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CA water use is 50% environment, 40% agriculture, 10% residential. Maybe we should focus on reducing that 50%? It was nice and all when we had plenty of water

CA water use is 50% environment, 40% agriculture, 10% residential. Maybe we should focus on reducing that 50%? It was nice and all when we had plenty of water to waste but it’s time to revisit those policies. https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

pjc50 5y ago
Which species and ecosystems are you proposing eliminating? ("environmental use" really means "leave it in the river"; reducing environmental use to zero means making rivers never reach the sea because you've extracted 100% of the water.)
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Which species are you claiming would go extinct and does your list cover 100% of those on the environmental list? Perhaps there's room somewhere between the two extremes?
  - blululu 5y ago
    Unclear if anything would go extinct but most of that water drains into Humboldt Bay. There are several robust salmon and trout fisheries which would almost certainly take a beating. These steams support river otters whose numbers have never really recovered from Russian and American fur trappers and those streams support an enormous number of migratory and local bird, fish and amphibian species. Unclear what might go extinct and what would merely take a beating but it is pretty clear from similar projects in the PNW that the ecological consequences would be significant. A visit to Humboldt might change your thoughts on the topic. It is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Not only does it boast the tallest trees on the planet but it is one of the few places in America that I would describe as wild and free. The scars of clear cutting from the 60s are still visible but the land is still alive in a way that it just isn’t in a lot of the State. Characterizing the issue as one between two extremes is a straw man. The rivers of Northern California are already heavily engineered. The current levels were established after the environmental consequences of that engineering was deemed unsuitable for the communities in the region. The Central Valley has effectively engineered its rivers out of existence and it is still not enough. It will never be enough. There is only one extreme in question here.
  - pnutjam 5y ago
    Hahaha.. Room between the 2 "extremes" of "use every drop of water in the river so it never makes it to the ocean" and "Let plants and animals have a little water". This is exactly what's wrong with discourse in America.
    - 8note 5y ago
      The compromise is what's already there today. The extreme would be to get rid of all human water use to allow the environment to recover
      - pnutjam 5y ago
        exactly my point. It's like the cartoon where one side says, "kill them" and one side says "don't kill us" and the guy in the middle is asking for a compromise.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Dams dramatically increase evaporation. Pull down the dams on the Colorado and other rivers and you’ll decrease that 50%. It’ll be good for fish, and species that depend on fish, too.
  - elmomle 5y ago
    Dams are the only thing making the southwest habitable at scale (regular water regardless of river flow).
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      There’s plenty of water for residential and even commercial use without dams. Dams are the only thing making the southwest farmable.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Floating solar farms on the reservoirs will radically reduce evaporation, besides providing power. The power generated can be used, in many cases, to pump water back up to the next higher reservoir.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      Too bad for the fish, eh?
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        They were not consulted about building the dams.
Spooky23 5y ago
So we should turn the Northern California wilderness into a desert as well? Maybe the people who want to secede have a point after all! That’s pretty monstrous.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Especially since the people who want to secede are identically the people most eager to drive all other species to extinction.
papito 5y ago
Farmers also grow rice in California, and alfalfa, which are two top water-hungry crops. It's so remarkable to which extent business and profits take precedence over the public good of tens of millions, in the United States. "We'll deal with it when it's a catastrophe - ka-ching!"
turtledove 5y ago
That link says that the environmental water use happens largely in areas that are not competing with agriculture. E.g. protecting rivers, streams, and wetlands in the redwoods. The answer to "we're being wasteful with water during a drought" is not "let's irreversibly destroy habitat and threaten species so we can continue to be wasteful."
DannyBee 5y ago
Yeah, your numbers are not different, just framed differently. If you scroll down, you'll see the "More than nine million acres of farmland in California are irrigated, representing roughly 80% of all water used for businesses and homes." number i cited. Not sure you can necessarily do a lot about the 50%, but maybe worth trying - my (ignorant) understanding is that a lot of it is in areas where it would not help. You can also see that urban water use has fallen like a rock already.. In the past 2 decades, per-capita use went from 230 gallons per day to 146 gallons per day - people have already cut their water use by 30%.
