Breakthrough deal to prevent Colorado River from drying up
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Open a nuclear reactor in Canada and power greenhouses there. Desalinate some water while you’re at it.
Just the US alone uses about ~110 km^3 of water for irrigation per year.
Selenium is one of the minerals that ends up in the runoff of Californian agriculture. In some coastal areas, the selenium content is so high that bird eggs laid by wildlife never harden. Or the birth defects are so high that the hatchlings don't live.
https://oilandgasinfo.ca/know-fracking/what-is-frac-fluid-ma...
It isn't the overall salinity that is impacted but local conditions.
This report from 2012(!) outlines how any effects from brine can be mitigated and even direct direct brine discharge when properly engineered impacts the area of only tens of meters: https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/ocean/d...
When improperly dumped, there can be localized effects, but that’s no different from any other construction.
As I understand it, San Diego's plant dilutes the effluent by mixing it with additional ocean water, but I don't have a good handle on how well that works.
The only solution is to let the water price rise so that the agribusinesses quit growing crap like alfalfa.
Edit: I bet that only covers a few years of farming use though.
Some local effects are certainly possible, but they can be mitigated by pre-diluting the brine.
You have to take it into account if you want to kayak to Channel Islands.
There are many design patterns and practices for better water management. Some of them are only just being implemented — California is now just starting to credit growers with putting water back into aquifers during seasons of excess rain (and mitigates flood risks). But there are a lot more to be done, including water harvesting structures that slow down water (converting surface water to ground water).
I think the pattern of simplification you are talking about is thoroughly explored in James C Scott’s Seeing Like a State, where complex systems are too complex for the governing body, and made legible through oversimplification. Actions are undertaken on the basis of the oversimplication. The results are disastrous. There are many historical examples. I was not talking about “slowing down water” in that way, though I get people might take it that way.
In areas with poor soil, increased deposition is a desirable thing in many cases. Extreme cases like wasteland and erosion that exposes bare bedrock, you need all the deposition you can get (until the land can support an ecosystem again)
More importantly, the design patterns I am thinking of involves the accumulation of organic material. The overall goal and metrics isn’t just slowing down water, but rather, restoring soil health to support an ecosystem, which in turn, helps regulate water.
You wouldn’t necessarily slow down the river. You start with slowing things down onsite where the land receives rainfall. And you definitely want to avoid having soil wash away to be deposited downstream.
Every site is different, and requires intense observation and unique designs using working principles — that’s design principle #1 of permaculture design, “observe and interact”.
Totally agree. Vegetation also plays a big role (esp. forests).
Makes you appreciate how old of a technology farming is.
I'm not sure what the answer is. The farmers have their own water rights, and as a group are pretty well politically connected.
We could try Eminent Domain or unilaterally breaking those old water contracts... but that's guaranteed to make the Supreme Court. Given the current make up of the SC, I don't see any decision coming that might curtail property rights. I'm guessing it'll be perpetual subsidies for letting land go fallow.
desalination cost varies, but for the London desalination plant it's £1.6 per litre[1]. I am sure that's on the higher end, but let's just work through the math.
1 mm of rain on 1 ha of land is 10 000 litres or 10 cubic meters of water. So to replace 1mm of rain in Britain, costs £16. Average annual rainfall in UK ~1150 mm. So if you had to replace the entirety of it from desalination, you would spend like £18,400.
If you are growing wheat, you get like 8 or 9 tons per hectare and you sell if for like £230 per tonne (these are very rough numbers) so your total revenue is like £2,000 per hectare. Out of that, your profit margin is probably under 10%
So you will be loosing money you have to replace more than a couple of % of annual rainfall from desalination, and if you grew wheat with entirely desalinated water it would cost 10X as much as 'normal' wheat does.
Now, typically you only irrigate high value crops, and wheat is a low value crop. Also you probably don't need the entire annual rainfall, and there might be cheaper desalination elsewhere. You can re-do the math with other crops and other desalination costs.
But fundamentally price of desalinated water is too high for use in agriculture.
1 - https://www.energylivenews.com/2022/08/08/thames-water-switc...
Where are you getting that? At your link I see "£660 per one million litres", or ~2,000x cheaper than that.
Thousands of times higher than what ag can afford tho.
This doesn't affect what the US is obligated to deliver to Mexico, so so (other than perhaps feeling slightly more confident that they will get their water) probably not much at all
Also, people especially farmers have been complaining about San Diego’s pricing to pay for their plant. Still, like you I don’t see any other long term solution since CA provides 1/3 of the US food supply. Maybe stop exporting live stock feed grown from the desert (ie water) to Asia?
We could do this with desalination, green energy projects, and other public infrastructure. I'd even love to see us subsidize fiber to homes and businesses en masse and allow ISPs to share the resulting infrastructure like they do in Europe
The basic issue is farmers can only make money with practically free water they get from natural sources. Anything that raise the average price per gallon is useless to them and they own most water rights. The long term solution is to reduce the amount of farming via eminent domain and rejecting all new farming operations.
I also imagine with continued investment and research the tech could get better at scale too. It may be hard today but perhaps there's headroom for innovation with more funding while tackling migrating cities to using desalination
What’s affordable for a town is several orders of magnitude different than what’s viable for that farmer.
The three states agreeing to this deal are down river (excluding two Mexican states that are further down river), and I suppose they are the ones most reliant on the river.
