Drought-Stricken California Communities Consider Desalination | Hacker News Reader

Drought-Stricken California Communities Consider Desalination

hereandnow.wbur.org

48 pointsMilnerRoute43 comments

I've heard that it's the farmers that are taking up the bulk of the water, and if they weren't planting water-intensive crops like pistachio nuts and almonds, we wouldn't be in a drought. Is this correct, or just hogwash?

Water politics is nothing new in CA, and people vs agriculture has always been at the heart of the issue. LA in particular created a giant mess because it was desert.. getting water in was what made the sprawling so-cal possible.

Nuts are disproportionate but right now they're all tapping into finite underground resources vs relying on rainfall. Being able to get to that underground water means market prices don't reflect the issue here. Of course china being part of the huge demand of almonds would probably only increase their consumption if prices went up because it would be seen even more as a luxury than is justified.

It's going to get even crazier over the years, and desalination is too extreme for the amount of water that agriculture uses.

We are in a drought, regardless.

A quick google search seems to indicate that agriculture accounts for something like 80% of the water use in California. So, in a sense, you are correct that we probably wouldn't have to worry about the drought from a drinking water point of view if not for agricultural use. However, we would have to worry about food supply issues nationally and economic issues in what is already one of the most economically depressed areas of the country.

Besides, most cities, including where I currently live, are not actually all that worried about water for domestic use. There have been no restrictions with any real bite. It is agriculture that is going to hurt first . . . well, no, it is the natural environment that is going to hurt first. Agriculture should probably take a hit, but that is politically difficult and certainly not consequence free as posts like these seem to indicate.

" However, we would have to worry about food supply issues nationally and economic issues in what is already one of the most economically depressed areas of the country."

The impact would be relatively minor. For example, we could simply stop growing rice in the desert and more than recover all water saved by urban use: http://www.kevinroderick.com/rice.html

There's more water lost to evaporation in rice fields than LA uses in its entirety all year long. We could very easily move California rice production to wet areas in the south which don't suffer droughts and which already produce most of our rice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_S...

The thing I say about rice is this: at least you can eat it. You can't say that about alfalfa, which uses over 5MAF of water per year (double the water input of rice) for negligible economic benefit (~a billion dollars in water needed to grow ~a billion dollars of alfalfa). This is chiefly used to feed cattle and more than 2/3rds of it is exported.

It's not the farmers' fault that it's not raining.

However, agriculture does take 80% of the state's water. Industry and residential take the remaining 20%. (Recent accounting shows habitat restoration taking 50%, farms taking 40%, and residential/industrial 10%, which is just a misleading way of saying the same exact thing).

If it wasn't for crops, California would have enough water for decades of drought. They're making things tight now, and it's going to get a lot tighter once the groundwater is pumped dry. When that's gone, it doesn't come back.

Reminds me of those "Food Grows Where Water Flows" signs along I-5. I've always wanted to scribble on the bottom: "and water does not flow here."

True, but it is the farmer's fault that they sank so much money into ridiculously water-intensive things like almond farming - each almond requires a gallon of water to produce, and if you don't keep the tree's properly watered, they'll die. (source: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/california-dr...)

It really irritates me how selfish the farming interests are, when my household managed to cut our already-low water use by nearly 30% last year, and we are still awash in delicious fruit in our garden which we trade with toehr local producers for veggies and so on throughout the summer, just by recycling leftover water from cooking, saving a little rainwater and so on. We're not hippies or anything, we just like the fact that we have some fruit trees in the garden and made some very minor lifestyle adjustments.

Oh man, those hilarious 'Congress Created Dustbowl' signs; everybody who passes those has to just wonder why these people started farms in the desert, right? Congress didn't make a dustbowl, you or your forbears just made a farm in a dustbowl and then assumed water from elsewhere would always be there for you. These same people would probably spout off about personal responsibility or some such nonsense if given the chance...

The almonds and rice and alfalfa issues only exacerbate the original silliness of farming in the goddamn desert.