emptyfile 5y ago
Is this a joke comment? Or is this really what the average American thinks?
- turtledove 5y ago
- Spooky23 5y ago
  When somebody’s mortgage depends on ignorance, don’t go looking to them for wisdom.
- barneygale 5y ago
  Don't bother with HN comments for anything other than tech and startups, and even then you should be suspicious. It's full of privileged tech bros pushing shitty solutions to the wrong problems.
- SamBam 5y ago
  "Deforestation is terrible thing. 10% of the forests are being cut down each year. We should reduce that number." "Yeah, but what about the 90% of forests being kept for 'environmental purposes?' We should get the low-hanging fruit and reduce that number first!" "...what?"
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
the easiest way to do that is of course to plant shading plants at the edges of waterways.
- drewm1980 5y ago
  That is actually the traditional way to evaporate as much water as possible, not to save it. Trees have a lot of surface area.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    Not all the sunlight hitting a tree is converted into heat. Rainforests don't run out of water despite the presence of trees along their watercourses.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Even within the already small residential slice, regulations are weird. When my parents lived in the LA area, they had a large swimming pool and an irrigated lawn but were required to have ultra low flush toilets. The amount of water saved by those toilets (which often required multiple flushes to empty the bowl of waste) paled in comparison with the government approved swimming pool and sprinkler systems.
- amluto 5y ago
  A modern low flush toilet is excellent. They flush considerably better than the old 5 gpf toilets. I’ve seen plumbers advise replacing old 5 gpf toilets with 1.28 gpf toilets to reduce the frequency of clogs. For amusement, you can look up MAPS testing. People flush varying amounts of standardized pretend poop to make sure that toilets work well. (But yes, there was a generation of low flush toilets that were essentially 5 gpf toilets modified to use less water per flush. They worked poorly.) Also, a covered pool uses surprisingly little water.
  - seanp2k2 5y ago
    Good points about toilets, but look on sat maps and see how many people have covered vs uncovered pools.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Even within the already small residential slice, regulations are weird. When my parents lived in the LA area, they had a large swimming pool and an irrigated lawn but were required to have ultra low flush toilets. The amount of water saved by those toilets (which often required multiple flushes to empty the bowl of waste) paled in comparison with the government approved swimming pool and sprinkler systems. How so? Pretty much everyone there has a flush toilet that they use all the time, while I'd imagine pools are much rarer (and also not drained/filled with each use). Toilets also essential items that last decades, so it takes a long time to phase in any updates to their standards (especially compared to lawn-watering regulations). It wouldn't surprise me that going to low flush toilets would save more water (across the whole population, over the long run) than banning pools would.
scythe 5y ago
The reason that we have those numbers is because we have carefully accounted for practically all of the recoverable freshwater in California. The unintended long-term consequences of damming nearly all of the streams and rivers in the state should not be underestimated. Similar proposals have been raised before and shot down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power...
blululu 5y ago
This is less of a solution than people in Kern county would like to hope for. That environmental water use is almost entirely in Humboldt and the surrounding counties (Trinity, Del Norte, Mendocino). Those people will be just as unhappy about killing off the Trout and Salmon fisheries that have been there for 10000 years as people in Kern will be about ending the Cotton Harvest that has been going for the last 100 years. And this is to say nothing of the difficulties associated with capturing all of that water. It is a purely selfish policy that wants LA to pay for Fresno to get water from Trinity instead of Central Valley farms simply living within their means and cutting back on water usage (which will have to be done eventually).
colechristensen 5y ago
It is really odd to include a metric for “environmental” water “use” and would seem to be a strategy to confuse. As if a river is “using” water and reducing that would be a good thing. California is past its capacity for people and agriculture and both need to be reduced or supplemented with generated fresh water. There are plenty of other places with adequate resources.
Sharlin 5y ago
“We’re facing a looming environmental disaster. Why not try to fix it by causing another environmental disaster?”
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

pjc50 5y ago

Which species and ecosystems are you proposing eliminating? ("environmental use" really means "leave it in the river"; reducing environmental use to zero means making rivers never reach the sea because you've extracted 100% of the water.)