The Mexican states/Mexican govt don't need to, they have a treaty with the US govt. The US govt is required to send X amount of water across the border. I forget the # and am not willing to look it up right now. The US govt has been supplementing water across the border for a while now with wells. Nothing new here.
That said, never found a better word for it, so maybe it’s correct.
>> That said, never found a better word for it, so maybe it’s correct.
> Per the constitution treaties are binding with the force of federal law.
1) I think that's controversial, or at least not so simple. IIRC, there's a question in US law if treaties have domestic force on their own, or must be implemented by "enabling legislation."
2) In any case, the US Constitution can't make "international law" international law, at best it makes a treaty domestic US law.
Russia is a international pariah now, with no more friends and the only states doing buisness with them are doing so, because russia is weak and without choice, so you can have favorable terms with them. Even china openly condemned russias aggression. They still do buisness with russia of course, but to very good conditions.
And china just did a important states meeting for central asian states:
https://thediplomat.com/2023/05/in-xian-chinas-xi-calls-for-...
Basically all former soviet states and russia was not invited or mentioned at all. China takes what russia cannot hold anymore - and russia still has to smile and dares no criticism, because without china - they would be done economically. China could not have done this prior the invasion.
And if china would try to invade Taiwan - then the military outcome is far from settled and china tries hard to avoid the political costs of a invasion. They rather want to strongarm taiwan into a forced "voluntarily" unification. Otherwise they would have invaded long ago.
Mexico worked with the US on NAFTA because they trust US to buy cars and pay them. Not because they they think we will nuke them or blow them up with a death star.
if you gain a reputation of a country that does not honour agreements, no-one will be interested in doing agreements with you.
I agree with you and others that the driver for abiding by treaties is not US law but us reputation. But that’s the GP’s point: the law is not the main driver here.
If tensions get really bad, sure the US armed forces could probably take Mexico in a fight, but then what? What good would that do the US?
It would be a pretty idiotic thing to do, but sure, it's possible.
I gotchu.
1944's "UTILIZATION OF WATERS OF THE COLORADO AND TIJUANA RIVERS AND OF THE RIO GRANDE" treaty between the US and Mexico established the "International Boundary and Water Commission" (IBWC). The text of the 1944 treaty is available from IBWC's website[0][1].
According to the text of the 1944 treaty (article 10 deals with the Colorado River), Mexico is entitled to at minimum 1.5 million acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado River, and in wet years is entitled to 1.7 million acre-feet of water.
Based on the submitted article, which says "3m acre-feet of water is expected to be conserved over the next three years". If that comes down to 1m acre-feet per year, that's 2/3 of the quantity of water guaranteed to Mexico.
[0] https://www.ibwc.gov/Treaties_Minutes/treaties.html [all treaties overseen by IBWC] [1] https://www.ibwc.gov/Files/1944Treaty.pdf [PDF of 1944 treaty]
I've been following this very closely for a while - the primary issue here is still agricultural businesses in California consuming more then their water rights permit.
I wonder why Colorado and Utah were not involved in the deal? If one of them had a problem with it, would they have standing to sue?
What if, hypothetically, Colorado built a dam and stopped the flow of water to the downstream states?
If Colorado wanted to build a dam, that’s completely different and the other states would likely challenge it in court.
The Colorado River Compact effectively divides states into two buckets, the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states. The Upper Basin states already came to an agreement a while ago; the Lower Basin states only came to an agreement today.
So it would be illegal in Colorado to build such a dam because you would be blocking the water that belongs to someone else.
In Colorado, it is illegal to collect the rainwater that lands on your roof because that water would normally flow into a river and that river water belongs to someone else. I used to live in Colorado and about 10-15 years ago, there was a change in the state law that the media proclaimed made it legal for you to collect the rainfall that landed on your roof. They left out the conditions that the statute required: you had to have an existing well permit, you could only use the rainwater for the same purposes that your well permit allowed (so if the permit only allowed watering livestock, you could not use the water for your garden), then there was another stickler - there could not be a water utility adjacent to your property (even if you were not connected to that water company). There were 3 other requirements, but those 3 were so narrowly focused that the law basically upheld the illegality of collecting rainfall.
Farms have a "use it or lose it" system for water allocation, which leads farms to grow water-intensive crops to keep their allocation, most notably alfalfa. We just need to stop growing such crops.
One bone of contention: while climate change is obvviously very real, neither it nor a "historic drought" is the cause of the problem. The problem is, quite simply, overuse based on unrealistic projections of water inflows to the Colorado River basin (see Figure 2 [1]).
Blaming it on climate change is washing hands of responsibility. Poor modeling and mismanagement is the real problem.
[1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad...
It seems like this lack of realism due to people's desire for very simple good-guy/bad-guy partisan narratives will continue affecting internal CA water politics, which are based on the Sierra Nevada-sourced water that flows in the California Water Project to Los Angeles.
Wanting unlimited water is a pretty biased take.
The start of the whole issue was that many Central Valley Farms and counties raised bonds to put in aqueducts and entered into purchase agreements with the state of California. The California legislature then passed environmental regulation and stopped providing the water. In many instances this water was already paid for, or the state decided that farmers must continue to pay while the state doesn't hold up their side of the contract.
The farmer's position is that the state needs to fulfill it's half of the contract or buy its way out of the obligations it made.
