By Stephanie Elam, CNNUpdated: Sun, 28 Aug 2022 14:50:16 GMTSource: CNNThe pretty, cloudless blue skies over perfectly manicured lawns represent an ugly reality for California's Las Virgenes Municipal…
By Stephanie Elam, CNN
Updated: Sun, 28 Aug 2022 14:50:16 GMT
Source: CNN
The pretty, cloudless blue skies over perfectly manicured lawns represent an ugly reality for California's Las Virgenes Municipal Water District as it grapples with the historic megadrought ravaging the American West.
Despite a lack of any measurable rain in months, the carpet of lush, green grass likely means homeowners are either not getting the message about the dire need for water conservation, or they are ignoring the warnings.
But now, the water district has found a way to get customers' attention. When customer service representatives are working in the different neighborhoods, they keep an eye out for any water restriction violations. And for repeat offenders, officials are trying something new: adding water restrictors to the pipes, which sharply reduce the home's water supply.
Lawns of the rich and famous
The District covers some of the most sought-after real estate in Southern California, northwest of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, including areas along the Ventura Freeway.
Las Virgenes imports all of its water from the State Water Project, which pipes runoff from the northern Sierra Nevada mountains to Southern California. However, at the end of winter, the snowpack was just 4% of normal, forcing unprecedented restrictions. Las Virgenes is only getting 5% of its requested water supplies this year.
"We're having to supplement the water that we have been getting from the State Water Project," said Mike McNutt, public affairs and communications manager for Las Virgenes, who added the district is pulling water from its Las Virgenes Reservoir, its stash for emergency needs, just south of Thousand Oaks.
Right now, McNutt confirmed it is 72% full; at full capacity, it is a six-month supply. "We've had to take significant measures to curb water usage in order for us to ensure that there's long-term water reliability meaning moving into the fall and winter," McNutt noted.
Nearly all of California is in severe or worse drought (the highest three designations), per the latest US Drought monitor. Several severely deficient years of rain and snow have punctuated a 20-year long megadrought scientists say is being fueled by warmer and drier conditions brought on by climate change.
When the grass being greener isn't a good thing
In light of the shortage and the prolonged drought, Las Virgenes has mandated residents cut their outdoor watering by half as required by the unprecedented order from its distributor, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
Outdoor watering makes up 70% of most customer's water usage, the water district says, so cutting down on irrigation can have a huge impact on conservation.
"They are only allowed to water one day a week outside, Tuesdays and Thursdays, depending on whether your address ends with an odd number or even number," McNutt explained. On top of that, each set of sprinklers can only be on for eight minutes. "It helps maybe keep some of the grass alive if people want to still continue to have lawns, but they are brown."
CNN rode along with Las Virgenes senior field customer service representative Cason Gilmer as he looked for wasted water. When he and his team drive around the coverage area, they keep an eye out for water where it shouldn't be -- on sidewalks and running down streets into gutters -- or outdoor irrigation on when it should be off.
"When it's in our face and the sprinklers are going off at noon on Wednesday, it's an easy target for us," Gilmer, who noted most customers seem to be doing their part now. "This street in particular was very, very green two months ago."
Along the ride, the number of homes with vibrant green grass were outnumbered by brown lawns. Some lawns have been replaced with turf and others have been painted green.
Neighbors can rat on each other, celebrities included
If anyone from the water district spots water waste, they can leave a door tag to let the homeowner know they are not in compliance and what they need to do. They also send mailers. The water district also fines abusers, resulting in charges which can reach thousands of dollars depending on the size of the infraction.
But the affluent haven of Calabasas, inside the water district's territory, is home to many A-listers with deep pockets. Some of those household names -- celebrities, musicians and athletes -- have used far more water than they should have, according to recent data.
People like Kevin Hart, Dwyane Wade, and according to the Los Angeles Times, Kourtney Kardashian, as well as sister Kim.
None replied to CNN's request for comment. However, in a statement to the Times, Wade and his wife, actress Gabrielle Union, said they have "taken drastic steps to reduce water usage in accordance with the new city guidelines and have since we moved into our home."
Las Virgenes said all of those celebrities are in good standing now.
"Those specific celebrities have been working very closely with the district. They do want to do the right thing ... in order to achieve a much more efficient water usage tier," McNutt said.
A disastrous megaflood is coming to California, experts say, and it could be the most expensive natural disaster in history
And when fines are not enough, it's time to bring in the restrictor
With so many wealthy residents, Las Virgenes has learned some customers respond more to losing water than they do losing money.
