6 ms·

It drives me absolutely bonkers when I see someone complain about some new apartments "because water". I live in a city in the west where there's a pretty sever

by davidw 3y ago

It drives me absolutely bonkers when I see someone complain about some new apartments "because water". I live in a city in the west where there's a pretty severe housing shortage, and water is also a concern. But when you dig into the water issue... it's all agriculture, and even there they have so much leeway to eliminate waste. I saw an exhibit at the airport of a "pipe" they dug up less than 5 years ago that was made of wood squeezed together with bailing wire. The "Total Water Use" chart here is pretty similar throughout much of the West: https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/update/2021/5/5/drought-and-the-deschutes-looking-at-the-same-river-twice https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/update/2021/5/5/droug... And denser housing tends to use water more efficiently. Edit: dug up a picture of that pipe I took. https://photos.app.goo.gl/PisNhiA81Rsw45Rx8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/PisNhiA81Rsw45Rx8

ajmurmann 3y ago
It's frustrating that there is no political way to prices water at real cost rather than use archaic water rights. I can't even see a reform to water rights major conflicts in those communities given the very real impact on people's lives and the common "don't tread on me"-attitude.
- davidw 3y ago
  Yes, it's pretty bad. Around Bend, where I live, there isn't a ton of 'serious' agriculture. Lots of hobby farms and some alfalfa operations, but the climate isn't really conducive to growing a lot. We're just a bit too high up to reliably grow many things commercially. Further down the Deschutes river, in Jefferson county, there are a lot of real farms that produce much more important crops ("Approximately 55% of the US domestic market carrot variety seed production is grown in Jefferson County"). Guess who has more water rights?
  - s0rce 3y ago
    I like the carrot honey from the carrot seed producers. Pretty unique to eastern Oregon as most places have cross-pollination with varieties to grow carrots for seed and the places that grow carrots for carrots don't get flowers so they don't produce honey.
  - kolanos 3y ago
    > ... but the climate isn't really conducive to growing a lot. We're just a bit too high up to reliably grow many things commercially. Didn't you answer your own question here?
    - tcmart14 3y ago
      Our water in Central Oregon does help to grow things though. One of our biggest water sources is snow melt, which get transported down a canal to farms in southern Oregon. So even though water locally may be used for any serious farming locally, it does get used for serious farming water down stream.
      - davidw 3y ago
        The canals go around central Oregon, but not to southern Oregon. Cool to see someone else from Bend here though!
  - tcmart14 3y ago
    Here in Bend also! There is also a lot of water that gets used up out on the East side of Bend on Old Deschutes Highway for ya, pretty much hobby farms for Horses.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  It's because it would effectively kill farming in a lot of these places because the only reason it makes sense there is because land and water was cheap and the water prices haven't updated to match the ever increasing usage.
  - jibe 3y ago
    Don’t ignore what’s downstream from farming - food. Cheap water is subsidizing cheap food.
    - 0xB31B1B 3y ago
      No, it’s not. The surplus created by cheap water is captured by the hedge funds buying up artificially cheap water rights then selling foods at market rates for a large profit. Growing alfalfa in California for cows in China or Saudi Arabia does not impact the price of California beef in a measurable way.
      - kolanos 3y ago
        Yes, it is. Have you quantified this claim? Do you know how little alfalfa is exported? > Based on USDA data for 2022, only 4% of all U.S. dry hay produced and 6.5% of all harvested alfalfa hay entered the export market. So 96% of all hay and 93.5% of alfalfa is used domestically. [0]: https://hayandforage.com/article-4300-hay-exports-in-2022-offered-mixed-news.html https://hayandforage.com/article-4300-hay-exports-in-2022-of...
        cjbgkagh 3y ago
        Price is set at the margins
        pdonis 3y ago
        Evidently this must vary a lot by state, since the article under discussion says that 70% of California grown alfalfa is exported to Japan and China.
        3y ago
- Vvector 3y ago
  Any solution is going to be very painful to a large section of the area. It's going to get a lot worse before there is any chance of a resolution.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  There's a simple political way that's been successful several times. The political decision is made to buy the water light rates and then the state owns it.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Why is that the only solution here? If the problem is exactly one crop (or hell, even 2 or 3), can't we just stack a gigantic export tax on it? It wouldn't even have to affect domestic use.
- ajhurliman 3y ago
  Levying a tax on international consumers might be an easier fix than completely rewriting water rights legislation. Also: our usernames are oddly similar!
- seanp2k2 3y ago
  Their great grandpappy, who immigrated from Eastern Europe, stole that land from the Native Americans fair and square!
- scoofy 3y ago