A similar legal battle is playing out all throughout California over groundwater. In those cases, the state passed environmental regulation bypassing the eminent domain process.
I know dozens of families that have lost their life's work and savings overnight because the state thinks it found a loophole to stop them from using water without using eminent domain to buy it.
The closest analogy for the groundwater situation is if you owned a farm in a migratory bird path and the state passed a law for minimum roosting land. Then, instead of buying your farmland, they made a law that you aren't allowed to step foot on it.
Do you have citations for this?
>The closest analogy for the groundwater situation is if you owned a farm in a migratory bird path and the state passed a law for minimum roosting land. Then, instead of buying your farm and land, they didn't compensate you but said you aren't allowed to continue using it as you have been.
isn't this how literally all laws prohibiting something work? The government generally doesn't prohibit something if no one is doing it. Why should the government buy their land?
For example, the government built the interstate highway network of which all of those central valley farmers need to ship their products by using the law to seize land and then changing the character of millions of acres of homes from quiet and peaceful to loud and toxic. They did not generally buyout homeowners who were not necessary to build the road despite fundamentally changing how they were using their property.
>isn't this how literally all laws prohibiting something work? The government generally doesn't prohibit something if no one is doing it. Why should the government buy their land?
No, this isn't how things generally work. It is one thing if a highway changes the character of your neighborhood, but another if the state makes you move out and demolishes your house to build the road. This is the second scenario.
In the case of groundwater, the state recognizes farmers as the owners of the water rights (so they are not being taken away), but limits farmers from exercising those rights. Simultaneously, they allow other groups without the water rights to use it.
It is very obviously not. I'm just pointing out that your 'bird' analogy doesn't work because the government makes laws and policy that affect how existing property owners can use their land all the time.
>In the case of groundwater, the state recognizes farmers as the owners of the water rights (so they are not being taken away), but limits farmers from exercising those rights. Simultaneously, they allow other groups without the water rights to use it.
If you want to find some specific examples, that would be helpful. The state also recognizes my rights to the car I own but can make policies on how I use my property including outright banning my use of it. Water rights aren't god given like the Central Valley farmers would like you to believe. They fall under the jurisdiction of the State of California and the United States of America.
I personally think the Central Valley farmers should stop looking for handouts, show some personal responsibility and adapt to reality instead of asking Uncle Sam to bail them out again.
Yes it does, but there is obviously a legal line which can be crossed and be considered a government seizure of property.
The California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) of 2014 [1] is the example for groundwater usage, currently being litigated all over the state.
It doesn't change groundwater rights, but sets up agencies with the power to allocate usage in penalties which ignore the groundwater rights or seniority of rights. A farmers who have been somewhere for a 100 years can and are being prevented from using water, while recently developed communities or other stakeholders get a pass.
>Water rights aren't god given like the Central Valley farmers would like you to believe. They fall under the jurisdiction of the State of California and the United States of America.
What does that mean in this context? All of your property and even your life fall under legal jurisdiction. That doesn't mean the state can ignore the laws it has established and take them away without due process.
Where established groundwater rights exist, this is clearly the case of the house being demolished to make way for the freeway, not making rules for the color of your paint. It is taking something that is recognized property of one person who is using it, and then using it for another purpose.
I personally think that citizens of California should show some responsibility and buy water from those with rights, instead of acting like petty thieves. If the state is free to systemically ignore its own laws, then individuals should be free do the same. However, that lawless society is not one I would want to live in.
https://blogs.edf.org/growingreturns/2018/09/04/groundwater-...
https://mavensnotebook.com/2021/01/13/sgma-in-action-challen...
Wait till you hear who that farmer took 'his' water rights from! They were there a hell of a lot longer than 100 years.
>What does that mean in this context? All of your property and even your life fall under legal jurisdiction. That doesn't mean the state can ignore the laws it has established and take them away without due process.
You haven't given an example of the State of California taking away someone's rights without due process though.
>I personally think that citizens of California should show some responsibility and buy water from those with rights, instead of acting like petty thieves. If the state is free to systemically ignore its own laws, then individuals should be free do the same. However, that lawless society is not one I would want to live in.
Your claim that California is 'acting like petty thieves' is unsubstantiated. You haven't provided any examples of that. There is a difference between what you'd like the law to be and what it is.
I'm open to reading about examples that support your argument if you have them. The realistic situation on the ground is that ranchers/farmers were allowed to act like drunks at an open bar and now the state is managing water more responsibly with respect to ALL the stakeholders in the community.
If you're a fundamental position is that legally established property rights don't matter and are revocable without compensation, I don't know that we will be able to find common ground and share information.
I personally know a lot of people going through this and find some of your characterizations dehumanizing and offensive, on par with wishing someone's family dies a slow death of cancer. For some of these people, it would have been kinder if the state simply showed up and shot them.
You've asserted that California is taking away rights without due process. I'm looking for examples of that.
You also said
"The start of the whole issue was that many Central Valley Farms and counties raised bonds to put in aqueducts and entered into purchase agreements with the state of California. The California legislature then passed environmental regulation and stopped providing the water. In many instances this water was already paid for, or the state decided that farmers must continue to pay while the state doesn't hold up their side of the contract."
which I'd love to learn more about if it actually happened, but Google has nothing.
>Did you read them and do you have questions? I
It's not my job to make your case for you. If you feel like those links have relevant information, pull it out and make a case.
