How bad is the California drought? | Hacker News Reader

How bad is the California drought?

telegraph.co.uk

61 pointsdmitri198168 comments

It's bad. I recently drove to LA through the central valley, and in 18 years of doing that drive, I've never seen it so dry. Whole farms are just gone, everything is brown.

There are a couple of problems preventing us from saving more water though.

#1, we had a drought in the 80s. A lot of people learned to conserve then and never changed their habits (like me). There is no way I could use 20% less water -- I already use the minimum. I have buckets all over the house for reuse, for example. My next step is a gray water system, which is expensive.

Which leads to #2, water is way to cheap in this state. I would have expected my water bill to go up during the drought. It's gone down. It's insane. Sure, let's keep tier one usage cheap so we don't destroy the poor, but tier two and up? It should be 10x what it is. That would make people conserve.

This is what I don't get about the way this is being handled. Instead of threatening $500 fines for people whose neighbors rat them out, why don't they price water to its true cost¹? I guarantee consumption would plummet if the consumer had to pay for it.

¹Sure, there probably still needs to be variances for residential vs. agricultural use, and tier 1 vs. 2+, etc.

Yes! That is what I am saying. I feel for the poor and the farmers, and I'm totally fine with paying more so they can pay less. I know I won't pay much more because I conserve, but the asshat down the street who waters the sidewalk will pay a lot more and I'm ok with that too.

Politicians, like most of the public, prefer to believe they have power over markets, and will use top-down rationing, rather than market-based pricing. See the gas/oil shortages of the 1970's, vs letting the market choose the price and having supply/demand automatically equalize based on price.

Also, some of the officials making the rules on water restrictions are guzzlers themselves [1].

1. http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/california/California-Water-...

Domestic water is probably overpriced not underpriced. It's the farmers who pay way too little (often zero!) for water. This has created screwed up incentives for farmers. Many crops are worth less than the true cost of the water needed to grow them!

This is what happens when you have a system driven by politics and not the market - it's prone to lose touch with reality (actual cost/value). Unfortunately it will be very difficult to get back to prices based on actual costs - smaller number of big losers (some farmers) and lots of small winners (consumers & taxpayers) as well as tons of interlocking, inflexible regulations and subsidies (local, state & federal).

food industry should be partly subsidized by government, otherwise country could end up in trouble when people don't get enough neccessary basic food and stuff

Yes, the federal government.

I would appear that the current subsidies are leading to an actual shortage of water.

Or they could just buy it from another country, like thousands of basic food items we don't grow enough of, starting with rice and bananas.

The number 1 way to conserve water is to eat less meat. I don't think that people have learned this yet and most people have not changed their habits to consume less meat.

Serious question: why is it acceptable to change all kinds of behaviors, take shorter showers, fix leaks, turn off taps, and even install gray water systems, yet not change our behavior to eat less meat?

If you didn't eat beef for one day (1/2 lb beef = 1,250 gallons of fresh water) it could be the same as not showering for a month.

Sources: http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irr...

http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/interactive-graphic/water...

> The number 1 way to conserve water is to eat less meat.

Sure, but that's more of a global issue than a local one, insofar as meat (and food for livestock) is shipped much further than water is.

California produced about 2 billion pounds of beef last year. That comes out to 8% of the US market for beef, the vast majority of which comes from the US.

The numbers I found said that each pound of beef requires anywhere between 1000 and 5000 gallons of water. (I suspect the high end is probably too high, so let's go with the low end.) That gives us 2 trillion gallons of water used in California each year for beef production.

Back of the napkin: If 10% of people who get their beef from California replace it chicken (which uses about a half the water per pound, both are about 1,000 calories per pound), the state would save 100 billion gallons of water per year. That's about 3 days worth of water for the whole state.

(Apologies for lack of sources, I didn't realize this would turn into a research piece, so I didn't save them, but they seemed reputable.)

Thanks for that, but I think it somewhat misses the point. The demand-side of "everyone wants meat" problem is more of a long-term global-trends sustainability thing.

The California issue is that the cost of locally-used water is not being reflected in locally-produced meat.

