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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

“””the Bureau of Reclamation will release an additional 500,000 acre-feet (616.7 million cubic meters) of water this year from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream on the Wyoming-Utah border that will flow into Lake Powell.”””

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.

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The real solution to the water crisis is to start by admitting that water is a scarce resource in the region that needs to be rationed somehow and then start working on an equitable plan for rationing.

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).

Given that non-residential is 80% of usage, it seems like that'd be where we should start looking at recycling water usage.

"The real solution to the water crisis is to start by admitting that water is a scarce resource in the region that needs to be rationed somehow and then start working on an equitable plan for rationing."

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.

> 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.

Progressive pricing is already a thing in other utility markets. Set tiers such that any single household can afford enough water to live and ramp up from there.

Except market driven allocation by and large works, despite the sheer denial going on here. Not every user of water is uncaring of price, and water prices demonstrably work. I don’t understand the resistance against such a measure, this is probably a textbook example of where market-driven allocation would work well. Most people don’t need enough water for even reasonably high prices to be a serious issue.

> Except market driven allocation by and large works, despite the sheer denial going on here.

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?

I've always wondered this about microchip plants and their water usage. They need ultrapure water, so it makes sense that they'd need a lot of water if they're using reverse osmosis systems. However, for every one litre of pure water used, hundreds of litres of water just a shade less pure are produced. Can't this just be resold, since for any other purpose, it's still perfectly fine water.

Or just raise the price of water to a market level and let things work themselves out. people waste and act irrationally when they get something for less than it should cost.

This proposal always ignores poor people. How are those with low/no income supppsed to afford it.

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.

Actually, poor people pay significantly (2 orders magnitude) more per unit water than (presumably sometimes corporate) farmers, who are often growing cash crops that make almost no impact on feeding anyone in the area.

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

You can have progressive water rates. Everyone gets X gallons of water at the current rate, then the rate goes up by 10 times. Then perhaps another 10x for the top 1% of water usage.

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.

Rich people can afford to game those rules. We don't have a rulemaking system that doesn't eventually cede to lobbying where flat, even rules evolve into entire regulatory systems that favor the rich

> You can have progressive water rates.

> 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.

Pretty sure this is by design when possible California prefers regressive taxes. Some good examples: gas tax, vehicle registration, highest sales tax in the country (7.25%) with most counties raising it even more, parcel taxes, etc.

> How are those with low/no income supposed to afford it.

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...

This is fully detached from mainstream economic theory. Barring a few rural agriculturalists, people below the poverty line don’t make a dent in overall water usage - a small handful of wealthy individuals and organizations use the vast majority of water. Pricing water appropriately benefits those poor, rural agriculturalists in the long run too, as appropriate rationing means they don’t have to compete with their wealthier neighbors in a race-to-the-bottom arms war, drilling ever deeper into depleted aquifers and purchasing potable water for drinking.

Not to mention the bandaid solution of subsidizing water only up to, e.g., the first thousand gallons per resident per month.

They ignore it because it's a non issue since. We do progressive pricing with all sorts of stuff and the amount of water needed to support a household is vastly different than a farm or other large scale operation.

Most cities already have progressive water costs. Enough to drink and bathe is cheapest, and overage to water huge lawns and fill pools costs more per gallon.

To do this, though, you'd have to resolve the water rights issue first. The vast majority of water consumption is by farmers who are not in the same market as residential consumers. There's little point in making regular people pay a progressive rate for water usage.

Sounds just like bitcoin mining/farming.

Raising rates has two points.

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

And kill everyone who can't afford it?

Just make the first 3-4000 gallons at typical rates, and ramp the price way up over said threshold.

Water companies already charge gallon prices by usage today, just not to any deterrent extent.

This is how my water is priced in a place with over 80 inches a year.

80 inches of rain!?! Curious where that is! I lived in about 50ish inches and found that too much already.

What nonsense! Are you worried that rich people will buy all the food, or use all the gasoline?

It seems you have misunderstood. This point is not about supply of water, it is about supply of dollars in a given wallet. Doesn't matter how much water is in supply: if someone cannot meet the price, they won't have access.

