Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage | Hacker News Reader

Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage

latimes.com

At least this article notes that the vast majority of water usage is agriculture. This isn't something cities could or should solve by switching to (expensive) desalination to effectively subsidize agriculture. Most notably, alfalfa is mentioned here as farmers are going to have to switch to less water-intensive crops.

Decreasing alfalfa production may well impact the ability to feed cattle. In the short term, that's actually fine. It may just force more beef production, which will be good for costs (again, in the short term).

But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not. It's simply usage. See Figure 2 on page 10 [1]. Additionally, water projections were made at a high point of water inflows that simply haven't been realistic since.

In short, we're using too much water and farming is going to have to take the hit.

[1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad...

> But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not. It's simply usage. See Figure 2 on page 10 [1].

> [1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad...

I don't trust that a 2012 report is up to date on our latest climate modelling, or even that this is a climate-adjusted projection at all. Actual data past the point of publishing has not followed this graph. Anything more recent that supports your claim?

Your source also says:

> In the long-term (2041 through 2060), the futures that consider the Downscaled GCM Projected water supply scenario [not shown], which incorporates projections of future climate, show a high inability to meet resource needs, regardless of the demand scenario and the operation of Lakes Powell and Mead.

It doesn’t need anything more recent. This has been a known issue for decades regardless of climate change.

That figure is simple supply and demand. It shows supply staying roughly steady, and demand increasing drastically every year. Climate has nothing to do with that calculation (although it's possible it's exacerbating it, this was going to be an issue regardless).

The desalination plant solutions a "let's do both." https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-coastal-comm...

Charge market prices for water and build desalination. Create abundance.

That’s another form of the “both sides” type of fallacy. Desalination is an extreme unnecessary compromise to deal with obscene waste in agriculture.

the largest desalination plant in the u. s. can serve 110,000 homes. we would need 30 of them to make a significant dent in just the LA area. we will all be long dead before 30 new desalination plants are operational in california

Idea I've had, solar power a desalination plant, pumping the water into a pumped storage reservoir, then water crops from it at night to reduce evaporation and produce energy when the sun isn't shining.

Is there an issue with trying to locate solar (often in flat areas) alongside pumped storage (would that be in a mountainous or at least hilly area)?

Who pays for it though? Market price is way below desalination price.

Desalination requires energy and creates waste. Perhaps we should live within our means instead.

> Desalination requires energy and creates waste.

This is true for basically every human endeavor.

Dams literally generate energy and provide water consistently.

Do dams provide water? Don't they use the water provided by a body of water?

By controlling and regulating water flow, dams make available more water than would be available from an unregulated water flow.

As noted by others, this isn't entirely cost-free, and there are ecological impacts. Still, on net, many dams do provide real benefits.

And lay waste to entire river ecosystems.

You are advocating for famine and war.

Or they're advocating for eating less water intensive things. If you for example grow wheat instead of grapes or almonds your likely reduce global famine a little bit.

Or growing water-intensive crops in water-plentiful regions of the world.

Aka deforestation.

That’s meat, it’s the most water intensive. How much do you want to get that she/he eats meat everyday? What about you?

I eat meat whenever my local supermarket has a piece of organic meat on sale because it would otherwise get thrown away. That's once or twice a week. Less meat consumption in general would probably be good not only for the environment but also for public health.

Awesome. I’ve been a vegetarian for 25+ years, my 6+ year old car has less than 35k miles, I’ll bet my carbon footprint is lower than nearly every American commenting on this thread.

Having said that, merely hoping that people will make significant changes in their lifestyle for indirect and abstract benefits is simply burying one’s head in the sand with a rationalization that makes them feel good. The population is growing, and we will either innovate our way out of this, or it’s famine/war/etc.

Edit: go into /r/environment on Reddit and suggest people eat a lot less meat and see how quickly it’s downvoted into oblivion. And those are the people who actively care!

> I eat meat whenever my local supermarket has a piece of organic meat on sale because it would otherwise get thrown away.

I don't think that really works any more than the "look I'm killing the cows" argument. If they have to throw away packages each week, they'll buy less in the future, which in turn leads to lower production.

I agree, but I enjoy meat a lot and these silly restrictions I put on myself help to keep my consumption at reasonably low levels.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Limiting to twice a week is good.

You assume the alternative is buying more. What if the alternative is buying twice a week but based on a different metric? Or buying less?

In general it's better to be accurate about cause and effect and then choose what to do. That way you can make sure the way you're measuring "good" is real.

If only people understood this concept. In my home town city council are bickering about whether to allow additional density to be build on already commercially zoned lots based on whether they force 10 or 12% if the units to be “affordable.”

They are bickering over whether 40 units of a building might have a net decreased rent of $200 a month and instead may get 0 units built instead of 400. The 400 units would likely reduce the rent in the area by more than $200.

Create abundance and then let the market set the price and be happy.

If you charge both the agricultural and residential users the same price, the agricultural ones go out of business. That may well be necessary, but they're politically well connected.

I drove into Sacramento last year in late summer. There are flooded rice paddies just outside the city. Rice paddies! In California! In the middle of a historic drought!

No no it's because you are flushing your pee and have a patch of grass in front of your condo. Gotta regulate that first before we talk about inefficient farming. /s

FYI: Sacramento is a natural delta and most of the water you saw still continues on through the water supply.

While one can always suggest more economical uses of water than any particular use/crop, the reality of what’s going on there might be different than your intuitions.

https://rice.ucanr.edu/Water_Use_by_Rice/

34" of consumptive water use (per your source) across the thousands of acres planted is simply unsustainable—plenty of crops use half that, even with 19th century techniques that agribusiness insists on. Also that's more than half of the draw (again per your source) so "most" is quite the exaggeration. And the majority of the loss here is simply surface evaporation!

Sure. I wasn’t meaning to defend it and tried to leave room for that. I don’t have the expertise to speak either way.