Central Valley farms are a big consumer of water in California, but bear in mind that this article is about a desalinization project in the San Diego area. That area of California gets its water largely from the Colorado River and the eastern Sierra Nevada range, whereas much of the Central Valley is in the western Sierra watershed. So the two regions don't have as much relative interdependencies as you might think.

I don't really know what the Colorado's upstream usage breakdown is, but it's significantly over-allocated.

Agriculture uses about 40% of the total water supply in the state and industry/municipal use is about 10% [1]. Of the human uses of the state's water, 10% goes to water almond trees [2]. While an important industry, agriculture accounts for only 2% of the state's gross domestic product [3].

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California

2. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California

Nuts aren't a crop that you plant every year, like grain. Nut trees take years to grow and reach productive maturity. Most California nut farmers have built their orchards over decades, and expect decades of future production from them. If they don't water the trees, they could die, and lose the entire farm. If you have 30 years of future production (10s of millions of dollars in revenue) at risk, you'd take any measure necessary to protect that investment, regardless of the impact.

I don't know if your statement about the decades of orchard development are true. There was a huge rush to convert acres to almonds in the last few years. 1/3rd of the acres in almonds were less than ten years old in 2013, and much of the new acres are in useless desert places of Kern, Fresno, San Joaquin counties and so forth. The long-standing orchards in places where you should actually grow nut tress -- Glenn, Tehama, Butte, Sutter, Colusa counties -- are the ones that are very old and they aren't in danger because water falls in those places. From the damn sky.

One other factor to consider is the (mostly successful) attempt by the grocery industry to differentiate their produce by offering "organic" crops at a 50-300% markup, which almost always lowers the yield per acre and often requires more water per acre. The markup way offsets the increased water costs, to the detriment of other water users.

>water-intensive crops like pistachio nuts

Erm? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistachio#Habitat

>Pistachio is a desert plant, and is highly tolerant of saline soil. It has been reported to grow well when irrigated with water having 3,000–4,000 ppm of soluble salts.[7] Pistachio trees are fairly hardy in the right conditions, and can survive temperatures ranging between −10 °C (14 °F) in winter and 48 °C (118 °F) in summer. They need a sunny position and well-drained soil. Pistachio trees do poorly in conditions of high humidity, and are susceptible to root rot in winter if they get too much water and the soil is not sufficiently free-draining.

Do people in California water their lawns? Cosmetic grass must be one of the biggest users of urban water - the last time I left our sprinkler system on for a day (I turned them on to humour our landlords, never turned them on since), it drained our 2500L tank, which is not ideal when you 'only' get 900L a day.

I like the Las Vegas approach of painting rocks green, no watering and best of all, no mowing.

If all Californians stopped watering their lawns, the state's water situation would remain almost wholly unchanged. It's an incredibly minor contributing factor.

Most of the laws passed mandating reduced watering are done primarily to satisfy the electorate that "something is being done," so they don't notice or care that groundwater supplies are being rapidly depleted in the interest of making billions off nut sales:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/almonds-water...

While I agree that lawn watering regulations in most places will do very little to actually help conserve water directly I think it goes a long way to making water shortages real to people. It's very hard to believe there is a serious issue when everywhere you look sprinklers are going. Being forced to conserve water in a simple way like that probably isn't going to be a direct benefit but getting people thinking about it more by it directly affecting their lives definitely can be.

I think just the opposite. You pass a law and think you've done something, but actually the problem remains exactly as large as is was the day before. And now you have another excuse for more bureaucracy, call lines for snitching on neighbors, excuses to fine people exorbitant fees which can hit a family very hard, etc. I think it's the worst possible action we could take.

There was a period in Bay Area about a year ago, before some of the more strict regs were enacted, when the local papers were running front page stories almost daily about water shortage and the city's refusal to implement "common sense policies" and other such nonsense. No one said a peep about that bag of almonds which wasted as much water as your entire house would use that month, lawn watering included.

