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These droughts were anticipated, but here in California preparing for climate change means preaching at others, and setting up a carbon exchange. Not a single

These droughts were anticipated, but here in California preparing for climate change means preaching at others, and setting up a carbon exchange. Not a single new reservoir has been built since 1979. It's impossible to take California seriously about much of anything, but especially not regarding the environment: "In 1979, California’s population was a little more than 23 million. Today, it is more than 39 million. Yet in that entire time, California did not construct one additional, large-scale water storage project – meaning water infrastructure that once suited the state’s irrigation, livestock, and human needs has become chronically inadequate to meet its essential tasks." https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-california-drought-with-no-new-reservoirs/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-california-dro... Not only does the state not prepare, but thanks to the record-setting wildfires of the past decade, the amount of carbon and soot pumped into the air has probably offset any gains that had been made. They're really just stupid out here.

jeffbee 5y ago
Our reservoirs are empty. Why would another reservoir help up? The fact is that California's urban water use has been declining since 1976, in absolute terms, not just in per-capita terms. The East Bay Municipal Utility District, for example, now only delivers half the water it delivered in 1976, despite the fact that the population in its service area has increased by 50% over that period. Conservation and efficiency are outpacing population growth. EBMUD now owns double the reservoir capacity it actually needs. People who advocate for new reservoirs in California, especially people who advocate for it in East Coast editorial magazines, are representing the interests of agriculture megabusinesses who want to rip off the tax payers some more. Don't believe them.
- eplanit 5y ago
  "Our reservoirs are empty. Why would another reservoir help up?" A serious question? More water in reserve = more water in reserve. If you fill 4 glasses with water now, and then then EBMUD turns the water off for the rest of the day due to a broken main (I know EBMUD really well), you'll have 4 more glasses of water to drink than you would have, otherwise. Simple math, really.
  - aesh2Xa1 5y ago
    OP's point is that you have two glasses now, which are empty. Another two to make four and you'll have four empty glasses. You need to address the reason why they're empty. You said you know the system well, so do you mind explaining?
    - lovecg 5y ago
      They’re empty now, but presumably they would not have been pre-drought, delaying the point when the current shortage begins.
      - wpietri 5y ago
        You can't presume that. You have to show it. In particular, you have to show the new reservoir would capture water that would last long enough to matter. It has been years since some of the large reservoirs were close to full. Where specifically do you believe new reservoirs should be built? And why do you do believe that they will capture water that keep from evaporating long enough to make a difference during the next drought cycle?
      - Someone 5y ago
        I don’t think it is a given that, this time, there will be a post-drought that fills the current reservoirs. If so, if extra reservoirs were built years ago, they would have been useful exactly once. On top of that, that ‘useful’ could have been very limited. For example, shortening a half year drought by a week would not be worth anything if it just meant crops would die a week later. You have to do some serious modeling on expected rainfall, the costs of reservoirs and water usage to figure out whether additional reservoirs are worth the investment.
    - eplanit 5y ago
      So 100% of reservoir loss is due to evaporation? In the analogy, filling the glasses before EBMUD turns the water off is like filling a reservoir during (even brief) rainy seasons.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > Our reservoirs are empty. Why would another reservoir help up? I’m not an expert, but presumably the reservoirs are empty because too many people were drawing on them (too much load per unit capacity). Increasing the reservoirs spreads the load across greater capacity. But in general California (and much of the rest of the country) needs to stop it’s unsustainable agriculture practices.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    The problem is that California is the breadbasket for a ton of US goods. You're right, we need to stop but it's gonna be painful for a lot of industries.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      What are the major agricultural commodities for which California is the breadbasket, and how many of those commodities could be sustainably grown elsewhere in the US and/or imported from abroad? Besides maybe almonds (which can presumably be easily imported), nothing springs to mind as predominately californian.
