14 ms·

A deceptively simple plan to replenish California’s groundwater

86 points by lxm 5y ago

neonate 5y ago
https://archive.ph/frHKn https://archive.ph/frHKn https://web.archive.org/web/20220326044028/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/the-deceptively-simple-plan-to-replenish-californias-groundwater https://web.archive.org/web/20220326044028/https://www.natio...
jefurii 5y ago
Residential water use is about 10-15% of total water use in the state. Agriculture and industry uses about 85%. The two biggest line-items are cows (and alfalfa) and almonds. 50% of the water in the Colorado River Basin is ised for cows in some way (drinking, raising alfalfa). If we could just buy out the almond industry that would be a big chunk right there. If we as a society could eat less beef and drink less milk we'd have a lot more water to use.
- lacker 5y ago
  If we could just buy out the almond industry That is true but I think in practice it is too weird to buy out the almond industry. It would be easier to simply start taxing agriculture more money per water used. At some point that would mean that almond farmers and alfalfa farmers would have to plant new crops. Obviously this would be politically controversial, but I think at this point any solution will be. It's great that California can produce so much food. Even if we had to give up alfalfa and almonds, California would still have farming as a core part of its identity.
  - bushbaba 5y ago
    If anything it’d raise the cost of almonds. Might not reduce almond demand much. All depends the magnitude of the tax. Also is a tax really the best approach? I’d rather see an auction so that the water goes the most economically useful activity. Similar to the spectrum auctions.
    - kansface 5y ago
      I don’t think the state has the legal authority to auction off established water rights, some of which likely predate the existence of the state.
      - coryrc 5y ago
        Time for eminent domain.
    - jefurii 5y ago
      Fifteen or twenty years ago most people had never even heard about almond milk. It got popular because of an intense marketing campaign. So what if it raises the cost of almonds? That would get people to stop doing something stupid like using a huge amount of water in a state that really doesn't have enough.
  - jefurii 5y ago
    The government pays farmers not to grow crops all the time. In the past we've done it to raise the cost of corn in order to shut Mexican farmers out of the market. We can totally do this if we choose to. I grew up in the Central Valley. The places that currently have almond orchards used to be mostly cotton fields. Almonds are far more water-intensive than any other crop in the Valley. Fruit orchards, vegetable farms, and cotton use far less water.
- hedora 5y ago
  Almond growers claim almond milk is much less water intensive than cow milk. Cows can live in a wider climate range than almonds. Cutting the cow industry's irrigation water off probably makes more sense.
  - jefurii 5y ago
    Yep, dairy is the real big gorilla here, and the biggest line item on the state's water budget.
dehrmann 5y ago
I'm not sure how viable this is. Up to a certain point (probably around Merced), farmers already put enough water on their fields to recharge groundwater. Much further south, is there even enough winter runoff to flood fields? I assumed the watersheds were all dammed up to capture this water for use in the summer.
- Someone 5y ago
  FTA: “Local water districts’ SGMA plans currently propose to fill about 40 percent of the hole with recharge. But an independent analysis from the PPIC found that recharge could fill only about 25 percent of the overdraft.” So, it seems it’s a good idea, but not a silver bullet. Water use will have to be more than halved, too.
WalterBright 5y ago
This is such a classic "Tragedy of the Commons" situation. Nobody owns the water, so everyone grabs as much as they can, whether they need it or not. (Compare with the shortage of cows and chickens. What shortage, you say? Exactly. It is managed by the owners of the cows and chickens so there's a ready supply.) Government regulation is a lousy solution, as it will allocate the resource based on politics, not practicality, efficiency, or common sense. You see this as well in California - regulating showers with ineffectual results. One way would be to allocate X gallons per year total can be pumped, and then auction off those gallon rights.
- helmholtz 5y ago
  A masterful suggestion. Truly inspired. Why don't you also promote the privatisation of air next? I shouldn't be breathing so much. No wait! Better idea. Totally privatize all land. How dare I walk from place to place with no regards for practicality, efficiency or common sense. Maybe my organs can also be allocated. _Two_ kidneys?! When there are some who only have one? Reappropriation, immédiatement. Compare your cows with Silicon, Steel or really a 100 other things in short supply now, despite your wet dream free market left untouched, and you'll see the folly of your harebrained suggestion. My god!
  - resonantjacket5 5y ago
    > A masterful suggestion. Truly inspired. It would actually solve the water crisis. What is currently happening is the government is giving away water at an underpriced value leading farmers to not implement more water conserving practices or grow less water-intensive crops. Also the water crisis in California is from agriculture practices not from urban dwellers running out of drinking water. Just randomly setting the price of water below it's actual market price doesn't magically wave away the shortages caused when more people want to grow pistachios/alfalfa/etc... than the rivers can actually support. > Why don't you also promote the privatisation of air next? I shouldn't be breathing so much. There is actually cap and trade to stop power plants to let them freely put carbon dioxide/other pollutants into the air. It is in effect 'privatizing' the air trying to prevent the tragedy of the commons.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arthurofbabylon 5y ago