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Which species are you claiming would go extinct and does your list cover 100% of those on the environmental list? Perhaps there's room somewhere between the two extremes?
- blululu 5y ago
  Unclear if anything would go extinct but most of that water drains into Humboldt Bay. There are several robust salmon and trout fisheries which would almost certainly take a beating. These steams support river otters whose numbers have never really recovered from Russian and American fur trappers and those streams support an enormous number of migratory and local bird, fish and amphibian species. Unclear what might go extinct and what would merely take a beating but it is pretty clear from similar projects in the PNW that the ecological consequences would be significant. A visit to Humboldt might change your thoughts on the topic. It is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Not only does it boast the tallest trees on the planet but it is one of the few places in America that I would describe as wild and free. The scars of clear cutting from the 60s are still visible but the land is still alive in a way that it just isn’t in a lot of the State. Characterizing the issue as one between two extremes is a straw man. The rivers of Northern California are already heavily engineered. The current levels were established after the environmental consequences of that engineering was deemed unsuitable for the communities in the region. The Central Valley has effectively engineered its rivers out of existence and it is still not enough. It will never be enough. There is only one extreme in question here.
- pnutjam 5y ago
  Hahaha.. Room between the 2 "extremes" of "use every drop of water in the river so it never makes it to the ocean" and "Let plants and animals have a little water". This is exactly what's wrong with discourse in America.
  - 8note 5y ago
    The compromise is what's already there today. The extreme would be to get rid of all human water use to allow the environment to recover
    - pnutjam 5y ago
      exactly my point. It's like the cartoon where one side says, "kill them" and one side says "don't kill us" and the guy in the middle is asking for a compromise.
bradleyjg 5y ago
Dams dramatically increase evaporation. Pull down the dams on the Colorado and other rivers and you’ll decrease that 50%. It’ll be good for fish, and species that depend on fish, too.
- elmomle 5y ago
  Dams are the only thing making the southwest habitable at scale (regular water regardless of river flow).
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    There’s plenty of water for residential and even commercial use without dams. Dams are the only thing making the southwest farmable.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Floating solar farms on the reservoirs will radically reduce evaporation, besides providing power. The power generated can be used, in many cases, to pump water back up to the next higher reservoir.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    Too bad for the fish, eh?
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      They were not consulted about building the dams.

Spooky23 5y ago

So we should turn the Northern California wilderness into a desert as well? Maybe the people who want to secede have a point after all! That’s pretty monstrous.

ncmncm 5y ago
Especially since the people who want to secede are identically the people most eager to drive all other species to extinction.

papito 5y ago

Farmers also grow rice in California, and alfalfa, which are two top water-hungry crops. It's so remarkable to which extent business and profits take precedence over the public good of tens of millions, in the United States. "We'll deal with it when it's a catastrophe - ka-ching!"

turtledove 5y ago

That link says that the environmental water use happens largely in areas that are not competing with agriculture. E.g. protecting rivers, streams, and wetlands in the redwoods. The answer to "we're being wasteful with water during a drought" is not "let's irreversibly destroy habitat and threaten species so we can continue to be wasteful."