      - jeffbee 5y ago
        California totally dominates the fruit market. Georgia might call itself the Peach State but California produces 20 times more peaches. California produces 90% of the nation's grapes and twenty times more wine than the second-place state. It's not necessarily that you couldn't grow these elsewhere, but it is a path-dependent process by which government subsidies have pushed all this production to California and killed the industries elsewhere. Changing this so fruits and vegetables are widely produced in every state would involve an abrupt discontinuity that entrenched California growers are sure to oppose.
        hindsightbias 5y ago
        As long as the other states’ diet can be 100% corn based, they’ll be fine.
- hourislate 5y ago
  Your point could be valid. A quick googling of water demand in CA produces the following. Urban water use is only 10% of total water use in California. Agriculture uses anywhere from 30% (wet year) to 70% (dry year). Just raising cattle in the state uses anywhere from 100-250 million gallons per day.
  - novok 5y ago
    How much does almonds and rice do? And could you grow plants on the cow land?
    - hourislate 5y ago
      Makes you wonder wtf is going on there (Almonds/Rice)? Just as insane as irrigating Alfalfa fields to harvest hay for cattle to eat.
CraneWorm 5y ago
> They're really just stupid out here. I don't think this is a fair statement and rather it seems like you want just to put a label on the whole state to avoid having to research into why didn't California build more reservoirs; frankly, to me it makes you look like a troll.
- akiselev 5y ago
  On the one hand, it's the same reason we stopped building freeways: federal funding dried up - they own almost all the dams because they own almost all the land. On the other hand, as a Californian, I couldn't agree more with the GP.
  - rapethedang 5y ago
    Watch out, agreeing with a human experience will get you banned on this fascist forum
- wpietri 5y ago
  For sure. Motivated reasoning is a huge problem around political issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
vimy 5y ago
Cheap electricity to power desalination plants could be a solution.
ericbarrett 5y ago
I will never take any complaint about residential water use in California seriously while there are flooded rice paddies in Sacramento: https://localwiki.org/davis/Rice_Paddies https://localwiki.org/davis/Rice_Paddies
- jet_32951 5y ago
  Yes. Last time I checked, water used for rice growing amounted to 8% of all water use in California, and all household / urban use was also 8%. It is madness to grow rice in a desert, but that is California water "management".
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Nobody grows rice in a desert. The rice-growing areas of California are naturally inundated. We spent billions of dollars un-flooding Glenn, Butte, and Tehama counties. Rice fields are flooded in the winter when they would have been flooded anyway, then drained in the early spring, then flooded again during peak runoff season in the late spring. They don't "use" water in a way that could be reduced to help anyone else.
  - matmatmatmat 5y ago
    Non-agricultural use makes up about 16%, IIRC, but not sure how "household/urban" use fits in there.
- scrumbledober 5y ago
  wow i haven't seen a davis wiki article in ages! really brings me back. probably about to not get any sleep reading through that site now
avianlyric 5y ago
> Not only does the state not prepare, but thanks to the record-setting wildfires of the past decade, the amount of carbon and soot pumped into the air has probably offset any gains that had been made. They're really just stupid out here. This is a little unreasonable and just smacks of victim blaming. The way you write suggests the California has been deliberately setting their own wildfires, rather than just being a early victim of climate change. With regards to water reservoirs, that does not seem to be a uniquely Californian thing. As an outside observer it seems the entire US is dependent on ageing infrastructure built after WWII, which has seen nothing but neglect since.
- novok 5y ago
  California also reduced or stopped forest management in the 80s, it's a bit deserved.
- throwaway09223 5y ago
  Lifelong Californian here. We're not victims - that would imply some outside actor. In reality it's almost entirely our fault. The water shortages are not caused by climate change. They're entirely caused by our water policy. Specifically: Expanded crops in the central valley (which we should simply not grow) and failure to expand infrastructure to keep pace with development as noted above. Climate change is a factor, but the fires are primarily caused by substantial mismanagement throughout our utilities and government.