People don't necessarily have to eat less meat in general, as long as less of the production comes specifically from California.

What percent of the population would have to stop eating meat all together in California to reduce consumption by the 20% that the Governor has called for?

If you're feeding beef irrigated feed, that's crazy.

But normally beef are fed crops that are highly drought resistant, like grass, alfalfa and barley.

Human crops like wheat, rice and corn require a lot more water than feed crops.

So if your rainfall levels are less than what is required by human food crops, you have several options:

- irrigate - grow cattle feed without irrigation - idle the land

The 3rd option may be the most environmentally friendly, but it doesn't feed anybody.

Beef may require more water per calorie than other foods, but it may still be more efficient. It doesn't really matter how much water is required -- it matters how much irrigation is required. And for beef, that number can be "0" in areas where nothing else is.

This link states that beef are normally fed corn:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx

Also, cows can drink up to 30 gallons of water per day:

https://beef.unl.edu/amountwatercowsdrink

I don't know how we could consider it to be more efficient than simply eating other foods (i.e. plants) under any circumstance when all variables are considered.

Beef in the States are normally fed corn, yes. And that's silly, yes.

Corn is heavily subsidized in the States, and also needs to be rationalized.

Under any circumstance? Please tell me what would be a more rational way of feeding people in Montana? Cows can graze on native prairie and have an ecological impact similar to the buffalo that predated them. Ripping up the native prairie to grow wheat or corn would destroy the soil and turn it into a desert in about 20 years.

The latest issue of National Geographic has a map showing meat calories consumed per-capita for various countries and regions around the world. The US is high, but more-or-less right on par (or a little under) with many other places: Brazil, western Europe, northern Europe, Australia, and China[1]. Some countries are considerably higher, including Argentina and Finland.

This is, indeed, a global phenomenon, not a US one.

[1] China is interesting in that the meat calories consumed is high, but the amount (in weight?) of meat consumed is less. This due to the consumed meat being largely high-fat-content pork.

Even if it is a global phenomenon, and even if the US is not the worst in terms of meat calories consumer per-capita, that doesn't negate the fact that we could still improve our environmental impact by eating less meat.

It's not a competition, we can still make an impact locally and globally by eating less meat.

Argentina and Finland are mostly-mountain countries. The water usage there is probably lower, and it doesn't matter (it is not used up in the growing of livestock feed, it passes through), and both countries have large areas where you can't eat the crops that do grow, but cows can.

So you shouldn't take them as examples. That their meat consumption is higher probably actually saves water.

A classic, Forget Shorter Showers: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801...

I think the issue isn't only the lack of rain, it's the immense use of water. I read at some point recently farmers have moved to crops such as pistachio nuts which have high margins, but take something like 1 gallon of water per nut.

And water usage in rich areas actually increased year-over-year, which is infuriating. We had rain throughout the winter, and even a couple of summer showers recently which is rare, and if you look at Crystal Springs reservoir, the water levels don't look as bad as some of the pictures you see on the news.

So I think this is more a case of demand vs supply. What hasn't increased however, is our water rates. Places in Hillsborough, a rich area of SV, use in excess of 300 gallons per day to water their lawns, vs other areas. I personally have stopped watering my lawn down to zero, and my property is a big patch of dirt now. I think there should be a tax on people who want to water their lawn during these times, because it's so unimportant. For a household of 2 adults and 2 kids, we use less than 85 gallons per day, and my water bill is $15/month.

85 Gallons per day - Interestingly. In Australia [In my particular urban region] - that same usage would cost AUD$38 per month (Roughly $3.90 per 1000L)

And yet, instead of raising prices, polls show we are looking to pass Prop 1, a terrible omnibus pork-barrel bill as our "solution" instead of just raising prices on water as should be happening. http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_1,_Water_Bond_...

Holy wow. My household of 2 adults and 2 kids (3 & 5yo ... they usually bathe together), we use between 80-100 gallons per day, which includes daily use of a high efficiency clothes washer and a reasonably efficient dishwasher. If I workout in the morning I often shower twice those days, at least during hot weather (because another of our conservation actions is keeping the thermostat at 80F during the day).

