7 ms·

Rainy years can’t make up for California’s groundwater use

73 points by LinuxBender 5y ago

R0b0t1 5y ago
It was posted on an older thread, but there's a quote by a surveyor and geologist in the 1800s as they were defining water rights. He mentioned there is no way to sustain an agricultural population in these areas despite the aquifers.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  Old timey academics often had no idea what they were talking about. I don't know the full quote, but that's obviously untrue because indigenous peoples already lived here.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    They weren't intensively farming the area. What he (and I) meant was "sustain an agricultural population." They were divvying up water rights but it was recognizable very early on that even modest farming could deplete the aquifer faster than it regenerates. I've edited it for clarity, but this is one of those times to refer to the site guidelines. You're supposed to look for the most charitable interpretation of a comment's phrasing -- what are the odds I somehow didn't know Indians exist?
    - AlotOfReading 5y ago
      I presumed you knew about native Americans, but that doesn't mean the geologist considered them. Anyway, it's still relevant since many populations in the Sonoran and Mojave had highly intensive traditional agriculture. I assume those are the areas that were being discussed? The lack of what we'd traditionally call intensive agriculture in places like central valley is mainly just a historical semantic distinction. They cultivated and intensively shaped their local environments to maximize food production, but they weren't herding or clearing fields so it doesn't count.
      - redis_mlc 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- kickout 5y ago
  So the US abandons agriculture production and Brazil slurps it up by chopping down Amazon rainforests? Global effects, not so simple.
mwattsun 5y ago
I've been hearing about water issues my entire life living in California but I don't worry about it because one of these days people will come to their senses and realize clean water is a precious resource that is priced too cheaply. Once we pay for it what it's worth, it will no longer be economical to grow water intensive crops [1] and it will become economical desalinate Pacific Ocean water like San Diego [2] powered by the falling price of renewable energy [3] (one day with plentiful fusion energy maybe) or pumping water from Oregon to California through an undersea pipeline [4] and more far out plans like pumping water from Alaska using 6 nuclear powered pumping stations and atomic bombs to dig trenches will be unnecessary [6] [7] [1] https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-are-the-california-crops-that-use-the-most-water/ https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-... [2] https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawater-desalination/ https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawat... [3] https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour-of-electricity-by-source/ https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_interstate_water_pipelines_to_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_interstate_water_pipe... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power... [7] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nijhuis/pipe-dreams-the-forgotten-project-that-could-have-saved-amer https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nijhuis/pipe-dreams-the... edit: For example, people are fine with paying $2 for a bottle of clean water but farmers get mad if you suggest paying more than $70 an acre foot for similar quality water. An acre foot is 325,851 gallons of good clean water suitable for growing the high quality crops California is known for
- kevin_b_er 5y ago
  The farmers can use pretty much as much as they want from the aquifers and they pay that $70 for 325 thousand gallons of water. That's how individual water conservation pales in comparison to a farmer paying for $20 more in water. Or a new chip fab plant that uses millions of gallons of water per day.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    For what it’s worth, chip fabs mostly recycle water. Intel is also funding water restoration projects to achieve net positive water use. See https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-water-dependent-chip-plants-in-arizona.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-... > Glenn O’Donnell, vice president and research director at analyst firm Forrester, told CNBC that chip fabrication plants “recycle water religiously,” adding that it’s a bit like a swimming pool in an enclosed building. > “You need a lot to fill it, but you don’t have to add much to keep it going,” he said. “Also, being in an enclosed space, a lot of the water that evaporates can be captured with a dehumidifier and returned to the pool. The fabs will do similar things with their own water usage.” > Intel notes on its website that it is striving to achieve “net positive water use” in Arizona and that it has funded 15 water restoration projects that aim to benefit the state. “Once fully implemented, these projects will restore an estimated 937 million gallons each year,” the company says.
01100011 5y ago