I just thought it would be constructive to surface some of the detail behind what you reported in your original comment. People’s imaginations can run wild when you talk about California!

I'm not versed on specific water usage by rice paddies but am aware that:

The inland Central Valley of California was historically a seasonal or episodic lake. The Great Flood of 1862 saw 3m (10 ft) of water dumped on the state over 43 days from December 1861 through January 1862, followed by a warm storm melting much of the snowpack:

The entire Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys were inundated. An area about 300 miles (480 km) long, averaging 20 miles (32 km) in width,[21] and covering 5,000 to 6,000 square miles (13,000 to 16,000 km2) was under water.[15] The water flooding the Central Valley reached depths up to 30 feet (9.1 m), completely submerging telegraph poles that had just been installed between San Francisco and New York. Transportation, mail, and communications across the state were disrupted for a month.[22] Water covered portions of the valley from December 1861, through the spring, and into the summer of 1862.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862

Much of the valley still floods seasonally, with designated flood zones such as the Yolo Bypass, between Sacramento and Davis.

A key problem within the central valley has been groundwater loss resulting in subsidence exceeding 15 m (50 feet) in places. Flooded paddies might help contribute to groundwater recharge.

Much of the paddy water is through-flow, which I'd presume returns to river flows. What the impacts of ag practices (fertiliser, pesticides) are I'm not sure. There will also be evaporative losses, of course.

I'd like to see a net impact / net flows analysis. The picture's likely more complex than a brief glance from the highway would afford, however.

Desalination isn't that much more expensive than reservoir water. I wish urban areas would just build 'em and look at farmers and the rest of the country and say "OK now what?"

Can you provide any source for that? It seems obviously wrong given both capital and maintenance costs.

> This isn't something cities could or should solve by switching to (expensive) desalination

In 2015, the Southern Nevada Water Authority completed a "3rd straw" into Lake Mead to safeguard water availability, at a cost of $817M [1], which is enough to cover the power costs to desalinate Nevada's CO river allotment for ~23 years. It's been a while since I looked into it, but I once ran the numbers and the cost of that 3rd straw was comparable to the cost of building a solar power plant that would generate enough electricity to cover the desalination for NV's allotment as well.

Notes:

Nevada's allotment of water from the Colorado River is 279k acre ft / yr (actual use is 242k acre ft / yr in 2021) [2]. There are desalination systems available that require 3452 kw / acre ft [3]. Southern Nevada wholesale rate of $.37 / MWh [4].

[1] https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn/the-third-straw.htm [2] https://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/News/Blog/Detail/lake-mead-wa... [3] http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/water.html [4] https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/nv-energy-introduce...

Desalinated water would have to be pumped uphill along way for the coast. Desalination makes much more sense for coastal communities in that regard, but it won’t be that useful for agriculture.

Or you could use transmission lines to push the electricity to the coast, and just keep the equivalent water from flowing downstream.

> Southern Nevada wholesale rate of $.37 / MWh [4].

Typo. That should be $37/MW-hr, not $0.37/MW-hr (article quotes $36.67 / MW-hr)

Desalination traditionally needs a source of water to desalinate. Then you need somewhere to put the brine.

The ocean is traditionally the answer to both these needs. Nevada is not a good candidate for a desalination plant.

> Nevada is not a good candidate for a desalination plant.

No, but it's a good candidate for a solar power plant, and the water source is shared with major coastal metro areas. You'd of course want to move the power to the coast; an amount of water equivalent to that produced by desalination could be withheld upstream, in Nevada.

That said, I still think they made the right move building the 3rd intake, even at such expense. That intake is below the "dead pool" level, while the other 2 are not .. so even if ppl can't sort things out politically and continue to draw the water down past the point that it won't flow over the dam, NV will still be able to draw their "allotment". And of course, it's very hard to build desalination plants in CA, no matter how much sense it makes.

But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not.

Sure, you have a whole host of local disasters caused by local mismanagement (agricultural water use, failure to prevent fuel build-up in forests, etc). And the local mismanagers point to climate change to say "don't blame us".

However, when discussing these things in the large, you have people pointing to the local mismanagers and saying "don't blame climate change", which is pretty much the reverse sort of bullshit. Of course climate change has made these already bad problems worse. Of course, the first way the problems of climate change appear is this making bad problems worse thing. What else would you expect? That climate change appears in a nice, neat way that lets you exclude other causes? Ha (except that results aren't funny at all).

And this mutual finger-pointing works well to prevent anything being at any level.

> But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not. It's simply usage.

See "Characterizing Drought Behavior in the Colorado River Basin Using Unsupervised Machine Learning"[0]. The journal article states: "The range of possible climate change considered here, regardless of ESM model, does point to a hotter CRB [Colorado River Basin] with large changes in the timing and magnitude of runoff, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture that will present challenges in managing water resources in the future."

[0] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021EA00...

Not all climate change is global warming. Our actions change the environment in numerous, and often unpredictable, ways.

This reference agrees with you in the short/mid term (to your credit, which you explicitly mention), but states in the long term climate change is the most important factor, regardless of demand. Taking action against alfalfa is a sensible thing to do right away, but won't address the looming crisis:

> In the near-term (2012 through 2026), water demands are similar across scenarios, and the largest factor affecting the system reliability is water supply. In the mid-term (2027 through 2040), the demand for water is an increasingly important element in the reliability of the system, as are assumptions regarding the operations of Lakes Powell and Mead. In the long-term (2041 through 2060), the futures that consider the Downscaled GCM Projected water supply scenario, which incorporates projections of future climate, show a high inability to meet resource needs, regardless of the demand scenario and the operation of Lakes Powell and Mead. "

Serious question: Have climate scientists previously been able to accurately predict climate changes decades away on a regional basis?

Not an expert but here's what I found from a little research:

It's hard to quantify, but it does seem like regional predictions are less accurate than continental, and predictions about rainfall are less accurate than temperature. However, predictions of rising temperature are essentially guaranteed.