In a watershed in eastern Idaho farmers, conservationists, and outdoor enthusiasts got together and instituted an aquifer recharge program. Here’s how they did it, as I understand it -> Ecologists studied water temperature and its impact on cutthroat, the great prize in fly fishing. It turns out the cold water (passing from aquifers to streams, versus more immediate runoff) fosters healthier populations. The outdoors people wanted aquifer recharge. The same ecologists study and publish general watershed health. Seeing the state of the watershed, conservations wanted aquifer recharge. The upstream farmers have a problem of being required to turn off their water when downstream farmers need to irrigate (water rights). With strong aquifers, that “turn off your water” event happens later in the year, allowing upstream farmers to irrigate longer int he crucial summer season. The farmers wanted aquifer recharge. So they all collaborated and did it. I believe conservationists initially paid or maybe continue to pay the farmers to flood their fields in the spring. For farmers, I have the impression it is about as easy as regular irrigation. Aligning interests solves problems. Communication across stakeholders solves problems. I love this story and hope that I did the details justice. If anyone is curious about getting the full story from insiders, write to me and I’ll connect you.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Stories like this make me belive that we might actually have a chance to not screw up a lot worse then we did already! Thanks for sharing! A side note: This approach works in a lot of cases, e.g. across company functions. It's incredibly hard to achieve, impossible for me I'd say.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Not to be a party pooper, as I also like to read about events like this an envision them working on a larger scale, but doing this on a larger scale tends to be the problem. Two people collaborating is easy to manage, two million people collaborating is hard as hell, two billion people collaborating seems impossible.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aaron695 5y ago
mromanuk 5y ago
TL;DR: The idea is straightforward: When extra water rushes through the state’s waterways, some of that could be “peeled off” and diverted to fields, recharge basins, wells, or other floodable sites.
interestica 5y ago
The hackerest part of this: > Cameron was years ahead. In the 1990s, preparing for his flood experiment, he built a big ditch at the edge of the property to hold the extra water. (“We didn’t get permits or anything, and I should probably be in jail, but we just had to try it,” he says.)
ggm 5y ago
Without an economic model which monetises saving water into the aquifer higher than selling water for direct consumption, and an associated public-interest governance model with directing force, this is one of those "so simple, so hard" things. Australia has a comparable problem. The Great Artesian Basin is being drained by morally, and sometimes financially corrupted process which vests in inter-state rivaly, "I want to" farm-gate logic, and "Its muh right" views of water falling on the land. An attempt to construct a 4 state agreement to manage flows has failed because of acts of bastardry by one state (NSW) against the down stream wishes of two others (Vic, SA) and acts of indifference by a fourth state (qld) where much of the headwater springs from. As a species, we're incapable of making decisions which matter. I despair, or wonder if tyrants would do better right now.
- chermi 5y ago
  There exists various forms of "water markets". I'm most familiar with irrigation districts in California, but I know there's other examples that facilitate the monetization of saving water in some form. Stanford and UC Merced do some work on the problem, with the former having some economists involved iirc. https://waterinthewest.stanford.edu/ https://waterinthewest.stanford.edu/
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  It lacks more than an economic model. It lacks a reason for doing so at all. Goundwater in the ground doesn't help anyone.
  - senectus1 5y ago
    >Goundwater in the ground doesn't help anyone. beg to differ. There are many examples of where ground water in the ground helps maintain the environment in ways that benefit everyone. You cant just take something as significant as an existing water table away and expect the ecology and geography of that environment to stay the same.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
giantg2 5y ago
Probably going to get downvoted for this... We have too many people and nobody is willing to do things that dramatically reduce the quality of life that are necessary to sustainably support ourselves.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  I don’t think we quite have too many people in America. The USA could easily sustain a population the size of China. We’re not even close.
- vondur 5y ago
  In California? I’d agree with you. The state really hasn’t upgraded the infrastructure since the 70’s. We’ve probably tripled the population since then.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Not just there. The aquifers under the plains are also almost drained. A lot of that is not for those local people, but for food production for people nationally and internationally.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Take a look at Phoenix. Way more than tripled, and now uses less water for residential purposes that it did in the 1990s. Your assumptions that people living somewhere are the main users of water is way, way out of touch with the reality: the main user is agriculture. In my state, NM, residential use is 7%, commercial/retail/business is 7%, evaporation is 7% and agriculture is 77%.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  Perhaps true, but not closely related. The vast amount of water being used goes to agriculture and industry and not supporting the population.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Who do you think uses agricultural and industrial products? People
wintermutestwin 5y ago
Maybe if we stopped exporting agriculture from California to China, there would be plenty of water? https://hayandforage.com/article-3388-thank-china-for-record-alfalfa-hay-exports.html https://hayandforage.com/article-3388-thank-china-for-record... https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/04/03/agriculture-is-80-percent-of-water-use-in-california-why-arent-farmers-being-forced-to-cut-back/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/04/03/a... https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989 edit: I am puzzled as to why eliminating this one massive water use needs to be clarified. Exporting to China (or any other country) is purely a for profit endeavor that is using a large % of CA's water. Many farmers argue for the need to feed the US and I am not against that idea (in principle).