It's time for a national water grid(https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122-national-smart-water-grid https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122-national-smart-water-grid): > The National Smart Water Grid{trademark} will pay for itself in a single major flood event. Weather patterns will likely change dramatically and violently. We cannot relocate our farmland fast enough. We need a system capable of absorbing extreme precipitation and reclaiming it for food. This isn't about stealing water from the Great Lakes(that's a common worry). Yes, pumping water takes energy, but it also provides an infrastructure for gravitational storage of solar energy for night time use. We need to think big, and we need to think fast.
- kodah 5y ago
  Instrumenting water usage I think is the more important task that would fall under a national water grid. California uses an incredible amount of water that can be blamed on maintaining habitats, scenic views, and landscapes as well as agriculture respectively [1]. When states can't get enough water from the ground, they focus on redirecting rivers [2] which destroys other habitats and extracts value out of other states. [1]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ [2]: https://disappearingwest.org/rivers.html https://disappearingwest.org/rivers.html
  - 01100011 5y ago
    Is it a problem if CA uses an incredible amount of water if that water can be provided cheaply and in an environmentally sound manner? Sure, the current situation is unsustainable, but we don't have to focus on conservation and usage restrictions if we have a way to supply CA's water wants while reducing flood damage outside of CA. What do you think is more likely: - People voluntarily accepting a reduced quality of life by cutting back on water usage and forgoing water intensive produce. - Using excess water from flooding in other parts of the country to replenish CA aquifers and support historical usage patterns while helping to reduce flood damage outside CA.
    - saagarjha 5y ago
capybara_2020 5y ago
Just making an observation. As someone living in Asia, pre-pandemic our apartment association had to buy 3-6 times the water we normally did, during this time of the year. We had people visiting from outside the country mostly from the US. So basically for an additional 10% population at the very least we had to get 3 times more water. A personal observation with relatives, they tend to use toilet paper. Maybe it is our plumbing. But they flushed like 5-7 times(yes I counted a few times). Flushes take a ton of water, not sure if toilet paper actually makes you use more water even in the west.
- jeltz 5y ago
  This is mostly irrelevant since almost all of the water use in California comes from agriculture.
- MarcoZavala 5y ago
- giantg2 5y ago
  There are toilets that use approximately 1 gpf that can flush toilet paper well. It depends on the design of the toilet.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Just need to upgrade the hardware to something more modern. Any mid-grade or better low-flow toilet made in the past 10 years or so can flush a lot of TP without any difficulty. Some of the early low-flow toilets weren't particularly good at it, and the high-flow toilets from the 70s were amusingly bad given the sheer quantity of water they use. Also, encourage people to use bidets. Those are the best.
aaron695 5y ago
kerneloftruth 5y ago
California could easily build reservoirs, but they don't -- which makes the constant water fear mongering annoying. Reservoirs would capture much of the rainfall which isn't absorbed into ground water, and currently flows to the sea. The reservoirs would create new habitat for wildlife.... the downsides are few, if any.
- varelse 5y ago
  Don't know why you're getting downvoted for this and it's absolutely true. Cue the pedants nitpicking every word of the story below. We could do so much better here but we choose otherwise despite the highest state income taxes in the country. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet-winter-california-20190220-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    That really baffles me about CA. The quality of services and amenities doesn’t seem any higher there - in fact in many cases it seems lower than low tax burden states. Where does it all go? Is it too simplistic to say the government is mismanaged and has unqualified workers spending massive budgets? Or is it that public workers are lazy/coasting? Something else?
    - throwaway6734 5y ago
      One possible cause is that municipal workers (cops, teachers, firefighters) require much higher salaries due to the higher CoL
      - varelse 5y ago
        If it's to be believed, 40% of our budget is spent on education, 25% on health and human services, and 7% on prisons... https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2008-09-EN/BudgetSummary/SUM/1249561.html https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2008-09-EN/BudgetSummary/SUM/1249... But also, people are really triggered by rain reclamation for some reason. They're not saying why though which is weird.
pkaye 5y ago
Don't forget about the Ogallala reservoir in the mid west. http://duwaterlawreview.com/crisis-on-the-high-plains-the-loss-of-americas-largest-aquifer-the-ogallala/ http://duwaterlawreview.com/crisis-on-the-high-plains-the-lo...
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I think the Ogallala is an indication that industrial farming cannot work long term. The immense increase in yields from advanced machinery and GMO crops effectively means that rich farmlands are basically shipping out vast quantities of water and disrupting the local balance. The underground aquifers don’t have much more left, so we will have to confront this at some point. Maybe that means a new advance in farming technology and reduced consumption, but I also wonder if we just need fewer people and a lot of other problems go away without needing to roll the dice on the possibility of new advancements.