>If you're a fundamental position is that legally established property rights don't matter and are revocable without compensation, I don't know that we will be able to find common ground and share information.
I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. I can't help but feel that you don't have any supports for your assertion and are therefore grasping at straws to put words in my mouth.
>For some of these people, it would have been kinder if the state simply showed up and shot them.
The state doesn't exist to prop up whatever business they want to run. It's very obvious that your viewpoint on this situation is informed solely by the complaints of people who want to continue to be subsidized by the state at the expense of everyone else.
If you don't have an actual case to make, I don't see any point in moving forward. I've already heard the Ag industry's made up grievances.
The urban water districts, especially Southern California, paid for the 444-mile California Aqueduct to get water from the mountains to the cities. During the last half of the twentieth century this had more supply than needed, so they were happy to sell it for cheap to Central Valley farmers under the condition that they don't grow permanent crops like trees, because eventually the urban water needs were going to increase and they'd need to keep more of the water that they'd paid to transport.
What did they actually do? For one thing, planted orchards. (I'm assuming the miles and miles of felled orchards I saw last week alongside the 5 are related to this particular thing.)
Now, the farmers of the Central Valley may have contractual grievances if the State has done as you say -- and I don't claim to invalidate those, but (A) the fishermen who want salmon to still exist have just as much of a right to a living as they do, and the self-serving bias of the farmers is obvious here. And (B) they have no inherent right to that water, as it comes from up in the mountains. I'd say the districts who paid the cost to build the water project should have first dibs. The farmers who are loudest right now seem to see water costs the same way restaurant owners view minimum wage: "It must be low enough to make my personal business model viable, and if it's not, I'm being oppressed." Nobody owes them favorable costs, any more than Apple is owed cheap semiconductors or Tesla is owed cheap batteries. As reliable Republican voters, it's disappointing that they oppose a market economy so much.
As far as I can see, I think that as long as there is a marginal dollar that could be made by the farmers if only water were cheaper, their politicians will be disingenuously arguing that the cities are robbing them of their water and trying to get more. No matter how fair the arrangements are, or how many concessions are made to them.
The first difference is that you characterize the urban water districts as the primary payers. My understanding is that many agricultural cities and counties also put money and bonds for various water projects with the intent to use it for agricultural uses.
I have also never heard of any conditions on trees or crops, so I am genuinely curious where that is coming from.
In general, I am for letting the water price vary with market demand, or as dictated by contractual agreements. This is admittedly very complicated because the supply and allowed participants is dictated by policy. That is to say, fishermen and environmentalists aren't buying up the water in the market, they set limits on how much can be sold and to whom.
I actually hear very little from farmers auguring that the cities are robbing them of their water. They seem to see the conflict more in terms of ag vs environmental groups, and take city use for granted. Urban dwellers seem to see the conflict more in terms of city vs Ag, with environmental use taken for granted.
I don't think your restaurant example is a charitable or accurate description of farmers (or restaurants for that matter). Nobody is owed anything, but people can be reasonably upset if they think their government is actively working against their interests. A farmer might be mad that the state prioritizes smelt over his livelihood or cancer treatment. In some sense it's a central function of government to pick winners and losers, and it sucks being on the losing side. A restaurant owner might be mad about minimum wage hikes while the city prevents more housing that would alleviate such need, seeing themselves as a victim of bad policy. It doesn't feel good if your life is selected as a necessary sacrifice for the greater good. People obviously have huge biases about what the greater good is when it opposes their livelihood, but let's not pretend policy is free of flaws either.
I apologize for not bringing receipts for the orchard stuff. I promise I didn’t read it somewhere silly, but will try to find the source anyway since me saying so doesn’t prove anything.
As for who paid, you’re probably right that while the CSWP itself definitely was paid for by the urban water districts, perhaps many expensive… uh… “tributaries”? Branches? were invested in by the ag counties to move the water they were getting from it, and if they were promised that water was forever and it wasn’t, I assume that they would be mad. And tbh I don’t think anything I know is related to the Colorado River stuff, so if your info is about that water, perhaps that’s part of these discrepancies.
I just found the wiki page today and it is one of the best and most technical pages I have seen in a long time, probably ever. It has lists of relevant annual reports going back to the 1920s, a comprehensive list of litigation, and tons of relevant links.
I also found a reference to farmers being advised to avoid orchards, but this pertained to the CSWP waters from the 1970s onward [3]
>In the early 1970s, the SWP system still had a lot of "surplus" – water supply developed through the construction of Oroville Dam, which was running unused to the Pacific Ocean because the water delivery infrastructure for Southern California had not yet been completed (and when it was, southern California was slow to use the water). The surplus water was given for irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley instead. Because the water would only be a temporary supply, farmers were advised to use it for seasonal crops (such as alfalfa or hay) rather than permanent crops such as orchards. Nevertheless, many farmers used the water to develop new permanent crops, creating a dependency on SWP water that is technically part of Southern California's entitlement
On a different perhaps more mixed note, I found these articles [4][5] going down this rabbit hole of "permanent water contracts"
>According to the Bureau of Reclamation, as of October 2019 more than 75 agencies that had “temporary” water service contracts to receive Central Valley Project water, including the State of California Department of Fish and Wildlife, have exercised the option provided by the WIIN Act to convert their contracts to “permanent” repayment contracts. The contract terms proposed in the repayment contracts for Westlands and other Central Valley Project contractors under the WIIN Act are nearly identical to those in the Friant Division repayment contracts.