> There is considerable confidence that climate models provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental scales and above ...

> Confidence in model estimates is higher for some climate variables (e.g., temperature) than for others (e.g., precipitation).

> Over several decades of development, models have consistently provided a robust and unambiguous picture of significant climate warming

Sources:

[1] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/climate/factsheet... [2] https://archive.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq...

In terms of temperature, yes. Early climate models correctly predicted that warming would be concentrated at the poles, for example:

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

>Also in 1969, Mikhail Budyko published a theory on the ice–albedo feedback, a foundational element of what is today known as Arctic amplification.

This is generally confirmed by observations, as seen in the graph:

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

I assume four decades should be enough. I don't know about precipitation modeling, that stuff's really hard and the variance is huge.

> Decreasing alfalfa production may well impact the ability to feed cattle.

A substantial portion of alfalfa is exported to China [0]. So, at the very least that portion can be eliminated without any impact on domestic US cattle feed.

[0] https://hayandforage.com/article-3388-thank-china-for-record...

From 2005 to 2015, Israel changed its entire water system by building desalination plants.

Like Central and Southern California today, Israel used to issue similar dire warnings about freshwater supplies running dangerously low. These days, believe it or not, Israel now exports freshwater. Yes. tiny, little, arid Israel exports freshwater to neighboring Jordan.

Freshwater, like agricultural products, seems to be a product we can now cheaply and easily produce in abundance.

Sure, taking some water from farmers is an option too. But is it viable? I don’t know. Obviously voters living in the conurbation from Los Angeles, California to San Diego, California could vote in politicians who promise to do this. But once in office would politicians actually follow through on such a promise? I doubt it.

This seems like a very tough battle to me because many California "farmers" are extremely wealthy. Some California farmers are billionaires with a "b". If extremely successful businessmen with many thousands of millions of dollars want to keep receiving free water, they will probably very cleverly spend vast sums of money to do so.

Here are two apparently feasible options.

First, we are on the cusp of abundant, cheap renewable electricity (from solar and wind) which, of course, will lead to the potential for cheap desalination.

Like the aforementioned Israel, Carlsbad, California (near San Diego, California) already relies on desalination for much of its water needs. I think I read that residents there pay an extra $5/month to $10/month per person for desalinated water compared to what they were paying for imported fresh water.

Second, I assume the discharge water from washing machines could easily be used to water most of the landscaping in Southern California.

I've watched a few videos on YouTube. Apparently one simply needs to change the type of laundry detergent used so it would be safe for the landscaping, install discharge pipes from the washing machine to the landscaped areas, and control the system with computer to ensure the landscape isn't over-watered or under-watered.

The Los Angeles Times has become a terrible newspaper. COVID has receded from the front page, therefore they need some more bad news to sell. "We are running out of water!!!" is what they are selling these days.

In other words, this entire subject is "much ado about nothing." In other words, this is doom and gloom, "the sky is falling" nonsense.

> Second, I assume the discharge water from washing machines could easily be used to water most of the landscaping in Southern California.

detergents used for washing likely make it a bad idea

tell us you didn’t really read the parent without telling us you didn’t really read the parent

Thank you.

The answer to this problem lies here: “Entsminger pointed out that roughly 80% of the river’s flow is used for agriculture, and most of that for thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is mainly grown for cattle, both in the U.S. and overseas.”

The simple solution would be to raise prices on water such that it disincentivizes growing water hungry crops than alfalfa for example. The west’s water crisis is less about cities than agricultural choices made during the last century, which was wetter than it will be going forward. The obvious answer is to either regulate or incentivize using less water hungry crops more strongly. It would be better if this had started slowly a while ago, allowing the market to adjust and reallocate. Alas, looks like it will have to be an abrupt shift in the near future.

The reason this doesn’t happen is that farmers/farming lobbies have a lot of political power, especially in rural districts and no politician wants to be painted as anti-farming interests.

Unlike cities, farmers go where the water is. I know some HNers think farmers are growing crops in deserts. But that's just laughable. They farm where there is water: rivers, lakes, flood planes, deltas, etc. It is the cities diverting the water from these places.

> They farm where there is water: rivers, lakes, flood planes, deltas, etc. It is the cities diverting the water from these places.

What do you call a place where the lakes, rivers, flood planes, and deltas are dried up? That's right. A desert. If current trends continue that's exactly what you're going to have.

> What do you call a place where the lakes, rivers, flood planes, and deltas are dried up?

I think you mean diverted. Cities are actively draining reservoirs, too.

No they are not, not at the same scale as ag.

Yes, market prices on water and beef (incorporating what are now climate externalities) would seem to solve these problems. Why isn't that being considered? Remember when conservatives, neo-liberals, and libertarians supported the market as a solution for everything?

Of course, we would need a reasonable amount of water available to consumers at below-market rates.

To me charging market price for water seemed obvious and easy till the comments here pointed out what should be obvious: the farmers Steve getting their water from the faucet but from their own wells, creeks etc. So that solution is pretty hard to do on practice.

Other than disgruntled voters, I don't see an obstacle for proper beef prices. In fact I wish we could price in carbon emissions, as I wish that pretty much for every price. I personally hope we'll soon see the day where you have to pay extra at McDonald's to get a beef patty instead of cyber meat.

I think as manufacturing and agriculture have become less labor intensive, a bigger proportion of the cost of things has been energy. So in a way, carbon emissions sort of are being priced into things naturally, and I'd guess the trend is increasing. In some extreme technological utopia, energy would be the only cost of food and products, meaning it's all carbon.

> I think as manufacturing and agriculture have become less labor intensive, a bigger proportion of the cost of things has been energy. So in a way, carbon emissions sort of are being priced into things naturally

But our carbon emissions are not priced into the cost of energy. That's the primary cause of the climate crisis!