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.

We charge for water now. I'm not aware of any poor Californians dying of thirst due to cost. So I believe your hypothesis is wrong.

> I'm not aware of any poor Californians dying of thirst due to cost.

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."

People in Bolinas are dying of thirst?

You will find it difficult to quantify a dollar-value of the damage done to people who would like to live in a particular place but have been locked out due to artificial constraints on housing supply. That's why it's such an effective strategy.

You appear to be responding to some comment other than my own.

What hubris to expect that your tiny filter bubble can accurately reflect large-scale tendencies!

If you know of anyone in California who has died of thirst because of water cost, please cite it.

If you don't know of anyone in California who has died of thirst because of water cost, please don't assume that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

Is there any credible source to that effect? If not, I submit that your statement is ridiculous hyperbole.

> Or just raise the price of water to a market level and let things work themselves out.

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.

progressive water rates. Figure out a decent figure for a person to live on in a decent manner (say 100 gallons, or whatever), then make that 100 gallons super cheap, but go above that and it rapidly gets expensive.

On the contrary, it works very well indeed, and far better than a centrally planned "equitable" allocation system. Such a system is the very reason we're in the pickle we're in!

> This doesn't work well for something which is required to support life and a scarce resource.

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.

Mondragon cooperative is a special case that is semi-autonomous collective that also does agriculture with about 81000 people.

Mondragons pay workers wages and managers 5x more. A great deal of the workers aren't owners, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

It seems to be halfway between a commune and a corporation.

Set the top marginal prices high and use all that money the rich people with mansions are paying to build up a bunch of infrastructure to go get more water.

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.

70% of the water in Arizona goes to farming. Our state ships hay to the Middle East. Subsidized water is a ridiculous subversion of market economics.

Blaming this on suburban households is like pretending that climate change would be solved if only consumers would be mindful of their carbon footprints.

I think they alluded to that in their reply

Here is a source(ish) for the above. On the supply side:

  41% Groundwater 
  36% Colorado River (limited to 2.8 million acre feet annually)
  18% In-state Rivers (unlimited)
  5% Reclaimed Water

https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts

It’s becoming unbearable that every issue facing society is the consumers fault. I take a ten minute shower and I’m destroying the world but the farmer growing crops that wouldn’t exist in the region without imported water is fine.

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.

If they can convince us that everything is our fault, then we'll turn to fighting amongst ourselves, and nothing will change. Which is exactly where we're at, and not just with climate issues.

Stop trusting the people on TV!

Whose fault is it?

I’m not really interested in fault when this is a solvable problem with current tech. Consider that New Mexico gets enough solar power per year to power all of the globe. And it gets a ton of wind (70 mph gusts the last several days for much of the day!). And that’s just one state in the southwest and the rest get similar (or more) amounts of sunny days, wind, etc.

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.

To an extent, it is. Americans can’t do much about hay shipped to the Middle East, but buying cheap produce out of season pushes markets to grow crops in unusual places. Less of a problem when buying in-season foods from down the road, but that’d mean customers also have to stop shopping at places like Walmart.

Americans can fix the subsidized water distribution. Why allow people in the Middle east to purchase US hay at a discount? Charge fair market price.

Americans seem to be one of the only two groups that actually could do something about Americans shipping hay to the Middle East, no? How is that a "can't do anything about it"?

Voting is a much worse waste of time and resources than making the right choices. Even if you vote for the "right" congressional candidate, the hurdles of getting a bill out of committee, avoiding lobbying pressures/temptations, making deals with other members of Congress, watering it down with the other chamber, hoping it doesn't get vetoed, etc, already reduces your odds by, let's say, 95%.

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.

Outside of voting for politicians in elections who promise change in this regard (and casting a vote is a very coarse signal), the average individual American can't do much. And blaming individuals for taking advantage of the system they were borne into is dumb—individuals cannot be expected to understand the macro-level naunces that group behaviours have.

I don't live in the Southwest, but I'm not inconveniencing myself so some fucking company can make more money. If the individual needs to belt-tighten, so can the company. They're people too, right?

