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I live in the salt lake valley and it’s infuriating how much of a disconnect between public perception and reality there is about water usage. People are all st
by broof 3y ago
I live in the salt lake valley and it’s infuriating how much of a disconnect between public perception and reality there is about water usage. People are all stressed out about not watering their lawns and ripping out grass, when in reality the alfalfa farmers use the vast majority of our water. Because of water rights they get it cheap so we’re subsidizing beef production with our dwindling water supply so we can grow alfalfa in the desert.
- solardev 3y ago(Edit: This may not be correct! Please see comment chain below with jeffbee) California too. While they were making it illegal for restaurants to hand out drinking water without asking, big ag carried on. It's so silly it can't be a real conservation concern, probably was just some divide and conquer from the industry.
- jeffbee 3y agoBig Ag and Big Restaurant do not share the same water supply. In 2014, when the temporary emergency conservation measure that you mentioned was adopted, many municipal water supplies were actually out of water. Nothing that an almond orchard can do would solve that problem promptly.
- solardev 3y agoWouldn't municipalities have more water if not for the ag rightsholders? (Honest question. Maybe I misunderstood how it works?)
- jeffbee 3y agoNot really. Probably you can find some case where that is true, such as small towns that formerly used now-depleted aquifers, but on a population-weighted basis your typical California city has completely separate rights and infrastructure. Many of the municipal systems have very superior rights, way upstream. Our ancestors were idiots but they knew the rules of the game.
- solardev 3y agoHmm, I don't quite understand. Are you saying typical municipalities today (say, LA or San Diego) get their water from different sources than ag does, so they're not in competition with each other? (ie water not from the same watersheds or pipelines)?
- jeffbee 3y agoYes. Los Angeles does buy water from some ag rights holders but they also have dedicated supplies. San Francisco and the East Bay have totally separate rights that are upstream of everyone. I think the main thing to know is that water is not like electricity. There is not a grid. Every municipal system has circumstances completely unique to it.
- solardev 3y agoI see. Thanks for the correction! I edited my comment upstream.
- KptMarchewa 3y agoIf the agriculture used less water, you could divert it to cities.
- schimmy_changa 3y agoTrue for SF & LA, but many other cities depend on State Water Project water which gets used by Ag as well - it's not just small towns.
- schimmy_changa 3y agoPromptly, sure - but there's a system that can be changed overall, we should have the power to do so. For instance, groundwater depletion from ag limits municipal water supplies, or other ag use uses State Water Project water 'before' it gets sent down to SoCal. The more SWP water they use, the less Colorado water they use. It is a grid, and not always fully fungible, but more connected than people think.
- lolinder 3y agoIt's not just local beef production either—30% of the alfalfa and hay goes overseas, 20% to China. We're taking the tiny amount of water we have in this desert and shipping it over an ocean.
- j16sdiz 3y ago(non-American here, so take this with grain of salt) 30% looks reasonable to me. That is 70% are sold locally. Does other water-using industries exports around the same percentage?
- dr-detroit 3y ago[dead]
- lolinder 3y agoIt's specifically a problem because Utah is a desert. Alfalfa fed to local cows that are consumed locally keeps the water in our ecosystem, within the bounds of our natural water cycle. Alfalfa fed to cows overseas exports our water overseas, so it doesn't reenter the water cycle locally, and it may never find its way back (on human timescales). You can think of it as having a trade deficit for water—we're not importing it in sufficient quantities to make up for our exports, and the result is that our local environment gradually dries out. Wetter climates don't have that problem because water that evaporates from the ocean can be treated as unlimited. Edit: Clarified a few things.
- vkou 3y agoYou are completely wrong about how agricultural water usage works. The water doesn't physically go into the final shipped alfalfa in meaningful quantities. 99.9% of the water that is used in growing alfalfa evaporates, or ends up in the ground, and it doesn't matter whether the remaining 0.1% that actually ends up, and stays inside the plant gets exported to Mars, or consumed locally. When growing alfalfa, 100 tonnes of water is used to produce ~300lb of biomass. When you're sourcing those 100 tonnes unsustainably, it really doesn't matter whether you export the 300lb, or not. You're blaming a foreign boogieman for a domestic, self-inflicted problem.
- esotericimpl 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Dig1t 3y agoHere’s your daily reminder that desalination can provide as much water as we need. Nuclear power + desalination would solve all our water AND energy problems in a carbon-free way. Israel gets over 55% of their water from desalination. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the... Water problems are simply a political\planning failure. There is no real shortage of water. The west coast has a water problem, the tools to solve it, and complete one-party control of politics to make it happen. They are choosing not to though. You Utah folks obviously don’t have an ocean sitting next to you, but perhaps if the west coast used less of the Colorado river there would be more for you.
- gustavus 3y agoI need to clarify here, the GSL is far far too salty to desalinate, and Utah is pretty close to the head of the Colorado, not the other way around. It's AZ and NM and CA that are having problems with the CO not providing enough water. Also the GSL water is entirely divorced from the CO river water.