> To me charging market price for water seemed obvious and easy till the comments here pointed out what should be obvious: the farmers Steve getting their water from the faucet but from their own wells, creeks etc. So that solution is pretty hard to do on practice.

It doesn't seem that hard to measure it. The large scale would justify the cost.

Some US beef is already produced with private water traded on the free market, at least in the western US. This is already priced into the cost of that beef. The price of water fluctuates every year but as a percentage of cost for beef, it isn't that much.

Why do those farmers (or ranchers) use private water? Is it just the obvious - not enough public or on-premises water?

In places where water is scarce, like the US mountain west, all water is owned by someone. Drilling a well or having surface water does not entitle you to the water ipso facto, the water right has to be legally acquired from either a private owner or the State.

Prime grazing lands do not always come with water rights. Lease or purchase of that land to raise cattle requires acquiring sufficient water rights elsewhere. Since the State often has no additional water grants to allocate for that aquifer or water system, you then have to lease those water rights on the private market from an existing owner. While you could purchase titled water rights, they are rarely for sale since there is a ready market for renting them.

> The simple solution > The obvious answer

This community seems like its at its best when it expresses humble curiosity and its worst when it shuts the door on learning by oversimplifying deeply complex matters as though nobody else had the sense to look straight at them.

Water rights carry a legacy of centuries of personal and political history and thousands of competing interests. The levers with which to control price and set incentives the way you suggest don’t exist.

There are real problems looming, but there are no “simple solutions” or “obvious answers” being missed.

Whatever comes will involve great compromise and very few will think it was the right solution. I guess maybe you’re just joining that chorus early.

Notwithstanding the farm and ranch lobbies, what part of raising prices isn’t a simple solution?

The question of who owns the water right is important. The doctrine for water usage is different in the western US and the eastern US. Some of this is due to geography, and some due to the history of settlement. Here are a few useful links that discuss the differences. https://nationalaglawcenter.org/overview/water-law/ https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/03/an-introduction-to-water-l...

https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/whose-water-is-it-...

So change the laws.

I know you’re being earnest and understand the conviction behind what you’re saying, but I can’t help imagining that some of these comments are “false flag” posts by the NRA.

Completely overhauling property rights for half of a continent doesn’t come without major resistance. We’re still recovering from the last that that was done.

It’s just not as simple a problem as we’d all like it to be, and it’s not because this senator is in that rancher’s pocket.

All you really need is a tax, and considering how much else can be taxed trying to complain about a water tax for bulk use just seems whiny.

Changing the law ignores the problem. This involves vast amounts of titled property with centuries of history. People respond very poorly to wholesale deprivation of property rights such that the political ramifications cannot be ignored, and the US Constitution puts strict limits on the nature of such deprivations.

This is essentially in the same class of situation as the government deciding to nationalize everyone's private home to solve some Important Problem. There isn't a realistic version of the world where that is a politically viable solution and the costs would be intractably high.

As we saw in Kelo, the government can easily take away private property for basically any reason.

And do what about the geography?

Changing the laws is not something that just happens and solves everything. If we're fixing legal doctrines from westward expansion of the US there is a lot to fix. I'd propose taking back the patchworks of land gifted to the railroads, or at least forcibly consolidate them into contiguous blocks.

Maybe those water rights should be given to the tribes who used to live in the watersheds. Let them set the prices.

What is so complex about eminent domain? Just force the sale of water rights back to the government for a fair price. It will sting a little bit, but sting far less than pretending like only 15% of the water in the western US actually exists.

Politicians are afraid of getting voted out, and frankly many of their constituents prefer to ban this or that symbolic thing in residential usage that scratches their control freak itch.

Or, just allow farmers to sell their water to the highest bidder. The Coase theorem to the rescue.

This is what I would expect to happen. Everyone wants the government to "simply" violate property rights and seize it but is there not a way for the market to sort itself out fairly? Are they forbidden from selling their water rights? Or is the water actually worth more to the farmers than the city residents so that the current situation is actually fine?

> Everyone wants the government to "simply" violate property rights...

It's a lot simpler when you don't believe that water is something private individuals have a right to hoard. Imo, water is a natural resource we all have some minimum access to as humans, regardless of if someone wants to buy it up and sell at a higher price later

It's not really natural though, is it? Regulated by the Hoover dam and supplying people living in deserts. Obviosuly people who choose to live in remote arid places don't automatically have the right to be provided with water by everybody else.

> It's not really natural though, is it?

What? I’m not sure how water could not be considered a natural resource. It just exists, it didn’t take a human hand to create.

Unfortunately the government sold it. Now of course they could buy it back ... That's unacceptable, apparently. Just taking it away, no compensation is what everyone seems to want.

And the price the current water holders want is apparently infinite because they claim the right to all the water that falls in perpetuity. We have removed rights to certain classes of objects before when managing other resources. If I recall correctly land deeds used to assume rights from heaven to hell but then air and mineral rights were carved off for the sake of commerce. We can do so again

Buy the land that has the rights attached? Everyone has their price but maybe the buyers just feel too entitled to have to pay.

Obviously I'm talking about the transport of the water from where it naturally occurs to where people want to use it, not somehow creating it out of atoms.

This happens in some places already but a major issue is the absence of a distribution network to get water from where it is to where it is needed most. Being able to move the water consumption to where the water is located is one of the major drivers of cattle ranching out west.

Water rights are at odds with what society needs now. There is nothing complex here. Make everyone pay equally for water and the problem goes away.

The people that complain that it’s way more complex than that are the ones that don’t want to pay for water.

Should someone be able to dig a well in their own land? Draw surface water from a river, stream, or creek that passes through it? Grow crops in their own flood plains, estuaries, marshes, ponds, and lakes?

The water we’re talking about doesn’t come through a pipe with a meter, and the people who have access to water have practical influence over the use, routing, safety, and quality of that water even if you try to assert legal control over them.