  Be careful what you wish for. The existence of places like Los Angeles, itself, effectively exist because of these same water rights. Why do you think LA is allowed to just pump an entire major river all the way from near Mammoth Lakes to the coast? Out of the goodness of the folks on the Owen's River's hearts? Fuck no. Los Angeles lied, cheated, and stole to get those water rights, and if you think Los Angeles isn't going to have to pay through the nose if we reset water rights, you're sorely mistaken. You look at the history of water in the American West, and you'll see that everyone has done everything wrong since the 1920's, when water rights were designed to prevent migration west. Then you'll understand why this mess is much, much bigger than we can imagine.
  - joshjob42 3y ago
    I'm sorry but the 10M people of Los Angeles County with 3.5% of the GDP of the United States which if a country would put it between Poland and Switzerland would, on an open market for water, absolutely crush the ~100x fewer people who live around Mammoth Lakes, Owen's River, etc. We import ~800k (in 2018 it as ~750k, latest number I found) acre-feet of water a year to LA County via MWD, or 0.08 per person per year, or ~100m^3 per person. That's used to generate ~$72k of economic activity. Alfalfa for instance uses ~0.4acre-feet per ton. Alfalfa prices haven't ever been higher than $300/ton. That means that if water cost more than $750/acre-foot, they'd be out of business on water cost alone. At that price, the average Angeleno would have to pay a shockingly high... $5/mo for all their water. Oh wait, no, that's less than 0.1% of GDP per capita in Los Angeles County. The fact is urban dwellers don't use much water, and are enormously economically productive, much moreso than rural areas, and so in any kind of open market for water, the urbanites will win handily every time. The city will get it's water, no matter what, and the fairly economically unproductive areas will have to adapt. It's only through political interventions like silly "water rights" designed for the benefit of farmers that a city has to resort to more expensive sources. https://ourcountyla.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Our-County-Water-Briefing_For-Web.pdf https://ourcountyla.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/... https://archive.is/7BNdF https://archive.is/7BNdF https://hayandforage.com/article-4472-Another-drop-for-hay-prices-in-June.html https://hayandforage.com/article-4472-Another-drop-for-hay-p...
kedikedi 3y ago
That wooden pipe looks very cool actually :) Do you know when did they make it/installed it? And how did they joined them, more wood?
- davidw 3y ago
  I don't know anything more about it. My guess is that it's pretty old. The book pictured next to it says 1914, and that broad time frame feels about right.
  - Flow 3y ago
    What's the metal on it? Lead?
- bombcar 3y ago
  Search "wooden water pipes" and "wooden sewer pipes" and you can find a lot of them.
innagadadavida 3y ago
The other issue is that California is taking away jobs of farm workers south of the border and uprooting their lives and causing the influx of migrants to exacerbate. Farm owners here are wealthy and have the politicians in their pockets and it will be very difficult to change the status quo.
offsign 3y ago
Water infrastructure in the west is highly fragmented and locally rate limited -- you can't just reroute water from large swaths of the state like you can with electricity. Additionally, the water consumed by agriculture is often different than the 'treated water' needed to serve residential communities. So yes, water is major a bottleneck for residential development out west. But to solve this you need new means of transport (pipes / channels), storage (reservoirs), and treatment (plans)... infrastructure that doesn't currently exist, is hard to get approved, and would likely need to be paid for by increasing the cost of living for existing residents. Agree that we should be smarter about how water is allocated / used out West, but 'taking from ag' isn't going to make it any cheaper for you to buy a home.
RoddaWallPro 3y ago
As someone who also lives in Central Oregon (and was born and raised here), I will say this: this article is profoundly misleading. They state that the Upper Deschutes CFS goes from ~1200->~65, and state that is from irrigation. But they don't actually prove that. Much of that CFS decline could be observed out of irrigation season, because that section of the Deschutes dumps a ton of water into lava tubes/back into the ground. You'd have to measure the CFS at the end of that section prior to irrigation getting turned on, then after, and then the difference is what is going to irrigation. And CO Land Watch doesn't do that. Hell, they don't even state where their data is coming from. You can get a better idea of this drop by instead looking at official US govt data where the Deschutes drops into Lake Billy Chinook: https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv/?cb_00060=on&format=gif_default&site_no=14076500&legacy=1&period=&begin_date=2021-01-01&end_date=2021-12-31 https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv/?cb_00060=on&for... That is for the year 2021, when that article was written. You can see the drop in April, which is when irrigation starts. It's about 500CFS,or ~half the river at that point. That is NOT 95% of the river, as CO Land Watch would have you believe. (Side note: CO Land Watch has a bit of a reputation around here. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems like they would gladly end all farming in Central Oregon to save a few salmon.)
- davidw 3y ago
  The chart I care about is the 'city vs everything else' one, TBH, and that one is broadly accurate. There's a lot of room to provide more water for both fish and farmers by 1. eliminating waste and 2. fixing some of the weird water rights stuff where people are really just wasting it.

