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We learned yesterday that 80% of water consumption in California is by agriculture[1]. Yet this executive order does nothing to reduce agriculture's use of wate

• joshstrange 12y ago
  Yeah it seems pretty crazy that they are targeting the smallest sliver of water use for restrictions. I'd think we would want to limit the restrictions on everyday citizens and focus on the farmers who are fewer in number and, I would assume, easier to control as a whole than every citizen in CA...
  • johndevor 12y ago
    It's not crazy. It's politics.
    • jonshariat 12y ago
      You repeated yourself there.
  • wnevets 12y ago
    someone has to protect our poor farmers, everyone loves farmers.
    • BrainInAJar 12y ago
      food shortage leads to revolution. The real problem here is we tried to turn a desert in to our national bread basket.
      • trhway 12y ago
        >The real problem here is we tried to turn a desert in to our national bread basket. or may be that our national bread basket is turning into a desert? One needs 3 components - soil, sun and water. We're loosing the 3rd component : http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_27070897/california-drought-worst-1-200-years-new-study http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_27070897/california-dr... "The last three years of drought were the most severe that California has experienced in at least 1,200 years" Everybody can just only guess why... Edit: to the "jff"'s response below - a "guess" by the Stanford http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/september/drought-climate-change-092914.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/september/drought-climate...
        • jff 12y ago
          > Everybody can just only guess why... NOAA says it isn't because of climate change, if that's what you're implying.
          • nitrogen 12y ago
            NOAA says it isn't because of climate change, if that's what you're implying. Should the word "anthropogenic" be in that sentence somewhere? Getting less water is indeed a change in the climate by the very definitions of climate and change.
            • Dylan16807 12y ago
              Not when it's just random chance. An X year drought by definition is supposed to happen every X years.
              • nitrogen 12y ago
                What's the dividing line between a changing climate and a very highly randomly varying unchanging climate? Also, minor nit, "X year event" doesn't mean the event should happen every X years, but that over a span Y >> X, the event happens Y / X times.
  • baddox 12y ago
    Residential users are a dispersed interest group. Industrial users are (mostly) concentrated interest groups. These results are exactly what you should expect.
    • derekalv911 12y ago
      In political chess it would make sense to put the squeeze on the masses in an effort get popular support behind putting the squeeze on corporations. Everyone needs to contribute.
• pdeuchler 12y ago
  Just more theater by a corrupt system and it's inhabitants desperately trying to maintain the lucrative (for them) status quo, everything else be damned.
• CUViper 12y ago
  This is where Amdahl's Law meets real life.
  • pbreit 12y ago
    "used to find the maximum expected improvement to an overall system when only part of the system is improved" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law
• jconley 12y ago
  Many farmers are getting no [0] water this year and are relying on ground water to keep trees alive or not planting seasonal crops. Others get a very small fraction of their typical allotment [1]. California water rights are complicated... [0] http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article11355200.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article11355200... [1] http://hanfordsentinel.com/news/in_focus/california_drought/state-water-project-growers-get-percent/article_18eaa03b-36d3-52ce-a15f-5e230a991c84.html http://hanfordsentinel.com/news/in_focus/california_drought/...
  • grok2 12y ago
    The farmers are getting no "Federal" water. I don't know what exactly this means -- presumably the state too supplies water to it's farmers via various water-works projects (your 2nd link indicates that farmers relying on state supplied water will get 20% of their usual quota this year) and farmer's also possibly have other sources of water like wells, bore-wells, etc.
    • jconley 12y ago
      It's much more convoluted than that, unfortunately. There are many layers of rights to water. Farmers will get anywhere from 100% to 0% of water from government sources. For instance, my family's farm is getting 0, so they are forced to rely on well water.
    • pacificmint 12y ago
      There are two different water systems in California. The Central Valley Project [1] is run by the the federal government, the California State Water Project [2] by the state. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project
  • olliej 12y ago
    The trees they're trying to keep alive have ridiculously high water consumption, almonds for instance consume 10s of litres of water for each _individual_ almond. They need to stop growing trees like that in a desert, which is what they're doing. The wells they are digging are tapping into the underlying aquifers that are the last resort, so they are in fact getting _free_ water while complaining about the cost. In essence they are stealing the water that other californians pay for. At the same time they are asking for subsidies, to support a business model built on the ridiculously stupid idea of growing high water use crops in a _desert_. The solution is to actually treat this as a free market (as most HN commenters seem to believe is the solution to everything), everyone pays the same amount for water, including farmers. This would mean farmers would actually make sane use of their water - maybe they can't grow almonds for a profit anymore, and switch to something else. They will probably fairly quickly find some new food stuff that people really want to pay lots of money for, but uses less water. That's how things work.
• thaumaturgy 12y ago
  You are right. Just read through the XO and agricultural water suppliers are only required to come up with "plans" detailing the amount of water they need. This is obnoxious and stupid. Given the severity of the drought and California's willingness to continue to supply all the water that agriculture wants at the expense of some of the smallest water consumers, California's looking like a pretty good place to be from.
• rdtsc 12y ago
  For bureaucrats it is very important that they are perceived as being proactive and doing something, preferable make it as visible as possible by as many people as possible. Someone out there will get a pat on the back for "taking initiative", "being proactive" or "making an impact". Residential water restrictions seem to qualify maximizing those things.