Where I grew up (near Camp Pendleton), we couldn't dig a well on our property. Nobody in the area owned the water rights on their land.

> Should someone be able to dig a well in their own land?

If that connects to a shared aquifer which can easily be depleted, then not without regulation.

> Draw surface water from a river, stream, or creek that passes through it?

I wouldn't expect to be allowed to reduce the flow of one of those, comparing how much enters and how much exits my land.

> Grow crops in their own flood plains, estuaries, marshes, ponds, and lakes?

That seems fine, probably.

You and what 1,200 ft deep well? The aquifers are so depleted the land is sinking. It's just gone, and the rain isn't replenishing it fast enough. The water we're talking about is already more deep and less frequent.

The complexity is to find a way to do that politically. Lots of powerful interests benefitting from the current system.

If you or I were Emperor, it would be easy. But the current US system is different.

Lots of problems look like they'd be solved with heavy-handed authoritarianism, but there are costs to that both for individuals getting screwed over and the long term trust in the government to honor its agreements, reducing its strength in making future agreements. Plenty of 3rd world governments have happily seized property rights all over the place and it's not really a recipe for success.

Why not go a step further and just "solve" water shortages around the world by "forcing" some neighboring country that has too much water to sell it to you at the same price as to themselves? They weren't using it anyway, so that's fair, right?

In a quite literal sense, how?

Much of the water being discussed is in rivers and streams, which is taken as it passes through the land that uses it. It is only useful if it is in that exact waterway. There is no such thing as a market rate for water in a dry river.

If you turn it into an open market there are all sorts of weird complications. E.g. ranch A is upstream of Ranch B. Under a market system ranch A can use all of the water in the stream and just pay for it. Ranch B now doesn’t get that option since there is no more water in the stream. Rancher B can buy more water, but what good is buying water in a river that doesn’t go through your land.

So then you get to a rights based system. Rancher B has been watering his fields for 100 years, and rancher A comes along and says he wants to water his fields too. That’s fine, he just has to lay claim to whatever rancher B isn’t using.

The rights system would work fine except that nature won’t cooperate. We divided up rights for 100 units of water fair and square, so what do we do when we discover that we can only get 90 units of water.

Do you all take a 10% cut? Does the newest guy take the full cut (how it works now)?

You say it’s not complex, but millions of lives and industries worth trillions all rely on it. The current solution is a known flawed treaty that is almost 100 years old based on legal concepts that are far older. If it was so simple it would have been solved back then.

> Water rights carry a legacy of centuries of personal and political history and thousands of competing interests.

So did slavery, and we managed to get rid of that.

Doing the right thing is really not that complicated, it just requires political will.

That may not be the example you want to use for something accomplished completely or without complication.

>So did slavery, and we managed to get rid of that.

... with a civil war.

Doing the right thing is often quite complicated, and comes with severe costs and injury to some party somewhere.

600,000 immediate American casualties (not to mention the slaves) is not a great example here, of something being "simple"

COVID killed over a million. The culpability for that isn't simple either.

What does that have to do with this topic?

We can start by rolling back the modern entrenchments that have only made it worse. I would be absolutely shocked if this were only a 200 year old problem and there wasn't modern legislation basically gifting free water to special interests.

I'm by no means an expert or a lawyer or someone you should listen to. But this may hint at the complexity. A lot of water rights come from Spanish land grants ~330 years ago. And those were guaranteed by treaty after the Mexican American war. So, the U.S. can do whatever it wants, but treaties are in this weird space below the constitution but above a simple bill through congress to become law.

Water rights are generally old, old law and weird and complicated and special for each little town.

> treaties are in this weird space below the constitution but above a simple bill through congress to become law

Treaties have the force of federal law [1]. Not more. Not less. California is bound by them. The Congress is not.

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

And the final say rests with the man with the gun, so if necessary the laws will be changed.

Since things haven't reached that level, it's likely the issue isn't super serious (yet).

> things haven't reached that level, it's likely the issue isn't super serious (yet)

This isn't some some weird theoretical aside. Congressional power to modify and break treaties was debated by the founders [1].

Treaties are laws, full stop. Congress breaking them has political consequences. But it's not illegal, and it's no different from amending an act a prior Congress passed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause#Repeal_of_treati...

Yep, and if it got really really bad 3/4ths of the states can modify the Constitution and over-ride just about anything.

So if the southwest states piss off the rest of the country ...

> if it got really really bad 3/4ths of the states can modify the Constitution and over-ride just about anything

You're describing extreme actions relative to a quotidien one. Armed revolution and Constitutional amendments are rare. Congress amending treaties is mundane.

We try to give the other side the courtesy of consultation, but that's (a) far from even common at this point and (b) sometimes impossible. The water rights in question are no different from any other private water rights. The fact that they originated from a treaty a curiosity at best.

Thanks for the clarification! my dim memories of high school civics failed me, and you helped me out.

But I think the main point - water rights are a nightmare - still stands. Endless bickering over what rules apply.

Mexican water rights were considered separate from the underlying land rights unless they were explicitly included in the grant. Moreover, Mexican title was required to be registered with the government shortly after annexation. Most of those titles were in turn siezed by various quasi-legal means, which is where cities like Berkeley come from. There are relatively few water rights remaining from Mexican annexation, most of which are held by municipal institutions like LA and only affect relatively small streams. Those of larger areas, like the Sangre de Cristo grant, have been litigated to death in courts over the past couple centuries and most of the entities involved no longer exist.

Water law is a nightmarishly confusing hellscape, but Guadalupe -Hidalgo isn't an important reason why today.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. Your point about nightmareishly confusing hellscape is what I just what was trying to get across.

Way to double down on the "not sure why this is so hard to solve, the answer is obvious!".

How is something a cow eats possibly a cash crop?

Cash crop is defined as something that you sell rather than use yourself.

