4 ms·
There is more than plenty of water for human consumption. Restrictions like forcing restaurants not to put water on the table are conservation theatre. A servin
by bradleyjg 12y ago
There is more than plenty of water for human consumption. Restrictions like forcing restaurants not to put water on the table are conservation theatre. A serving of California grown rice represents 20-25 gallons of water. If there are to restrictions on restaurants it should be to serving produce and livestock sourced from the arid west.
What California needs to do is reform its outdated water laws to move from the incredibly inefficient prior appropriation system to an auction system. Let the farmers and ranchers bid against the cities for their acre-feet of water.
- radicality 12y agoHow can one get that 20-25 gallons of water figure? I don't know much about agriculture/life-cycle of water, but say you water your rice field – then some of the water is absorbed by rice so that it can grow, but the rest clearly must stay in the ground, evaporate, and then come back down as rain, no? How does a serving of rice then use up 20-25 gallons of water?
- monort 12y agoAccording to this table you need 2500 liters of water per 1 kg of rice: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-much-water-food-production-waste http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-muc... 25 gallons per serving seems to be underestimated.
- maxerickson 12y agoIn this context, "use" means something like "remove from the predictable supply". So if you don't have any rainfall, you have to remove 25 gallons from your source to grow the rice. Groundwater replenishment and rainfall would already be counted as part of your predictable supply.