• nostromo 12y ago
  If the TSA is security theater, this is conservation theater. It's all about feeling good and conspicuously "doing our part" but has nothing to do with solving the problem. I wonder what's next, maybe a ribbon or wristband campaign?
  • caublestone 12y ago
    Plot twist, the TSA dips into conservation by presenting it's water reserves stocked by forgetful travelers.
• thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Yes those of us who did not already know this long-standing fact learned it yesterday. What many of us seem to have failed to absorb is that water supplies are compartmentalized in such a way that saving in one area does not necessarily improve the situation in another area. One city can run out of water while another has plenty. Many cities have dedicated water supplies that are in no way connected to nor shared with agriculture, so saving even 100% of agricultural water provides no benefit for the municipal supplies.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• Kluny 12y ago
  Directly from the article: "State officials said the order would impose cutbacks on water use across the board — including homeowners, farmers, cemeteries and golf courses."
  • bradleyjg 12y ago
    Here's the primary source, look for yourself. http://gov.ca.gov/docs/4.1.15_Executive_Order.pdf http://gov.ca.gov/docs/4.1.15_Executive_Order.pdf All the mandatory restrictions are on urban water users, agricultural water suppliers are required to submit paperwork.
• chaostheory 12y ago
  We need food. We don't need wasteful, water hungry lawns and we can make inefficient toilets and showers a little more water efficient with some cheap mods.
  • pjlegato 12y ago
    Lawns and toilets are such a tiny part of water usage in California that even if you got rid of all lawns and toilets altogether, it would not make any material difference to the water shortage. All residential usage of all types in CA amounts to ~9% of water usage. Talking about lawns and toilets is a purely theatrical feelgood measure designed to make people think they're pitching in and helping. We need food of some kind, yes. We do not need massively water-hungry high margin crops such as pistachios and almonds being grown in the middle of the desert during the worst drought in centuries.
    • dougmany 12y ago
      Landscaping typically accounts for half of all residential water use. To some the value of a lawn is close to zero. Saving 5% of all water use by eliminating something with close to zero value is a huge gain.
    • tajen 12y ago
      Why do you add restrictions on water usage by discretionnary laws and never just put higher taxes on it? The most useless usages of water would naturally disappear if water were sufficiently expensive. A glass of water at $0.30, a washing cycle at $8... so what? Watering some lawn for $30 a day? Ok lawnlords would finally get it. You could say that at this price, agriculture wouldn't be possible. And, ehm, that's quite an accurate picture of the reality constraints: Given your drought, it's foolish to do so much local agriculture. You may need to do it offshore and import it, probably by ocean cargo. There's a point where petrol is "cheaper" than water, but only the rise of the water market will make the optimal optimizations.
      • lowbloodsugar 12y ago
        Capitalism???? In America???? You've clearly not met our government. The Free Market is for poor people.
• vijayr 12y ago
  Sad part is, a huge portion of agriculture is to feed animals which then become our meat. It is just not sustainable. The best way to conserve water is to eat less meat. This book has lots of interesting numbers - http://www.amazon.com/Meatonomics-Rigged-Economics-Consume-Smarter/dp/1491534680 http://www.amazon.com/Meatonomics-Rigged-Economics-Consume-S...
  • mark_l_watson 12y ago
    +1 you are exactly right on this. It takes about 10 times the water and 10 times the energy to eat mostly meat. I would argue that a mostly vegetarian diet is healthier also. One problem is that it takes some degree of skill to cook a delicious vegetarian meal, but is fairly easy to make a tasty meal out of meat.
    • vijayr 12y ago
      Meat consumption is a hugely unpopular topic. Take just this HN thread for example. There is way more discussion on crops like almond, than on meat and dairy industries. Meat and dairy consume way more resources than any crop/food grown for human consumption. We can water our lawns less, and take showers once a week. It will not make much of a difference until we eat less meat. Same goes for sea food too. We are literally eating some of the fish species to extinction - it is just sad.
      • vizeroth 12y ago
        Seriously, the article was about almonds. That's why the discussion is more focused on almonds than meat and dairy, or even some of the crops people are more aware of in California's agriculture, like strawberries, grapes, or avocados. If agriculture receives almost no restrictions on water use from the state while residential use is slashed, it puts the burden on the people with the least impact. Sure, go around and cite people for watering their lawns and washing their cars, but I'm paying through the nose for water that was imported across state lines and they're planning to implement toilet-to-tap while the corporate farmers are sucking up the groundwater and using it to grow cash crops for export.
• AesopHimself 12y ago
  Does this %80 include the water footprint for raising livestock? It would be interesting to know the relative price in water of a small Niman ranch steak compared to a single serving of California-grown almonds. Is the drought an argument against eating California-raised livestock since it isn't necessarily as location-dependent as certain agriculture?
  • anigbrowl 12y ago
    I certainly think so.
  • markvdb 12y ago
    http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts.pdf http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-planet-thirsty.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-pla... "beef, about 145,000 gallons per ton" "Changing one’s diet to replace 50 percent of animal products with edible plants like legumes, nuts and tubers results in a 30 percent reduction in an individual’s food-related water footprint. Going vegetarian, a better option in many respects, reduces that water footprint by almost 60 percent."