Corn, harvested and sold as corn is a cash crop. Corn, harvested and used to feed your dairy herd is not.

Here's the worst part: we aren't even growing this for ourselves. These are farms owned by the saudis, and we're growing it and exporting it.

Citation? I'd love to read more about this.

Edit: ah, I see you linked it downthread thanks.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/02/453885642/sa...

On a previous thread a month ago... some more links https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31384931

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-w...

https://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/-files/pdf/shippingwaterputnam.p...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/140123-co...

https://www.hcn.org/issues/46.7/how-we-export-our-water-to-a...

https://www.npr.org/2014/08/12/339753108/in-time-of-drought-... (earlier than the one you link to)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444517304577653...

> Based on USDA data for 2021, only 3.9% of all U.S. hay produced and 6.4% of all alfalfa hay entered the export market. [0]

[0]: https://hayandforage.com/article-3825-year-end-hay-exports-s...

Because we grow a lot in the Midwest where water comes from the sky.

Where do you think the Colorado River gets its water from?

Rocky Mountain snowmelt? It’s not coming from rain in Nebraska, that’s for sure.

Snow comes from the sky.

I can say with 100% certainty that none of it comes from midwestern rain.

And the Oglala Aquifier. But at least that water crisis is in the future not right now.

Alfalfa is one of the most water efficient and nutritionally rich crops there is. It is also one of the most drought resistant crops. It is hearty and reliable, unlike corn which is far more wasteful when it comes to water.

> Deep-Rootedness—alfalfa roots are commonly 3-5 feet deep and can extend to 8-15 feet in some soils. Therefore this crop can utilize moisture residing deep in the profile when surface waters become scarce. It shares this property with crops such as orchards, vineyards, and sugarbeets and safflower, unlike crops such as onion, lettuce and corn, where it's easy to lose water past the root zone.

> Alfalfa's deep roots are capable of extracting water from deep in the soil, thus much of the water applied is not wasted. Additionally, deep roots enable the crop to survive periodic droughts.

> Perenniality—The fact that the crop grows for 4-8 years, grows quickly with warm conditions in the spring is a major advantage of alfalfa—it can utilize residual winter rainfall before irrigation is necessary. This is unlike summer-grown annual crops that need to be replanted each year (water use efficacy is low during this time). In many areas, the first cutting of alfalfa of the year requires zero irrigation– supported only by rain and residual soil moisture.

> Very High Yields—Alfalfa is a very high yielding crop, and can grow 365 days a year in warm regions (such as the Imperial Valley of California and southern Arizona). Its biomass yields are very high—we can get up to 12 cuttings per year in those regions, and growers with top management can obtain more than 14 tons/acre dry matter yields. High-yields create higher water use efficiencies.

> High Harvest Index, High Water Use Efficiency—Alfalfa's Water Use Efficiency is not only due to high yields, but because nearly 100% of the above-ground plant material is harvested (known as the harvest index). In most seed-producing and fruiting crops, only a portion of the plant is harvested (typically 30-50% of the total plant biomass).

[0]: https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1772...

Too bad the California Coastal Commission just denied the permit for a desalinization plant in Huntington Beach at the site of a decommissioned steam plant and reusing some of its infrastructure. It would have provided water to several Southern California cities.

https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-coastal-comm...

> would have provided water to several Southern California cities

It blows my mind that it's simpler to build, in one of the most water-blessed parts of our planet, a desalination plant, than it is to get farmers to quit growing literal fodder. Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture. Eighty percent.

And what percentage of those agriculturally grown calories are you going to cut out from your diet to reduce those usages? How much more do you want us all to pay for food?

"Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture" is very literally saying "Eighty percent of California's water feeds people". There are cash crops that use a somewhat disproportionate amount of the water, but that is in no way reflected in your comment.

> "Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture" is very literally saying "Eighty percent of California's water feeds people"

Alfalfa doesn't feed people [1]. It feeds cows that feed people. And nobody is going to starve because almonds and pistachios are pricier.

Moreover, California's agriculture is notoriously water inefficient [2]. Why wouldn't it be? What other behavior would you expect from agricultural multinationals for whom we've effectively zero rated a commodity input?

[1] https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-...

[2] https://calmatters.org/multimedia/2021/09/california-crops-d...

Absolutely. Great arguments. In no way reflected or referenced in the parent I was responding to.

He very clearly addressed your question. I don't see the problem.

Sure. But you can't ask California to solve "its" water problem while solving everyone's food problem. One of them has to give.

Water should be priced the same for everyone, there's no reason that alfalfa farmers should pay a hundredth of a percent that I do for the same resource.

Nations will never stop agricultural subsidies due to national food security and rural district votes. It’s not just price supports and crop insurance but dams to deliver water and electricity.

Tap water is drinkable and plumbed into your home. That’s why it costs more than canal water that’s neither.

Almonds are not needed for national food security.

Neither is beef or cotton. Hence I alluded to rural district votes.

We can solve the food problem with not efficient crops than pistachios and almonds and nobody had to eat beef either. Of water was priced at market price crops would be chosen where that strike the right balance between hope much people value the particular food vs what else we could do with the water. All that is a pipedream though, since farmers have wells and stuff instead of getting it from the faucet like I do.

Meanwhile the rain here is used to make corn that's turned into ethanol and shipped to California to run the tractors farming alfalfa to feed the cows. Seems we could cut out some middlemen here.

80% sounds like a lot, but is it really? Is it a lot based on land area? Ie is 80% of california land dedicated to agriculture? (honest question, I've no idea.)

What about per-species? Sounds like humans are getting a full 20% of the water, all other species (plant and animal) get the rest. And I feel like you're arguing that humans should get a bigger slice?

What should the right % be? Presumably not 0. Agriculture after all produces food for same humans. So it doesn't seem like closing agriculture is the right option.

So perhaps choosing agriculture that consumes less water? That seems reasonable - but there are diminishing returns in that direction. Sure rice seems unnecessary, but what about almonds? I'm no farmer but does it mean they should all grow the most efficient crop? A monoculture?

