4 ms·

California’s water supplies in trouble as climate change worsens dry spells

robomartin 5y ago
Good article. Don't know about some of the assumptions being made. For example: > Statewide, California averages about 2 feet of precipitation per year And then... > California is about 100 million acres in area, so at 2 feet per year, its annual precipitation averages about 200 million acre-feet. You can't apply the average to the entire population like this. This isn't how statistics work. I don't think California has a drought problem any more than the Sahara desert has a drought problem. What I mean by this is that this is the climate here. This is how it behaves. Another way to put it is: If you are in drought conditions for an extended period of time, well, that's far more likely to be the new normal rather than an aberration, hence the comparison to the Sahara. From my perspective the problem has multiple variables. The elephant in the room is agriculture. The author correctly points out utilization but fails to identify it as a problem: > About 80% of that goes for agriculture and 20% for urban uses. Going back to the Sahara, imagine insisting on using 80% of some water supply to grow crops in the desert. Crazy, right? Well? One of the other issues I see is what I call the "ridiculous cult of the green lawn". Seriously. I can't even imagine how good drinking water is absolutely wasted every day on grass in front of homes. In my neighborhood the storm drain has a nearly constant stream of water going into it. All of that water comes from homes watering their front lawns up the hill. To me this is the very definition of insanity. We have restrictions on flow rate for such things as showerheads (which I think is ridiculous) while people can dump tens of gallons of good clean water on their lawns (this is why I think showerhead flow restrictions are stupid). Furthermore, I'll bet water utilization could be cut in half --if not more-- if we adopted a sensible water recycling program at the homes. Water from showers and sinks ought to be collected for irrigation. There's nothing wrong with this water, and yet we throw it away, every day. This would require a change in building codes and suitable technology (not rocket science!) as well, as perhaps, subsidies. If homeowners got a 30% tax credit --as they did for solar-- as well as a reduction in the cost of water when installing a suitable recycling system we could see adoption. Not the easiest to implement due to having to mess with pluming within the home, yet not absolutely impossible. Create an economic incentive and entrepreneurs will figure out how to do it. In short: - Should we really be farming in the desert? - Should we really be wasting potable water on grass in front of every home? - Could we implement a sensible recycled water program for irrigation? I don't know the answers to these questions. I have my opinions, but that's worth as much as the paper this is not written on.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  I don't have links handy but I have seen some documentaries and interviews that showed California has less of a drought problem and more of a water storage problem. Most of the water ends up in the ocean. Water storage is expensive and getting approval to build it is often met with legal battles that drag out for decades. My own take on it is that the system is paralyzed by conflicting interests leading to the existing exacerbated problems, making what would be a mild drought into a major issue. To answer your question, should we really be farming in the desert, I think that depends on when/if the problem of water storage is solved. Assuming that gets solved, I would expect things like water reclamation and making sea water usable for crops to follow. Without storage all of those systems would have to be over-engineered to keep up with demands, I think.
  - robomartin 5y ago
    > Most of the water ends up in the ocean. I think you are right.
- bsder 5y ago
  > Water from showers and sinks ought to be collected for irrigation. There's nothing wrong with this water, and yet we throw it away, every day. Unfortunately, this may not be as true as you think. A lot of assumptions about what was "safe" got upended with data when everything shut down. A lot of what we do is a lot more "unsafe" for us than we credit. > Should we really be farming in the desert? Don't call it "farming". Call it "agribusiness" because that's what it is and what drives the incentives. The real problem is that the agribusinesses aren't paying for the water at a rate that reflects what it is worth to not run out. Consequently, the incentive is "pump now and leave someone else holding the empty bucket". The reality is that agribusiness will eventually shut down in the Central Valley. However, there is a lot of money to be made maintaining the status quo in the meantime, and no money to be made protecting the aquifers.
  - robomartin 5y ago
    > A lot of assumptions about what was "safe" got upended with data when everything shut down. A lot of what we do is a lot more "unsafe" for us than we credit. Can you provide some context here? While I don't necessarily dispute what you are saying, it is a very broad and general statement. One should not spray plants or a lawn with soapy water (concentration being a factor, of course). For this approach to work without stripping off the wax coating most plants and grass have, you want to deliver the water to the roots rather than spray from the top. If you did that, the amount of soap in a typical shower, hand washing or dish washing cycle isn't going to be an issue. I can also imagine a simple filtration system that might treat the recycled water before irrigation. According to the EPA [0], in the US, about 9 billion gallons of water per day are used for landscape irrigation. That is an astounding amount of water. I found numbers in the range of 100 gallons per day for watering lawns during the summer. Even if we could replace half of that water with recycled water, the gains would be massive. Which brings me to the reality that one could filter soapy water and then, if necessary, dilute it with some clean water in order to maintain a plant-healthy soap concentration. The point is that this might be a worthy idea to consider. The details would have to be worked out. I don't think it is impossible. [0] https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/o...

