8 ms·

I don't think they have ever added one of these useless restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing. They blame the lawn, and you have people peac

I don't think they have ever added one of these useless restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing. They blame the lawn, and you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points. I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. Meanwhile even if no grass was ever watered and no pool was ever filled it would amount to absolutely nothing since those things are measured in billions but the water used by farms is measured in trillions.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
"... you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points". Nicely done!
notyourwork 4y ago
That last sentence blew my mind.
mistersquid 4y ago
> I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. I understand these figures may not mean anything because private individuals consume relatively imperceptible amounts of water compared to (the agriculture) industry. But reflect for a moment that Kim Kardashian blew through over one quarter million gallons of water in June. [0] (There are other offending celebrities listed in that article. Kardashian is the most egregious of them.) I’m all for restricting and regulating agricultural waste of water. But surely some attention should be given to flagrant offenders among individual citizens. [0] https://www.npr.org/2022/08/24/1119112184/kim-kardashian-kevin-hart-dwyane-wade-water-usage-violation https://www.npr.org/2022/08/24/1119112184/kim-kardashian-kev...
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  No. There’s an extremely simple way to solve this problem that would work; Everyone pays the same price for water. If the government is not going to do that then blame the government.
  - bigiain 4y ago
    Are you suggesting the same dollars per gallon? Because I callus also see a reasonable argument to charge for water in percentage or person that per gallon. As the article mentions, some people are perfectly happy to pay more money. Which’d be fine if there was a guaranteed supply with enough for everyone. But that’s not how the water supply in CA is today. Poor people should not die of dehydration just because rich people want lawns and pools.
    - jtbayly 4y ago
      But, as has been pointed out many times in this thread already, it’s not because of pools and lawns.
    - Panzer04 4y ago
      It should be simple enough to have a baseline allocation, along with an increased price after that's used up. It's also worth noting that water probably doesn't need to be very expensive before usage starts getting curbed quite heavily by the main consumers. If there's no price, might as well use as much as you're allocated - there is no direct consequence for doing so.
    - vilhelm_s 4y ago
      The prices should not go up a lot, because if they did, farming would become unprofitable. E.g., tomato farming produces around $4000 worth of produce per acre and year[0], and requires 2.5 feet applied water. ($4000/acre)/(2.5 feet) = 0.5 cents/gallon. If the water got that expensive they'd need to stop growing tomatoes, since just the water would already cost more than the produce would be worth. By contrast, residential water is 0.7 cents per gallon[1], so the prices involved are really tiny compared to what human users are already paying. [0] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=california https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverv... [1] https://www.calwater.com/docs/rates/rates_tariffs/ela/20220101-Residential_Metered_Service_ELA.pdf https://www.calwater.com/docs/rates/rates_tariffs/ela/202201...
- alexnewman 4y ago
  If everyone, farmers, industry and people all paid the same per gallon as Kim kardashian water use would be cut in half
- alexnewman 4y ago
  Flagrant offenders?
- jtbayly 4y ago
  You’re begging the question. They are only offenders at all because the law against residential use has been passed. The claim is that it’s a useless law, and your response is to say that people should be punished under the law.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  For context vs the quarter million figure for a month for a celebrity: yesterday it rained about 20 million gallons of water on my family’s small Iowa farm. Like a middle class income size of farm.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Or, to put it a different way she used as much water as 4 acres of farmland in California (averaged over all crops, only 3 acres if its growing almonds).
bcrosby95 4y ago
We have a brown lawn because our water district was given a budget based upon population, and they decided to enforce it by restricting outdoor use.
- Eric_WVGG 4y ago
  You have a brown lawn because you haven’t embraced xeriscaping.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Siddarth1977 4y ago
Agricultural use of water is actually productive though. Most of us prefer having food to starving. Having a lush, green front lawn in the desert however helps no one (and actively harms the natural plants and animals that belong in a given climate). Additionally, while some water issues are over very large areas (eg, piping water from Colorado River to LA) lots of places have far more local water issues, where a given aquifer or reservoir provides water to a single city (but no agricultural users) and lawn watering really is a major drain on that local resource. That said, yes, the situation in California is a mess in large part because people are growing ridiculously water-intensive crops in the desert because someone in the 1800s acquired senior water rights which our government granted in perpetuity.
- samatman 4y ago
  If you ever drive through the part of the Imperial Valley which is just artichokes, you'll viscerally get the point I'm about to make: you shouldn't be deciding whether square miles of artichokes are a more productive use of water than someone's lawn. No one is starving without artichokes, lawns make people happy. We solve this kind of problem with markets, or in California's case, we flagrantly ignore the solution and start fucking with people's supply.
  - gsk22 4y ago
    Markets solve problems efficiently, but not equitably. In the case of water, an equitable solution is a moral prerogative, no?
    - nradov 4y ago
      Everyone has a different option about equity when it comes to distribution of natural resources. It's highly subjective.
      - gsk22 4y ago
        For other natural resources, sure. But without water humans _die_. That's not subjective.
killyourcar 4y ago
The largest agricultural crop in the US by acre is lawn. It's not just the lawns, it's the sod fields, it's the grass seed fields, it's all the support those things need. Lawns are incredibly wasteful, much much moreso than pools or other uses. Yes, urban water use is small compared to agricultural use, but lawns in the desert really are inexcusable.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

