36 ms·

The Extraordinary California Drought of 2013-2014

96 points by pc 12y ago

johndolan 12y ago
When you really stop to think about it, the amount of things in our lives that depend on the weather are overwhelming.
- Dewie 12y ago
  My electricity bills seem to have been more expensive last summer than last winter (obviously no heating in the summer, and no cooling), which I suspect is because of less precipitation (though I haven't looked into it).
alwaysdoit 12y ago
What I don't understand is how we have gotten to the point where we are living paycheck to paycheck in terms of water consumption. We know that it varies from year to year... why don't we have some sort of cushion with which to plan ahead?
- frandroid 12y ago
  Look towards farmland...
- NoPiece 12y ago
  It is too politically expensive and difficult to build dams and reservoirs in California's eco-sensitive environment. There were more dams and reservoirs built in the 70s (18) than the 34 years since (11). Also, a lot of the easy/obvious sites have already been built. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in_...
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    That doesn't say a lot by itself; it's not crazy to imagine that additional reservoirs become less worthwhile as your stock of existing reservoirs grows.
    - NoPiece 12y ago
      The currently empty reservoirs show more are worthwhile. The population is growing much faster now than it was when more reservoirs were being built. California has grown ~40% (14.6 million) since 1980.
      - thaumasiotes 12y ago
        > The population is growing much faster now than it was when more reservoirs were being built. California has grown ~40% (14.6 million) since 1980. This at least makes sense on its face, though I was under the impression that the population wasn't using much of California's water consumption. > The currently empty reservoirs show more are worthwhile. This is total nonsense. By this argument, additional reservoirs would only stop being worthwhile if we never withdrew water at all. That's no better, and in fact much worse, than never building reservoirs in the first place.
        NoPiece 12y ago
        This is total nonsense. By this argument, additional reservoirs would only stop being worthwhile if we never withdrew water at all. That's no better, and in fact much worse, than never building reservoirs in the first place. That's really not what I'm saying. Additional reservoirs would only stop being worthwhile if we never withdrew more than 100% of water. I.e., if reservoirs are down to 0% capacity, we should have had more reservoirs.
  - kderbe 12y ago
    Your Wikipedia link says there are over 1,400 named dams in California (and presumably more unnamed ones). But the list you are reading from contains less than 250 of them, so you are probably under-counting. A thousand dams and reservoirs sounds to me like an awful lot already.
    - NoPiece 12y ago
      There are 41 million acre feet of reservoir in California. The 10 largest reservoirs account for over half that, and the top 50 account for 90%. The unlisted reservoirs beyond the 250 in the table don;t account for much storage. The big 10 million plus acre feet reservoirs average 60 years old.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  We do -- they're called reservoirs.
- _fs 12y ago
  Well to be fair, we are not living paycheck to paycheck. Are water reservoirs and dams function as our emergency fund. We have (had) years of water stored within these reservoirs. And many years in unregulated groundwater. The problem is, even if you plan a large emergency fund, during an epic drought, the emergency fund is eventually going to run dry.
- plorkyeran 12y ago
  We're three years into a drought and there's still some water in the reservoirs. Perhaps the cushion was too small, but it clearly existed.
- cjensen 12y ago
  We have an enormous cushion and can survive multiple drought years. The current water restrictions are just mild precautions against the chance that this will be a multi-year drought. Right now we are at the "please let your lawns get a bit brown" level. In the 1970s, the multi-year drought got to the point where the restrictions were "do not use more than 50 gallons per person per day."
  - cpa 12y ago
    Who uses 50 gallons per person per day? People with a swimming pool? A 10 minute shower is ~25 gallons, so how on Earth can 50gallons/person/day can be a "restriction"? (not being a judgemental asshole, but I'm not honestly dumbfounded)
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      Some folks water their lawns twice a day and take two showers, hose down the car every Saturday and set up a water slide for the kids. It's not hard to use a lot of water. In other words, it was intended to be a restriction on truly frivolous use, while still allowing all the basic day-to-day without worry.
    - Retric 12y ago
      A dishwasher uses ~6 gallons of water per cycle. Flush can use 3 to 7 gallons and are often flushed 2 or more times a day. Shaving and brushing your teeth can easily use 2 or more gallons. Add in cooking and 50 gallons per day is well below what the average person uses even without watering their lawn. PS: Older showers used up to 4 gallons per minute, high flow showers can get well above that. Worse and old style washing machine will often use 40 to 45 gallons per load.