The difference is that we need to eat -- you don't need to take 10 minute showers or water your lawn. It IS the over-consuming citizen (i.e. you) causing these problems at the end of the day, whether that fact makes you uncomfortable or not.

But do we need to eat almonds and avocados grown in a [REDACTED] desert?

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.

Disagree. Consumers buy the products these companies make. There wouldn't be a market for the products if consumers didn't buy them.

If you can sell a product at $5 by doing it in an unsustainable way but can't afford to go below $10 if you do it in a sustainable way, is it reasonable to expect each individual consumer to fully vet claims of sustainability and make the right long-term decision?

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?

In general people want products that will enrich their lives in some way. Sometimes these things aren't necessities, but sometimes they are. Food for example...

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.

If you don’t think there’s a huge demand for cannibalistic products, you haven’t been listening to Q. Which is good news for you. Of course confusion about the plausible goals of large actors is kind of their thing.

Consumers didn't hold a gun to anyone's head and force them to profit from environmentally disastrous manufacturing and shipping practices, or to profit from literal slave labor in supply chains. Those actually committing those actions, and profiting from them, are responsible for their actions, and it's shifting the blame to suggest that those who have no say in how private businesses are run are responsible for how private businesses are run.

No, but consumers enabled them by buying their products. And consumers do have a say, either by voting to increase regulation, or by not buying products.

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.

A lot of the almonds are grown in former marshland. It’s our own mismanagement of water that has desertified the San Joaquin valley.

Do you eat avocados or almonds or kiwis or bananas or lettuce? If so, then STFU.

Please send me some data on how water that is able to be treated and re used is causing issues for society.

It's true though. Any company is a selling a product to a consumer or is part of a supply chain whose end product goes to a 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.

> 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.

Or nestle finishing off water reserves

This. I live in Utah and it's the same story.

It is not a matter of subsidized water, It is a challenge around private water ownership and public demand.

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.

https://mywaterearth.com/who-are-the-global-water-grabbers/

If a perfect market existed in water in western states, the cost of a gallon of water would be the same whether directed to urban or agricultural uses. It clearly isn't, which is a pretty clear sign that there are high frictions facing people who want to purchase the water they need.

A fix to this requires a change in policy.

It is not the price of a gallon that is being paid, but the right to use a gallon for all time. There are indeed high frictions, mostly in the form of upfront capital costs.

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.

That reminds of me of when my state made a big show of banning restaurants from automatically bringing water to your table, when 80% of our water use goes to agriculture.

Dude... farms make food lol. You don't need an extra cup of water without asking, but farms need water to grow food. This is the type of delusional entitlement that is ruining the planet.

"Delusional entitlement" is thinking you should be able to forever grow crops in a region where water is scarce.

And WHY do you think crops are grown there?? Year round sunshine to feed the consumer’s (I.e. YOUR) appetite. You can’t grow avocados in Minnesota.

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.

The only entitlement I see is from those who think they're entitled to grow crops in a desert during a drought. Nobody is going to die if almonds aren't grown in the desert.

That’s because it’s the only place you can grow these crops year round, which is what the American consumer demands. You have very poor systems understanding — just a myopic view that lets you cast aspersions while enjoying the benefits of the system.

I believe that number is even higher in California: ~80%

How much almond California produces? Given the fact that "one ounce of almonds requires ~23 gallons of water", do the math!

It's an ugly problem. The farmers actually have first right to the water over the cities, even if they use it inefficiently, due to the oldest laws in Arizona: water right laws.

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.

I completely agree that the first step is to admit water is scarce and the cost of usage needs to reflect that.

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.”

The alfalfa must flow.

What do you think the animals that you eat eat? Just because you don't directly consume alfalfa doesn't make it a wasteful crop.

Alfalfa is easily shipped from places with abundant water. Water is very expensive to ship uphill.

Isn't this the same governor whose solution was to declare a special day for citizens pray for rain?

The same one, yup: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/04/utah-governo...

I totally disagree. This is the mentality of defeatism. Instead, we should be trying to solve "Why is this not abundant" and use technology to stave off scarcity-driven society.

