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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting!

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.

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The vast majority of the consumption isn't personal, it's silly agricultural use like growing alfalfa and almonds in the desert.

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...

As horrible usages of water ad those are, it seems like significantly more water is used on also very inefficient meat production.

I would love a better breakdown of what exactly California & the west's agricultural water usage is.

This article has a good breakdown of where the Colorado's water goes.

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.

In Arizona, it's not even the US consumption. They're selling the alfafa to Saudi Arabia, which won't grow it itself because it uses too much water.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizon...

Well of course they won’t grow it. They’re in a desert and that would be ridiculous! /joke

Interestingly Saudi Arabia has been super wasteful of their water too.

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.

One of the theoretical advantages of an absolute monarchy or any other totalitarian form of government is that it should be able to make unpopular decisions (i.e. prevent the people from accessing groundwater resources) that are good in the long run (i.e. the aquifers don't all run out within a few decades). Strange how that plays out in reality.

They would've if they took the Chinese approach to gradually improve the standard of living organically through productivity improvements and education. Saudi Arabia instead immediately skyrocketed their standard of living far past what the population can do productively without oil. Populations don't take well to huge standard of living decreases that are inevitable when oil $ runs out to subsidize everything in the state enormously.

> They would've if they took the Chinese approach to gradually improve the standard of living organically through productivity improvements and education.

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

Of course, I meant the Deng Xiaoping reforms

> should be able to make unpopular decisions that are good in the long run

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).

It's actually a brilliant move on the part of the Saudis. They are essentially pumping Arizona's aquifer across the globe and the alfalfa is a convenient storage mechanism.

Saudi Arabia is doing the same with its aquifers.

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...

It illegal to grow alfalfa in Saudi Arabia. This was pointed out in all the Arizona newspapers when they found out about the Saudi connection.

>eat one less steak or skip a handful of almonds

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...

As I understand their water rights were recently revoked:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/arizona/articles/202...

>has rescinded drilling permits

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.

The entire flow of the Mississippi:

> 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.

Farmers seem to disagree with the "almonds bad" narrative: https://farmtogether.com/learn/blog/dispelling-miconceptions...

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.

This is one of those “but where does the water go” questions that have to be answered to determine the true effect.

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.

Utah has a similar problem. The governor has an alfalfa farm yet has gotten on TV to demand that Utahns pray for rain. 80% of Utah's water consumption is agricultural. If the governor wanted to reduce Utah's water problem, he should start by putting his money where his mouth is, and stop growing such an abusive crop.

Unlike Arizona, it appears that much of Utah's alfalfa crop gets exported to China.

I’m fully onboard with this. Silicon manufacturing is one example that consumes an insane amount of water (100’s of thousands of gallons each day) but has to ultra purify it for their processes and then returns it back to the city water supply cleaner than when it came in. The water treatment plant has to have the capacity to feed it but to say that the water was “consumed” is a misnomer.

If it's so clean and pure, why not just reuse it?

Or bottle it. appleSiliconRunoff would sell like … bottled water!

> If I pull water from a well and then put it back in the ground with a septic

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.

How do they evaporate into the air? https://www.epa.gov/septic/types-septic-systems "conventional system" is the one I know most common, and I've never seen an evapotranspiration system.

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 am in the desert, and still haven't heard of this. Everyone out near me has a leach field.

That is what the Leach field does.

Leach fields are not uncommon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septic_drain_field

Leach fields evaporate water.

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