Parched California Misses a Chance to Store More Rain
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
If you're interested in California weather, read weatherwest.com
Edit to add: "During the dry years, the people forgot about the rich years, and when the wet years returned, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way." (East of Eden)
This feels like an abomination.
These promises of rights were vastly out of proportion. They were granted at no charge. We should have no compunction about saying no, now, while there is still some water left in the west & not just after it's gone & these folk again are left with nothing or radically reduced water. Letting the crisis overcome us & being afraid to rescind that-which-was-never-available is cowardly, invites true disaster.
There's no way to buy these people out. The price is infinity. The proverbial All The Gold In Fort Knox is still less valuable than top rights to the rivers & aquifers forever.
So what do we do? Should we go broke paying ever more for Imminent Domain money to re-civilize water we said belonged to the very few, the very old interests? Imminemt Domain doesnt seem sufficient here. Do we do nothing, and just let there be not enough water, let the right dry up along with the water supply itself, and let the shared pain also impact the rest of civilization?
This is such a pitiful situation. It drives me nuts that we are so afraid to have a government that can redress it's own criminally poor life-threatening choices. Someone needs to sue the government for granting these impossible water rights in the first place- force these rights to be overturned- with a charge of negligent homicide against the state. Right now there's seeming agreement there's no escape from these rights, but the rest of the world also has some rights, and those rights needed a stake at the table many decades ago when these absurd water rights were being created. Or we need real redress now, cancelling the impossible promise of exploitation forever.
There are some good proposals out there: https://law.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk10866/files/medi...
> "Under House Bill 1005, rain barrels can only be installed at single-family households and multi-family households with four or fewer units. A maximum of two rain barrels can be used at each household and the combined storage of the two rain barrels cannot exceed 110 gallons. Rain barrels can only be used to capture rainwater from rooftop downspouts and the captured rainwater must be used to water outdoor lawns, plants and/or gardens on the same property from which the rainwater was captured. Rain barrel water cannot be used for drinking or other indoor water uses."
Even there, look at the clauses - every gallon of water is fought over, it seems:
> "The capture and use of rainwater using rain barrels does not constitute a water right," said Reagan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Institute, part of CSU’s Office of Engagement. "HB 1005 includes language that could result in the State Engineer curtailing the use of individual rain barrels if a water-right holder can prove that those rain barrels have impacted their ability to receive the water that they are entitled to by virtue of their water right."
As the major reservoirs on the Colorado continue their apparently inevitable decline to dead-pool stage, these pressures will only get more intense, and the long-term trend doesn't seem to be affected that much by periodic atmospheric river injections like this past winter's - see this recent article:
https://www.newsweek.com/lake-mead-dead-pool-hoover-dam-rami...
No worries, recycled urine is an acceptable source of drinking water...
Suddenly there is an incentive to reduce claims...
Rule #1 of water policy in California is if someone says that all the water is just slipping through our fingers, it's because they have a commercial interest in owning said water.
This was the most recent article that popped up in tehGoog, but it's a long running issue. If it's just a question of corporate profits and state tax revenue, exactly why do the laws need to be changed to benefit some states with later claims?
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/foreign-companies-face-mou...
This is like deficit spending. Eventually, the chickens will come to roost.
The exports to be concerned about the ones going to non-North American areas, especially alfalfa. I don't want people in developing nations to starve, but the truth is the current agricultural output is unsustainable which is bad for global food security in the long run.
https://calricenews.org/2021/09/01/flooding-opportunities-dr...
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1019488080
However, there are other questionable crops that are being grown in California and exported.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado...
> In 2021, nearly 20% of alfalfa produced in the west was shipped abroad, according to analysis of United States Department of Agriculture data. Nationwide, alfalfa exports reached a record high last year, driven by strong demand from China. Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia are among other top importers.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/contributors/valley-...
> We make this business extremely profitable for them by selling them 3.4 million acre-feet (1 acre foot =325,851 gallons) of water every year for $35 to $60 per acre-foot. The water you get for your house costs you $800 per acre-foot today, and it could be double that in 10 years' time. You could supply the water needs of 40 million people with that 3.4 million acre-feet.
