Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

It's bad, but California has the California Water Project, a huge collection of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts built in the 1960s, to store water and move it around. Here's current reservoir status:

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.act...

Levels were slightly lower in 1977, but the population of California was 16 million people lower then. The California Water Project was designed to store enough water to get through 3 years of drought. We just finished drought year 3. (The water year ends Sep. 30, before rainy season starts.)

San Jose has a new sewerage treatment plant so good it can be used to provide drinking water. It just came on line last summer. Right now, it's just being used for irrigation and recharging ground water, but if things get really bad, that backup is available. (http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_26160300/california-dr...)

So, yes, extensive preparations for this were made a long time ago.

Rain so far during this water year, starting Oct. 1, is slightly above normal.

Population has little to do with it. 80% of water is used by agriculture. The climate isn't helping, but actual water shortages are entirely manufactured by an industry that feels like it's infinitely entitled to grow plants in the desert.

To be fair, it's because they're feeding a population that feels like it's entitled to low cost food. Because we've never had to pay the true environmental and resource costs of our food.

Thank you for this reference! The good measures taken in the past seem to help tremendously.

Looking at the drought maps was depressing enough and that was compounded by the fact that the Bay Area does not feel anything like an area that is experiencing one of the worst droughts ever! I have always wondered how we (I live here) could survive all this time with water to spare for swimming pools, 24-hour tap-water supply, many-minute-long daily showers, restaurants full of water supply and wastage. Having been born and brought up at places where there were severe droughts and poor historic water management measures made me extremely cautious while using water, but it seems like that behavior was largely irrelevant here.

Whereas I like the comfort provided by California Water Project and pray for enough rainfall this year, I do hope that the approach of Bay Area Californians toward water preservation improves.

> The good measures taken in the past seem to help tremendously.

Sure did. Too bad the country has given up on investing in infrastructure. In fact the largest single investment seems to be in destroying other people's infrastructure instead of making ours better.

People keep saying that. Yet, in the last decade in the Bay Area alone, we've had

    - a major new dam in Fremont.
    - a new Bay Bridge eastern span
    - a second San Mateo Bridge alongside the first
    - a fourth bore at the Caldecott Tunnel
    - a new major tunnel at Devil's Slide
    - a new sewerage plant at San Jose
    - a third Hetch Hetchy water pipeline
    - an automated tram between BART and the Oakland airport.

Under construction are the new Transbay Terminal, the SF Central Subway Line, the new Golden Gate Bridge west approach, more light rail and BART stations...

You can go even further back to the Central Valley Project started in 1933 by the federal government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project which led to the largest reservoir in the state, Lake Shasta. Agriculture was to be the primary beneficiary of the Central Valley Project, at a time when the state population was far smaller.

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