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    > Lifelong Californian here. We're not victims - that would imply some outside actor. In reality it's almost entirely our fault. You're responding to a post about wildfires. Your post doesn't make sense in context. p.s. I was born, worked and lived in California for 40 years.
    - throwaway09223 5y ago
      No, I'm responding to a post and comment about the water shortage which mentions wildfires in passing. You've been here almost as long as I have!
epistasis 5y ago
This isn't a very complete picture of what's going on with water in California. Even as population has almost doubled, and as agricultural output increases, we have decreased our water usage: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ There's a lot to be said for simply not wasting lots of water. If California stopped growing alfalfa, a low value product that is the largest agricultural use of water, we could probably house 20-30M more people with that water. California could have built more reservoirs, but how many more? And how many more natural beauties would we have sacrificed instead of simply using less of a resource? The stupidest thing California does is treat water rights as economic land for farmers that simply waste obscene amounts of a valuable resource. We need to tax that economic land at the full land rents, to encourage more economically efficient uses.
- eplanit 5y ago
  It sounds like there really isn't anything to be concerned about then. "If California stopped growing alfalfa...we could probably house 20-30M more people". I'm very happy to stop growing crops in the desert, and agree there's absurd waste there (just because something can be done does not mean it should be done). But 10s of millions more people...is that really a goal, or even a good thing?
  - epistasis 5y ago
    People have to live somewhere, and if they live in California they are going to be living a lower carbon life than if they live in Texas, Boise, Phoenix or Atlanta. Those are the places that California has been exporting anybody who doesn't make lots of money. So yes, as a California resident,, I think 20-30M more in California is a fantastic idea compared to the alternatives.
    - matmatmatmat 5y ago
      Just a small point about Texas: Although it still pumps huge amounts of oil and gas, it also has more wind power resources that it could deploy. Texas could have a lower carbon future if it so chose.
BurningFrog 5y ago
> Not a single new reservoir has been built since 1979 Just one example of the bigger trend/policy: California is extremely averse to build anything. FIguring out why that is is the interesting part.
- tedjdziuba 5y ago
  With water sequestration specifically, we've already built all the cheap dams. It's significantly diminishing returns at this point.
DantesKite 5y ago
I’m all for building new reservoirs but you’re incredibly wrong. It’s weird hearing this because I live 500 feet away from a new reservoir built in the 2000s. Literally. I take walks out there, stare at the man-made lake, walk pass by the museum where all the archaeological discoveries were made. I don’t know what kind of subpar journalism goes on at the National Review but they couldn’t be more wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Valley_Lake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Valley_Lake
- epistasis 5y ago
  The National Review is more focused on developing political ideas than it is on journalism, kind of like Jacobin is on the left. In particular, coming up with new ways to hate California seems to be a popular pastime on the right, since California turned towards the left after the 90s.
- ternaryJimbo 5y ago
  Hi fellow hemet HNer!
  - DantesKite 5y ago
    Small world. Hope you enjoy the town!
- sampo 5y ago
  > a new reservoir built in the 2000s Wikipedia says, planning started in 1987 and construction was from 1995 to 1999.
shadowgovt 5y ago
Would more reservoirs help? Excess retention is useless if the water isn't coming in.
- frumper 5y ago
  We had flood warnings a few years ago in the central valley. California has always been boom or bust for water.
rrss 5y ago
> Not a single new reservoir has been built since 1979 This is not an accurate simplification of "did not construct one additional, large-scale water storage project." The have been a number of new reservoirs constructed since 1979. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Valley_Lake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Valley_Lake There are also sort of a lot that have been proposed, but have not been funded, due in part to the 1986 federal law that banned federal funding for water projects unless most of the funding came from other sources. The emphasis on population growth IMO suggests that the water consumption has just increased linearly with it, which is not true: > Total urban water use has been falling even as the population grows. Also urban water use is a fairly minor part, and it looks like agricultural water use is actually also down in the last few decades too: > Farm production generated 38% more gross state product in 2015 than in 1980, even though farm water use was about 14% lower https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/06_June/June2019_Item_12_Attach_2_PPICFactSheets.pdf?la=en&hash=E233EA870DFB826F235B258177849300179E1B64 https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/... These sorts of claims that suggest California needs to increase its water supply by 50% should be argued using water usage data, not using population numbers. p.s. if all the reservoirs proposed were magically built this year, I think the total new water supply would be insignificant compared to the existing huge reservoirs in prime locations.
john_moscow 5y ago
>They're really just stupid out here. Oh, they are not stupid. I can bet the ruling class in California has their own generators and does not have to drain their swimming pools due to water shortage. In fact, they are very successful at manipulating the general public at turning a blind eye at them and even not wanting all these things. Why build infrastructure for the plebs if you can pick a few activist groups, give them the power to bully the fellow plebs over zero-cost topics, and keep the society busy? This is very smart. USSR has failed at it, so did many other dictatorships. The U.S. situation appears pretty stable. People seem to genuinely believe that shaming your neighbor for having kids and demanding that schools drop math exams will solve all the problems. Ironically, U.S. used to do use the divide-and-conquer approach overseas some decades ago. They would support multiple competing guerilla groups to keep them in a permanent state of fight, and prevent the territory from becoming strong enough to be a threat. Now the same tactic is aimed at your own middle class and nobody seems to care...
- skybrian 5y ago
  Rich people aren’t a monolith and some of them live in rural communities with severe water shortages. There are stories about people having water trucked in, which has to be very expensive. But the politics is basically that people don’t want to pay for expensive new infrastructure and see their utility rates go up. This isn’t just water - you see the same thing for replacing outdated sewer treatment plants. I don’t think it’s the rich who are worried about their utility bills?
  - john_moscow 5y ago
    The bills go up anyway, in order to maintain the permanently growing army of bureaucrats. The only realistic way to solve it is to bring back competition. If you have multiple competing small operators, and one of them offers better infrastructure at a reasonable extra cost, people will switch. If you let them all get merged and managed centrally, of course all you get is a carefully written apology letter blaming climate change.
    - skybrian 5y ago
ip26 5y ago
Are there any suitable valleys left that haven’t already been dammed, aside from Yosemite?
lazide 5y ago
Totally agree on the giant circle jerk that is California conservation politics (which IMO are all show and hot air, no realistic action - except when it comes to stopping any sort of actual necessary stewardship work like fuel reduction or development of higher density). That said, the reason new dams haven’t been built is simple - all the areas worth damming already have been. There are only so many areas with enough dammable area and enough precipitation to make it even a little worthwhile, and those were all obvious by the 40’s and dammed up by the 70’s-80’s at the latest. It isn’t even about how close something is - hetch-hetchy slaked the thirst of most of the Bay Area, and that is a solid 5+ hr drive away.
NonContro 5y ago
California's population would be shrinking (due to inter-state emigration), if not for international immigration: https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/californias-stalled-population-growth-figure-3.png https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/californias-stalled-... Securing the southern border and deporting all irregular migrants should also be a priority from an environmental standpoint.
- lovich 5y ago
  How is bringing up immigration policy in a conversation about climate change(which does not respect national borders) anything but a non sequitur?
gameswithgo 5y ago
Wildfires don't really play into climate change much, carbon gets released, the plants grow back. In the same way, planting trees doesn't help climate change much, its just a temporary buffer. Also it is easy to say "build water projects", but to actually do it is not so simple. Build what exactly, where, and what other consequences will result? The world is crowded enough that people's usual "simple" solutions almost always cause other problems, or are vastly too small in scale to help anything at all (plant trees! don't use paper straws!)