Here are the water utility rates in the Raleigh area. Notice that non-residential rates are almost as low as Tier 1 but irrigation rates are the same as Tier 3.

Residential Water Rates:

Tier 1 = 0-4 CCF billed at $2.28 Tier 2 = 5-10 CCF billed at $3.80 Tier 3 = 11+ CCF billed at $5.07 Non-Residential Water Rate: $2.95

Irrigation Rate: $5.07

1 CCF = 748 gallons

> We had rain throughout the winter

Snow would have been better. Rain fill the reservoirs, and then the excess must be spilled off. Snow sits in the mountains forming a huge natural reservoir, and the more gradual melt can be used more efficiently.

It is very frustrating to me that we are dealing with such significant drought, while most of us Californians live within 100 miles of the ocean. Using that water seems like the answer. The problem with desalination is that it's an expensive solution to a sometimes problem.

http://www.wateronline.com/doc/santa-barbara-to-reboot-desal...

Santa Barbara built and then shut down an expensive desalination plant in the early 1990's. Desalination is expensive, and when water is abundant, it is more cost effective to use natural water sources than run an expensive plant. A desalination solution must be designed to be inexpensive and easily hibernated/restarted. That way, the state could effortlessly switch between whichever water supply was most abundant.

As with nearly all of our problems, California's water shortage is really an energy shortage. If we had cheap, abundant energy, desalinization isn't expensive anymore.

Figure out fusion and our water problems are solved.

Of course, in the meantime you think we'd at least consider pricing water as a resource and let supply and demand control the price. Instead, we implement this ludicrous system of encouraging neighbors to tattle on each other.

Calfornia's energy shortage is a classic market failure.

If markets were capable of intelligent long-term strategy, California wouldn't have an energy shortage in the first place.

Fusion isn't required to solve a problem that could have been solved by much simpler means.

Fusion is cool, but fission is easy and if used on Thorium in LFTRs[1], would provide us with virtually unlimited, passively safe energy that leaves extremely little waste.

Unfortunately it falls under the 'nuclear' umbrella and thus carries with it all of the baggage associated with that.

5 minute elevator pitch for the LFTR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY

Failing that, I don't understand why we can't just connect a pipe (like we do with oil) from one of our water rich states to CA.

But for whatever reason the state doesn't seem to be even considering any engineering solutions to the problem.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor

You know that California already drains water from the entire Colorado river basin, the Owen Valley, and numerous other sources. No way a state is going to just let California's appetite for clean water drain yet more rivers.

Alaska might be up for it.

Surely you have to ask yourself, if your proposed solution is energy intensive desalination, perhaps the problem actually is using too much water?

or too many people even when each uses a reasonable amount of water

The unfortunate truth is that we actually need to use that water. Roughly 80% of California's water consumption goes to agriculture. [1] I can't speak to whether that water is allocated or used as effectively as it could be, because I'm not familiar with the agriculture industry. [2] That said, I do know that California is a major food producer for the rest of the country. Assuming agricultural water use is as efficient as can be expected (i.e. not blatantly squandered), the only answers are to reduce food production (to the detriment of California food producers and anyone who buys our food) or maintain/increase the water supply. Limiting residential and non-agricultural water usage will slow the bleeding, but not enough to solve our water problems.

1. http://www.environment.ucla.edu/reportcard/article4870.html

2. I suspect that we would see improvements in the situation if water were priced appropriately, which to my casual knowledge is not the case, especially for our farmers. I believe right now our government picks the "winners and losers" of water allocation, which upsets the losers, and doesn't encourage the winners to explore less water-intensive farming methods. But again, I could be drastically oversimplifying a situation I am not well educated on.

So when the governor suggested people should take measures to reduce water usage 20%, it would only help if they reduced their water usage to zero ?

Figures.

Reduce food production is the only sustainable option. Best done by reducing the nation's population through attrition.

Was recently at the Lost Coast for a hike and on the way there several of the smaller lakes and rivers were mere rock beds. From what i've heard from friends in LA, shops still 'water the side-walk' as they call it.