"We try to get public education and notification and stuff about drought out there, but a lot of people throw the mailers away. They ignore it," said Gilmer, who created a simple, yet effective way to get users' attention one gallon at a time. "I call it a bit of a last resort."
The water restrictor is a slim circle of food grade stainless steel with a small hole in the middle, which fits right into the offending customer's water meter, which technicians can usually access right on the street since the meters are district property.
"This particular restrictor will give you around one gallon a minute. Normally, a three-quarter-inch meter is 25 to 30 gallons a minute. So at 25 to 30 gallons a minute, you can run your dishwasher and run your sink and have somebody in the shower and maybe even have your irrigation on and nobody knows the difference," Gilmer explained. "With the restrictor in ... your sink works fine. Your shower works OK. Your irrigation will not work. It just won't supply the amount of water that's demanded."
Gilmer even tried it at his own house to see what it was like having his water restricted.
"The big part was that you can't do two things at once. So if I was in the shower and my wife tried to do dishes, my shower was done. I just got out," Gilmer said with a slight smile. "My wife demanded I take it off after a day and a half."
California drought could cut state's hydropower in half this summer
After a customer uses more than 150% of their water allocation four times, they will be in line to get the flow restrictor installed. Las Virgenes says about 1,600 connections, or just more than 7% of its customer base falls into this category.
"It's not meant to be punitive," McNutt said. "It's meant to tell people ... this drought is incredibly serious and what we need you to do is do your part."
McNutt added Las Virgenes is leading by example in California as it is "using these flow restriction devices for conservation purposes."
"We're kind of leading this charge moving forward of how do we get people to stop using so much water with the advancement of climate change."
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Comments
In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban use ranges between 8-13%.
https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF...
Agriculture is effectively unrestricted by law in their water use. I think we may be targeting the wrong group
By karaterobot 2022-08-2819:343 reply That's how it goes: make people feel better by imposing visible but ineffective restrictions, meanwhile allow the worst offenders to continue operating as usual. So much of environmental regulation works by acts of meaningless public guilt and contrition: cf. bans on plastic shopping bags and drinking straws. Of course I mean "works" in the sense of operation, not in the sense of success, because in the meantime things get worse.
By wudangmonk 2022-08-2820:566 reply I don't think they have ever added one of these useless restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing. They blame the lawn, and you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points. I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate.
Meanwhile even if no grass was ever watered and no pool was ever filled it would amount to absolutely nothing since those things are measured in billions but the water used by farms is measured in trillions.
By Siddarth1977 2022-08-292:049 reply Agricultural use of water is actually productive though. Most of us prefer having food to starving. Having a lush, green front lawn in the desert however helps no one (and actively harms the natural plants and animals that belong in a given climate).
Additionally, while some water issues are over very large areas (eg, piping water from Colorado River to LA) lots of places have far more local water issues, where a given aquifer or reservoir provides water to a single city (but no agricultural users) and lawn watering really is a major drain on that local resource.
That said, yes, the situation in California is a mess in large part because people are growing ridiculously water-intensive crops in the desert because someone in the 1800s acquired senior water rights which our government granted in perpetuity.
If you ever drive through the part of the Imperial Valley which is just artichokes, you'll viscerally get the point I'm about to make: you shouldn't be deciding whether square miles of artichokes are a more productive use of water than someone's lawn. No one is starving without artichokes, lawns make people happy.
We solve this kind of problem with markets, or in California's case, we flagrantly ignore the solution and start fucking with people's supply.
Markets solve problems efficiently, but not equitably. In the case of water, an equitable solution is a moral prerogative, no?
By samatman 2022-08-2913:01 California's solution is feudal title to customary water rights, which is neither efficient nor equitable.
Let's try making it efficient first, and then see if we need to add equity. Kraft Dinner is very efficient to make, we add equity with EBT cards.
Everyone has a different option about equity when it comes to distribution of natural resources. It's highly subjective.
For other natural resources, sure. But without water humans _die_. That's not subjective.
How about making the price graduated. Each household has a low price up to a certain point (a reasonable amount for indoor use of the household) and after that it's market price.
Some households have more residents than others. I don't particularly want intrusive government monitoring of who lives where just for the sake of water allocations. No thanks.
By bobthepanda 2022-08-294:49 I don’t know that any such tiered pricing needs to be down to the liter.