jeffbee 5y ago

Our reservoirs are empty. Why would another reservoir help up? The fact is that California's urban water use has been declining since 1976, in absolute terms, not just in per-capita terms. The East Bay Municipal Utility District, for example, now only delivers half the water it delivered in 1976, despite the fact that the population in its service area has increased by 50% over that period. Conservation and efficiency are outpacing population growth. EBMUD now owns double the reservoir capacity it actually needs. People who advocate for new reservoirs in California, especially people who advocate for it in East Coast editorial magazines, are representing the interests of agriculture megabusinesses who want to rip off the tax payers some more. Don't believe them.

eplanit 5y ago
"Our reservoirs are empty. Why would another reservoir help up?" A serious question? More water in reserve = more water in reserve. If you fill 4 glasses with water now, and then then EBMUD turns the water off for the rest of the day due to a broken main (I know EBMUD really well), you'll have 4 more glasses of water to drink than you would have, otherwise. Simple math, really.
- aesh2Xa1 5y ago
  OP's point is that you have two glasses now, which are empty. Another two to make four and you'll have four empty glasses. You need to address the reason why they're empty. You said you know the system well, so do you mind explaining?
  - lovecg 5y ago
    They’re empty now, but presumably they would not have been pre-drought, delaying the point when the current shortage begins.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      You can't presume that. You have to show it. In particular, you have to show the new reservoir would capture water that would last long enough to matter. It has been years since some of the large reservoirs were close to full. Where specifically do you believe new reservoirs should be built? And why do you do believe that they will capture water that keep from evaporating long enough to make a difference during the next drought cycle?
    - Someone 5y ago
      I don’t think it is a given that, this time, there will be a post-drought that fills the current reservoirs. If so, if extra reservoirs were built years ago, they would have been useful exactly once. On top of that, that ‘useful’ could have been very limited. For example, shortening a half year drought by a week would not be worth anything if it just meant crops would die a week later. You have to do some serious modeling on expected rainfall, the costs of reservoirs and water usage to figure out whether additional reservoirs are worth the investment.
  - eplanit 5y ago
    So 100% of reservoir loss is due to evaporation? In the analogy, filling the glasses before EBMUD turns the water off is like filling a reservoir during (even brief) rainy seasons.
throwaway894345 5y ago
> Our reservoirs are empty. Why would another reservoir help up? I’m not an expert, but presumably the reservoirs are empty because too many people were drawing on them (too much load per unit capacity). Increasing the reservoirs spreads the load across greater capacity. But in general California (and much of the rest of the country) needs to stop it’s unsustainable agriculture practices.
- xeromal 5y ago
  The problem is that California is the breadbasket for a ton of US goods. You're right, we need to stop but it's gonna be painful for a lot of industries.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    What are the major agricultural commodities for which California is the breadbasket, and how many of those commodities could be sustainably grown elsewhere in the US and/or imported from abroad? Besides maybe almonds (which can presumably be easily imported), nothing springs to mind as predominately californian.
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      California totally dominates the fruit market. Georgia might call itself the Peach State but California produces 20 times more peaches. California produces 90% of the nation's grapes and twenty times more wine than the second-place state. It's not necessarily that you couldn't grow these elsewhere, but it is a path-dependent process by which government subsidies have pushed all this production to California and killed the industries elsewhere. Changing this so fruits and vegetables are widely produced in every state would involve an abrupt discontinuity that entrenched California growers are sure to oppose.
      - hindsightbias 5y ago
        As long as the other states’ diet can be 100% corn based, they’ll be fine.
hourislate 5y ago
Your point could be valid. A quick googling of water demand in CA produces the following. Urban water use is only 10% of total water use in California. Agriculture uses anywhere from 30% (wet year) to 70% (dry year). Just raising cattle in the state uses anywhere from 100-250 million gallons per day.
- novok 5y ago
  How much does almonds and rice do? And could you grow plants on the cow land?
  - hourislate 5y ago
    Makes you wonder wtf is going on there (Almonds/Rice)? Just as insane as irrigating Alfalfa fields to harvest hay for cattle to eat.

CraneWorm 5y ago

> They're really just stupid out here. I don't think this is a fair statement and rather it seems like you want just to put a label on the whole state to avoid having to research into why didn't California build more reservoirs; frankly, to me it makes you look like a troll.

akiselev 5y ago
On the one hand, it's the same reason we stopped building freeways: federal funding dried up - they own almost all the dams because they own almost all the land. On the other hand, as a Californian, I couldn't agree more with the GP.
- rapethedang 5y ago
  Watch out, agreeing with a human experience will get you banned on this fascist forum
wpietri 5y ago
For sure. Motivated reasoning is a huge problem around political issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

vimy 5y ago

Cheap electricity to power desalination plants could be a solution.

ericbarrett 5y ago

I will never take any complaint about residential water use in California seriously while there are flooded rice paddies in Sacramento: https://localwiki.org/davis/Rice_Paddies https://localwiki.org/davis/Rice_Paddies

jet_32951 5y ago
Yes. Last time I checked, water used for rice growing amounted to 8% of all water use in California, and all household / urban use was also 8%. It is madness to grow rice in a desert, but that is California water "management".
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Nobody grows rice in a desert. The rice-growing areas of California are naturally inundated. We spent billions of dollars un-flooding Glenn, Butte, and Tehama counties. Rice fields are flooded in the winter when they would have been flooded anyway, then drained in the early spring, then flooded again during peak runoff season in the late spring. They don't "use" water in a way that could be reduced to help anyone else.
- matmatmatmat 5y ago
  Non-agricultural use makes up about 16%, IIRC, but not sure how "household/urban" use fits in there.
scrumbledober 5y ago
wow i haven't seen a davis wiki article in ages! really brings me back. probably about to not get any sleep reading through that site now

avianlyric 5y ago

> Not only does the state not prepare, but thanks to the record-setting wildfires of the past decade, the amount of carbon and soot pumped into the air has probably offset any gains that had been made. They're really just stupid out here. This is a little unreasonable and just smacks of victim blaming. The way you write suggests the California has been deliberately setting their own wildfires, rather than just being a early victim of climate change. With regards to water reservoirs, that does not seem to be a uniquely Californian thing. As an outside observer it seems the entire US is dependent on ageing infrastructure built after WWII, which has seen nothing but neglect since.