  - kickout 5y ago
    The problem is we try and grow crops in places like Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma (corn, soybeans) that have no business being grown there. There production could disappear overnight and no one would notice. Problem is what are you replacing the economic activity with? Ideally it would be pasture fed cattle, but again that's 'inefficient' compared to other production tactics. I'd rather people in Nebraska/high Plains use the Ogallala aquifer than California residents.
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    Something that Desert really drove home was that the universe doesn't owe you a solution. Just because we back ourselves into a corner does not mean we will be able to innovate our way up and out.
mrfusion 5y ago
Why can’t farmers extract water from the air like they do in Star Wars? Or maybe from all the fog in San franscisco?
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  This is actually possible today but the newest technology hasn’t quite matured and scaled up. See this article: https://news.mit.edu/2020/solar-extracts-drinkable-water-1014 https://news.mit.edu/2020/solar-extracts-drinkable-water-101... > Existing AWH approaches include fog harvesting and dew harvesting, but both have significant limitations. Fog harvesting only works with 100 percent relative humidity, and is currently used only in a few coastal deserts, while dew harvesting requires energy-intensive refrigeration to provide cold surfaces for moisture to condense on — and still requires humidity of at least 50 percent, depending on the ambient temperature. > By contrast, the new system can work at humidity levels as low as 20 percent and requires no energy input other than sunlight or any other available source of low-grade heat.
  - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
    Water we take out of the air can't go into clouds and rivers upstream anymore. Maybe, and this might sound crazy but hear me out, we should stop consuming that much water in regions where it's scarce. It's not sustainable and lowering the ground water table is only going to work for so long.
- waffle_maniac 5y ago
  It's being trialed in Galapagos. https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/blog-articles/743-update-report-year-one-harvesting-water-isabela-galapagos https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/blog-articles/743-update...
ryan93 5y ago
California would have enough water to almost double population by just ceasing alfafa production/
DoreenMichele 5y ago
People in California who are interested in actually improving things should read up on what Fresno county does and see what lessons they can borrow. Fresno county is where a lot of California water law was hashed out more than a hundred years ago. It was basically a desert with a river (or rivers) running through it and they built a series of irrigation canals. The history of those canals is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Fresno county then turned lush and green. It is a modern Hanging Gardens of Babylon and I never hear about that. I only know because I spent a couple of years there while homeless and read some local history. Following the creation of the canals, they began having problems with low lying areas turning into ponds and they began creating recharge ponds. In some years, they have actually raised the water table. In addition to the history of the canals, there's a book called Salt Dreams that I highly recommend that is about the history of water stuff in Southern California, basically. The Salton Sea is both kind of a manmade accident kept alive by agricultural runoff and a recurring periodic feature of the region historically. It would turn into a body of water for some reason and then slowly dry up over a period of years or decades because it wasn't getting recharged. The current version was predicted to dry up but hasn't because of recharge from agriculture. If you are actually interested in understanding water issues in the state, I recommend those two books. I don't think this is hopeless. Edit: Water for a thirsty land is the history of Fresno water development https://www.worldcat.org/title/water-for-a-thirsty-land-the-consolidated-irrigation-district-and-its-canal-development-history/oclc/36954078&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/water-for-a-thirsty-land-the-... .
- jcranmer 5y ago
  > It was basically a desert with a river (or rivers) running through it and they built a series of irrigation canals. My understanding is that much of the Central Valley was actually a (seasonal?) marshland/grasslands ecosystem, not a desert environment. The irrigation and diversion to Southern California caused many large, shallow lakes (e.g., Tulare Lake) in the region to dry up entirely.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
If you factor out usage for agriculture (which serves others out of state) does CA per capita use more or less water? That is, how much of this problem is strictly CA and how much is it a national food system issue? Mind you, I realize there are crops that grow best in CA (and not elsewhere in the US) but that doesn't nean we have to grow them if they weaken other aspects of the broader system.