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Lots of typical Californian "we should stop doing things!" in this sad thread...
- _8j50 5y ago
  Do you have another customer in mind or are you asking the exporters to deal with it?
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    > Do you have another customer in mind or are you asking the exporters to deal with it? I believe the gp is saying it shouldn't be exported _at all_ and hence there should be no customers (outside California anyway).
    - _8j50 5y ago
      I know but that is loss of business. Who will absorb that loss? Subsidize it and tax payers absorb it like much is done in farming? Or just let the farmers lose?
- pengaru 5y ago
  Why you would single out CA's exports to .cn is beyond me, it's more an issue of CA agriculture in general. CA feeds a lot more out of state mouths than just the Chinese.
jollybean 5y ago
Radically 'dumb' nuclear distillation that has Uranium pebbles just 'boil' water and then capture the condensation. Those pebbles could sit there for 50 years before reconstitution. It might even be designed so that left unmanned, it just kept working or wouldn't overheat i.e. using 'heavy water' like CANDU reactors. Designed not so much for efficiency but for simplicity, safety, longevity.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  Will it scale? This is a LOT of water in question.
lesgobrandon 5y ago
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. (that's probably a bit optimistic but even if it takes 10 flood events it's worth it) 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. North America has plenty of water and plenty of land suitable for growing food but they don't always line up. It is easier to move water than to move farmland with all of its associated supply chains and infrastructure. We can take small amounts of water from all over the wetter areas of the country during times of excess and transport it to drier areas to grow food and support manufacturing. I believe the net environmental impact would be positive. We could allow CA rivers and streams to flow as they used to, supporting wildlife and replenishing our beaches. It's a project that provides jobs, national and international food security, reduces flooding damage, and allows us to adapt to climate change. Sorry for posting some version of this comment in every water related thread but I think it is critical that we think big for the big problems facing us now and in the near future.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  No. Pumping water is one of the most ecologically horrific things to do. It’s running a power plant backwards. Rather than having a farm in New York State, let’s have a farm in New Mexico that requires pumping water up a mile and 1000 horizontal miles. Totally makes sense, right? Places like California completely eradicated farming in the East but it’s based on an ecological lie. When the water runs out we’ll see why it was a mistake.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  > It's time for a national water grid I mean you have massive, massive mountains that preclude you from doing that fast or in an energy efficient way. Its far, far simpler and cheaper and effective to increase dwell time of rain water. What do I mean by this? Every year lots of money is spent in and around california to maintain storm drains and infra. They spend billions trying to get excess water from the hills to the sea in a faster way as possible. However this means that the water isn't soaking into the land, which means its not there in summer to evaporate and provide clouds, which rain and drive weather cycles. Basically its drought causing. By selectively blocking drainage systems, and forcing localised flooding (ie flood planes) not only do you get less damaging flash floods (the water takes a lot longer to get from a to b) a shit tonne more water drains into the soil. This means that more plants grow, which means less sun hitting the floor, which means lower temperatures, etc etc, etc Whats more its fucking cheap. > It is easier to move water than to move farmland with all of its associated supply chains and infrastructure. I mean that's patently not the case. If it was cheap to move water then we'd see loads of many thousand mile irrigation canals and pipes. We only really see it for high value crops. There was a plan to create a nationwide canal "backbone" for the UK (a canal can be used for moving water as well) But as it would cost ~10% of GDP to build it wasn't practical.
ineptech 5y ago
This (briefly, the article is about rerouting winter runoff to flood fields as a way of refilling the rapidly-depleting water table) seems really exciting, because it's a rare example of a coordination trap with a practical solution. The coordination trap is that farmers are using more groundwater than is sustainable: farmer A drills a 100' well, farmer B drills 120', and so on, until every dollar of profit in the farming business is spent entirely on wells and pumps. They could agree to stop at some point, but as long as most farmers cooperate, the few who don't will outcompete them. In fact, it's essentially the same problem seen in international corporate tax rates. Ireland lowered its corporate tax rate to entice multinats to repatriate there, which worked, and led to other countries adopting an even lower rate, in a "race to the bottom" scenario. The proposed solution[0] is basically a cartel: all countries agree to some non-zero minimum value that they won't go beneath, and to punish anyone who defects from the agreement. Unfortunately, that can't work for farmers; it's unrealistic to expect all farmers to come together and find an equitable way to share well-water and detect and punish cheaters. And for the government to enforce water usage would require a lot of heavy-handed regulation: checking farms to make sure they're metering correctly, calculating which crops deserve how much water, etc. Ugh. That's what makes this exciting: a government program to replenish the aquifer represents a way that the farmers could solve their problem and share the cost in a way that's (roughly) equitable and not very easy to cheat on, without micro-managing which farm gets how much water. 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/01/nations-agree-to-support-us-proposal-for-global-minimum-tax-on-corporations.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/01/nations-agree-to-support-us-...