>The Interior Department on Friday awarded the nation’s largest farm water district a permanent entitlement to annual irrigation deliveries that amount to roughly twice as much water as the nearly 4 million residents of Los Angeles use in a year....The district is one of more than 75 Central Valley Project customers — most of them farm irrigation districts — that are taking advantage of a 2016 law to convert water service contracts that require periodic renewal to agreements that permanently lock in delivery entitlements and other terms.
I believe these are the water contracts that farmers have been paying since the 1930s, which had terms to convert to permanent contracts. I will have to tell my republican farming family how Obama accelerated the terms of the water contracts to make them permanent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project#/media/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project
http://redgreenandblue.org/2020/02/29/californias-westlands-...
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-02-28/westlan...
Why is water different than land in this regard? When a developer wants to put up a new subdivision, they buy property from the current owner. Why shouldn't water shares be the same?
Alfalfa and almonds are thirsty yet we grow them by the square mile in the desert. It doesn't take much googling to realize this is not a smart thing to do in a drought area.
If we didn't grow alfalfa we would have a lot more water for people to drink. We could sustain more people. Then, instead of having a few thousand people live next to a little stream in the middle of the desert, we could have tens of thousands of people live next to a little stream in the middle of the desert.
No amount of googling explains to me why it is better to have more people near a small stream than it is to have more alfalfa near a small stream.
Imagine a small island that used the scarce land for agriculture. Would it be better to put more people on the island, or would it be better to grow food on the island? What if there were only a few people and they had large fields to grow food. Should they be forced to give up their land so more people could live on the island?
Why is it so important to fill the island with people?
Plentiful and subsidized year-around food is a security issue on the federal level - but when compared to other industries it brings in comparatively little for the states involved. You can't reasonably expect a few water starved states to export the majority of its water via crops while sacrificing its own economic prosperity for the sake of the broader country.
The "use it or lose it" system of water rights for agriculture in the Colorado River basin creates warped incentives, which is to maximize water usage rather than the economic value of the crop or the calorie content of that crop.
It's clear we can use a ton less water and still feed people in a way that's economically viable for the farmers. But no one wants to give up the water because once it's gone, it's gone.
This situation has real impacts where some in California, for example, were floating the iea of using desalination to provide potable water for people rather than the far cheaper and more obvious solution of just using less water on water-intensive crops.
All of this is just superficial responsibility shifting.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/scarcity-water-use-kcals
As a nation, we have this fantasy of turning the desert green. The book Cadillac Desert lists our national obsession with massive water projects that never pay for themselves and that always require massive tax subsidies.
https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing...
Perhaps that's not how it works in the US? Or are they saying agriculture by the native tribes, and therefore that is considered different from non-tribe agriculture?
They may use or resell their water.
The state of water security is California - and the US West more broadly - is a fascinating history problem in my mind. I focus on California due to the enormity of its investments to attempt to sustain its massive population. And within California, I think a lot responsibility for the current state of affairs falls on the head of Los Angeles.
The City of Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power serves a population of over 4 million. Only 13% of that water is from local/recycles water supplies. That approximates to a natural water supply that can sustain around 500,000 people. To sustain the current and forecast populations, ~40% of water is pulled from the SF Bay Area Delta and another ~40% is pulled from the Eastern Sierra. The remainder is pulled from the Colorado River. From my last study of the subject over a decade ago, effective desalination strategies were still forthcoming.
The survival of Los Angeles - and the broader Southern California region - is heavily dependent on these outside sources. And each sources has it's own threats and challenges.
Receiving water from the Bay Area Delta is the result of the State Water Project (SWP) - which happens to be the single largest energy consumer in the state of California (it takes a lot of juice to pump all that water up and over the mountain ranges that separate Southern California from the Central Valley). One threat that water/government agencies have been concerned about is the affect of a major Bay Area earthquake on the SWP and on the water supply of Southern California. If the levees scattered throughout the Bay Area Delta were to fail in significant quantity, salt water would be pulled in from the Pacific and would contaminate 40% of Los Angeles's fresh water supply (affecting over 1.6 million people). To avert this potential crisis - there have been talks for 20-some years to build a tunnel and divert the SWP-bound water from the Delta. The State of CA has put forth plans to proceed with the tunnel bypass [1] - at an estimated cost of 16 billion.
Then we have the Eastern Sierra - which, again, contributes nearly 40% of water to Los Angeles. The historic extraction of water from that region has resulted in a least one massive (mostly) dried lakebed (Owen's Lake) [2]. It should be pointed out that this dried lakebed became one of the single largest sources of particulate pollution (PM-10 - sand/dust) in the United States. While Owen's Lake is no longer the largest single source, Mono Lake (also in the Eastern Sierra) now is. While that lake has not been drained, is has had it's natural water sources diverted to supply Los Angeles (I can dig for those data points if need be). The extraction of water in that region has been directly attributed to the desertification of the landscape and the changing of the ecosystem.
Beyond the situation with the Colorado River, California has much to grapple with. Balancing decades of unruly development and population growth is an issue that will need to be handled for generations to come.
For a 'fun' read on the development of Los Angeles, check out the aptly named book, "Reluctant Metropolis" [3].