Good article. Don't know about some of the assumptions being made. For example: > Statewide, California averages about 2 feet of precipitation per year And then... > California is about 100 million acres in area, so at 2 feet per year, its annual precipitation averages about 200 million acre-feet. You can't apply the average to the entire population like this. This isn't how statistics work. I don't think California has a drought problem any more than the Sahara desert has a drought problem. What I mean by this is that this is the climate here. This is how it behaves. Another way to put it is: If you are in drought conditions for an extended period of time, well, that's far more likely to be the new normal rather than an aberration, hence the comparison to the Sahara. From my perspective the problem has multiple variables. The elephant in the room is agriculture. The author correctly points out utilization but fails to identify it as a problem: > About 80% of that goes for agriculture and 20% for urban uses. Going back to the Sahara, imagine insisting on using 80% of some water supply to grow crops in the desert. Crazy, right? Well? One of the other issues I see is what I call the "ridiculous cult of the green lawn". Seriously. I can't even imagine how good drinking water is absolutely wasted every day on grass in front of homes. In my neighborhood the storm drain has a nearly constant stream of water going into it. All of that water comes from homes watering their front lawns up the hill. To me this is the very definition of insanity. We have restrictions on flow rate for such things as showerheads (which I think is ridiculous) while people can dump tens of gallons of good clean water on their lawns (this is why I think showerhead flow restrictions are stupid). Furthermore, I'll bet water utilization could be cut in half --if not more-- if we adopted a sensible water recycling program at the homes. Water from showers and sinks ought to be collected for irrigation. There's nothing wrong with this water, and yet we throw it away, every day. This would require a change in building codes and suitable technology (not rocket science!) as well, as perhaps, subsidies. If homeowners got a 30% tax credit --as they did for solar-- as well as a reduction in the cost of water when installing a suitable recycling system we could see adoption. Not the easiest to implement due to having to mess with pluming within the home, yet not absolutely impossible. Create an economic incentive and entrepreneurs will figure out how to do it. In short: - Should we really be farming in the desert? - Should we really be wasting potable water on grass in front of every home? - Could we implement a sensible recycled water program for irrigation? I don't know the answers to these questions. I have my opinions, but that's worth as much as the paper this is not written on.

LinuxBender 5y ago
I don't have links handy but I have seen some documentaries and interviews that showed California has less of a drought problem and more of a water storage problem. Most of the water ends up in the ocean. Water storage is expensive and getting approval to build it is often met with legal battles that drag out for decades. My own take on it is that the system is paralyzed by conflicting interests leading to the existing exacerbated problems, making what would be a mild drought into a major issue. To answer your question, should we really be farming in the desert, I think that depends on when/if the problem of water storage is solved. Assuming that gets solved, I would expect things like water reclamation and making sea water usable for crops to follow. Without storage all of those systems would have to be over-engineered to keep up with demands, I think.
- robomartin 5y ago
  > Most of the water ends up in the ocean. I think you are right.
bsder 5y ago
> Water from showers and sinks ought to be collected for irrigation. There's nothing wrong with this water, and yet we throw it away, every day. Unfortunately, this may not be as true as you think. A lot of assumptions about what was "safe" got upended with data when everything shut down. A lot of what we do is a lot more "unsafe" for us than we credit. > Should we really be farming in the desert? Don't call it "farming". Call it "agribusiness" because that's what it is and what drives the incentives. The real problem is that the agribusinesses aren't paying for the water at a rate that reflects what it is worth to not run out. Consequently, the incentive is "pump now and leave someone else holding the empty bucket". The reality is that agribusiness will eventually shut down in the Central Valley. However, there is a lot of money to be made maintaining the status quo in the meantime, and no money to be made protecting the aquifers.
- robomartin 5y ago
  > A lot of assumptions about what was "safe" got upended with data when everything shut down. A lot of what we do is a lot more "unsafe" for us than we credit. Can you provide some context here? While I don't necessarily dispute what you are saying, it is a very broad and general statement. One should not spray plants or a lawn with soapy water (concentration being a factor, of course). For this approach to work without stripping off the wax coating most plants and grass have, you want to deliver the water to the roots rather than spray from the top. If you did that, the amount of soap in a typical shower, hand washing or dish washing cycle isn't going to be an issue. I can also imagine a simple filtration system that might treat the recycled water before irrigation. According to the EPA [0], in the US, about 9 billion gallons of water per day are used for landscape irrigation. That is an astounding amount of water. I found numbers in the range of 100 gallons per day for watering lawns during the summer. Even if we could replace half of that water with recycled water, the gains would be massive. Which brings me to the reality that one could filter soapy water and then, if necessary, dilute it with some clean water in order to maintain a plant-healthy soap concentration. The point is that this might be a worthy idea to consider. The details would have to be worked out. I don't think it is impossible. [0] https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/o...