86 points by lxm 5y ago

https://archive.ph/frHKn https://archive.ph/frHKn https://web.archive.org/web/20220326044028/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/the-deceptively-simple-plan-to-replenish-californias-groundwater https://web.archive.org/web/20220326044028/https://www.natio...

jefurii 5y ago

Residential water use is about 10-15% of total water use in the state. Agriculture and industry uses about 85%. The two biggest line-items are cows (and alfalfa) and almonds. 50% of the water in the Colorado River Basin is ised for cows in some way (drinking, raising alfalfa). If we could just buy out the almond industry that would be a big chunk right there. If we as a society could eat less beef and drink less milk we'd have a lot more water to use.

lacker 5y ago
If we could just buy out the almond industry That is true but I think in practice it is too weird to buy out the almond industry. It would be easier to simply start taxing agriculture more money per water used. At some point that would mean that almond farmers and alfalfa farmers would have to plant new crops. Obviously this would be politically controversial, but I think at this point any solution will be. It's great that California can produce so much food. Even if we had to give up alfalfa and almonds, California would still have farming as a core part of its identity.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  If anything it’d raise the cost of almonds. Might not reduce almond demand much. All depends the magnitude of the tax. Also is a tax really the best approach? I’d rather see an auction so that the water goes the most economically useful activity. Similar to the spectrum auctions.
  - kansface 5y ago
    I don’t think the state has the legal authority to auction off established water rights, some of which likely predate the existence of the state.
    - coryrc 5y ago
      Time for eminent domain.
  - jefurii 5y ago
    Fifteen or twenty years ago most people had never even heard about almond milk. It got popular because of an intense marketing campaign. So what if it raises the cost of almonds? That would get people to stop doing something stupid like using a huge amount of water in a state that really doesn't have enough.
- jefurii 5y ago
  The government pays farmers not to grow crops all the time. In the past we've done it to raise the cost of corn in order to shut Mexican farmers out of the market. We can totally do this if we choose to. I grew up in the Central Valley. The places that currently have almond orchards used to be mostly cotton fields. Almonds are far more water-intensive than any other crop in the Valley. Fruit orchards, vegetable farms, and cotton use far less water.
hedora 5y ago
Almond growers claim almond milk is much less water intensive than cow milk. Cows can live in a wider climate range than almonds. Cutting the cow industry's irrigation water off probably makes more sense.
- jefurii 5y ago
  Yep, dairy is the real big gorilla here, and the biggest line item on the state's water budget.

dehrmann 5y ago

I'm not sure how viable this is. Up to a certain point (probably around Merced), farmers already put enough water on their fields to recharge groundwater. Much further south, is there even enough winter runoff to flood fields? I assumed the watersheds were all dammed up to capture this water for use in the summer.