> ...
> Alfalfa is used to feed farm animals like pigs and cows. But we export 70% of what we grow in California to Japan and China. The Japanese raise Kobe beef with it and send it back to us for $200 per pound. The Chinese use it to raise pigs to meet their rapidly expanding demand for pork as they become more affluent and eat more meat.
> Why don’t they grow their own alfalfa? Because they are short of water and it is so much cheaper to buy ours. In fact, alfalfa has become an instrument for exporting subsidized water.
And while its from 2014, still applicable - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989
> "A hundred billion gallons of water per year is being exported in the form of alfalfa from California," argues Professor Robert Glennon from Arizona College of Law.
> "It's a huge amount. It's enough for a year's supply for a million families - it's a lot of water, particularly when you're looking at the dreadful drought throughout the south-west."
If they don't pump it out and back into a river, and it just slowly seeps into the ground, that's exactly what the article is proposing, isn't it? Just with the added benefit of keeping the rice plants uneaten.
When northern California weirs are flowing and the "bypass" fields of the Sacramento are flooded, much of that recharges the groundwater, exactly the storm capture that you'd want.
But what the article is discussing are waterworks that would pump smaller rivers like the Russian dry, in any year. They think any water that reaches the Pacific is waste, to hell with fish.
I'm interested in how you know an area is litigious. I've lived at various places in the US and litigiousness have never surfaced as an indicator.
Another interesting wrinkle was when I needed to do something simple on my car. I went to an AutoZone and asked to borrow the battery tester or maybe it was the OBD2 reader. They could sell me one but couldn’t lend me one because of laws around people working on their own vehicles. I’ve done this in other states and the front desk just nods and points to a cart or hands me a tool. I’ve run into a few car related regulation oddities with service folks which have brought the cost of certain fixes higher than they needed to be.
There are warnings on products due to CA prop 65 that are labeled through the country. You don’t see anything being sold “known to the state of Arizona to cause cancer” for example.
In talking with developers, I’ve heard California is quick to make rules (local and not) around housing that conflict with themselves. I understand that housing is a complex social, logistical and geographical challenge. I don’t have much direct experience in this arena but I believe the people I’ve talked with.
As a pilot flying out of KRHV, I 100% support flying with unleaded fuels and advocated for it in my local flight school where appropriate. Santa Clara County had a hearing regarding the airport mid-pandemic and the proceeding was a bit of a witch hunt. Instead of looking to solve problems, the common thread seemed to be centered around what they legally had power to do to accomplish their goal of closing the airport despite the stated goal of collecting feedback about the issue. They ended up restricting the sale/delivery of 100LL which may have ultimately lead to a plane crashing after being serviced there. The county is now being sued by AOPA.
There have been other things along the way but these are a good sampling of what causes this feeling for me personally.
You're describing small town living. California is very urbanized with a lot of movement between big cities and small towns in a total population over 40 million, so there's more interactions with strangers and less trust. I totally get why rural Idahoans and Kansans don't like California. I get sick of it myself sometimes and have to take road trips to rural America. This sometimes feels like time traveling since the future is not evenly distributed.
Is that litigiousness (eagerness to launch a lawsuit), or too much aggressive and overreaching behaviour that won't stop unless somebody sues to make it stop? Maybe some combination of both.
1. Wildfires and related homeowners insurance raises
2. Deteriorating prevailing attitudes and outlook
3. Earthquake risk (grossly underestimated in some areas)
4. Long-term water scarcity
5. Worsening income inequality as evidenced by people living on the sides of the roads and highways. It's not normal and it's a lack of government action to secure affordable housing
Average estimated risk for an area of the US:
The unsolved problems: energy, money, and brine discharge. Desalination is energy intensive. And with the highest energy costs in the nation, SoCal is in a really tough spot to use large amounts of energy on water. The subsidized water from the Colorado river is too cheap not to use.