I think it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that agricultural water from individual farms dwarfs that of individual residences, so you just need to find the cutoff at which residential allowance stops applying.
By Thorrez 2022-08-2914:39 Get an estimate of the maximum people/bedroom in the area, then judge each house based on that. I think the city already knows how many bedrooms each house has.
By AnimalMuppet 2022-08-2922:08 People die without water to drink. Nobody dies without water to grow artichokes.
As a bonus, not using all that water to grow artichokes leaves more water for people to drink.
So, yeah. Like samatman said, "Let's try making it efficient first, and then see if we need to add equity."
Don't be ridiculous. No one is seriously proposing completely cutting people off from water. Flow restrictors still allow customers enough water for personal consumption and hygiene.
When were we ever talking about flow restrictors?
You were defending a market-based solution to water usage, which I asserted would be inequitable and therefore immoral.
Flow restrictors are pretty anti-market, and I think they're a great solution to penalizing those who repeatedly break the rules.
By nradov 2022-08-296:17 Yes ideally free markets should be used to allocate limited resources. What's your point?
> We solve this kind of problem with markets
Aren't you glaringly forgetting diminishing marginal utility of money in personal consumption?
By samatman 2022-08-2913:02 No, I'm pointing out that the artichoke crew don't have to pay for water at anything resembling a market rate.
Californian citizens pay for water. Agriculture doesn't work that way. It should.
By binbashthefash 2022-08-295:202 reply Source needed on lawns making people happier than having access to water and food.
By rexpop 2022-08-296:28 Artichokes are only nominally food. Functionally, they're recreation.
By karaterobot 2022-08-2920:38 Counterpoint: source not needed, it's clearly an opinion or a conjecture, not a reference missing its citation.
By icelancer 2022-08-293:01 > Agricultural use of water is actually productive though
Depends on what food is being produced. Some foods are significantly more water intensive than others [0] or are inefficient to grow in droughts [1]. Perhaps cutting back on non-essential crops that require tons of water would be a method to meet halfway?
[0]: nuts primarily, you may recall the hullabaloo about almonds which is somewhat inaccurate about them specifically, but true about nuts generally
[1]: asparagus is very inefficient as well
By colechristensen 2022-08-293:44 Nobody is going to starve if California stops agriculture growing the wrong plants in arid climates. There are plenty of places to grow things that don’t require abusive amounts of irrigation (and many that require zero irrigation at all)
Someday we will face hunger, because the short term economies of scale associated with “the miracle in the desert” made farming economically unviable elsewhere.
Places like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, etc have and are continuing to permanently lose prime farmland to subdivisions because nobody can compete with growing in the desert.
A recent article local to me, Mid Atlantic Coast USA, that touches on farmers quitting. From the article this one happened to be the largest privately owned farm in the State.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/new-jersey/farming-farms-produ...
Wonder who bought it? We can certainly anticipate food prices rising as the core needs in life; air, water, and energy become the next hot commodity as the "nice to haves" supply chain suffers and those with liquid capital seek returns.
By Spooky23 2022-08-3017:48 I worked as a teenager for a farm that had been continuously operating since the Dutch colonial era.
There are few continuously operating entities that are 300+ years old in the US. That farm managed to operate for all of that time, but went dormant about 20 years ago. They board horses and lease the land for hay to pay the property taxes, and will probably sell it when the current family owner gets older.
It’s just not possible to compete against scaled agribusiness. To borrow another example in this thread, you can’t sell artichokes from your 500 acre farm when the competition plants 20 square miles of artichokes in a desert with government provided water.
Same with grain. We’re emptying an ancient aquifer in the Great Plains to grow wheat, corn and soy and have eliminated those crops everywhere else as a result. All good until the water runs out.
By midoridensha 2022-08-295:48 Also because people insist on living in single-family-houses in subdivisions located in places that are better used as farmland, rather than in denser cities.
By NonNefarious 2022-08-296:33 Yes, because children in the inner city are subsisting on ALMONDS.
By ErikVandeWater 2022-08-292:58 Productive is relative. Certainly the most water-needy crops can be grown in countries (or states) with more abundant rainfall than that of California. The water used for those crops grown in California has a better purpose down the line..
By imperfect_light 2022-08-295:53 If farmers want to pay the same rate as someone watering their lawn (less a volume discount) I'm all for it. But of course they're not, they're paying a well below-market rate to grow water intensive crops in arid environments where a lot of water is wasted through evaporation. And we'll guilt individuals to stop watering their lawn and take shorter showers.