by davidw 3y ago

ajmurmann 3y ago

It's frustrating that there is no political way to prices water at real cost rather than use archaic water rights. I can't even see a reform to water rights major conflicts in those communities given the very real impact on people's lives and the common "don't tread on me"-attitude.

davidw 3y ago
Yes, it's pretty bad. Around Bend, where I live, there isn't a ton of 'serious' agriculture. Lots of hobby farms and some alfalfa operations, but the climate isn't really conducive to growing a lot. We're just a bit too high up to reliably grow many things commercially. Further down the Deschutes river, in Jefferson county, there are a lot of real farms that produce much more important crops ("Approximately 55% of the US domestic market carrot variety seed production is grown in Jefferson County"). Guess who has more water rights?
- s0rce 3y ago
  I like the carrot honey from the carrot seed producers. Pretty unique to eastern Oregon as most places have cross-pollination with varieties to grow carrots for seed and the places that grow carrots for carrots don't get flowers so they don't produce honey.
- kolanos 3y ago
  > ... but the climate isn't really conducive to growing a lot. We're just a bit too high up to reliably grow many things commercially. Didn't you answer your own question here?
  - tcmart14 3y ago
    Our water in Central Oregon does help to grow things though. One of our biggest water sources is snow melt, which get transported down a canal to farms in southern Oregon. So even though water locally may be used for any serious farming locally, it does get used for serious farming water down stream.
    - davidw 3y ago
      The canals go around central Oregon, but not to southern Oregon. Cool to see someone else from Bend here though!
- tcmart14 3y ago
  Here in Bend also! There is also a lot of water that gets used up out on the East side of Bend on Old Deschutes Highway for ya, pretty much hobby farms for Horses.
rtkwe 3y ago
It's because it would effectively kill farming in a lot of these places because the only reason it makes sense there is because land and water was cheap and the water prices haven't updated to match the ever increasing usage.
- jibe 3y ago
  Don’t ignore what’s downstream from farming - food. Cheap water is subsidizing cheap food.
  - 0xB31B1B 3y ago
    No, it’s not. The surplus created by cheap water is captured by the hedge funds buying up artificially cheap water rights then selling foods at market rates for a large profit. Growing alfalfa in California for cows in China or Saudi Arabia does not impact the price of California beef in a measurable way.
    - kolanos 3y ago
      Yes, it is. Have you quantified this claim? Do you know how little alfalfa is exported? > Based on USDA data for 2022, only 4% of all U.S. dry hay produced and 6.5% of all harvested alfalfa hay entered the export market. So 96% of all hay and 93.5% of alfalfa is used domestically. [0]: https://hayandforage.com/article-4300-hay-exports-in-2022-offered-mixed-news.html https://hayandforage.com/article-4300-hay-exports-in-2022-of...
      - cjbgkagh 3y ago
        Price is set at the margins
      - pdonis 3y ago
        Evidently this must vary a lot by state, since the article under discussion says that 70% of California grown alfalfa is exported to Japan and China.
      - 3y ago
Vvector 3y ago
Any solution is going to be very painful to a large section of the area. It's going to get a lot worse before there is any chance of a resolution.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
There's a simple political way that's been successful several times. The political decision is made to buy the water light rates and then the state owns it.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Why is that the only solution here? If the problem is exactly one crop (or hell, even 2 or 3), can't we just stack a gigantic export tax on it? It wouldn't even have to affect domestic use.
ajhurliman 3y ago
Levying a tax on international consumers might be an easier fix than completely rewriting water rights legislation. Also: our usernames are oddly similar!
seanp2k2 3y ago
Their great grandpappy, who immigrated from Eastern Europe, stole that land from the Native Americans fair and square!
scoofy 3y ago
Be careful what you wish for. The existence of places like Los Angeles, itself, effectively exist because of these same water rights. Why do you think LA is allowed to just pump an entire major river all the way from near Mammoth Lakes to the coast? Out of the goodness of the folks on the Owen's River's hearts? Fuck no. Los Angeles lied, cheated, and stole to get those water rights, and if you think Los Angeles isn't going to have to pay through the nose if we reset water rights, you're sorely mistaken. You look at the history of water in the American West, and you'll see that everyone has done everything wrong since the 1920's, when water rights were designed to prevent migration west. Then you'll understand why this mess is much, much bigger than we can imagine.
- joshjob42 3y ago
  I'm sorry but the 10M people of Los Angeles County with 3.5% of the GDP of the United States which if a country would put it between Poland and Switzerland would, on an open market for water, absolutely crush the ~100x fewer people who live around Mammoth Lakes, Owen's River, etc. We import ~800k (in 2018 it as ~750k, latest number I found) acre-feet of water a year to LA County via MWD, or 0.08 per person per year, or ~100m^3 per person. That's used to generate ~$72k of economic activity. Alfalfa for instance uses ~0.4acre-feet per ton. Alfalfa prices haven't ever been higher than $300/ton. That means that if water cost more than $750/acre-foot, they'd be out of business on water cost alone. At that price, the average Angeleno would have to pay a shockingly high... $5/mo for all their water. Oh wait, no, that's less than 0.1% of GDP per capita in Los Angeles County. The fact is urban dwellers don't use much water, and are enormously economically productive, much moreso than rural areas, and so in any kind of open market for water, the urbanites will win handily every time. The city will get it's water, no matter what, and the fairly economically unproductive areas will have to adapt. It's only through political interventions like silly "water rights" designed for the benefit of farmers that a city has to resort to more expensive sources. https://ourcountyla.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Our-County-Water-Briefing_For-Web.pdf https://ourcountyla.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/... https://archive.is/7BNdF https://archive.is/7BNdF https://hayandforage.com/article-4472-Another-drop-for-hay-prices-in-June.html https://hayandforage.com/article-4472-Another-drop-for-hay-p...