I'm a bit north of LA, but the country club golf course has never been greener ;-)

Joking aside, it does feel like people are trying to make a difference and conserve.

In the last month, 3 of my neighbors have removed their lawns in favor of rockscape or mulch. LADWP is offering $3 per square foot if you remove your lawn, so that is encouraging people.

LADWP - Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

They're doing that here in the bay area too. My question is, do I have to have grass to count as a lawn? I stopped watering my lawn the day I bought the house, so at this point it is just dirt. Can I still the the $3/sqft to put in turf?

where can i can more info on this deal? I'm based in Mountain View and willing to stop this front lawn nonsense, especially if they'll pay me for it.

A list of Bay Area rebate programs:

http://www.bayfriendlycoalition.org/LYL-rebates.shtml

And the program most relevant to your current question:

http://www.valleywater.org/Programs/LandscapeRebateProgram.a...

"I stopped watering my lawn the day I bought the house"

In some cities, not watering your lawn may get you a fine too: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-brown-lawns-...

Yep it sure can. They sent me a nastygram once so I watered for a week till they inspected and then stopped again. It's such a waste to water things that aren't edible. I was just ahead of the curve -- green is the new brown.

Need: [(Solar || Nuclear Power) + Desalination]

There's plenty of water available (Ocean), but California needs to spend it's money on the right things. Too many frivolous laws and programs.

So, uh, why would anyone bulldoze dead almond trees if they're not going to replace them with another crop yet? Seems like it would just increase soil erosion problems.

At a guess, scrub fire hazard?

I'm guessing that the almond farmers know what they're doing.

Maybe dead trees encourage diseases that attack live trees.

They're probably going to just let the land lie fallow.

According to the article, LA received about 4 inches of water a year over the past 3 years, which is 2 inches per year less than average. Wouldn't that mean LA is in perpetual drought?

When I last visited (4 years ago), I was struck by how much everything was watered there. I'd never keep plants that need that much tending. Water must be way too cheap there.

Before William Mulholland and the draining of the Owen Valley basin, LA was a desert. Without millions of gallons of water piped it from hundreds of miles away at great expense and energy use, LA would still be a largely uninhabitable, and would certainly not be a city of millions with lawns and golf courses.

It reminds me of some years ago when the last major drought hit Australia [1]. We had dams down to ridiculously low capacities (about 15% total supply for certain urban areas, with individual dams getting to single digits if I recall correctly) at times. An entire generation got used to fast showers as the government actually circulated little 4 minute egg-timers to encourage everyone to take no more than that in having a shower.

I think many of the laws enacted then around use of water (e.g.: for car washes, lawns, etc.) are still tighter than they were prior to the drought, but everyone's sort of used to being more water wise now so it doesn't really bother us.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_Australian_drought

I went camping at Snow Mountain in Mendocino Forest a few weeks ago. Not a drop of water anywhere, only dry stream beds. Extremely high risk of fire. No sign of mammals larger than chipmunks.

Meanwhile, I'm sure this hasn't changed: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21596955-drought... — choice quote: “Last week Barack Obama visited Fresno, in California’s fecund Central Valley, to announce $183m of federal aid before spending three days golfing on well-watered courses in the desert.”

This president is one of the biggest hypocrites! I can never forget him being caught saying: "I'm very good at killing people." And he's a Nobel Prize Laureate!

Obligatory and insightful XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1410/

There appears to be a five year periodicity to the lifting of the drought, I wonder if that will happen in 2015, I assume that is because of a reoccurring El Nino? If not, can someone enlighten me :)

Are we not able to desalinate water? No doubt some special interests are preventing us from solving this problem. Access to plentiful, cheap water has not been a first world problem in a very long time. Just authorize the building permits and a contract to buy water sufficient to make it profitable, and this problem will be solved quickly.