By thereisnospork 2022-08-295:14 >Agricultural use of water is actually productive though
Then they should have no problem paying fair market value for their water...
By binbashthefash 2022-08-295:18 That food is exported for profit, not used to feed hungry people in precarious situations.
By mistersquid 2022-08-2822:115 reply > I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate.
I understand these figures may not mean anything because private individuals consume relatively imperceptible amounts of water compared to (the agriculture) industry.
But reflect for a moment that Kim Kardashian blew through over one quarter million gallons of water in June. [0] (There are other offending celebrities listed in that article. Kardashian is the most egregious of them.)
I’m all for restricting and regulating agricultural waste of water. But surely some attention should be given to flagrant offenders among individual citizens.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2022/08/24/1119112184/kim-kardashian-kev...
By jtbayly 2022-08-290:59 You’re begging the question. They are only offenders at all because the law against residential use has been passed. The claim is that it’s a useless law, and your response is to say that people should be punished under the law.
By colechristensen 2022-08-293:501 reply For context vs the quarter million figure for a month for a celebrity:
yesterday it rained about 20 million gallons of water on my family’s small Iowa farm. Like a middle class income size of farm.
By HWR_14 2022-08-295:00 Or, to put it a different way she used as much water as 4 acres of farmland in California (averaged over all crops, only 3 acres if its growing almonds).
By alexnewman 2022-08-290:44 If everyone, farmers, industry and people all paid the same per gallon as Kim kardashian water use would be cut in half
By alexnewman 2022-08-290:45 Flagrant offenders?
By barry-cotter 2022-08-2822:272 reply No. There’s an extremely simple way to solve this problem that would work; Everyone pays the same price for water. If the government is not going to do that then blame the government.
Are you suggesting the same dollars per gallon? Because I callus also see a reasonable argument to charge for water in percentage or person that per gallon. As the article mentions, some people are perfectly happy to pay more money. Which’d be fine if there was a guaranteed supply with enough for everyone. But that’s not how the water supply in CA is today. Poor people should not die of dehydration just because rich people want lawns and pools.
By Panzer04 2022-08-2823:51 It should be simple enough to have a baseline allocation, along with an increased price after that's used up.
It's also worth noting that water probably doesn't need to be very expensive before usage starts getting curbed quite heavily by the main consumers. If there's no price, might as well use as much as you're allocated - there is no direct consequence for doing so.
By mr_toad 2022-08-294:32 > Poor people should not die of dehydration
Places that do charge for water (places like Perth, Western Australia) charge a few dollars per thousand litres - enough for several months of drinking water. Nobody is going to die from dehydration.
The prices should not go up a lot, because if they did, farming would become unprofitable.
E.g., tomato farming produces around $4000 worth of produce per acre and year[0], and requires 2.5 feet applied water. ($4000/acre)/(2.5 feet) = 0.5 cents/gallon. If the water got that expensive they'd need to stop growing tomatoes, since just the water would already cost more than the produce would be worth.
By contrast, residential water is 0.7 cents per gallon[1], so the prices involved are really tiny compared to what human users are already paying.
[0] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverv...
[1] https://www.calwater.com/docs/rates/rates_tariffs/ela/202201...
By diffeomorphism 2022-08-295:22 You mean farming of water-intensive crops would become unprofitable. Yeah that is fine.
The flip side of this is that it never was profitable to begin with and only was done because citizens gave enormous handouts to these companies (paying for all their water). You can keep doing that, but make it more explicit: Make them pay for all the water, but give them a subsidy of $X and change it if they waste water.
By seventytwo 2022-08-293:132 reply Noooo… tomatoes would just get more expensive to the point where demand balances out. You need to think beyond the first effect. All of this stuff ripples through the entire market.
By vilhelm_s 2022-08-293:23 You can still grow tomatoes outside California though, surely production would shift to a place with cheaper water? And if the prices are too high people would stop buying tomatoes.
I agree that the prices would not be exactly the same, my point is just that these prices are still extremely low. You don't need to fear people dying from dehydration (like the comment above suggested).
By binbashthefash 2022-08-295:22
By jtbayly 2022-08-290:57 But, as has been pointed out many times in this thread already, it’s not because of pools and lawns.
By ericmay 2022-08-2823:25 Probably pay the same price such that water doesn’t deteriorate past a point though right? It does need to be affordable for families. If you don’t also put some usage level maintenance then it’ll get depleted to the point that it remains too expensive for all but the wealthiest users (personal or corporate or government.