73 points by LinuxBender 5y ago

It was posted on an older thread, but there's a quote by a surveyor and geologist in the 1800s as they were defining water rights. He mentioned there is no way to sustain an agricultural population in these areas despite the aquifers.

AlotOfReading 5y ago
Old timey academics often had no idea what they were talking about. I don't know the full quote, but that's obviously untrue because indigenous peoples already lived here.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  They weren't intensively farming the area. What he (and I) meant was "sustain an agricultural population." They were divvying up water rights but it was recognizable very early on that even modest farming could deplete the aquifer faster than it regenerates. I've edited it for clarity, but this is one of those times to refer to the site guidelines. You're supposed to look for the most charitable interpretation of a comment's phrasing -- what are the odds I somehow didn't know Indians exist?
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    I presumed you knew about native Americans, but that doesn't mean the geologist considered them. Anyway, it's still relevant since many populations in the Sonoran and Mojave had highly intensive traditional agriculture. I assume those are the areas that were being discussed? The lack of what we'd traditionally call intensive agriculture in places like central valley is mainly just a historical semantic distinction. They cultivated and intensively shaped their local environments to maximize food production, but they weren't herding or clearing fields so it doesn't count.
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kickout 5y ago
So the US abandons agriculture production and Brazil slurps it up by chopping down Amazon rainforests? Global effects, not so simple.

mwattsun 5y ago

I've been hearing about water issues my entire life living in California but I don't worry about it because one of these days people will come to their senses and realize clean water is a precious resource that is priced too cheaply. Once we pay for it what it's worth, it will no longer be economical to grow water intensive crops [1] and it will become economical desalinate Pacific Ocean water like San Diego [2] powered by the falling price of renewable energy [3] (one day with plentiful fusion energy maybe) or pumping water from Oregon to California through an undersea pipeline [4] and more far out plans like pumping water from Alaska using 6 nuclear powered pumping stations and atomic bombs to dig trenches will be unnecessary [6] [7] [1] https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-are-the-california-crops-that-use-the-most-water/ https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-... [2] https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawater-desalination/ https://www.sdcwa.org/your-water/local-water-supplies/seawat... [3] https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour-of-electricity-by-source/ https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_interstate_water_pipelines_to_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_interstate_water_pipe... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power... [7] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nijhuis/pipe-dreams-the-forgotten-project-that-could-have-saved-amer https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nijhuis/pipe-dreams-the... edit: For example, people are fine with paying $2 for a bottle of clean water but farmers get mad if you suggest paying more than $70 an acre foot for similar quality water. An acre foot is 325,851 gallons of good clean water suitable for growing the high quality crops California is known for

kevin_b_er 5y ago
The farmers can use pretty much as much as they want from the aquifers and they pay that $70 for 325 thousand gallons of water. That's how individual water conservation pales in comparison to a farmer paying for $20 more in water. Or a new chip fab plant that uses millions of gallons of water per day.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  For what it’s worth, chip fabs mostly recycle water. Intel is also funding water restoration projects to achieve net positive water use. See https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-water-dependent-chip-plants-in-arizona.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-... > Glenn O’Donnell, vice president and research director at analyst firm Forrester, told CNBC that chip fabrication plants “recycle water religiously,” adding that it’s a bit like a swimming pool in an enclosed building. > “You need a lot to fill it, but you don’t have to add much to keep it going,” he said. “Also, being in an enclosed space, a lot of the water that evaporates can be captured with a dehumidifier and returned to the pool. The fabs will do similar things with their own water usage.” > Intel notes on its website that it is striving to achieve “net positive water use” in Arizona and that it has funded 15 water restoration projects that aim to benefit the state. “Once fully implemented, these projects will restore an estimated 937 million gallons each year,” the company says.