Not refuting your point, but it's not quite that simple. Current desalination techniques are very energy costly, and the state has actually decreased its energy capacity in the past few years. For example, the San Onofre nuclear station went offline permanently in 2012 because of a botched repair job by, a little ironically, the Japanese (Mitsubishi). Neither ConEd or the state have announced any plans to replace the lost capacity (~10% of the state's total energy capacity) = higher energy costs.

San Diego county is currently building a billion dollar desal facility off the coast of Carlsbad, but it hasn't been easy or cheap. And even with the state in dire conditions, this project has faced opposition for various reasons - e.g. environmental concerns about desal runoff (apparently the salt water byproduct is very bad for marine life and has to be treated before being released back into the ocean).

Even when it's completed and producing at full capacity of 50 million gallons per day, this will be a literal drop in the bucket compared to the 38 billion galls of water per day that are used by the state overall (2010 USGS estimate). With population projections having the state grow 40% by 2060, things are not looking good and nobody seems to be addressing the longer-term impacts.

Obviously NOT BAD ENOUGH if California keeps using more and more water every year.

If you want to understand the drought conditions better, I implore you to watch this Ted talk by environment scientist David Keith:

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_keith_s_surprising_ideas_on_c...

To sum it up, governments are engaged in cloud seeding to fight climate change, and they're staying silent on the issue because informing the public is a moral hazard.

As a side effect of cloud seeding, certain areas are bound to develop less rain clouds. This causes drought conditions.

Spraying chemical compounds over populated areas also has environmental impacts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4WhYKP83zo

"On July 15th, 2014, citizens from Northern California rallied to create the largest attendance ever at the Shasta County Supervisors chambers (400+, chairman Les Baugh confirmed this attendance record at the start of the meeting). The primary purpose of this meeting was to present information that proves there is a very dire heavy metal contamination and UV radiation issue across the Shasta County region (and the world). A list of 10 experts presented data to the board to confirm the legitimacy of the concerns being addressed. At the end of the presentation, the board voted unanimously to investigate the heavy metal contamination and passed resolutions accordingly."

Evidence please - surely you have something better than a 7 year old talk about a proposal and a conspiracy-mongering chemtrails website. I looked at the Documents section there and it's a joke - one white paper from 1966, one guy's investigation of his single diseased rhododendron plant, one unpassed bill introduced by Dennis Kucinich and written by a couple of UFO researchers, and a slide deck on possible geoengineering methods.

http://contrailscience.com/kucinich-chemtrails-and-hr-2977/

Sorry, this is kooksville. A reasonable argument would start with a review of meteorological classification and then assert novel observations before introducing theories about possible causes. Instead we have some guy who drones into his camcorder about how sheeple can't remember what real clouds look like.

Ted.com, and a youtube recording of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors.

That's what I linked you to.

Your criticism would be better directed at the various websites you have apparently frequented.

> Evidence please - surely you have something better than a 7 year old talk about a proposal and a conspiracy-mongering chemtrails website. I looked at the Documents section there and it's a joke - one white paper from 1966, one guy's investigation of his single diseased rhododendron plant, one unpassed bill introduced by Dennis Kucinich and written by a couple of UFO researchers, and a slide deck on possible geoengineering methods.

> http://contrailscience.com/kucinich-chemtrails-and-hr-2977/

> Sorry, this is kooksville. A reasonable argument would start with a review of meteorological classification and then assert novel observations before introducing theories about possible causes. Instead we have some guy who drones into his camcorder about how sheeple can't remember what real clouds look like.

What made this poster go to the lengths he did? Dennis Kucinich? UFOs? Did he even read what I posted?

The guy leading the presentation to the Shasta County board of supervisors is the same guy who runs http://GeoengineeringWatch.org which is the first link in the description of the video. Not wanting to sit through an hour-long video of people making speeches - rarely a good way to get informed on a topic - I went to his website in search of a written summary of his argument. Unfortunately it sent my BS meter straight into the red.

If the US and/or other countries are actually seeding clouds on a massive scale, and if there is any evidence of this being linked to the drought in California as you asserted, then I would love to read it.

The event lasted 3 hours, and the video was shortened. Sorry but I don't have a transcript.