Reservoirs: similar problem of money. The state has already dammed up all the cheapest and most obvious terrain in California. It gets more expensive to dam up new areas. Did you know there is another large reservoir in NorCal being planned that's almost a decade into funding/planning (Sites)? It's not directly on a river so will require active pumping. 2 more (Pacheco & Los Vaqueros) are being expanded in the near future from the same pile of money paying for the new reservoir. [1]
What California needs is rethinking existing potable water use and combine with smart rain capture. San Diego Airport in recent years has installed large capture cisterns for a parking lot that will offset its largest water use - HVAC for the airport. They've even piloted the capture of condensate from the land-based AC that is brought out to planes on the ground during turnaround. [2]
[1] https://cwc.ca.gov/Water-Storage
[2] https://municipalwaterleader.com/storm-water-capture-and-reu...
If it came to it, Texas also is on the coast and unlike California they actually build things in Texas, so desalination is available.
For anyone wondering why Seattle has a reputation as a rainy city when quite a few other well known US cities get comparable or more rain and no one ever thinks of them as particularly rainy, there are two main reasons.
1. Seattle rains on more days (where a day is considered as with rain if there is 0.01 mm or more of rain).
Seattle's 38 inches is spread over 156 days. Austin's 35 inches comes over 86 days. Houston's 50 inches is over 107 days.
There are cities with more total rain and more rain days, such as Buffalo (41 inches, 166 days), which brings us to reason #2.
2. Buffalo gets around 92 inches of snow a year which takes place over around 72 days. No one is bothered by a little rain on a day when you've got all that freaking snow to deal with.
Similar for most other cities that have more rain and more rain days then Seattle. They also tend to have one or more other things that are more annoying than the rain.
Seattle on the other hand mostly just has the rain.
It's funny. I actually used my umbrella a lot less in the "rainy" Seattle area than when I lived in Los Angeles or Cupertino.
I think that is because with so many rain days if you don't carry the umbrella with you all the time (except maybe summer) you are eventually going to get caught in rain--but it is almost always mild rain and you figure out you don't actually get wet enough to be annoying (with one major exception, covered below) unless you stay out in it for quite a while. You learn that if you are just doing indoor stuff where you will only be outside while walking between parking lots and buildings it is not really a problem.
When it does rain heavily it is usually for a short enough period that you can just wait it out. It will usually only take a few minutes to get light enough that a short walk won't be a problem.
The one exception is if you wear glasses. That's pretty easy to fix without resorting to an umbrella by getting a hat. The rain is usually not accompanied by much wind, so you only need a small brim to keep the rain away from your glasses.
Austin, it rains for what seems like maybe a month, if that. The new normal is 50/50 snow angels late Jan or early Feb. Austin doesn't have the humidity of HTX, San Anton, or Corpus. You can breathe in the summer without it feeling like lava in your lungs in NYC, DC, New Orleans, or the gulf coast in S. America. The perception of amount rain in Austin is much less than in the Bay Area. In the Bay Area, there are many annoying dribbles of almost rain like the clouds have an enlarged prostate.
The southwest has charm but it's no place to live because it's right in the middle of a forecasted climate shift to endless desert. If people don't have water, they'll either a. spend stupid money competing to attain it or b. move like climate-displaced farmers from S. America, the Middle East, Asia, and Iberian and Mediterranean Europe. It's not rocket science, it's climate science.
It was 87 F today in Austin. It was glorious. Of course the flying and crawling things were all out like they just discovered air and sun. I have a ladybug wandering around my apartment that won't leave. Maybe a $3k rent bill (their share) will scare them off?
Except reliable power infrastructure, apparently.
If you did, then you'd know above-ground switchgear varies widely by climate.
Put 2 tons of ice on a 900' span rated for mild summers and see how long that stays up.
> Wildfires and related homeowners insurance raises
this is the bit I would have expected not to be better in Texas, between floods and energy instability.
The amount of cleaning of bug zappers and fencing-in of porches, you might as well live as a hermit with all that flies and bites.