[0]: https://archive.org/details/cadillacdesertam00reis/
[1]: https://www.deltaconveyanceproject.com/
Out east, it seems like upstate NY has a decent shot at long-term water security, depending on how thirsty NYC becomes and how influential that thirst is in the scheme of NY state politics.
In this same spirit, I happen to be building a sci-fi post-apocalyptic "comedy" adventure game [SB: see below] whose goal is to educate as much as it is to entertain. We take as a premise that humanity fails to take the kinds of big bold urgent action needed to prevent the worst of climate change's dystopic upheavals from happening. Water becomes much harder to come by, for billions. (Imagine like in the film Mad Max Fury Road.) Even while other areas go underwater or experience more frequent or more extreme monsoons or flooding.
Therefore everyone becomes massively more careful about water. More respectful.
Because they must.
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https://www.usbr.gov/lc/phoenix/AZ100/1950/whiskey_drinking_...
One of the hard things with "looking in from the outside" is that these numbers are just so batshit insane that we cannot really grasp it. An "acre-foot" is huge, and what we personally consume appears so small (and what does "consume" mean anyway? If I pull water from a well and then put it back in the ground with a septic, how much is "consumed"?)
Perhaps we need federal labelling for things that puts some "water used" on things so you can compare, though water used in some areas is critical and in others is not a bit deal at all.
80% of the Colorado River water usage is agricultural. [1]
Forget not drinking water or taking a shower - eat one less steak or skip a handful of almonds. That's where all the water is actually going.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado...
I would love a better breakdown of what exactly California & the west's agricultural water usage is.
TL;DR:
- 55% goes to livestock feed (hay, alfafa, etc.) - 11% cotton - 14% other food crops - 4% thermoelectric power - 4% commercial & industrial - 12% residential
I'd be further interested to know how much of each of those are exported (the article mentions that a 2020 study estimated 10-12% of all US livestock feed crops are exported).
It seems ridiculous that we're putting the economic benefits of exporting these crops against the long-term sustainability of citizens living in the region.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizon...
They have all but drained their aquifers that takes thousands of years to replenish in a bid to become self sufficient in their food supplies. Now they are taking some corrective action with investing more in desalination, reducing certain type of agricultural produce etc.
Well, since the topic is authoritarianism, note that the Chinese approach resulted in a few tens of millions dead, which is worse than what the Saudis have managed so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
Well, no, totalitarianism is characterized by the unilateral exercise of power, and the results will vary wildly depending on who your tyrant is. Tyrants are easily as dumb as the average person; dumber, perhaps, if you think that absolute power corrupts one's ability to view the world objectively (or that those who have a tendency to seek absolute power might correlate with those who do not have the best interests of others at heart).
They also have the foresight to do it near one of its borders (I used to do the same thing in SimCity: shit my coal plants in the corner).
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Saudi+Arabia/@30.1201859,37...
At least in the case of Arizonan desert alfalfa, this is a result of sweetheart lease deals offered to Saudis with no limits on groundwater access, who are effectively exporting Arizona’s aquifers in the form of livestock feed.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizon...
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/arizona/articles/202...
This is just saying that they had the right to drill MORE wells revoked, presumably they already have wells that will continue to pump water out of the ground.
>reported that the new wells would have pumped up to 3,000 gallons (11,000 liters) of water per minute.
That is an insane amount of water.
> At Lake Itasca, the average flow rate is 6 cubic feet per second. At Upper St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the northern most Lock and Dam, the average flow rate is 12,000 cubic feet per second or 89,869 gallons per second. At New Orleans, the average flow rate is 600,000 cubic feet per second.
In addition to the reasons they list, I'd like to point out that Almonds are actually native to the desert in Iran and the Levant. I've found them in the wild while hiking in the desert in the middle east.
Eg - if ten gallons per almond is true, and one goes to evaporation and nine into the aquifer it’s much different than if five evaporate, four run off into the ocean, and one sinks into the ground.
Unlike Arizona, it appears that much of Utah's alfalfa crop gets exported to China.
Get your septic system fixed if this is happening. Septic systems are supposed to evaporate the water into the air, not put it back into ground water.
Of course you won't actually see it working like that in a properly functioning system. However that is how it should work.
Ah:
>Evapotranspiration systems are only useful in specific environmental conditions. The climate must be arid and have adequate heat and sunlight. These systems work well in shallow soil; however, they are at risk of failure if it rains or snows too much.
So it's a desert thing, I am not in a desert.
I'd like to know more about what that means.
The whole problem is that there isn't enough water. How does the federal government magically supply 76% of the shortfall?
https://www.levernews.com/biden-admin-boosts-big-oils-colora...
Really problematic stuff going on.
> The largest oil producer in the Uinta Basin, Finley Resources (which operates in Utah through its subsidiary Uinta Wax), has been promoting the project while claiming it cannot afford to contribute to construction costs
So they can't build it and presumably can't maintain it, so we should foot the bill and hope nothing goes wrong?
