix it. But they aren't.
Say you'd price it a 10 cents per gallon. A 15 gallon shower now costs you 1.50$. Maybe you'd install some water saving shower head and shower bit less long. The actual price is closer to a 1000 gallons for that price. Hence the average American not giving a shit when they flush the toilet, take a shower, etc.
Water isn't cheap to source anymore. Especially if you live in a desert. Taking water from unsustainable sources has the downside that those sources run out eventually. Especially if they are not being replenished naturally anymore. That's what is happening in a lot of places. Water isn't scarce though. Our planet is covered in it. All we need to do is separate it from salt (and our waste) and we can have as much as we want of it. But it comes at a price.
But... I was surprised. I could definitely shorten my showers.
[1]https://americanhomewater.com/the-truth-about-reverse-osmosi...
I kind of miss making coffee with water out of that purifier though, it tasted noticeably better
[1] https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/entwicklung-d... (figure shows liters per day, 129 liters per day are about 12438.5 gallons per year)
[0] 138 gallons per day is a little over 190k L/yr https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=138+gallons+per+day+to+...
edit: 138 figure from here. Just took the google knowledge box answer: https://www.watercalculator.org/footprint/indoor-water-use-a...
To put this in context, it's 10x the water we use in our house in the UK, and I don't think we're particularly low in our water usage (we work out to be around 300 litres a day).
These units seem to be deliberately obtuse.
My sewer bill in Seattle is over $120. That isn't for water, that is just the price of getting the water out of my house! (My water bill is half that, go figure!)
This was winter/spring, so just this is just laundry, showering, and doing dishes.
Where I live, in a very wet part of ther United States, water is still too expensive for watering the lawn regularly. This is usually because the meter reading is used to assess charges for sewer as well. Those who do have irrigation systems request second meters to avoid sewer charges or even tap into the gray water supply.
Edit: By decorative, I mean the manicured lawns that are only for aesthetics that require tons of watering and sprinkler systems, and pesticides/insecticides/fertilizers.
To imitate that in the southwest you usually need irrigation.
I pulled my figures for the past year. We used approx 36,000 gallons in household use and 9,000 gallons in irrigation/outdoors use. Effectively, my lawn is equivalent to one additional person living in our home.
I find that most of the time, it's not the heat or dry that's killing lawns, it's disease and pests. If I was foolish enough to water fescue regularly in the summer heat, I would lose it to dollar spot or brown patch. I've been completely wrecked by web worm while on vacation. I have a new residence with a larger lot and plan to switch away from fescue once I've lived here a few seasons. I'm also convinced the USDA 2012 hardiness zone map is overdue for an update. Regardless, I'm not going back to a high maintenance lawn.
The only long term solution for our water problems is massive investment into desalination and pipelines from the coasts inland. There are other solutions such as using what we have more efficiently, equitably and with less waste, but that will only get us so far. We're heading towards 400M Americans by 2060. They'll all need water.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKL40aBg-7E - The Biotic Pump] [https://forestecosyst.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s406... - The enduring link between forest cover and rainfall: a historical perspective on science and policy discussions] [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/amazon-lo... - Amazon Losing "Flying Rivers," Ability to Curb Warming]
Cows & dairy is the problem.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore
Shutting down hydroelectric power is really wasteful since they already are incurring the negative environmental effect of the dam, but without the benefit of getting clean energy.
My partner’s parents said that they were on the lake about 20 years ago, and their reaction to how much it had fallen was very visceral.
I’m very glad something is being done to help the lake.
Also, go see it if you get the chance. It’s very beautiful.
More human remains have already been found since that first barrel[0]. It's more than a little disturbing to think about how many people rely on that lake for their drinking water and how much worse the quality will get as the water levels drop.
[0]https://nypost.com/2022/05/09/more-remains-found-at-lake-mea...
Link is this Atlantic article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/how-the-we...
Even if that plant goes live it is only 50 million gallons a day or just 2.5% of the needs of Orange county.
You would need 40 more plants like that .
The issue is not just people but an out-of-control agro businesses that have no limitation to their water usage
1 acre-foot (feet?) is about 1233m3 according to Google.
I always thought Americans would just use "billions of Gallons" into infinity.
I mean it's not Beard-seconds but not far off.
EDIT: I read about it in the following paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01290-z
Can you site a source? I'm not even skeptical, but if that's true it would be nice to stop blaming climate change.
Events can have multiple causes. Whether there are millennia long natural cycles happening doesn't disprove human caused climate change.
I'm not sure how we could even know, with any level of certainty, that there are thousand year drought cycles or how they work. It's true that the Colorado is oversubscribed and the whole Southwest is fairly unsustainable as-is.
The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet periods like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the rule in California for at least the last 3,500 years, and that mega-droughts are likely to recur.
The South American drought was of "horrendous proportions," said Dr. Kolata, and it destroyed Tiwanaku's agricultural base. The empire's cities were abandoned by about 1000. Dr. Kolata believes that the raised fields could no longer support the cities, and archeological evidence shows that the fields were abandoned between 1000 and 1100. The political state collapsed, the population dispersed and, with agriculture no longer possible, the people relied on raising alpacas and llamas.
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/19/science/severe-ancient-dr...
There is a saying that water policy in the West is 21st century needs on top of 20th century infrastructure and 19th century law.