01100011 5y ago

It's time for a national water grid(https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122-national-smart-water-grid https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122-national-smart-water-grid): > The National Smart Water Grid{trademark} will pay for itself in a single major flood event. Weather patterns will likely change dramatically and violently. We cannot relocate our farmland fast enough. We need a system capable of absorbing extreme precipitation and reclaiming it for food. This isn't about stealing water from the Great Lakes(that's a common worry). Yes, pumping water takes energy, but it also provides an infrastructure for gravitational storage of solar energy for night time use. We need to think big, and we need to think fast.

kodah 5y ago
Instrumenting water usage I think is the more important task that would fall under a national water grid. California uses an incredible amount of water that can be blamed on maintaining habitats, scenic views, and landscapes as well as agriculture respectively [1]. When states can't get enough water from the ground, they focus on redirecting rivers [2] which destroys other habitats and extracts value out of other states. [1]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ [2]: https://disappearingwest.org/rivers.html https://disappearingwest.org/rivers.html
- 01100011 5y ago
  Is it a problem if CA uses an incredible amount of water if that water can be provided cheaply and in an environmentally sound manner? Sure, the current situation is unsustainable, but we don't have to focus on conservation and usage restrictions if we have a way to supply CA's water wants while reducing flood damage outside of CA. What do you think is more likely: - People voluntarily accepting a reduced quality of life by cutting back on water usage and forgoing water intensive produce. - Using excess water from flooding in other parts of the country to replenish CA aquifers and support historical usage patterns while helping to reduce flood damage outside CA.
  - saagarjha 5y ago

capybara_2020 5y ago

Just making an observation. As someone living in Asia, pre-pandemic our apartment association had to buy 3-6 times the water we normally did, during this time of the year. We had people visiting from outside the country mostly from the US. So basically for an additional 10% population at the very least we had to get 3 times more water. A personal observation with relatives, they tend to use toilet paper. Maybe it is our plumbing. But they flushed like 5-7 times(yes I counted a few times). Flushes take a ton of water, not sure if toilet paper actually makes you use more water even in the west.

jeltz 5y ago
This is mostly irrelevant since almost all of the water use in California comes from agriculture.
MarcoZavala 5y ago
giantg2 5y ago
There are toilets that use approximately 1 gpf that can flush toilet paper well. It depends on the design of the toilet.
rootusrootus 5y ago
Just need to upgrade the hardware to something more modern. Any mid-grade or better low-flow toilet made in the past 10 years or so can flush a lot of TP without any difficulty. Some of the early low-flow toilets weren't particularly good at it, and the high-flow toilets from the 70s were amusingly bad given the sheer quantity of water they use. Also, encourage people to use bidets. Those are the best.

aaron695 5y ago

kerneloftruth 5y ago

California could easily build reservoirs, but they don't -- which makes the constant water fear mongering annoying. Reservoirs would capture much of the rainfall which isn't absorbed into ground water, and currently flows to the sea. The reservoirs would create new habitat for wildlife.... the downsides are few, if any.

varelse 5y ago
Don't know why you're getting downvoted for this and it's absolutely true. Cue the pedants nitpicking every word of the story below. We could do so much better here but we choose otherwise despite the highest state income taxes in the country. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet-winter-california-20190220-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  That really baffles me about CA. The quality of services and amenities doesn’t seem any higher there - in fact in many cases it seems lower than low tax burden states. Where does it all go? Is it too simplistic to say the government is mismanaged and has unqualified workers spending massive budgets? Or is it that public workers are lazy/coasting? Something else?
  - throwaway6734 5y ago
    One possible cause is that municipal workers (cops, teachers, firefighters) require much higher salaries due to the higher CoL
    - varelse 5y ago
      If it's to be believed, 40% of our budget is spent on education, 25% on health and human services, and 7% on prisons... https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2008-09-EN/BudgetSummary/SUM/1249561.html https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2008-09-EN/BudgetSummary/SUM/1249... But also, people are really triggered by rain reclamation for some reason. They're not saying why though which is weird.

pkaye 5y ago

Don't forget about the Ogallala reservoir in the mid west. http://duwaterlawreview.com/crisis-on-the-high-plains-the-loss-of-americas-largest-aquifer-the-ogallala/ http://duwaterlawreview.com/crisis-on-the-high-plains-the-lo...

