In 2015, Intel, the largest semiconductor company by market capitalization, used nine billion gallons of water
Hmm, I bet they build their factories by the Great lakes then!
Oh - Intel’s new Arizona fabs to be production ready in 2024, creating more than 3,000 high-tech jobs [0]
I better start taking really short showers to make up for that!
[0] https://www.chandleraz.gov/news-center/intel-breaks-ground-t...
"Irrigated agriculture is the largest user of water in Arizona, consuming about 74 percent of the available water supply." https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/agriculture
"In Arizona, approximately 15 percent of the water supply is for commercial, industrial and institutional uses." https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/commercial-industrial
So it's on us to do everything we can to optimize the last 10% of all the available water.
To be clear I think we all should do our part, but there are so many misleading news stories that fail to even acknowledge the reality of our water distribution.
California is important but remove Grapes and Almonds and some of the other non essentials (like avocados, sweet potatoes, etc) and California is somewhere at the bottom of the top 10.
Compare that to #2 on the list, Iowa. If Iowa didn’t produce the $17bn of “grains, oilseeds, dry beans, etc”, then large swaths of the Americas experience severe nutrition issues.
I love California and live here, but let’s not kid ourselves - the Midwest feeds the US
You know what I meant when I said “Midwest”.
Again, the point of the article was that drought conditions are occurring and, in CA, 75% of the water consumption is due to “agriculture” as has been stated above, and after removing commercial uses, only 11% is residential.
My insinuation is that (1) Agriculture is the key impactor of drought conditions, (2) when policy makers and those with your opinions talk about the problem being irrigated water uses, it’s always deflected as “CA feeds the US, we have to protect it” giving the industry a free pass, (3) If we put in policy, like paying fairly for water, the industry would be impacted negatively, but as your document proves - it wouldn’t substantially impact core nutrition of the US - just the convenience of a bunch of rich wine and charcuterie consumers.
(Maybe someone else can put this in terms of Libraries of Congress?)
sources: https://wisdomanswer.com/how-much-water-does-an-alfalfa-plan... https://civileats.com/2021/09/15/climate-change-could-put-an...
Intel provides a few thousand high paying jobs. Agriculture is heavily mechanised with the remainder of the work going to immigrants. Farming in my opinion is one of those industries that doesn't make sense in a Western economy. It's heavily subsidized because of "identity politics" not cold hard economic facts.
Food production independence absolutely makes sense. Growing food in a desert based on ignorant and overblown ideas from the 1940s about the impact of damming a couple of rivers and distributing the water ... probably not so much.
"About 80% of that water was captured after use and purified at treatment plants operated by Intel and the city of Chandler, then either returned to the fabs for reuse in manufacturing or its cooling towers, or reused within the city or injected into the ground to recharge the aquifer."
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands...
Oh wow, about 1/3 of the 5 billion gallons of water this one campus was used at least more than once. Problem solved!