      - khuey 12y ago
        That would have to be an ancient toilet to use 7 gallons of water. US law has required a maximum of 1.6 gallons per flush for new toilets since the late 90s, and I've never seen one more that used more than 3 in my life.
- Retric 12y ago
  This is the third year of unusually dry conditions, so reserves where already somewhat low to begin with. Dams generally store water from excess years to be used in lean ones, but like anything there is major cost benefit analysis going on. Usually, they trade some power generation capacity for water in lean years, but they can't let dams get to low or you risk structural problems. More importantly, one of the major, but less talked about issues is evaporation. http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2006/5252/section2.html http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2006/5252/section2.html Suppose you built a standby hover just to store water. Assuming you found a usable location and outside of the direct costs for construction and ~125,600 acres of land. It's going to cost you 791,000 acre-ft/yr * (1 acre-ft ~= 325,851 U.S. gal) = 257 BILLION gallons of water every year just for a standby. Considering water is already in short supply in good years it's just not worth it.
- quizzas 12y ago
  Because farming and irrigation sucks up everything that's available.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > What I don't understand is how we have gotten to the point where we are living paycheck to paycheck in terms of water consumption. We have systems that address variability and provide reserves for it, and a few low years can be handled without people noticing -- California's had more than a few low years. While 2013-2014 has been the worst year, its not the one bad year that is the problem.
trhway 12y ago
that is kind of disconcerting here is that there are clear winners in the drought - people who have water rights and who sell these rights at record prices as it is just much more profitable to sell the rights than to put that water to productive use. I wouldn't be surprised if these people haven't had any effect on the state water politics. On the other side, once price gets high enough, some enterprising folks will charter some big tugboats and start towing icebergs to CA :)
- hnnewguy 12y ago
  >much more profitable to sell the rights than to put that water to productive use But this is exactly what selling the rights does: passes the rights on to someone who can put the water to better use.
  - trhway 12y ago
    if somebody can use it better why would you get assigned rights to the shared state resource like water in the first place? It is not like the water is collected on your land or pumped from your well (such cases would have at least some logic behind it)
    - webnrrd2k 12y ago
      I'd guess that the rights were assigned in the past, and they made sense then. In the present there are different, better uses for the water, but the rights have not been reassigned.
    - fleitz 12y ago
      Because the state generally arbitrates what the 'best' use of a shared resource is sub-optimally, usually according to politics, rather than economics. Hence when the state allocates water you get a situation where crops that would be grown at a loss when paying for water, like rice and almonds, are given severely discounted access to water to encourage misallocation of water from profitable uses to unprofitable ones. In a market economy when someone does something stupid, like thinking it's a good idea to grow rice in a desert the market responds by making their business unprofitable. In a political economy when someone does something stupid, everyone else goes without so that morons can grow rice and almonds in deserts. Therefore almond farmers being somewhat non-moronic will sell their water rights to people who need to take showers rather than grow almonds because they are at least intelligent enough to understand that more money is better than less money. For an example see, any centrally planned economy, ever.
mjcohen 12y ago
My wife and I had an argument about whether we would ever move from our paid-for house in zip 90045. I said if the drought gets bad enough, she said never. Hope we never have to decide, but I am worried.
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  I don't get it. Why would you think about moving just because you can't wash your car or water your lawn for a couple of months?
  - swartkrans 12y ago
    The drought could get much worse than disrupting home irrigation. Depending on how bad it gets, the price of water could rise and force people out, leaving them with no choice but to leave. I don't know what that would look like or how it would affect households already economically strained with limited capacity to move, but I doubt it will be a good situation. The disruption to California's ability to produce food will also affect people outside of the state, raising prices. There's probably water around to import if the price is right if it came to that, so I think it just becomes a question of market forces and how the drought will impact California's economy and the country. I don't think many people are going to die of thirst, although that is a real possibility for immigrants who cross the border illegally who may encounter less water because of the drought.