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.

The problem is that the avocado farmers own the water rights, and you can’t just steal it from them. You might be able to eminent domain it from them but you would have to pay them a fair price for it.

The real solution is to get rid of fossil fuels as quickly as possible and by any means necessary, no matter the cost.

Rationing is a very blunt instrument.

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.

Your /first/ solution is to ban US Citizens from using our own resource?

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

> not a made-up price that makes their business competitive?

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 appreciate that you point out that agriculture exports contain the local water.

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.

Rationing is always a bad idea. It leads inevitably to mis-allocation, usually for corruption and political purposes. Rationing bureaucracies are never, ever able to manage the complexity of finding the best use of the resource.

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.

People need water to live. Letting the price rise seems like it would price many people out water.

Water rates in Seattle are 3 cents per cubic foot. Do you really think people will be priced out of water?

>Then the market will allocate it to the most productive use.

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.

Why is nearly everything cheaper in capitalist countries than communist ones?

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?

> So a simple starting point for water rationing is... ban lawns and watering lawns

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.

Adding desalination plants is a great solution.

As for telling people to move, that actually is a solution even for the number of people at stake. Look how many million people left California in the last two years. Just ask Boise, ID. If you start charging $20/CCF instead of $5/CCF to fill an olympic-sized swimming pool, immigration into California might come to a screeching halt.

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.

Since farming is 80% of water use, cutting out a little bit of the water intensive farming will provide for any residential needs for some time.

Yep. All other discussions are fiddling around the edges while you still have farmers casually spraying water in the hot air as it is cheaper than pipes.

Then raise the price of water. I don't get a Nobel Prize for this. It really just earns me a Captain Obvious sticker.

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.

You're assuming farmers are paying for water the same way residential consumers do. "Just raise the price of water" doesn't work without first reforming a lot of law.

I think the recent bouts of inflation show that people don't take large price hikes kindly

In a country where major companies get governments to fund their factories while they spend billions on stock buybacks that is unlikely to be allowed to happen.

Well that's it. Pack it up. There's no solution as long as government can be bought by companies.

...and if you stop farming in california. Inflation will go up.

Realistically, California could and should start a major water works project to import water from the east or pacific northwest.

Only alterantive is to cut back some of the corn/soybean production in the midwest and grow some of the other crops grown in California. If that doesn't work, like you said, we can import water but other states need to cooperate and the federal government should chip in some funding. You can't just tell Californians to suck it up and figure this out by themselves when the state has >10% of the population plus many essential crops and industries.

I don't think there is a need to cut back on corn/soybean production. But we definitely need to be growing more fruits and veggies in the midwest.

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.

Yup. Orchard farmers will routinely leave their thirstier crops in puddles of water, leaving their sprinklers on the whole day because it's easier and less management than a smarter plan. Any exposed water that evaporates from the surface is effectively wasted and won't be replenished until the next rain- or snowfall.

Meet the California Couple Who Uses More Water Than Every Home in Los Angeles Combined

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.

Yeah people moving out and people moving in. It’s not like CA lost “millions of people”.

https://www.capolicylab.org/pandemic-patterns-california-is-...

Enforcing US immigration laws and securing the Southern Border should be pursued from an environmental sustainability angle, at least. Seal the border properly and that's 2million people each year we don't have to feed, house, or water.

Deport the 10-20 million already inside the USA and that's an even greater improvement.

This doesn’t address the largest consumers of water in the area, as stated above. People consume far less water than business and ag.

IMO, golf courses in the southwest is straight up foolish. Start the ax there.

Just because I'm a smart-ass... it actually might address the agricultural aspect if farmers don't have access to the stereotypical labor sources.

"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.

We could also start exiling US citizens and liquidating (ironically) undesirables.

Human consumption if you have an ocean isn’t much of a concern in the dry places, desalination is cheap enough for what people can pay.

Agricultural and industrial usage, not so much.

> You don't have to solve the problem in a single year.

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.

Building permits are already crazy expensive in California; you can save a lot of money by building in another state.

> If you start charging $20/CCF instead of $5/CCF to fill an olympic-sized swimming pool, immigration into California might come to a screeching halt.