Ultimately is the real problem just too many humans in a place with little water? Should humans then supplement that water via say desalination? Sure its more expensive but maybe that helps reduce population growth?

California's "average water use is roughly 50% environmental, 40% agricultural, and 10% urban" [1]. 80% of California's discretionary water budget is used by agriculture. This is about agricultural versus urban use.

[1] https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

Thanks for the info.

> In an average year, about 39% of California's water consumption, or 34.1 million acre-feet (42.1 km3), is used for agricultural purposes. Of that total, 11%, or 8.9 million acre-feet (11.0 km3) is not consumed by the farms for crop production but is instead recycled and reused by other water users, including environmental use, urban use, and agricultural use, yielding net water consumption for food and fiber production equal to 28% of California's water consumption, or 25.2 million acre-feet (31.1 km3). [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Agricultur...

> salt discharge being pumped back out into the ocean and raising salinity levels around there to significantly damage ocean life, would prevent them from approving the plan

Offshore oil platforms with annual spills coating the beaches? Go for it!

Massive ports with dozens of container ships anchored off shore dumping who knows what for months? Perfect, ship it!

Putting salt back into the ocean after taking it out and producing water for people to drink? Nah man, what if the ocean gets too salty?

The same with nuclear plants dumping warm water in the ocean after using it to make steam and for cooling. Perhaps in both cases the waste water could be stored and evaporated in a salt flat or something.

IMO the solution to both of these is a ~5km perforated pipeline going out to deep ocean. Im no marine biologist, but I know life finds a way, and I’d bet my life that the stretch of slightly warmer/saltier water would end up facilitating a vibrant biome of some sort. It may not be identical to whats there today, but it’s unlikely to be “worse”, just different.

> The Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in cities from Denver to Los Angeles

> “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River"

> roughly 80% of the river’s flow is used for agriculture, and most of that for thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is mainly grown for cattle

Somebody needs to wake the people in those cities up. If they don't start screaming at their representatives, they won't be able to use their faucets, because some cattle farmers don't want to import feed. This is ridiculous.

But then again, this is America. If 25 million people need to go without water so my burgers will be cheaper, so be it, right?

> they won't be able to use their faucets, because some cattle farmers don't want to import feed

It's the cattle farmers in other countries that want to import California feed (because it's on the west coast and easier to ship?).

> if they don't start screaming at their representatives, they won't be able to use their faucets, because some cattle farmers don't want to import feed

The situation will rapidly sort itself out once faucets are turned off. Ordinarily, that would happen after irreparable environmental destruction. Fortunately, we have the Bureau of Reclamation to pull the plug on the Colorado River Compact states before that happens.

Don't forget to factor in this truly wildcard Supreme Court.

This is as foretold in Reisner’s classic book on water in the American West - Cadillac Desert.

It’s a great place to start if you’re interested in learning more.

As long as we're still turning the Arizona desert into an alfalfa field for the Suadis, I won't believe that we're in a water crisis and certainly won't be doing anything that effects my life in any negative way to "remedy" this: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/02/453885642/sa...

Went kayaking in Lake Powell last year. Locals were saying the lake was down 30 feet (!!) from the past couple of years. I have no idea if that sort of fluctuation is common but that was enough to make me feel very concerned about the water situation in the southwest

It's a larger drop than usual.

https://mead.uslakes.info/Level/

Was it worth kayaking? I've wondered if there are interesting parts to explore.

How the West was Lost: In America’s first climate war, John Wesley Powell tried to prevent the overdevelopment that led to environmental devastation.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/how-the-we...

Back then they didn't have good desalination technology. Now we do, and, while Israel is a leader, they export: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the...

According to Google, Israel is 85 miles across at the widest point. That barely gets you to San Bernadino, CA. It certainly doesn't include any of Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico. The southern tip of Arizona looks to be within 85 miles of the Gulf of California.

Desalinating water would help California's residents, but the energy requirements for desalinating and transporting water to the desert southwest (that shouldn't have been settled so extensively in the first place) continue to elude us.

Could we feasibly just run desalination stations from the coasts and pipe the water - like oil - to fill up these reservoirs? Setting cost aside for a second, is there any reason not to do something like this?

Setting cost aside? No. It costs a lot because it requires lots of energy which probably means lots of fossil fuels burning.

There’s other ways to mitigate that cost. Israel for instance runs many desalination plants from if I recall correctly solar power. We could do the same with solar and wind.

Never the less, yes, because I believe cost can be managed and figured out over time, where as I don’t know what other mitigating factors would be the consequence of such a choice

Do you have a source on the solar power Israel desalination? They use natural gas and coal.

Israel also recycles 90% of it's water. It first goes to urban use, then it's recycled for agriculture. California could do the same. https://www.waterworld.com/wastewater/article/16202781/israe...

If only the cities were before the farms instead of after - reuse of city water for agriculture is a great idea.

Yes. Extremely high energy usage.

Generally it would be cheaper to use more efficient farming methods.

That would take 10-20 years to build out...what will you do next year?

Bottled water. Very big bottles.

The real solution is to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact acknowledging that historical flow is several million acre feet less than what is allocated. Desalination and pumping is prohibitively expensive and would require as much interstate cooperation as reopening the original deal. And at the end you have hundreds of millions of gallons of brine to deal with.

Anything is possible for enough money but I don't think you understand how much money what you're proposing would cost. In electricity alone desalination costs around 3kwh/m^3. 3.7mwh/acre foot of water. Last year we got 9.2 million acre feet of water in the Colorado River of the allocated 15 million acre feet. So if we say we want to supplement flows with just 2 million acre feet of desalination water, that's 7 Pwh of electricity. Per year. That's approximately 1000x the annual generated power of the largest nuclear plant in the world.