    - spydum 12y ago
      If history teach us much, the scarcity will spark innovation in water efficiency. Most of the US has been pretty lax when it comes to water usage. Perhaps large scale desalination efficiency will be found, or atmospheric moisture extraction will take off. Imagine if you could get some order of magnitude improvements on these technologies.. Consider reversing the flow of water now: pump from ocean, back up the land, and let each consumer desalinate on premise?
      - deciplex 12y ago
phkahler 12y ago
I always come back to air traffic. Did patterns change significantly in the last few years? I could swear the weather here in MI changed a bit after delta bought northwest and made Detroit a non-hub. But that's just anecdotal. Does anyone study weather pattern correlation with air traffic routes?
- stfp 12y ago
  Wat
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- honestcoyote 12y ago
  As you might remember, there were a few days after 9/11 when all air traffic nationwide was grounded. Some scientists took it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to examine what effect air traffic might have on climate. Here's an article in Nature talking about it. http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081231/full/news.2008.1335.html http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081231/full/news.2008.1335.h...
  - phkahler 12y ago
    Thanks for the link. I was well aware of that week. Michigan skies were exceptionally deep blue and cloud free - all week. I am also aware that NASA recorded an increase in the daily temperature range (details escape me). My question getting modded down to -4 is an amazing example of... something. People thinking climate is all about CO2? I dunno, but I'm gonna go follow that nature link. Thanks again.
- pinaceae 12y ago
  right. that's why all other major airline hubs report droughts as well. globally.
kderbe 12y ago
The Oakland Museum's Gallery of California Natural Sciences has some great installations highlighting California's water management and usage. I was taken aback by how much of California's total rainfall is captured and diverted for human consumption. It's well worth a visit to learn about all the infrastructure California already has for managing water and coping with draught, and how severe this draught must be to overcome those safeguards.
- sparkman55 12y ago
  I'd argue that California's water management infrastructure is doing a great job. For example, the Crystal Springs reservoir, which supplies San Francisco, has remained nearly full [1], and municipalities haven't undertaken rationing or other drastic measures beyond "rat out your neighbors if they are watering the sidewalk." This means that not only is the reservoir system keeping water in the taps of California's 38 million residents, but at least some of it is also keeping enough of a reserve to deal with catastrophes like an earthquake severing the pipelines that supply water to the San Francisco Bay Area. [1] http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryMonthly?CRY http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryMonthly?CRY
Teodolfo 12y ago
Anyone interested in managing water should read the book Living with Water Scarcity (free pdf here http://livingwithwaterscarcity.com/ http://livingwithwaterscarcity.com/)
r0h1n 12y ago
Just a few days ago some HN commenters were saying it's perfectly fine to waste food in America because, hey, you can't really know how much food you'll really need while buying it. Someone ought to correlate what is the environmental impact on California from wasting 35 million tonnes of food annually.
- aaronbrethorst 12y ago
  It takes somewhere between 441-12,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, depending on whether you want to believe the stats from the beef industry or an ardent environmentalist/vegetarian: http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-water-footprints http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big... My guess is that the real number is somewhere in between, but that still represents an order of magnitude more water consumption than producing plant-based foodstuffs. The 35mm tons of wasted food is terrible, for numerous reasons, but we shouldn't stop there. There are a lot of things we can and should do to drastically reduce our water consumption. Like eating alternative foods. Fwiw, I essentially haven't eaten beef in about 17 years. I eat a fair amount of poultry and fish, and occasionally eat pork, but I skip beef both for personal health and general environmental reasons.
  - Shivetya 12y ago
    It is not so much water consumption that is the problem, it was the ridiculously subsidized price of water to this area that made it a problem. Locating water intensive farming away from a natural resource was only asking for problems. Then to top it off with far too many people who want that picturesque green lawn and just throwing water on it.

