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Building more reservoirs doesn't mean there's more water in reserve, it just means there's more space to store water.

akiselev 5y ago
The water cycle covers the entire state so as long as you don't set up in a desert or a hundred miles from the nearest waterway, chances are the reservoir can be filled up on a regular basis. We're storing a teeny tiny fraction of all the water that goes through the system.
- pixl97 5y ago
  2 things. One is you want to keep the rivers flowing in the first place. If you impound too much water, you don't have rivers, you have dry creeks and all the wildlife in them dies. The big one is water rights. The water is not the states to impound in the first place in many cases. If I have particular water rights, and you block them, I can sue you out of existence under existing laws, laws that are going to be very hard to break with our current legal system.
  - akiselev 5y ago
    > One is you want to keep the rivers flowing in the first place. If you impound too much water, you don't have rivers, you have dry creeks and all the wildlife in them dies. That's only if we build massive dammed reservoirs that try to serve dense populations from a single source like Hetch Hetchy supplying the Bay Area. A system of smaller reservoirs dotted across the state would serve the same function without the concentrated ecological impact. San Francisco has three terminal reservoirs within its city limits, for example. > The big one is water rights. The water is not the states to impound in the first place in many cases. If I have particular water rights, and you block them, I can sue you out of existence under existing laws, laws that are going to be very hard to break with our current legal system. That's why utilizing the whole water cycle is important, rather than concentrated sources like rivers and streams. A farmer can prove you're taking his inch of water by comparing upstream of the installation but it's much harder to do that if snowmelt is being collected in hundreds of smaller reservoirs along the mountains. (IANAL, so grain of salt and all that)
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      There are already 1500 reservoirs in California. It's a myth that there are un-impounded streams waiting to be captured. There really are not. Just look at the area around Placerville. There is Sugar Pine, Loon, Big, French Meadows, Ice House, Hell Hole, Stumpy Meadows, Union Valley, Sly Park, and, of course, Folsom Lake. That's all in a diameter of only 30 miles.
    - rtkwe 5y ago
      Generally that snowmelt either goes into existing streams or penetrates into groundwater though. It's not workable to just capture every drop of snow even if we could from and engineering and water rights standpoint, that water is already feeding environments that would dry out and pose more fire risk without that water.

The water cycle covers the entire state so as long as you don't set up in a desert or a hundred miles from the nearest waterway, chances are the reservoir can be filled up on a regular basis. We're storing a teeny tiny fraction of all the water that goes through the system.

pixl97 5y ago
2 things. One is you want to keep the rivers flowing in the first place. If you impound too much water, you don't have rivers, you have dry creeks and all the wildlife in them dies. The big one is water rights. The water is not the states to impound in the first place in many cases. If I have particular water rights, and you block them, I can sue you out of existence under existing laws, laws that are going to be very hard to break with our current legal system.
- akiselev 5y ago
  > One is you want to keep the rivers flowing in the first place. If you impound too much water, you don't have rivers, you have dry creeks and all the wildlife in them dies. That's only if we build massive dammed reservoirs that try to serve dense populations from a single source like Hetch Hetchy supplying the Bay Area. A system of smaller reservoirs dotted across the state would serve the same function without the concentrated ecological impact. San Francisco has three terminal reservoirs within its city limits, for example. > The big one is water rights. The water is not the states to impound in the first place in many cases. If I have particular water rights, and you block them, I can sue you out of existence under existing laws, laws that are going to be very hard to break with our current legal system. That's why utilizing the whole water cycle is important, rather than concentrated sources like rivers and streams. A farmer can prove you're taking his inch of water by comparing upstream of the installation but it's much harder to do that if snowmelt is being collected in hundreds of smaller reservoirs along the mountains. (IANAL, so grain of salt and all that)
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    There are already 1500 reservoirs in California. It's a myth that there are un-impounded streams waiting to be captured. There really are not. Just look at the area around Placerville. There is Sugar Pine, Loon, Big, French Meadows, Ice House, Hell Hole, Stumpy Meadows, Union Valley, Sly Park, and, of course, Folsom Lake. That's all in a diameter of only 30 miles.
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    Generally that snowmelt either goes into existing streams or penetrates into groundwater though. It's not workable to just capture every drop of snow even if we could from and engineering and water rights standpoint, that water is already feeding environments that would dry out and pose more fire risk without that water.