"... you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points". Nicely done!

notyourwork 4y ago

That last sentence blew my mind.

mistersquid 4y ago

> I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. I understand these figures may not mean anything because private individuals consume relatively imperceptible amounts of water compared to (the agriculture) industry. But reflect for a moment that Kim Kardashian blew through over one quarter million gallons of water in June. [0] (There are other offending celebrities listed in that article. Kardashian is the most egregious of them.) I’m all for restricting and regulating agricultural waste of water. But surely some attention should be given to flagrant offenders among individual citizens. [0] https://www.npr.org/2022/08/24/1119112184/kim-kardashian-kevin-hart-dwyane-wade-water-usage-violation https://www.npr.org/2022/08/24/1119112184/kim-kardashian-kev...

barry-cotter 4y ago
No. There’s an extremely simple way to solve this problem that would work; Everyone pays the same price for water. If the government is not going to do that then blame the government.
- bigiain 4y ago
  Are you suggesting the same dollars per gallon? Because I callus also see a reasonable argument to charge for water in percentage or person that per gallon. As the article mentions, some people are perfectly happy to pay more money. Which’d be fine if there was a guaranteed supply with enough for everyone. But that’s not how the water supply in CA is today. Poor people should not die of dehydration just because rich people want lawns and pools.
  - jtbayly 4y ago
    But, as has been pointed out many times in this thread already, it’s not because of pools and lawns.
  - Panzer04 4y ago
    It should be simple enough to have a baseline allocation, along with an increased price after that's used up. It's also worth noting that water probably doesn't need to be very expensive before usage starts getting curbed quite heavily by the main consumers. If there's no price, might as well use as much as you're allocated - there is no direct consequence for doing so.
  - vilhelm_s 4y ago
    The prices should not go up a lot, because if they did, farming would become unprofitable. E.g., tomato farming produces around $4000 worth of produce per acre and year[0], and requires 2.5 feet applied water. ($4000/acre)/(2.5 feet) = 0.5 cents/gallon. If the water got that expensive they'd need to stop growing tomatoes, since just the water would already cost more than the produce would be worth. By contrast, residential water is 0.7 cents per gallon[1], so the prices involved are really tiny compared to what human users are already paying. [0] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=california https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverv... [1] https://www.calwater.com/docs/rates/rates_tariffs/ela/20220101-Residential_Metered_Service_ELA.pdf https://www.calwater.com/docs/rates/rates_tariffs/ela/202201...
alexnewman 4y ago
If everyone, farmers, industry and people all paid the same per gallon as Kim kardashian water use would be cut in half
alexnewman 4y ago
Flagrant offenders?
jtbayly 4y ago
You’re begging the question. They are only offenders at all because the law against residential use has been passed. The claim is that it’s a useless law, and your response is to say that people should be punished under the law.
colechristensen 4y ago
For context vs the quarter million figure for a month for a celebrity: yesterday it rained about 20 million gallons of water on my family’s small Iowa farm. Like a middle class income size of farm.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Or, to put it a different way she used as much water as 4 acres of farmland in California (averaged over all crops, only 3 acres if its growing almonds).

bcrosby95 4y ago

We have a brown lawn because our water district was given a budget based upon population, and they decided to enforce it by restricting outdoor use.

Eric_WVGG 4y ago
You have a brown lawn because you haven’t embraced xeriscaping.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Siddarth1977 4y ago

Agricultural use of water is actually productive though. Most of us prefer having food to starving. Having a lush, green front lawn in the desert however helps no one (and actively harms the natural plants and animals that belong in a given climate). Additionally, while some water issues are over very large areas (eg, piping water from Colorado River to LA) lots of places have far more local water issues, where a given aquifer or reservoir provides water to a single city (but no agricultural users) and lawn watering really is a major drain on that local resource. That said, yes, the situation in California is a mess in large part because people are growing ridiculously water-intensive crops in the desert because someone in the 1800s acquired senior water rights which our government granted in perpetuity.

samatman 4y ago
If you ever drive through the part of the Imperial Valley which is just artichokes, you'll viscerally get the point I'm about to make: you shouldn't be deciding whether square miles of artichokes are a more productive use of water than someone's lawn. No one is starving without artichokes, lawns make people happy. We solve this kind of problem with markets, or in California's case, we flagrantly ignore the solution and start fucking with people's supply.
- gsk22 4y ago
  Markets solve problems efficiently, but not equitably. In the case of water, an equitable solution is a moral prerogative, no?
  - nradov 4y ago
    Everyone has a different option about equity when it comes to distribution of natural resources. It's highly subjective.
    - gsk22 4y ago
      For other natural resources, sure. But without water humans _die_. That's not subjective.

killyourcar 4y ago

The largest agricultural crop in the US by acre is lawn. It's not just the lawns, it's the sod fields, it's the grass seed fields, it's all the support those things need. Lawns are incredibly wasteful, much much moreso than pools or other uses. Yes, urban water use is small compared to agricultural use, but lawns in the desert really are inexcusable.