novok 5y ago
California also reduced or stopped forest management in the 80s, it's a bit deserved.
throwaway09223 5y ago
Lifelong Californian here. We're not victims - that would imply some outside actor. In reality it's almost entirely our fault. The water shortages are not caused by climate change. They're entirely caused by our water policy. Specifically: Expanded crops in the central valley (which we should simply not grow) and failure to expand infrastructure to keep pace with development as noted above. Climate change is a factor, but the fires are primarily caused by substantial mismanagement throughout our utilities and government.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  > Lifelong Californian here. We're not victims - that would imply some outside actor. In reality it's almost entirely our fault. You're responding to a post about wildfires. Your post doesn't make sense in context. p.s. I was born, worked and lived in California for 40 years.
  - throwaway09223 5y ago
    No, I'm responding to a post and comment about the water shortage which mentions wildfires in passing. You've been here almost as long as I have!

epistasis 5y ago

This isn't a very complete picture of what's going on with water in California. Even as population has almost doubled, and as agricultural output increases, we have decreased our water usage: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ There's a lot to be said for simply not wasting lots of water. If California stopped growing alfalfa, a low value product that is the largest agricultural use of water, we could probably house 20-30M more people with that water. California could have built more reservoirs, but how many more? And how many more natural beauties would we have sacrificed instead of simply using less of a resource? The stupidest thing California does is treat water rights as economic land for farmers that simply waste obscene amounts of a valuable resource. We need to tax that economic land at the full land rents, to encourage more economically efficient uses.

eplanit 5y ago
It sounds like there really isn't anything to be concerned about then. "If California stopped growing alfalfa...we could probably house 20-30M more people". I'm very happy to stop growing crops in the desert, and agree there's absurd waste there (just because something can be done does not mean it should be done). But 10s of millions more people...is that really a goal, or even a good thing?
- epistasis 5y ago
  People have to live somewhere, and if they live in California they are going to be living a lower carbon life than if they live in Texas, Boise, Phoenix or Atlanta. Those are the places that California has been exporting anybody who doesn't make lots of money. So yes, as a California resident,, I think 20-30M more in California is a fantastic idea compared to the alternatives.
  - matmatmatmat 5y ago
    Just a small point about Texas: Although it still pumps huge amounts of oil and gas, it also has more wind power resources that it could deploy. Texas could have a lower carbon future if it so chose.

BurningFrog 5y ago

> Not a single new reservoir has been built since 1979 Just one example of the bigger trend/policy: California is extremely averse to build anything. FIguring out why that is is the interesting part.

tedjdziuba 5y ago
With water sequestration specifically, we've already built all the cheap dams. It's significantly diminishing returns at this point.

DantesKite 5y ago

I’m all for building new reservoirs but you’re incredibly wrong. It’s weird hearing this because I live 500 feet away from a new reservoir built in the 2000s. Literally. I take walks out there, stare at the man-made lake, walk pass by the museum where all the archaeological discoveries were made. I don’t know what kind of subpar journalism goes on at the National Review but they couldn’t be more wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Valley_Lake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Valley_Lake

epistasis 5y ago
The National Review is more focused on developing political ideas than it is on journalism, kind of like Jacobin is on the left. In particular, coming up with new ways to hate California seems to be a popular pastime on the right, since California turned towards the left after the 90s.
ternaryJimbo 5y ago
Hi fellow hemet HNer!
- DantesKite 5y ago
  Small world. Hope you enjoy the town!
sampo 5y ago
> a new reservoir built in the 2000s Wikipedia says, planning started in 1987 and construction was from 1995 to 1999.

shadowgovt 5y ago

Would more reservoirs help? Excess retention is useless if the water isn't coming in.

frumper 5y ago
We had flood warnings a few years ago in the central valley. California has always been boom or bust for water.