96 points by pc 12y ago

johndolan 12y ago

When you really stop to think about it, the amount of things in our lives that depend on the weather are overwhelming.

Dewie 12y ago
My electricity bills seem to have been more expensive last summer than last winter (obviously no heating in the summer, and no cooling), which I suspect is because of less precipitation (though I haven't looked into it).

alwaysdoit 12y ago

What I don't understand is how we have gotten to the point where we are living paycheck to paycheck in terms of water consumption. We know that it varies from year to year... why don't we have some sort of cushion with which to plan ahead?

frandroid 12y ago
Look towards farmland...
NoPiece 12y ago
It is too politically expensive and difficult to build dams and reservoirs in California's eco-sensitive environment. There were more dams and reservoirs built in the 70s (18) than the 34 years since (11). Also, a lot of the easy/obvious sites have already been built. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in_...
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  That doesn't say a lot by itself; it's not crazy to imagine that additional reservoirs become less worthwhile as your stock of existing reservoirs grows.
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    The currently empty reservoirs show more are worthwhile. The population is growing much faster now than it was when more reservoirs were being built. California has grown ~40% (14.6 million) since 1980.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      > The population is growing much faster now than it was when more reservoirs were being built. California has grown ~40% (14.6 million) since 1980. This at least makes sense on its face, though I was under the impression that the population wasn't using much of California's water consumption. > The currently empty reservoirs show more are worthwhile. This is total nonsense. By this argument, additional reservoirs would only stop being worthwhile if we never withdrew water at all. That's no better, and in fact much worse, than never building reservoirs in the first place.
      - NoPiece 12y ago
        This is total nonsense. By this argument, additional reservoirs would only stop being worthwhile if we never withdrew water at all. That's no better, and in fact much worse, than never building reservoirs in the first place. That's really not what I'm saying. Additional reservoirs would only stop being worthwhile if we never withdrew more than 100% of water. I.e., if reservoirs are down to 0% capacity, we should have had more reservoirs.
- kderbe 12y ago
  Your Wikipedia link says there are over 1,400 named dams in California (and presumably more unnamed ones). But the list you are reading from contains less than 250 of them, so you are probably under-counting. A thousand dams and reservoirs sounds to me like an awful lot already.
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    There are 41 million acre feet of reservoir in California. The 10 largest reservoirs account for over half that, and the top 50 account for 90%. The unlisted reservoirs beyond the 250 in the table don;t account for much storage. The big 10 million plus acre feet reservoirs average 60 years old.
thaumasiotes 12y ago
We do -- they're called reservoirs.
_fs 12y ago
Well to be fair, we are not living paycheck to paycheck. Are water reservoirs and dams function as our emergency fund. We have (had) years of water stored within these reservoirs. And many years in unregulated groundwater. The problem is, even if you plan a large emergency fund, during an epic drought, the emergency fund is eventually going to run dry.
plorkyeran 12y ago
We're three years into a drought and there's still some water in the reservoirs. Perhaps the cushion was too small, but it clearly existed.
cjensen 12y ago
We have an enormous cushion and can survive multiple drought years. The current water restrictions are just mild precautions against the chance that this will be a multi-year drought. Right now we are at the "please let your lawns get a bit brown" level. In the 1970s, the multi-year drought got to the point where the restrictions were "do not use more than 50 gallons per person per day."
- cpa 12y ago
  Who uses 50 gallons per person per day? People with a swimming pool? A 10 minute shower is ~25 gallons, so how on Earth can 50gallons/person/day can be a "restriction"? (not being a judgemental asshole, but I'm not honestly dumbfounded)
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    Some folks water their lawns twice a day and take two showers, hose down the car every Saturday and set up a water slide for the kids. It's not hard to use a lot of water. In other words, it was intended to be a restriction on truly frivolous use, while still allowing all the basic day-to-day without worry.
  - Retric 12y ago
    A dishwasher uses ~6 gallons of water per cycle. Flush can use 3 to 7 gallons and are often flushed 2 or more times a day. Shaving and brushing your teeth can easily use 2 or more gallons. Add in cooking and 50 gallons per day is well below what the average person uses even without watering their lawn. PS: Older showers used up to 4 gallons per minute, high flow showers can get well above that. Worse and old style washing machine will often use 40 to 45 gallons per load.
    - khuey 12y ago
      That would have to be an ancient toilet to use 7 gallons of water. US law has required a maximum of 1.6 gallons per flush for new toilets since the late 90s, and I've never seen one more that used more than 3 in my life.
Retric 12y ago
This is the third year of unusually dry conditions, so reserves where already somewhat low to begin with. Dams generally store water from excess years to be used in lean ones, but like anything there is major cost benefit analysis going on. Usually, they trade some power generation capacity for water in lean years, but they can't let dams get to low or you risk structural problems. More importantly, one of the major, but less talked about issues is evaporation. http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2006/5252/section2.html http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2006/5252/section2.html Suppose you built a standby hover just to store water. Assuming you found a usable location and outside of the direct costs for construction and ~125,600 acres of land. It's going to cost you 791,000 acre-ft/yr * (1 acre-ft ~= 325,851 U.S. gal) = 257 BILLION gallons of water every year just for a standby. Considering water is already in short supply in good years it's just not worth it.
quizzas 12y ago
Because farming and irrigation sucks up everything that's available.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> What I don't understand is how we have gotten to the point where we are living paycheck to paycheck in terms of water consumption. We have systems that address variability and provide reserves for it, and a few low years can be handled without people noticing -- California's had more than a few low years. While 2013-2014 has been the worst year, its not the one bad year that is the problem.