Someone 5y ago
FTA: “Local water districts’ SGMA plans currently propose to fill about 40 percent of the hole with recharge. But an independent analysis from the PPIC found that recharge could fill only about 25 percent of the overdraft.” So, it seems it’s a good idea, but not a silver bullet. Water use will have to be more than halved, too.

WalterBright 5y ago

This is such a classic "Tragedy of the Commons" situation. Nobody owns the water, so everyone grabs as much as they can, whether they need it or not. (Compare with the shortage of cows and chickens. What shortage, you say? Exactly. It is managed by the owners of the cows and chickens so there's a ready supply.) Government regulation is a lousy solution, as it will allocate the resource based on politics, not practicality, efficiency, or common sense. You see this as well in California - regulating showers with ineffectual results. One way would be to allocate X gallons per year total can be pumped, and then auction off those gallon rights.

helmholtz 5y ago
A masterful suggestion. Truly inspired. Why don't you also promote the privatisation of air next? I shouldn't be breathing so much. No wait! Better idea. Totally privatize all land. How dare I walk from place to place with no regards for practicality, efficiency or common sense. Maybe my organs can also be allocated. _Two_ kidneys?! When there are some who only have one? Reappropriation, immédiatement. Compare your cows with Silicon, Steel or really a 100 other things in short supply now, despite your wet dream free market left untouched, and you'll see the folly of your harebrained suggestion. My god!
- resonantjacket5 5y ago
  > A masterful suggestion. Truly inspired. It would actually solve the water crisis. What is currently happening is the government is giving away water at an underpriced value leading farmers to not implement more water conserving practices or grow less water-intensive crops. Also the water crisis in California is from agriculture practices not from urban dwellers running out of drinking water. Just randomly setting the price of water below it's actual market price doesn't magically wave away the shortages caused when more people want to grow pistachios/alfalfa/etc... than the rivers can actually support. > Why don't you also promote the privatisation of air next? I shouldn't be breathing so much. There is actually cap and trade to stop power plants to let them freely put carbon dioxide/other pollutants into the air. It is in effect 'privatizing' the air trying to prevent the tragedy of the commons.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

arthurofbabylon 5y ago

In a watershed in eastern Idaho farmers, conservationists, and outdoor enthusiasts got together and instituted an aquifer recharge program. Here’s how they did it, as I understand it -> Ecologists studied water temperature and its impact on cutthroat, the great prize in fly fishing. It turns out the cold water (passing from aquifers to streams, versus more immediate runoff) fosters healthier populations. The outdoors people wanted aquifer recharge. The same ecologists study and publish general watershed health. Seeing the state of the watershed, conservations wanted aquifer recharge. The upstream farmers have a problem of being required to turn off their water when downstream farmers need to irrigate (water rights). With strong aquifers, that “turn off your water” event happens later in the year, allowing upstream farmers to irrigate longer int he crucial summer season. The farmers wanted aquifer recharge. So they all collaborated and did it. I believe conservationists initially paid or maybe continue to pay the farmers to flood their fields in the spring. For farmers, I have the impression it is about as easy as regular irrigation. Aligning interests solves problems. Communication across stakeholders solves problems. I love this story and hope that I did the details justice. If anyone is curious about getting the full story from insiders, write to me and I’ll connect you.

hef19898 5y ago
Stories like this make me belive that we might actually have a chance to not screw up a lot worse then we did already! Thanks for sharing! A side note: This approach works in a lot of cases, e.g. across company functions. It's incredibly hard to achieve, impossible for me I'd say.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Not to be a party pooper, as I also like to read about events like this an envision them working on a larger scale, but doing this on a larger scale tends to be the problem. Two people collaborating is easy to manage, two million people collaborating is hard as hell, two billion people collaborating seems impossible.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aaron695 5y ago

mromanuk 5y ago

TL;DR: The idea is straightforward: When extra water rushes through the state’s waterways, some of that could be “peeled off” and diverted to fields, recharge basins, wells, or other floodable sites.