I see it as a means of subjecting the population toward ever increasing levels of scrutiny, control, and government interference. The drought is just an excuse. The policy has zero meaningful impact except to expand government largess and the populace's willingness to kowtow to authority.

For most people sure they will stop watering their lawn pat themselves on the back and be done with it. You won't ever get action from those people though so we can ignore them. There is a smaller group that will be annoyed that they are having to make sacrifices when industry/agriculture isn't and those people will be pushed to be more active.

Does it guarantee improvements? Nope, but it does get more people on the side of conservation.

Any way to improve it would require increasing levels of government interference. Clearly people(industry included) aren't willing to self regulate their water usage or they would already be doing so.

It gets people thinking they're conservationists. It doesn't necessarily make them conservationists. In fact, I'd argue it has tended to produce the opposite effect, because it creates a mental barometer based on the wrong indicators.

And any way to improve it may require increasing levels of government interference, but increasing levels of government interference ≠ improvement.

I know it sounds obvious when put that way, but too many people fall into the trap of thinking that because something must be done, anything must be done. And, that because something was done, it was a good thing. Which is seldom true, unfortunately.

I agree it will make lots of people think their conservationists when in reality they are just retweeters/fb likers but I disagree that it won't actually lead more people to being actual conservationists.

>And any way to improve it may require increasing levels of government interference, but increasing levels of government interference ≠ improvement.

Agreed but I think increasing interference in the "wrong"(as in not most effective place I.E. watering lawns) place will put pressure on them to also put pressure on the right places so the people under the first problem don't feel like they are over contributing.

That said I've not read any studies on this so really I'm just guessing blind here.

I totally agree that people need to feel like they have skin in the game.

And I wish lawn-watering laws did that, but they don't seem to. I think the natural result with mankind–at least with Californians–seems to be that people then feel like they've done their part, and can go back to watching television. The state has a long history of such behavior across a variety of issues, and I don't think this one's any different, unfortunately.

It's a fine line, but Californians need to be having difficult conversations about the composition and nature of their economy, and the true long-term environmental impact of those choices, instead of feeling good about feeling bad.

Sending city employees out to fine people for watering their lawns, while legislators continue to enable a billion-dollar industry on land that can't support it for much longer, is what's happening.

The state's supposed to be at the forefront of environmental restraint, but can't ever seem to make do with what it has (whether it's water, money, or otherwise).

So what does it do?

Same thing it always does: Sweat the small stuff to win the PR game and fill the public coffers, sell bonds to fund boondoggles that won't attempt to solve any root causes, and seek reelection: something made considerably easier by the first two.

I honestly can't speak on the Californian mindset since my experience living there was only a few months so I can't say for sure it would work. I think it would give leverage to the people trying to enact agriculture changes though.

Once people can't water their lawns you can quite easily say "You can't water your lawns but look at this footage of MegaAgriCorp flooding this near desert field for days on end(I saw this near Delhi where a maybe 10 acre field that was rock hard was covered in plastic and flooded for a week then planted) just to get an extra few acres of land." and you will have a lot more advocates for change even if most people just go 'Meh'.

> I think it would give leverage to the people trying to enact agriculture changes though.

It probably does, but agriculture changes in California tend to be in the interest of the agriculture industry, and those whose campaigns they fund.

As far as watering restrictions being useful for winning hearts and minds, I think in some cultures that would make a lot of sense (Japan comes to mind), but not in California. Environmentalism and conservationism are about as diametrically opposed in California as it gets: it's one of the prime consumer cultures on the planet, and consumerism is at odds with conservationism, unfortunately.

I stayed in my RV through the areas south(Near Gilroy) and east(Near Turlock/Delhi) of San Jose last summer and we would constantly see people with lawn hoses going to the point of flooding areas. We'd see a sign with "We're in a drought please conserve water" next to an orchard with a watering system that had left the ground covered in a few inches of water. In Delhi the place we stayed would have sprinklers everywhere running all day long often leaving huge puddles of water.