trhway 12y ago

that is kind of disconcerting here is that there are clear winners in the drought - people who have water rights and who sell these rights at record prices as it is just much more profitable to sell the rights than to put that water to productive use. I wouldn't be surprised if these people haven't had any effect on the state water politics. On the other side, once price gets high enough, some enterprising folks will charter some big tugboats and start towing icebergs to CA :)

hnnewguy 12y ago
>much more profitable to sell the rights than to put that water to productive use But this is exactly what selling the rights does: passes the rights on to someone who can put the water to better use.
- trhway 12y ago
  if somebody can use it better why would you get assigned rights to the shared state resource like water in the first place? It is not like the water is collected on your land or pumped from your well (such cases would have at least some logic behind it)
  - webnrrd2k 12y ago
    I'd guess that the rights were assigned in the past, and they made sense then. In the present there are different, better uses for the water, but the rights have not been reassigned.
  - fleitz 12y ago
    Because the state generally arbitrates what the 'best' use of a shared resource is sub-optimally, usually according to politics, rather than economics. Hence when the state allocates water you get a situation where crops that would be grown at a loss when paying for water, like rice and almonds, are given severely discounted access to water to encourage misallocation of water from profitable uses to unprofitable ones. In a market economy when someone does something stupid, like thinking it's a good idea to grow rice in a desert the market responds by making their business unprofitable. In a political economy when someone does something stupid, everyone else goes without so that morons can grow rice and almonds in deserts. Therefore almond farmers being somewhat non-moronic will sell their water rights to people who need to take showers rather than grow almonds because they are at least intelligent enough to understand that more money is better than less money. For an example see, any centrally planned economy, ever.

mjcohen 12y ago

My wife and I had an argument about whether we would ever move from our paid-for house in zip 90045. I said if the drought gets bad enough, she said never. Hope we never have to decide, but I am worried.