interestica 5y ago

The hackerest part of this: > Cameron was years ahead. In the 1990s, preparing for his flood experiment, he built a big ditch at the edge of the property to hold the extra water. (“We didn’t get permits or anything, and I should probably be in jail, but we just had to try it,” he says.)

ggm 5y ago

Without an economic model which monetises saving water into the aquifer higher than selling water for direct consumption, and an associated public-interest governance model with directing force, this is one of those "so simple, so hard" things. Australia has a comparable problem. The Great Artesian Basin is being drained by morally, and sometimes financially corrupted process which vests in inter-state rivaly, "I want to" farm-gate logic, and "Its muh right" views of water falling on the land. An attempt to construct a 4 state agreement to manage flows has failed because of acts of bastardry by one state (NSW) against the down stream wishes of two others (Vic, SA) and acts of indifference by a fourth state (qld) where much of the headwater springs from. As a species, we're incapable of making decisions which matter. I despair, or wonder if tyrants would do better right now.

chermi 5y ago
There exists various forms of "water markets". I'm most familiar with irrigation districts in California, but I know there's other examples that facilitate the monetization of saving water in some form. Stanford and UC Merced do some work on the problem, with the former having some economists involved iirc. https://waterinthewest.stanford.edu/ https://waterinthewest.stanford.edu/
s1artibartfast 5y ago
It lacks more than an economic model. It lacks a reason for doing so at all. Goundwater in the ground doesn't help anyone.
- senectus1 5y ago
  >Goundwater in the ground doesn't help anyone. beg to differ. There are many examples of where ground water in the ground helps maintain the environment in ways that benefit everyone. You cant just take something as significant as an existing water table away and expect the ecology and geography of that environment to stay the same.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago

giantg2 5y ago

Probably going to get downvoted for this... We have too many people and nobody is willing to do things that dramatically reduce the quality of life that are necessary to sustainably support ourselves.

thehappypm 5y ago
I don’t think we quite have too many people in America. The USA could easily sustain a population the size of China. We’re not even close.
vondur 5y ago
In California? I’d agree with you. The state really hasn’t upgraded the infrastructure since the 70’s. We’ve probably tripled the population since then.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Not just there. The aquifers under the plains are also almost drained. A lot of that is not for those local people, but for food production for people nationally and internationally.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Take a look at Phoenix. Way more than tripled, and now uses less water for residential purposes that it did in the 1990s. Your assumptions that people living somewhere are the main users of water is way, way out of touch with the reality: the main user is agriculture. In my state, NM, residential use is 7%, commercial/retail/business is 7%, evaporation is 7% and agriculture is 77%.
m0llusk 5y ago
Perhaps true, but not closely related. The vast amount of water being used goes to agriculture and industry and not supporting the population.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Who do you think uses agricultural and industrial products? People

wintermutestwin 5y ago

Maybe if we stopped exporting agriculture from California to China, there would be plenty of water? https://hayandforage.com/article-3388-thank-china-for-record-alfalfa-hay-exports.html https://hayandforage.com/article-3388-thank-china-for-record... https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/04/03/agriculture-is-80-percent-of-water-use-in-california-why-arent-farmers-being-forced-to-cut-back/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/04/03/a... https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989 edit: I am puzzled as to why eliminating this one massive water use needs to be clarified. Exporting to China (or any other country) is purely a for profit endeavor that is using a large % of CA's water. Many farmers argue for the need to feed the US and I am not against that idea (in principle).

BurningFrog 5y ago
Lots of typical Californian "we should stop doing things!" in this sad thread...
_8j50 5y ago
Do you have another customer in mind or are you asking the exporters to deal with it?
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  > Do you have another customer in mind or are you asking the exporters to deal with it? I believe the gp is saying it shouldn't be exported _at all_ and hence there should be no customers (outside California anyway).
  - _8j50 5y ago
    I know but that is loss of business. Who will absorb that loss? Subsidize it and tax payers absorb it like much is done in farming? Or just let the farmers lose?
pengaru 5y ago
Why you would single out CA's exports to .cn is beyond me, it's more an issue of CA agriculture in general. CA feeds a lot more out of state mouths than just the Chinese.

jollybean 5y ago

Radically 'dumb' nuclear distillation that has Uranium pebbles just 'boil' water and then capture the condensation. Those pebbles could sit there for 50 years before reconstitution. It might even be designed so that left unmanned, it just kept working or wouldn't overheat i.e. using 'heavy water' like CANDU reactors. Designed not so much for efficiency but for simplicity, safety, longevity.

