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That's not really the whole story though, because water supplies are not a centrally stored resource shared amongst all consumers. It's a fairly distributed sys
by ehnto 5y ago
That's not really the whole story though, because water supplies are not a centrally stored resource shared amongst all consumers. It's a fairly distributed system with lots of different reserves feeding different consumers.
For example, small towns may pull their drinking water from a dam or other reserve that is of limited supply, where the agriculture in the area is not affecting the same water, being pulled from rivers or bores or a separate reserve.
That is to say, drought measures should really be applied town by town.
- wbl 5y agoNot true in California due to the state water project. Water is captured in NorCal and shipped to SoCal for agriculture. Central Valley farmers directly reduce the water for SV suburbs. The only river they haven't tapped is the Klamath.
- jjav 5y ago> Not true in California due to the state water project. Very much true in California, your info is incorrect. There is no central water source. There are tons of independent unrelated water systems. Source: My small town in California has its own and every nearby small town have their own. Every one struggles with drought conditions but each one is different. Some feed off mountain runoff and rivers, some are from groundwater only, some are threathened by seawater incursion some are not, and so on. In some of these drought years some of them have nearly run out of water completely, others have more spare capacity.
- ac29 5y agoThey're not all interconnected though. For example, where I live most water comes from Hetch Hetchy, which is not connected to the central CA agricultural water delivery projects.
- areyousure 5y agoIn case anyone is curious, the Tuolumne "river was dammed at Don Pedro and Hetch Hetchy to provide water for Central Valley farmers and the city of San Francisco, respectively". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuolumne_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuolumne_River It appears that one ~half of the Tuolumne is diverted for Central Valley agriculture and one ~sixth is diverted to San Francisco. To be explicit, water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir/valley flows to central California agriculture by not being diverted to San Francisco (via the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct), instead continuing to flow as the Tuolumne river until being dammed by the New Don Pedro Dam, then eventually released by that dam until again hitting the La Grange Dam, from there possibly being diverted into the Turlock Irrigation District main canal.