5 ms·
(numbers not precise at all) I see that graph of rainfall, jumping between ~350mm in droughts and ~700mm in wet years; From what I hear, the farming industry
by mapt 11y ago
(numbers not precise at all)
I see that graph of rainfall, jumping between ~350mm in droughts and ~700mm in wet years; From what I hear, the farming industry has allocated perhaps 3000mm of water rights, is presently consuming maybe 600mm (depleting aquifers) down from their usual 700-800mm, and is complaining about reservoirs running dry and water deliveries not showing up. Water rights that the owner does not attempt to use in a given year are lost forever: It's not "Finder-Keeper", it's even worse than that, overconsumption is being guaranteed by this system.
If California wants to be sustainable - and not that word has a specific meaning, 'to be able to continue indefinitely', rather than a vague greenness - it needs to reduce the number it actually uses to perhaps 200mm-300mm. Because reservoirs have run low, aquifers have been mined dry, saltwater intrusion and subsidence has been happening, and the geomorphology has been all out of whack. The invisible damage they're doing to the natural resources they rely on using just 100% of rainfall is enormous; They've killed most of the native ecosystem, most of the native rivers entirely, and turned the hills to fire tinder; The un-farmed areas rapidly went from grassland and swamp to desert. At 175% of rainfall things begin to happen like destroying the topography ("Congratulations, your farm is now on a hill. Water doesn't flow uphill.") which have overt, direct externalities, things visited on one's neighbor rather than on one's great-grandchildren. That's insane. One wouldn't expect even a rugged individualist frontiersman to tolerate their neighbor jacking up their property a few millimeters a day in the dead of night in order to rob them of canal usage; Shotguns would be employed in remedy. Aquifers have an interesting property in that they're not necessarily trivially refillable - pore spaces compress and become less permeable. If you let the Everglades loose again, eliminating humans from Florida, it would look drastically different than it looked in pre-Columbian times because the land has sunk and water would now flow over it rather than through it.
So: What will cut back agricultural water usage (usage, not deliveries from canals) by around 2/3 in a durable way, which minimizes the hit to GDP? That's what California should be asking itself. Anything which accomplishes this goal is acceptable from a sustainability & environmental standpoint, be it bureaucratic micromanagement, pricing, blanket moratoriums, state seizure, whatever.
- logicchains 11y ago>What will cut back agricultural water usage (usage, not deliveries from canals) by around 2/3 in a durable way, which minimizes the hit to GDP? Reducing agricultural subsidies would both cut back agricultural water usage and improve GDP, as most agricultural subsidies make little sense from an economic perspective, representing a net drain on productivity. They encourage farming in places not conducive to farming, leading to significant environmental degradation. Considering the strength of the agricultural lobby however such subsidies are unlikely to be repealed.
- krasin 11y agoWhy does a large-scale desalination, like in Israel, is not on the table? A quote from [1]: "Once unthinkable, given Israel's history of drought and lack of available fresh water resource, with desalination, Israel can now actually produce a surplus of fresh water". Israel is a perfect example, since it's another large food producer located in a desert, just like California. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Israel
- mapt 11y agoBecause it's expensive. Really expensive. Replacing California's agricultural water supply with desal plants would cost something on the order of $2,000 per acre-foot at current-day energy prices. That's something like 80 billion dollars per year before you consider distribution, and it doesn't filter through the local economy, it's shipped straight to foreign natural gas and coal exporters. California's agricultural output sells for around 40 billion dollars a year given water that's free & unmetered from the ground, and a feudal fiefdom ownership share from the rivers/canals. That pays for the land, the labor, the processing, the fertilizer, the seeds, everything. At some point it's cheaper to just grow things in places other than California.
- krasin 11y ago>Replacing California's agricultural water supply with desal plants would cost something on the order of $2,000 per acre-foot at current-day energy prices. It's actually 3 times cheaper. Price of desalinated water from Soreq plant (the newest / largest one in Israel) is about NIS 2.20 = USD 0.57 for a cubic meter. One acre-foot is 1233 cubic meters. $0.57 * 1233 = $702. See [1] As for capital investments, I would like to see how did you come up with the numbers. 20% of Israel needs for water are covered by a single plant that costed $500 mln, according to [2]. Update. According to [3], California uses 49 billions of cubic meters of water every year. Soreq plant produces 150 mln m3/year and costs $500 mln to build. So, naively, to desalinate 100% of California water needs, the required investments are $164 bln. To cover just the deficit, about 20% of that is required, which is about $33 bln. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Israel#Seawater_desalination_.282000s.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in... 2. http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megascale-desalination/ http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megasca... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California