rrss 5y ago

> Not a single new reservoir has been built since 1979 This is not an accurate simplification of "did not construct one additional, large-scale water storage project." The have been a number of new reservoirs constructed since 1979. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Valley_Lake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Valley_Lake There are also sort of a lot that have been proposed, but have not been funded, due in part to the 1986 federal law that banned federal funding for water projects unless most of the funding came from other sources. The emphasis on population growth IMO suggests that the water consumption has just increased linearly with it, which is not true: > Total urban water use has been falling even as the population grows. Also urban water use is a fairly minor part, and it looks like agricultural water use is actually also down in the last few decades too: > Farm production generated 38% more gross state product in 2015 than in 1980, even though farm water use was about 14% lower https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/06_June/June2019_Item_12_Attach_2_PPICFactSheets.pdf?la=en&hash=E233EA870DFB826F235B258177849300179E1B64 https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/... These sorts of claims that suggest California needs to increase its water supply by 50% should be argued using water usage data, not using population numbers. p.s. if all the reservoirs proposed were magically built this year, I think the total new water supply would be insignificant compared to the existing huge reservoirs in prime locations.

john_moscow 5y ago

>They're really just stupid out here. Oh, they are not stupid. I can bet the ruling class in California has their own generators and does not have to drain their swimming pools due to water shortage. In fact, they are very successful at manipulating the general public at turning a blind eye at them and even not wanting all these things. Why build infrastructure for the plebs if you can pick a few activist groups, give them the power to bully the fellow plebs over zero-cost topics, and keep the society busy? This is very smart. USSR has failed at it, so did many other dictatorships. The U.S. situation appears pretty stable. People seem to genuinely believe that shaming your neighbor for having kids and demanding that schools drop math exams will solve all the problems. Ironically, U.S. used to do use the divide-and-conquer approach overseas some decades ago. They would support multiple competing guerilla groups to keep them in a permanent state of fight, and prevent the territory from becoming strong enough to be a threat. Now the same tactic is aimed at your own middle class and nobody seems to care...

skybrian 5y ago
Rich people aren’t a monolith and some of them live in rural communities with severe water shortages. There are stories about people having water trucked in, which has to be very expensive. But the politics is basically that people don’t want to pay for expensive new infrastructure and see their utility rates go up. This isn’t just water - you see the same thing for replacing outdated sewer treatment plants. I don’t think it’s the rich who are worried about their utility bills?
- john_moscow 5y ago
  The bills go up anyway, in order to maintain the permanently growing army of bureaucrats. The only realistic way to solve it is to bring back competition. If you have multiple competing small operators, and one of them offers better infrastructure at a reasonable extra cost, people will switch. If you let them all get merged and managed centrally, of course all you get is a carefully written apology letter blaming climate change.
  - skybrian 5y ago

ip26 5y ago

Are there any suitable valleys left that haven’t already been dammed, aside from Yosemite?

lazide 5y ago

Totally agree on the giant circle jerk that is California conservation politics (which IMO are all show and hot air, no realistic action - except when it comes to stopping any sort of actual necessary stewardship work like fuel reduction or development of higher density). That said, the reason new dams haven’t been built is simple - all the areas worth damming already have been. There are only so many areas with enough dammable area and enough precipitation to make it even a little worthwhile, and those were all obvious by the 40’s and dammed up by the 70’s-80’s at the latest. It isn’t even about how close something is - hetch-hetchy slaked the thirst of most of the Bay Area, and that is a solid 5+ hr drive away.

NonContro 5y ago

California's population would be shrinking (due to inter-state emigration), if not for international immigration: https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/californias-stalled-population-growth-figure-3.png https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/californias-stalled-... Securing the southern border and deporting all irregular migrants should also be a priority from an environmental standpoint.

lovich 5y ago
How is bringing up immigration policy in a conversation about climate change(which does not respect national borders) anything but a non sequitur?

gameswithgo 5y ago

Wildfires don't really play into climate change much, carbon gets released, the plants grow back. In the same way, planting trees doesn't help climate change much, its just a temporary buffer. Also it is easy to say "build water projects", but to actually do it is not so simple. Build what exactly, where, and what other consequences will result? The world is crowded enough that people's usual "simple" solutions almost always cause other problems, or are vastly too small in scale to help anything at all (plant trees! don't use paper straws!)