And we haven't even pumped that water 3700 feet up from sea level to the elevation of lake Powell.

This is a great comment. Thank you for doing the math. I thought the word "just" was doing a lot of work in the original comment.

Hm. Your numbers and mine don't match by a few orders of magnitude. I came up with 2.5GW sustained, which is (2.5GW * 24h * 365) 21900 GWh ~= 21TWh/yr. Big, but not the same as your value.

An acre foot is 1233 m^3, and at 3kWh/m^3, that's 3.7 MWh/acre foot. Math checks out so far.

Times 2000000, that's 7400000 MWh / 7400 GWh / 7.4 TWh.

I think you're off by a factor of 1000 somewhere in your math. You're looking at ~the output of a large nuclear plant, not 1000 of them.

Or my math is wrong. That's entirely possible too.

I get your numbers. I think OP skipped a prefix somewhere in the mega-giga-tera-peta hierarchy.

To put it in perspective, Bitcoin mining alone is more than three times that.

> That's approximately 1000x the annual generated power of the largest nuclear plant in the world.

Put another way, it's almost 40x the annual generated power of the State of California.

We don’t need to pump the water to lake Powell. We let Powell refill itself and use the water instead on level ground in California.

I mean, if you don't care in the slightest about cost of the plants, the energy required, the land needed to run the giant tunnels... maybe? It's probably technically possible within the constraints of "I have a full country's resources available and can demand they be used to satisfy my absurd requirements and won't face huge blowback for using resources this way."

But you can pencil it out. Cuts next year are 2-4 million acre feet of water. What would it take to bring that in?

An acre foot is 325,851 gallons, give or take. So, four of those is ~1.3e12 gallons of water for a year. A year has 31,536,000 seconds, so you're looking at a mere 41,000 gallons per second, or about 6500 cu*ft/s. Which is a good sized river's flow.

It's also 155 m^3 of water per second, or about 3.5 billion gallons a day.

I'm seeing [0] a plant in San Diego running 50M gallons a day on 35MW, so you'd need ~70 of those plants (or about 2.5GW) to manage your water supply. California's purring away at 33GW right now, so the energy required, while massive, is feasible.

Trying to figure out how to move 40k gallons a second a distance of 1000 miles exceeds my physics skills, but you could probably figure it out with the right calculators or CFD handwaves. But it's not going to be cheap.

Seems... somewhat easier to reduce demand, though.

[0]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/09/f66/73355...

40k gallons per second is on the order of the capacity of the Edmonston Pumping Plant of the State Water Project, so it's likely doable with existing technology.

And if you're doing mega projects on that scale, you'd just pipe water over the rockies from the midwest or divert the Columbia down the California coast.

Or cut into the Gulf of Mexico and flood Death Valley.

It would require a tremendous amount of energy. Lake Powell is more than 1km above sea level, which means each liter of water would require 10kJ just in gravitational potential energy.

The reclamation effort is 1 maf (million acre-feet) of water over a year, which if supplied continuously from sea level with perfectly efficient pumping and transport corresponds to ~10 GW of power. A typical nuclear power plant generates 1GW, so without any transport losses, you'd need 10 new plants running full-time just to move the water up the hill.

Add in the desalination challenges and transport losses, and you're talking what, 20-40 new nuke plants?

Why not pipe the water from the pacific northwest, similar to what was done with the Colorado river.

Lots and lots of mountains. On the east sides of the Cascades are massive dry and drought stricken areas (which are also farmland too). This same question can be asked about simply piping water from one side of the cascades to the other, let alone to the central valley

Cough... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power... ...cough

This is done in China:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South–North_Water_Transfer_P...

What makes you think there's excess water there?

California already has a version of this. It is called the California Aqueduct. It takes water in the north and sends it to the south.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct

You can see a portion of it driving on I-580.

The problem is that Northern California hasn't been getting enough water either. The rains have been falling further north. Think Seattle.

Also the aqueduct is fed from the existing river system. The major rivers in Oregon and Washington don't go into California AFAIK.

Looks like you would have to divert the Columbia River. Haha.

We call them “desalination” plants, but the salt doesn’t just disappear. The more fresh water you have them produce, the more salt (brackish water) you need to manage as well.

So even while you may imagine the ocean as a limitless supply of water, there’s only so far you can scale desalination.

To be fair the ocean is still pretty big. Also, water doesn’t disappear from the earth…

> Setting cost aside for a second, is there any reason not to do something like this?

The cost would be so massive that, even if the answer to that question is "no", we shouldn't do it.

You wouldn't have to pump it back up to refill the reservoirs: just slow the release from the reservoirs by the same amount you replace we desalinated water.

I just want to mention, that, upon reading the comments, I now understand why this is a terrible idea

It's weird how people don't want to pay more money for water when we literally can't go for more than a few days without drinking it and can't grow the food we need without it.

The average American lifestyle is very resource intensive. There are also many subsidies and social constructs supporting it. The end of abundant water is forcing hard choices. Less livestock and cheap beef. Water is an industrial input to cotton used in clothes, electricity generation, and fracking for oil & gas. Sacrificing wetlands and coastal groundwater to salt intrusion to squeeze out the last acre feet from rivers that normally flow into the sea.

Water increasing in price will reduce waste and increase efficiency. But everything will become more expensive, not just luxury or wasteful water uses.

I'll be curious to see if this reverses the westward migration in the United States that we've seen over the past 100+ years. Large rust belt and east coast saw stagnant, if not declining, populations as new families moved west for better weather, mountains, cheap land, access to the west coast, ... the Great Lakes, Ohio, Upper Mississippi, and New England (and the Upper Colorado) watersheds are least likely to be impacted by severe droughts. Throw the Mid Atlantic in there, too, despite the increasing risk of severe tropical events.

South Park called it [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park:_The_Streaming_Wars

I don’t see anyone mentioning the latest South Park “movie”, but they presented this in a very humorous, yet grim, way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com