jamesaguilar 12y ago
I don't get it. Why would you think about moving just because you can't wash your car or water your lawn for a couple of months?
- swartkrans 12y ago
  The drought could get much worse than disrupting home irrigation. Depending on how bad it gets, the price of water could rise and force people out, leaving them with no choice but to leave. I don't know what that would look like or how it would affect households already economically strained with limited capacity to move, but I doubt it will be a good situation. The disruption to California's ability to produce food will also affect people outside of the state, raising prices. There's probably water around to import if the price is right if it came to that, so I think it just becomes a question of market forces and how the drought will impact California's economy and the country. I don't think many people are going to die of thirst, although that is a real possibility for immigrants who cross the border illegally who may encounter less water because of the drought.
  - spydum 12y ago
    If history teach us much, the scarcity will spark innovation in water efficiency. Most of the US has been pretty lax when it comes to water usage. Perhaps large scale desalination efficiency will be found, or atmospheric moisture extraction will take off. Imagine if you could get some order of magnitude improvements on these technologies.. Consider reversing the flow of water now: pump from ocean, back up the land, and let each consumer desalinate on premise?
    - deciplex 12y ago

phkahler 12y ago

I always come back to air traffic. Did patterns change significantly in the last few years? I could swear the weather here in MI changed a bit after delta bought northwest and made Detroit a non-hub. But that's just anecdotal. Does anyone study weather pattern correlation with air traffic routes?

stfp 12y ago
Wat
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
honestcoyote 12y ago
As you might remember, there were a few days after 9/11 when all air traffic nationwide was grounded. Some scientists took it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to examine what effect air traffic might have on climate. Here's an article in Nature talking about it. http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081231/full/news.2008.1335.html http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081231/full/news.2008.1335.h...
- phkahler 12y ago
  Thanks for the link. I was well aware of that week. Michigan skies were exceptionally deep blue and cloud free - all week. I am also aware that NASA recorded an increase in the daily temperature range (details escape me). My question getting modded down to -4 is an amazing example of... something. People thinking climate is all about CO2? I dunno, but I'm gonna go follow that nature link. Thanks again.
pinaceae 12y ago
right. that's why all other major airline hubs report droughts as well. globally.

kderbe 12y ago

The Oakland Museum's Gallery of California Natural Sciences has some great installations highlighting California's water management and usage. I was taken aback by how much of California's total rainfall is captured and diverted for human consumption. It's well worth a visit to learn about all the infrastructure California already has for managing water and coping with draught, and how severe this draught must be to overcome those safeguards.

sparkman55 12y ago
I'd argue that California's water management infrastructure is doing a great job. For example, the Crystal Springs reservoir, which supplies San Francisco, has remained nearly full [1], and municipalities haven't undertaken rationing or other drastic measures beyond "rat out your neighbors if they are watering the sidewalk." This means that not only is the reservoir system keeping water in the taps of California's 38 million residents, but at least some of it is also keeping enough of a reserve to deal with catastrophes like an earthquake severing the pipelines that supply water to the San Francisco Bay Area. [1] http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryMonthly?CRY http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryMonthly?CRY

Teodolfo 12y ago

Anyone interested in managing water should read the book Living with Water Scarcity (free pdf here http://livingwithwaterscarcity.com/ http://livingwithwaterscarcity.com/)

r0h1n 12y ago

Just a few days ago some HN commenters were saying it's perfectly fine to waste food in America because, hey, you can't really know how much food you'll really need while buying it. Someone ought to correlate what is the environmental impact on California from wasting 35 million tonnes of food annually.

aaronbrethorst 12y ago
It takes somewhere between 441-12,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, depending on whether you want to believe the stats from the beef industry or an ardent environmentalist/vegetarian: http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-water-footprints http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big... My guess is that the real number is somewhere in between, but that still represents an order of magnitude more water consumption than producing plant-based foodstuffs. The 35mm tons of wasted food is terrible, for numerous reasons, but we shouldn't stop there. There are a lot of things we can and should do to drastically reduce our water consumption. Like eating alternative foods. Fwiw, I essentially haven't eaten beef in about 17 years. I eat a fair amount of poultry and fish, and occasionally eat pork, but I skip beef both for personal health and general environmental reasons.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  It is not so much water consumption that is the problem, it was the ridiculously subsidized price of water to this area that made it a problem. Locating water intensive farming away from a natural resource was only asking for problems. Then to top it off with far too many people who want that picturesque green lawn and just throwing water on it.