DannyBee 5y ago

Yeah, your numbers are not different, just framed differently. If you scroll down, you'll see the "More than nine million acres of farmland in California are irrigated, representing roughly 80% of all water used for businesses and homes." number i cited. Not sure you can necessarily do a lot about the 50%, but maybe worth trying - my (ignorant) understanding is that a lot of it is in areas where it would not help. You can also see that urban water use has fallen like a rock already.. In the past 2 decades, per-capita use went from 230 gallons per day to 146 gallons per day - people have already cut their water use by 30%.

emptyfile 5y ago

Is this a joke comment? Or is this really what the average American thinks?

turtledove 5y ago
Spooky23 5y ago
When somebody’s mortgage depends on ignorance, don’t go looking to them for wisdom.
barneygale 5y ago
Don't bother with HN comments for anything other than tech and startups, and even then you should be suspicious. It's full of privileged tech bros pushing shitty solutions to the wrong problems.
SamBam 5y ago
"Deforestation is terrible thing. 10% of the forests are being cut down each year. We should reduce that number." "Yeah, but what about the 90% of forests being kept for 'environmental purposes?' We should get the low-hanging fruit and reduce that number first!" "...what?"

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

the easiest way to do that is of course to plant shading plants at the edges of waterways.

drewm1980 5y ago
That is actually the traditional way to evaporate as much water as possible, not to save it. Trees have a lot of surface area.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  Not all the sunlight hitting a tree is converted into heat. Rainforests don't run out of water despite the presence of trees along their watercourses.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

Even within the already small residential slice, regulations are weird. When my parents lived in the LA area, they had a large swimming pool and an irrigated lawn but were required to have ultra low flush toilets. The amount of water saved by those toilets (which often required multiple flushes to empty the bowl of waste) paled in comparison with the government approved swimming pool and sprinkler systems.

amluto 5y ago
A modern low flush toilet is excellent. They flush considerably better than the old 5 gpf toilets. I’ve seen plumbers advise replacing old 5 gpf toilets with 1.28 gpf toilets to reduce the frequency of clogs. For amusement, you can look up MAPS testing. People flush varying amounts of standardized pretend poop to make sure that toilets work well. (But yes, there was a generation of low flush toilets that were essentially 5 gpf toilets modified to use less water per flush. They worked poorly.) Also, a covered pool uses surprisingly little water.
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  Good points about toilets, but look on sat maps and see how many people have covered vs uncovered pools.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Even within the already small residential slice, regulations are weird. When my parents lived in the LA area, they had a large swimming pool and an irrigated lawn but were required to have ultra low flush toilets. The amount of water saved by those toilets (which often required multiple flushes to empty the bowl of waste) paled in comparison with the government approved swimming pool and sprinkler systems. How so? Pretty much everyone there has a flush toilet that they use all the time, while I'd imagine pools are much rarer (and also not drained/filled with each use). Toilets also essential items that last decades, so it takes a long time to phase in any updates to their standards (especially compared to lawn-watering regulations). It wouldn't surprise me that going to low flush toilets would save more water (across the whole population, over the long run) than banning pools would.

scythe 5y ago

The reason that we have those numbers is because we have carefully accounted for practically all of the recoverable freshwater in California. The unintended long-term consequences of damming nearly all of the streams and rivers in the state should not be underestimated. Similar proposals have been raised before and shot down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power...

blululu 5y ago

This is less of a solution than people in Kern county would like to hope for. That environmental water use is almost entirely in Humboldt and the surrounding counties (Trinity, Del Norte, Mendocino). Those people will be just as unhappy about killing off the Trout and Salmon fisheries that have been there for 10000 years as people in Kern will be about ending the Cotton Harvest that has been going for the last 100 years. And this is to say nothing of the difficulties associated with capturing all of that water. It is a purely selfish policy that wants LA to pay for Fresno to get water from Trinity instead of Central Valley farms simply living within their means and cutting back on water usage (which will have to be done eventually).

colechristensen 5y ago

It is really odd to include a metric for “environmental” water “use” and would seem to be a strategy to confuse. As if a river is “using” water and reducing that would be a good thing. California is past its capacity for people and agriculture and both need to be reduced or supplemented with generated fresh water. There are plenty of other places with adequate resources.

Sharlin 5y ago

“We’re facing a looming environmental disaster. Why not try to fix it by causing another environmental disaster?”

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]