Picking apart this particular headline, perhaps a few of us are wondering how close the Colorado River is from drying up? My subjective measurement is that a river drying up would constitute 5% of its average discharge, or even less. The USGS tracks multiple key indicators on the Colorado River, including discharge at certain gauges along the river. From 1952 to 2022, the average is about 5,900 cubic feet per second. The worst year in the history of tracking the Colorado was 21 years ago, 2,417 cubic feet per second, or 40% of average discharge. That's 8 times what I would personally qualify as a dried up river. Compare that to the mighty Mississippi, which averages 208,833 cubic feet per second each year. Now their worst year was 1956, 93,990 cubic feet per second, or 45% of their average discharge. So the Mississippi is statistically fairly as variable in its discharge as the Colorado river, albeit with much more water. And anyway, that's only 9 times my personal qualification. I know these aren't universal measurements, but I hope this allows me to prove a point. The Mississippi River and the Colorado River aren't all that different in variability, and neither of them are even close to drying up. But it's the cities that are closer to the Mississippi River that are actually having water problems -- not Arizona (e.g. Jackson, MS had a water crisis where the National Guard was mobilized to help 150k residents with drinking water just last year). [1]
In the last two decades, the SW has been experiencing extreme drought, and all the while it's one of the fastest growing regions in the US. For example, since the 1950s, Arizona has grown from 700,000 to over 7,000,000, all while using less water. Yep, it's true. Remember that when people point to more neighborhoods, golf courses, and "cities in the desert" as the reason for this 'crisis'. [2]
With all that being said, my personal judgment is that there's a very real drought that is just about to conclude, as seen from recent projections of El Nińo, heavy snowpack and rainfall this winter in the region, and water conservation technology improving at an exponential scale. The Southwest will continue growing, especially due to immigration from South America and Mexico and recent onshoring due to the China/Russia crisis into the next few decades. And the water situation is going to be fine the whole way.
[1] - https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/annual/?referred_module=sw&a... [2] - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme...
It’s amazing what can be done with good planning and design.
The problem/challenge is that those with the least seniority don't like being cut off.
Are you saying that the problem with seniority is that it clearly solves the allocation debate and overallocation problem?
Which part do you object to?
Sarcastic quips like this do not promote a productive discussion. The commenter above is probably arguing that the oldest use is not necessarily the most valuable, and relying on stack allocation fails to make the most economically effective use of a limited resource.
>Basically there is no need for allocation at all.
They might be saying what you did, but it was far from clear to me. If so, my response would be pretty straightforward:
Seniority settles the question of rights. Buying and selling of rights and water is a very clear and effective way of putting them to the most effective economic use.
If a potential user wants water and can put it to better use, they can simply buy it. If they are the city or state, they can even use eminent domain to force the sale.
It could have been the case where the seniors were only given their rights because it was assumed there were 16.5 million acre-feet, and not 11 million.
Or perhaps the juniors only agreed because they thought there would be 16.5 million acre-feet.
Or the federal government may have allowed senior rights to continue to exist for so long because they thought there would be 16.5 million acre-feet.
The idea of senior water rights, not sharing such an important resource, is inherently unfair. The senior people did nothing to earn more water than anyone else. They didn't put the river there.
It seems there are better factors to consider when deciding how to distribute the water at this point than treaties based on bad data, signed a long time ago, when things were a lot different than they are today.
I would argue that seniority systems are the most fair, because the junior parties are the ones that drive the scarcity and create the problem.
On a small scale, If a family has been living off a stream for 100 years, and someone wants to move in an use the stream, in makes sense that the newcomer doesn't get access if there isn't enough for both. Similarly, it makes sense that the newcomer go without if there is a shortage.
In general water rights (even moreso than mineral, air, etc.) are notoriously hard to get "right", and nobody seems to have managed so well that it's the obvious approach to follow.
Most land in the united states has followed a possession seniority system since it was conquered and bought from native Americans. Decision makers don't periodically redistribute it without consideration for current ownership or compensation. The few cases where it does happen are widely considered grave miscarriages of justice.
I bring up eminent domain because it is a relevant policy tool in the toolbox that can be used given that a legal doctrine and history of water right ownership has already been established in the west.
Some people think we should just pass laws to dissolve established property ownership. Some people in this thread don't even get that far and think the state should just ignore law and history and simply seize it.
Think about it this way: you move somewhere and you're using 50 gallons per day of water. An agreement comes up that says you can keep doing that. 10 million people move in after and there's now a water problem. Were you over-allocated 50 gallons per day?
You could look at it two ways: you should sacrifice to help everyone else. Or, screw everyone else they shouldn't be here anyways.
My general opinion is that while there's benefits to growing food in the imperial valley, they don't outweigh the benefits of not having to move tens of millions of people out of the southwest - that's like throwing trillions in development into the trash. California has access to the ocean for desalination, and other southwest states don't. The best thing for the country as a whole would be for California to ween itself off the Colorado River. But I don't think that's going to happen, at least, it won't without a fight.
Once this is done, parties can work towards solutions. The southwest states and users can start buying rights from California and farmers.
One reason there is so much fighting and acrimony is that each party thinks they can get more water for free by convincing a judge they deserve or need it more.
This is further complicated by the fact that the best way to demonstrate need it to increase your dependence and set yourself up for even worse disaster if you don't get what you want.
There was a time when factories could pollute legally as much as they wanted. Then things change and they had to adapt. We can't have people insist on water rights that were given at a different time. They have to adapt.
Do you feel that way about other property rights such as land and housing?
In general, I feel like humans should not "own" natural resources. You can rent it from society, which is how I view property taxes, even though that's not exactly what they are.