David Lim, a doctoral researcher at the University of Reading, has a much more comprehensive presentation for the curious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-zRREd8DZQ

"This public presentation has been created to introduce the topic of geoengineering to those with limited or no knowledge of the subject. It therefore provides an overview of this lesser known area of science. The talk entitled 'Increases in extreme weather, food prices and illness: the unspoken connection' was held in Trent, Sherborne, Dorset (UK) on 27th March 2013 in front of an 80 strong audience. The 'questions and answers' session lasted 90 minutes and has been excluded from the clip for manageability. The audience consisted of members of the public; it appeared that very few people were aware of geoengineering let alone the science and political issues underpinning this vast topic. A multitude of periphery subjects were also discussed during the Q&A session, leaving many with much to consider...

I was a doctoral researcher at the University of Reading (UK) looking at domestic electrical loads, when I stumbled across the science of 'environmental manipulation', encompassing Geoengineering, Weather Modification and Military Operations - all of which pose a significant risk to natural systems. Period.

Having investigated the climate change debate and become acquainted with 'the bigger picture' - delineated by topics such as politics, geopolitics, history, meteorology, sociology, economics, physics, metaphysics, quantum mechanics, medicine, law, military and many others - I concluded that something was wrong. In fact many 'things' are wrong with the version of reality that is presented to us by the mainstream media and government. It has taken over 1,500 research hours to comprehensively put together the pieces of the geoengineering puzzle, which pulls in all of the other subjects mentioned afore, it just does. The vast majority of people simply don't have the energy or time to investigate such overarching topics as geoengineering, thus many are left in the dark. Herein, I simply aim to shed some light on this murky area, for those at stage one of 'the journey'..."

Look, I'm sorry if this seems rude, but do you not recognize that 90% of what you've pasted here is emotional manipulation? I'm willing to entertain your proposition but I would like to read something with specific assertions about chemicals, numbers, methods - stuff I can conduct searches on, not handwavey presentations by an expert who's dumbing it down for laypeople and so leaves me without any detail that I can check for myself.

I took some time to watch this guy's video, but his argument is incoherent and it's absolutely full of logical fallacies. I'm well aware that there have been multiple proposals for geoengineering, but it's a long way from that to claims that the clouds look wrong, geoengineering is being conducted on a mass scale, and there's a giant coverup. Having grown up near an airport, I've always had trouble with chemtrail advocates claims that 'these don't look like normal contrails' because my experience is that contrails have always exhibited a great deal of variety and do not have a single consistent appearance as contrail theorists are wont to claim.

I urge you to consider some of the debunking arguments that you can find at https://www.metabunk.org/forums/contrails-and-chemtrails.9/ and search for specific written arguments that are based on empirical and repeatable observations.

So you would agree the site you linked to is more scientific and empirical? The owner of metabunk.org, Mick, is thoroughly defeated in a public debate by Dane Wingington, who you apparently detest, here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/wigington-west-geoengineeri...

Mark my words, this issue is going to become more mainstream over the next thirty years. Your position is simply anti-science.

> Dane: You know, that's a great suggestion! I appreciate that suggestion, we'll do that, not just here, because we're already arranging meters for Norway, Maine, New Mexico, and Florida. So we'll do that in each location. And you know one that makes it quite clear that the numbers are that bad Mick, and again, your suggestion is a good one and we will follow that up. The bark in the pacific Northwest is literally being fried off the trees. Completely fried off to the core wood. Trees are dying everywhere up here. It takes a tremendous amount of UV to do that. Nothing grows here, which is a known consequence of excessive UV. I mean the UV seems so staggeringly high that leaves are literally falling off the trees right now. They started falling off in July. So, we see every single sign of excessive UV. Massive insect decline. We just had a US forest service biologist re-survey the terrestrial insects - 90% decline. Bark being burned off the trees. You can't stand in the sun here. So we believe those numbers. We are actually trying to use conservative math, because if you take the UVA and if you calculate 5% of the UVA measured in milliwatts per centimeter squared, you would come out with 3.5, and if you divide that into ten, which is UVB you'd get a number that's close to 3000%.

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