I understand residential usage is generally a small part of overall usage but it just seemed like no one there was even attempting to conserve water at all.

Sometimes, yes, but non-grass yards (landscaped with concrete and succulents, etc.) seem to be far more common here than other parts of the USA.

Ah, good to hear. :)

Follow the money:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/04/the-politics-of-drou...

Agriculture is by far the largest consumer of water.

They also have the cheapest water.

Desalination is a no-brainer for residential use. Less than $0.50/1000 liters to generate, and, on the coast, transport costs are low.

It's only a no-brainer as a last resort. Your number is preposterously low, and desal's environmental costs are pretty high. Where possible, conservation is a better plan.

Here in California, desalination runs about $2000-$3000 per acre-foot, so your number is more like $1.60-$2.40/1000 litres. (For comparison, I pay around $5/HCF for rainwater from my city, which is $1.70/1000 litres.)

And even that price doesn't include externalities. Desalination takes a huge amount of energy, and the salt doesn't just disappear. It gets pumped back into the ocean along with chemicals: http://www.paua.de/Impacts.htm

The Tuaspring desalination plant at S$ $0.45/m^3 in Singapore, 318,500 m^3/day. [1]. At 1233 m^3/acre foot, that's $399/acre foot. Not that useful for the central valley, because it's expensive to transport, but fine for the coastal cities.

The technology has advanced a lot recently, so older plants (or plants that were started a while ago), might be more expensive.

It's even cheaper just to recycle water, so that's another option in the toolkit for the California Cities.

Conservation has it's place, efficiency even more so, but for residential use, with a bit of planning, it's entirely reasonable for an individual to consume 200 liters/day.

[1] http://www.waterworld.com/articles/2013/09/singapore-s-secon...

This is a great idea. Victoria, Australia built one and the drought conditions immediately abated making the entire thing pointless. I'm sure someone here can find a term for describe the sense of 'fate' created by seeing something created to protect against a now non-existent issue.*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Desalination_Plant

*I realise Australia as a whole is likely to lapse into drought again and make having a desal plant good but until then it's amusing.

This too happened here in California. The city of Santa Barbara build a desalination plant, and it opened just in time for the drought to end. It's been unused since 1991, they are now planning to get it up and running again.

Now? What took so long?

Because there was no need. Reservoirs were full and residents conserved: http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system/...

FWIW, this explains why it will take 20 mil to get it back on line: http://www.noozhawk.com/article/santa_barbara_desalination_p... One eye-opener: reverse osmosis membranes break down with disuse so they were sold to Saudi Arabia.

The problem with our desalinisation plant wasn't that it was built, it's that it wasn't made a 'roll-out' system, paying for and bringing online sections of the plant as we needed them. Instead we paid for the whole thing as a job lot.

As for the end of the drought, no-one could predict it. People had been predicting the end of the ten-year drought of since year three or so. Melbourne's water was down to 14% of reserve, which was only worth a couple of years of rationed usage. Unfortunately, the people who campaigned against the desal plant convenient forgot that little tidbit...

This is sort of like joking about all the "wasted effort" that went into fixing the Y2K bug. It's not wasted effort if it averts an existential crisis.

So, the infrastructure equivalent of buffing your car because you know that'll make it rain the next day? :)

If the drought in California is a continuing trend, which many believe will be the case, desalinization may be the only option. Desalinization requires a lot of energy and that demand could be met by solar and potentially, in the near future, fusion energy. http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.htm...

Hopefully! Otherwise the energy needs will be met with fossil fuels that exacerbate climate problems that desalination is trying to be a solution for.

Vice did an excellent mini-doc on the issue. They do a good job of covering the problems, effects, and solutions. It is such a complicated situation!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmUwjk4S3gw

Another thing I expect California to eventually try: geoengineering far out in the Pacific, to create extra winter storms.

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