- Dig1t 3y agoOh I’m not talking about desalination of GSL. I’m talking about California doing desalination and not using the Colorado river for water anymore. If they stopped using water from the Colorado, there would be more water for Utah to take from it. States up the river use less water in order to leave some for the states down river. So if the states downriver stopped using it, then states upstream could increase their usage.
- irrational 3y agoHow would they get the water over the Rocky Mountains to the Salt Lake Valley? I thought the pipeline from the Pacific Ocean was a crazy idea, but you have that one beat.
- Dig1t 3y ago
- jacurtis 3y agoA lot of this is the fault of the politicians and public education. Both are largely influenced by one overwhelming organization with nearly infinite money. If you live in Utah you know who i'm talking about. They don't care about the environment and they aren't overly concerned with public health. Yet most politicians in Utah will only get and stay in power with their blessing and approval. Thats why Utah has had the same senator for 42 years. We need the utah public to wake up and vote with some intelligence to get people in power who want to and can actually make change and care about these things. I lived in Utah for almost 2 decades (as an adult). I moved out 5 years ago and it was the absolute best decision I ever made.
- paulddraper 3y agoLiterally nothing you describe is unique to Utah or the LDS Church. You can cherry pick anything to suit a narrative. Orin Hatch served 42 years; his successor is serving only one term. What does that mean?
- dfxm12 3y agoLiterally nothing you describe is unique to Utah or the LDS Church. I agree that it isn't unique, but why does it matter? The point isn't that it is a unique situation, the point is that Utahns are being underserved by their officials.
- paulddraper 3y agoIt matters in understanding root causes
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bjt 3y agoThough I'm no fan of the LDS church's dominance in Utah politics, your assessment of their stance on the environment seems off base. Example: This recent donation of agricultural water rights that they owned, to divert the water into lake preservation instead. https://naturalresources.utah.gov/dnr-newsfeed/church-donates-water-to-benefit-great-salt-lake https://naturalresources.utah.gov/dnr-newsfeed/church-donate...
- justinpombrio 3y agoAnd there's a simple solution: eliminate water usage rights and charge everyone for water usage, based on the amount of water used. If some farmers purchased water usage rights from the state (is that how it worked?), then the state should refund them, paying back the original purchase amount plus inflation. And then start charging them the same as everyone else for water. If farmers can grow alfalfa cheaply enough when the water isn't free, by being more efficient with water usage, then they will continue to do so because it will be profitable. If it's not profitable, then they'll stop growing alfalfa. We don't need to make laws about agriculture in particular; simply start charging people for the resources they use, and market forces will grind to dust anyone who uses resources inefficiently.
- oceanplexian 3y ago> And there's a simple solution: eliminate water usage rights and charge everyone for water usage, based on the amount of water used. If your great, great grandfather was a pioneer and moved into the SLC valley 150 years ago- a particularly harsh and rugged place, and then started a small farm that was perfectly sustainable, but then millions of transplants moved in, what exactly makes them so entitled to the water under your property? Sounds like theft to me.
- darth_avocado 3y agoIf your great grandfather was growing alfa alfa to send it to cattle feed lots in Saudi Arabia all the while risking the lives of his fellow pioneers who lived next to him, he wasn't entitled to that water in the first place.
- 2020aj 3y agoAnd what about the Native Americans that lived there before that? etc.
- oceanplexian 3y agoI don't disagree, Somewhat recently a Federal Judge ordered that the Navajo Nation wasn't entitled to the Colorado River that they had been using for thousands of years. This is what happens when the government steps in to redistribute a resource to who they "think" deserves it rather than to those who were historically entitled to it. Legalized theft, plain and simple.
- CalChris 3y agoWe have the same thing in California. We have rice and pistachio farmers in the Central Valley. It makes no sense to grow rice and pistachios in a water challenged environment. Then you see Congress Created Dust Bowl signs on I5.
- reducesuffering 3y agoIs CA's central valley water challenged? The Imperial valley siphoning the Colorado River and LA siphoning the back of the Sierras are. But northern Central valley especially seems quite abundant in water from the runoff of the Sierras. Reservoirs are looking pretty good to me https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain
- irrational 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsiden...
- dahart 3y ago> People are all stressed out about not watering their lawns Salt Lake City requested that residents reduce usage to keep enough drinking water in the reservoirs. This is pretty separate from the lake and upstream farming issues, no? I think the canyon runoff goes to Utah lake and not GSL? Some places legitimately went very very low on drinking water last year due to low runoff and high usage. I think it’s important to care about both watering lawns and the salt lake.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago> I think the canyon runoff goes to Utah lake and not GSL? Depends on the canyon. The canyons in Salt Lake County go to the GSL; the canyons on the Wasatch Back go to either the Provo River (and then Utah Lake) or the Weber River (and then the GSL).