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.

Where do you live? The California Water Service Company tariff for 1-8 CCF is $4.269/CCF for residential metered service in East Los Angeles.

That's remarkably cheap. 8 CCF is just about 6000 gallons (I'd never seen CCF used before, our water district in norcal bills in gallons). The rates are tiered, but by the 6000th gallon we'd paying ~$24 for 1000 gallons. It goes up to ~$29 for 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.

This really makes me appreciate my well.

It uses around $0.45 in electricity to pump 1000 gallons from my well continuously. Around $0.37 for 1000 gallons pumped intermittently.

Almonds in California use so much water it could feed 56 cities the size of Los Angeles (back-of-the-envelope math from publically available sources)

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.

They do limit water consumption actually.

Since only something like 0.03% of that water actually ends up in the almonds, you need to track what happens to that other 99.97% to determine the actual impact of almonds.

Thirsty folks from California and the Southwest wanting more water to be piped in to feed their water intensive crops and lawns in the desert. I'm sure that'll go down well in outlying regions. Maybe change in meteorological patterns and population levels hitting critical mass without the attendant infrastructure are bad for water levels. Aquifers are depleted. Rainfall is reduced. There's no more snowmelt to bank on as that savings account has been drained. Wildfires, drought, and rising sea levels will displace significant numbers of people. Agriculture will shift north and east. I think California peaked a few years ago.

It's particularly galling when many California cities have desalination as an option and it's opposed in many places. Farming is going to have to cut back regardless, though, since it uses 80% of the water. (Not including environmental use.)

Why is farming an improper use of water? I mean nations need to grow food and not rely on other countries as their bread basket, that seems like good systems planning. As for the types of food I suppose that is a good discussion to have but how do you deal with the reality that beef is an enormous use of water over nearly every single crop?

It's a desert. There are way better regions to grow food.

The central valley, where most of CA's food is grown, is not a desert. It was formerly mostly grasslands.

It's a desert now. Or will be. There's no more snowmelt to rely on. Rainfall is down. Aquifers are depleted so much the ground is sinking. Someone said I'm this thread that San Diego isn't a desert because they get 20% more rain than a desert by definition. 10 inches per year is really not a lot to replenish your water levels.

Growing food in the desert is the improper part. There are plenty of areas in other parts of the country that aren't experiencing crippling drought. That is where water intensive crops should be grown.

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.

That's a good point, something I am curious about now is the water costs of desert farming versus cattle ranching. Just wondering how close the gap actually is, I honestly want to say desert farming uses less resources than raising cattle for slaughter but I'm unsure and just guessing from the hip here.

I'm not sure how they compare in terms of water, but cattle ranching could certainly be done with less impact in less dry regions as well.

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.

> Cattle ranching could certainly be done with less impact in less dry regions as well.

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.

I think part of the problem, alfalfa and rice and almond trees, among other thirsty plants, are allegedly being ripped up as they're unprofitable and unsustainable. I think @azemetre is correct in holding up growing crops as a virtue, but we should be careful as to which, where, and how we grow.

I don't think farming in California will ever go away, but conserving water (say, cutting back by 20%) means that some crops might not be grown in California anymore. And the farming that's done will use water more efficiently.

(Also, regarding the "bread basket," grain is not typically grown out west, I don't think? That's east of the Rockies.)

If they cut back by 5% then residential people would get 25% more water.

This is true, but remember that averages can be misleading. Available water is a very spiky graph [1]. Reservoirs balance it out some, but cities need and can afford reliable water, so backup sources are good, even if they're expensive.

[1] https://d32ogoqmya1dw8.cloudfront.net/images/trex/students/l...

From: https://serc.carleton.edu/trex/students/labs/lab4_1.html

I don't think "just move" is the answer either, but the fact remains that the region cannot sustainably support its current population (much less a growing population) given current levels of consumption.

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 plenty of water in the south west, we just use most of it to grow animal feed in the desert. Even worst, much of that water is subsidized by the US Government which allows farmers to grow that animal feed in the high plains where it would be economically infeasible otherwise. We have engineered this problem to the benefit of a small number of ranchers and farmers and seem determined to blame it on everybody else.