throwawaysea 5y ago
I think the Ogallala is an indication that industrial farming cannot work long term. The immense increase in yields from advanced machinery and GMO crops effectively means that rich farmlands are basically shipping out vast quantities of water and disrupting the local balance. The underground aquifers don’t have much more left, so we will have to confront this at some point. Maybe that means a new advance in farming technology and reduced consumption, but I also wonder if we just need fewer people and a lot of other problems go away without needing to roll the dice on the possibility of new advancements.
- kickout 5y ago
  The problem is we try and grow crops in places like Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma (corn, soybeans) that have no business being grown there. There production could disappear overnight and no one would notice. Problem is what are you replacing the economic activity with? Ideally it would be pasture fed cattle, but again that's 'inefficient' compared to other production tactics. I'd rather people in Nebraska/high Plains use the Ogallala aquifer than California residents.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Something that Desert really drove home was that the universe doesn't owe you a solution. Just because we back ourselves into a corner does not mean we will be able to innovate our way up and out.

mrfusion 5y ago

Why can’t farmers extract water from the air like they do in Star Wars? Or maybe from all the fog in San franscisco?

throwawaysea 5y ago
This is actually possible today but the newest technology hasn’t quite matured and scaled up. See this article: https://news.mit.edu/2020/solar-extracts-drinkable-water-1014 https://news.mit.edu/2020/solar-extracts-drinkable-water-101... > Existing AWH approaches include fog harvesting and dew harvesting, but both have significant limitations. Fog harvesting only works with 100 percent relative humidity, and is currently used only in a few coastal deserts, while dew harvesting requires energy-intensive refrigeration to provide cold surfaces for moisture to condense on — and still requires humidity of at least 50 percent, depending on the ambient temperature. > By contrast, the new system can work at humidity levels as low as 20 percent and requires no energy input other than sunlight or any other available source of low-grade heat.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  Water we take out of the air can't go into clouds and rivers upstream anymore. Maybe, and this might sound crazy but hear me out, we should stop consuming that much water in regions where it's scarce. It's not sustainable and lowering the ground water table is only going to work for so long.
waffle_maniac 5y ago
It's being trialed in Galapagos. https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/blog-articles/743-update-report-year-one-harvesting-water-isabela-galapagos https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/blog-articles/743-update...

ryan93 5y ago

California would have enough water to almost double population by just ceasing alfafa production/

DoreenMichele 5y ago

People in California who are interested in actually improving things should read up on what Fresno county does and see what lessons they can borrow. Fresno county is where a lot of California water law was hashed out more than a hundred years ago. It was basically a desert with a river (or rivers) running through it and they built a series of irrigation canals. The history of those canals is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Fresno county then turned lush and green. It is a modern Hanging Gardens of Babylon and I never hear about that. I only know because I spent a couple of years there while homeless and read some local history. Following the creation of the canals, they began having problems with low lying areas turning into ponds and they began creating recharge ponds. In some years, they have actually raised the water table. In addition to the history of the canals, there's a book called Salt Dreams that I highly recommend that is about the history of water stuff in Southern California, basically. The Salton Sea is both kind of a manmade accident kept alive by agricultural runoff and a recurring periodic feature of the region historically. It would turn into a body of water for some reason and then slowly dry up over a period of years or decades because it wasn't getting recharged. The current version was predicted to dry up but hasn't because of recharge from agriculture. If you are actually interested in understanding water issues in the state, I recommend those two books. I don't think this is hopeless. Edit: Water for a thirsty land is the history of Fresno water development https://www.worldcat.org/title/water-for-a-thirsty-land-the-consolidated-irrigation-district-and-its-canal-development-history/oclc/36954078&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/water-for-a-thirsty-land-the-... .

jcranmer 5y ago
> It was basically a desert with a river (or rivers) running through it and they built a series of irrigation canals. My understanding is that much of the Central Valley was actually a (seasonal?) marshland/grasslands ecosystem, not a desert environment. The irrigation and diversion to Southern California caused many large, shallow lakes (e.g., Tulare Lake) in the region to dry up entirely.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

If you factor out usage for agriculture (which serves others out of state) does CA per capita use more or less water? That is, how much of this problem is strictly CA and how much is it a national food system issue? Mind you, I realize there are crops that grow best in CA (and not elsewhere in the US) but that doesn't nean we have to grow them if they weaken other aspects of the broader system.