I also don't think they should be arbitrarily seized. According to the article, some of the water reductions are being compensated for monetarily. I don't know the whole story there though.
AFAIK, you can't legally just buy a farm in the imperial valley and say you're going to use that water for residents in Arizona. Rights are based upon the use case.
You start from a place where the state has granted water rights by law and told people that this is yours, you can use it up to the very last drop. This has been the law for 150 years and people have built businesses and lives based on the idea that the government upholds the laws and contracts it made.
Do you just start one day and tell people with water rights that it sucks to suck, but the people have decided that they want what we previously promised was yours forever. It's your fault because you believed that the government would be consistent and uphold it's commitments.
Especially the Colorado river. An infamously volatile river. Most of the time it is a rather small desert river. but when it floods it floods something awful.
It's states like Arizona that will have the problem. I lived in Scottsdale. Saw the writing on the wall and we sold the Scottsdale place for an insane amount of money. Having said that, if you can get a place just inside the border of the city of Phoenix, you'll probably be good. Phoenix has been socking away water forever and has about 70 to 100 years worth of it under the city. As a matter of water availability, I'd stay away from places out in the suburban areas though. If you've been paying attention down there, you probably kind of already know that if it comes to a head, Phoenix will take care of Phoenix. Places like Scottsdale, Mesa, or Tempe would be expected to solve their own problems.
I firmly believe things are gonna get heated out in Arizona if the drought persists. No pun intended.
Is that phony or something? What was the writing on the wall that you saw that made you leave Scottsdale? Curious as a Phoenix-native who maybe one day might want to move back to the valley.
Scottsdale is confident, (or, at least, shows outward confidence), in its ability to provide water for 100 years because of its three pillars. One, that the Salt River gambit will always pay off. Two, that Scottsdale's water from the Colorado will never run dry. And three, that if all else fails, I mean, hey, Phoenix is sitting on an ocean. They can't leave us out high and dry can they?
With respect to two and three, we had zero confidence. Additionally, our faith in the ability of Scottsdale's leaders to effectively manage unexpected events with 1 was, limited.
I'm not saying move out of Scottsdale. I'm saying for us, it was too much risk and inconsistent with sustainability. I believe for a place like Scottsdale to become sustainable, somebody has to move out. Not saying who that should be, but mother nature is clearly signaling limits on our growth ambitions. Not all places in Arizona are unsustainable. Tuscon, Sedona, Phoenix proper. Etc. There are lots of places in Arizona that I think have put forth credible plans to manage their growth in the face of uncertain water security. But climate, geography and a failure to get out in front of the issue long ago has just put other areas in a precarious spot. That's just reality.
I do hold out some hope for technology in solving this problem. In theory (albeit at great cost), we could build a desalination pipeline from San Diego/Baja California to Arizona, and there's also the Source water panel[0] which pulls water out of the air, and seems like a potentially good option for residential water usage.
https://www.azfamily.com/2023/05/16/arizona-legislature-pass...
https://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/Assets/ScottsdaleAZ/News/News+I...
https://kjzz.org/content/1847190/scottsdale-wants-governor-v...
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands...
Looks like it was just vetoed by the governor today.
> Posted at 11:35 AM, May 22, 2023 and last updated 52 minutes ago
Thank you for the update on this.
With the unincorporated town that... lets say "has a dislike of government" it becomes difficult for Scottsdale water district to implement the same restrictions for other areas.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/27/arizona-scot...
> Incorporating could give the community more options for water supply in future but forming an official town or city brings requirements, such as paved roads, street lights, more taxation and rules. This would be expensive but also change the secluded, quaint feel of Rio Verde Foothills, where people own chickens, donkeys, horses and ride motorbikes straight out their doors to nearby Tonto national forest.
> And forming a new water utility district doesn’t appeal either, with residents reluctant to have another government agency overseeing their neighborhood.
People say this all the time, but where else do you propose this be done? Where's the empty land that can be as productive as the Imperial Valley? If you want to stop farming there, we're going to have to reduce our population or it'll happen naturally in an unpleasant way.
(note: the reclaimed water is interesting - Palo Verde nuke plant uses PHX's reclaimed water for cooling the (still?) largest nuclear power plant in the country.)
SRP uses large ponds/takes to 'recharge' the aquifers under PHX, as well as maintaining reservoirs.
It's behavior everytime the issue comes up suggest you are very wrong.
> Their use of it is limited to a small area south of LA.
No, its not; while most of it is used in the Imperial Valley, L.A. (by far the largest city in the State) itself also uses it for about half of its municipal supply, (as does San Diego, but I guess that could technically be considered part of the “small area south of LA”.)
PS - and due to there being less agriculture in the area now, PHX metro is down to 1950s levels of water usage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/us/arizona-water-rio-verd...
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands...
Wisconsin on Lake Michigan.
But again, if you can get a place in the border areas of Phoenix proper, I think that would be the ideal for the average person who lives in Scottsdale. We are from the Midwest, so.
I suspect the water under Phoenix is at least part of the reason developers got to places like Biltmore and Arcadia so many years ago. They're always one step ahead. But there is also the north Phoenix area bordering Scottsdale. I'd recommend that for the well off, but not wealthy. Still close to Kierland Commons area, and Scottsdale Rd is right there. (Although I'd bet even that area will still run you close to a mil for anything decent right now. And the prices there will only rise in the future if the water issues persist.)