We agree here. By "consumption," I'm not just referring to residential consumption.

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.

For sure! Even Buy-and-dry schemes seem to be struggling with political backlash and those landowners are being fairly compensated in voluntary transactions. It's not going to be pretty when the junior water rights holders are cut off for good.

The benefit is arguably not just to a small number of ranchers and farmers.

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.

The fact that the US grows a lot of food domestically seems completely counter to what you're saying. Growing food within the US has a lot of benefits but doing so in the middle of the desert is the worst possible spot.

Prove it. Start a tomato farm in Tennessee and challenge Musk and Bezos with your fortune. Replace tobacco with carrots in North Carolina and see how it goes.

Here’s a list of almost exclusively tomato farms in a single county in TN. Your globalization take is bad, but the tired repetition of the only-California-grows-food trope is also bad.

https://grainger.tennessee.edu/grainger-county-farmers-page/

Literally famous for tomatoes, man.

https://farmflavor.com/tennessee/tennessee-crops-livestock/w...

Thank you for those links. I'm very glad to see them. I wish them all success. I really do think it is important to not concentrate food production.

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.

> The U.S. went all-in on globalization. That includes globalization of food production.

"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.

Agree. In LV they’ve got huge water works to recycle all water. It’s a known that the water almost exclusively leaves the system when it’s evaporated or used to water plants. And there are tight restrictions on residential use.

> Further, the answer is probably not to tell people to simply move.

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.

I already know multiple people who have left southern California in order to beat the rush out. They consider themselves climate refugees.

The Federal government has set the precedent that they will bail out people impacted by climate change in the USA.

Only when it's convenient. They did change the rules about FEMA and insurance when it comes to floods. They also adjusted the flood area designations to include theoretical risk (ie places that have never had a flood problem).

There really isn't a lot of reason for phoenix to exist. Before the invention of air conditioning it was merely a truck stop between the texas coast and the california cost. Everything there is artificially put there and the only thing making it possible is the water. If everyone tries to stay, the price of water will adjust accordingly. Any crisis with the water will be handled by government as well as they handled covid.

I was just at lake Powell a couple weeks ago. It was very sad to see how low the water was. Lone rock is completely dry. Beaches where people used to park their boats are now up 80ft of cliffs. I couldn't help but think I was looking at climate change first hand. I know it's more complex than that, but the feeling was unshakable nonetheless.

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.

The water authority in Southern Nevada recently authorized 800,000 new housing connections. So one of the organizations that should be managing the water emergency is actively making it worse.

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.

> Further, the answer is probably not to tell people to simply move. That’s not a solution for the number of people at stake.

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.

We do not need farms in Arizona when Michigan exists

I know you're probably using Michigan just as a foil, but Michigan is sort of a weird case. The land that's able to be farmed is being farmed very well. The problem is that north of a certain point the land is just not very arable[1] due to a number of factors including soil quality and growing season length.

[1]: https://project.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/ag_regions.html

Many of the crops grown in Arizona and southern California such as lettuce and spinach are grown there to supply the country during the winter season.

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.

> the answer is probably not to tell people to simply move

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.

They'd better start exporting some sunlight.

and not via fruit.

California topped off all of their reservoirs in 2019. These systems of dams are designed to sustain california for five years, according to local farmers that i’ve talked to. However the water supply is being diverted into the ocean now because of insane environmental laws.

A farmer in california pays more for water than labor, taxes or anything else.

Gonna need some citations on that one big hoss. Most of the talk out of California lately is farmers in an arms race to drill the deepest well, because they're planting water-hungry crops like almonds like fiends (good profit margins so fuck the water table).

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/business/supply-chain-cal...

as they should? water where water isn't naturally should be very expensive from an environmental footprint. Externalities and all that

2019, while being a wet year, did not come close to the monumental claim of "topping off all their reservoirs". Got anything to back that up?

As for mandated minimum flow levels, would you rather the river courses run dry?

> diverted into the ocean now because of insane environmental laws

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...

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