_carbyau_ 5y ago
Will it scale? This is a LOT of water in question.

lesgobrandon 5y ago

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. (that's probably a bit optimistic but even if it takes 10 flood events it's worth it) 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. North America has plenty of water and plenty of land suitable for growing food but they don't always line up. It is easier to move water than to move farmland with all of its associated supply chains and infrastructure. We can take small amounts of water from all over the wetter areas of the country during times of excess and transport it to drier areas to grow food and support manufacturing. I believe the net environmental impact would be positive. We could allow CA rivers and streams to flow as they used to, supporting wildlife and replenishing our beaches. It's a project that provides jobs, national and international food security, reduces flooding damage, and allows us to adapt to climate change. Sorry for posting some version of this comment in every water related thread but I think it is critical that we think big for the big problems facing us now and in the near future.

thehappypm 5y ago
No. Pumping water is one of the most ecologically horrific things to do. It’s running a power plant backwards. Rather than having a farm in New York State, let’s have a farm in New Mexico that requires pumping water up a mile and 1000 horizontal miles. Totally makes sense, right? Places like California completely eradicated farming in the East but it’s based on an ecological lie. When the water runs out we’ll see why it was a mistake.
KaiserPro 5y ago
> It's time for a national water grid I mean you have massive, massive mountains that preclude you from doing that fast or in an energy efficient way. Its far, far simpler and cheaper and effective to increase dwell time of rain water. What do I mean by this? Every year lots of money is spent in and around california to maintain storm drains and infra. They spend billions trying to get excess water from the hills to the sea in a faster way as possible. However this means that the water isn't soaking into the land, which means its not there in summer to evaporate and provide clouds, which rain and drive weather cycles. Basically its drought causing. By selectively blocking drainage systems, and forcing localised flooding (ie flood planes) not only do you get less damaging flash floods (the water takes a lot longer to get from a to b) a shit tonne more water drains into the soil. This means that more plants grow, which means less sun hitting the floor, which means lower temperatures, etc etc, etc Whats more its fucking cheap. > It is easier to move water than to move farmland with all of its associated supply chains and infrastructure. I mean that's patently not the case. If it was cheap to move water then we'd see loads of many thousand mile irrigation canals and pipes. We only really see it for high value crops. There was a plan to create a nationwide canal "backbone" for the UK (a canal can be used for moving water as well) But as it would cost ~10% of GDP to build it wasn't practical.

ineptech 5y ago

This (briefly, the article is about rerouting winter runoff to flood fields as a way of refilling the rapidly-depleting water table) seems really exciting, because it's a rare example of a coordination trap with a practical solution. The coordination trap is that farmers are using more groundwater than is sustainable: farmer A drills a 100' well, farmer B drills 120', and so on, until every dollar of profit in the farming business is spent entirely on wells and pumps. They could agree to stop at some point, but as long as most farmers cooperate, the few who don't will outcompete them. In fact, it's essentially the same problem seen in international corporate tax rates. Ireland lowered its corporate tax rate to entice multinats to repatriate there, which worked, and led to other countries adopting an even lower rate, in a "race to the bottom" scenario. The proposed solution[0] is basically a cartel: all countries agree to some non-zero minimum value that they won't go beneath, and to punish anyone who defects from the agreement. Unfortunately, that can't work for farmers; it's unrealistic to expect all farmers to come together and find an equitable way to share well-water and detect and punish cheaters. And for the government to enforce water usage would require a lot of heavy-handed regulation: checking farms to make sure they're metering correctly, calculating which crops deserve how much water, etc. Ugh. That's what makes this exciting: a government program to replenish the aquifer represents a way that the farmers could solve their problem and share the cost in a way that's (roughly) equitable and not very easy to cheat on, without micro-managing which farm gets how much water. 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/01/nations-agree-to-support-us-proposal-for-global-minimum-tax-on-corporations.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/01/nations-agree-to-support-us-...