kedikedi 3y ago

That wooden pipe looks very cool actually :) Do you know when did they make it/installed it? And how did they joined them, more wood?

davidw 3y ago
I don't know anything more about it. My guess is that it's pretty old. The book pictured next to it says 1914, and that broad time frame feels about right.
- Flow 3y ago
  What's the metal on it? Lead?
bombcar 3y ago
Search "wooden water pipes" and "wooden sewer pipes" and you can find a lot of them.

innagadadavida 3y ago

The other issue is that California is taking away jobs of farm workers south of the border and uprooting their lives and causing the influx of migrants to exacerbate. Farm owners here are wealthy and have the politicians in their pockets and it will be very difficult to change the status quo.

offsign 3y ago

Water infrastructure in the west is highly fragmented and locally rate limited -- you can't just reroute water from large swaths of the state like you can with electricity. Additionally, the water consumed by agriculture is often different than the 'treated water' needed to serve residential communities. So yes, water is major a bottleneck for residential development out west. But to solve this you need new means of transport (pipes / channels), storage (reservoirs), and treatment (plans)... infrastructure that doesn't currently exist, is hard to get approved, and would likely need to be paid for by increasing the cost of living for existing residents. Agree that we should be smarter about how water is allocated / used out West, but 'taking from ag' isn't going to make it any cheaper for you to buy a home.

RoddaWallPro 3y ago

As someone who also lives in Central Oregon (and was born and raised here), I will say this: this article is profoundly misleading. They state that the Upper Deschutes CFS goes from ~1200->~65, and state that is from irrigation. But they don't actually prove that. Much of that CFS decline could be observed out of irrigation season, because that section of the Deschutes dumps a ton of water into lava tubes/back into the ground. You'd have to measure the CFS at the end of that section prior to irrigation getting turned on, then after, and then the difference is what is going to irrigation. And CO Land Watch doesn't do that. Hell, they don't even state where their data is coming from. You can get a better idea of this drop by instead looking at official US govt data where the Deschutes drops into Lake Billy Chinook: https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv/?cb_00060=on&format=gif_default&site_no=14076500&legacy=1&period=&begin_date=2021-01-01&end_date=2021-12-31 https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv/?cb_00060=on&for... That is for the year 2021, when that article was written. You can see the drop in April, which is when irrigation starts. It's about 500CFS,or ~half the river at that point. That is NOT 95% of the river, as CO Land Watch would have you believe. (Side note: CO Land Watch has a bit of a reputation around here. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems like they would gladly end all farming in Central Oregon to save a few salmon.)

davidw 3y ago
The chart I care about is the 'city vs everything else' one, TBH, and that one is broadly accurate. There's a lot of room to provide more water for both fish and farmers by 1. eliminating waste and 2. fixing some of the weird water rights stuff where people are really just wasting it.