By killyourcar 2022-08-292:11 The largest agricultural crop in the US by acre is lawn. It's not just the lawns, it's the sod fields, it's the grass seed fields, it's all the support those things need.
Lawns are incredibly wasteful, much much moreso than pools or other uses. Yes, urban water use is small compared to agricultural use, but lawns in the desert really are inexcusable.
By notyourwork 2022-08-2821:19 That last sentence blew my mind.
We have a brown lawn because our water district was given a budget based upon population, and they decided to enforce it by restricting outdoor use.
By AnimalMuppet 2022-08-2922:01 "... you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points". Nicely done!
I don't know where you live, but I see many fewer plastic bags drifting like so many tumbleweeds since the imposition of plastic bag fees and taxes where I live.
By karaterobot 2022-08-2820:542 reply Sure, but the stated purpose of these bans was not to reduce the number of plastic bags we see, it was to reduce plastic pollution. That would make you think that plastic bags were the most important source of post-consumer plastic pollution, which they aren't — plastic packaging is. For marine microplastics ("the pacific garbage patch") the main sources are things like textiles, car tires, and of course fishing nets.
The thinking seems to be "well, it would be hard to eliminate those sources, so let's make it so you don't see as many plastic garbage bags drifting around, and it'll look like we did something meaningful."
It seems to have absolutely reduced urban plastic pollution. I'd call it a win.
By mechagodzilla 2022-08-291:11 My town banned single-use plastic bags and I went from picking 1-2 out of my yard every week to pretty much zero immediately. It definitely didn’t solve every problem, but I agree it definitely made a problem a lot better.
Half measures still do _something_
They did reduce plastic pollution, as you admit.
Was it the most effective regulation to pass to reduce plastic pollution by the greatest possible amount? Not at all
By LawTalkingGuy 2022-08-290:091 reply They're often counterproductive. People feel accomplished, and finished with the half-measures and they often don't bother investigating the results or the ongoing requirements.
By SantalBlush 2022-08-291:332 reply I'm not sure that this is true. Maybe you could give some evidence that this is the most common outcome.
By karaterobot 2022-08-292:41 The evidence is that the major sources of plastic pollution were not put under further regulation subsequent to the regulation of this minor source of plastic pollution, even though the threat they present has not diminished.
By ZeroGravitas 2022-08-298:13 It's an article of faith for people in the libertarian climate change denial community, because they get funded by the people who sell the natural gas that is used to make them:
https://reason.com/tag/plastic-bags/
https://reason.com/tag/straws/
Just a quick glance at those links shows they are just a little obsessed about this.
I was visiting San Diego soon after the fees went into effect and they were dealing with a cholera outbreak because the homeless no longer had plastic bags to defecate into. So you have a miniscule effect on plastic pollution in exchange for a large effect in a different area.
By ryan_lane 2022-08-292:07 The solution to this is to provide bathrooms, not plastic bags.
By killyourcar 2022-08-295:19 This is not salient, it's like saying "when I removed pressure from the wound, the patient started bleeding out. Therefore removing pressure is bad and to fix the wound we should ask Re apply pressure" The pressure is a stopgap, you need to address the underlying problem (in this case by ensuring adequate bathrooms) rather than simply reacting to the surface level concern.
By seventytwo 2022-08-293:14 That is a wild unindented consequence.
By killyourcar 2022-08-292:12
By SoftTalker 2022-08-2820:291 reply That's likely true, but what change has been made in the total volume of plastic waste produced in the area? Possibly/probably very little.
It's an example of doing something easy and visibly noticable, but ultimately inconsequential, to create the illusion of solving a problem.
In Australia, when they did a plastic bag ban, the total volume of plastic waste actually went up. Instead of using flimsy grocery bags for their household trash, people were now using thicker dedicated trash bags. Those thin bags are some of the most re-used plastic out there.
Yep same in New Zealand, as much as I hate it we now buy dedicated bin bags for our kitchen bin and others as it works the best for our flat. In the past this was never an issue.
However, urban plastic pollution has definitely decreased. We do often now have an excess of paper bags in our house as people tend to forget their reusable bags and we don't have as many uses for the paper ones. At least they can be recycled.
By pclmulqdq 2022-08-291:10 The problem is the carbon footprint. Those paper bags have the carbon footprint of 5-10 plastic bags. Re-usable bags, depending on the material, are 200-1000 plastic bags worth of carbon.
By lillecarl 2022-08-2823:13 Our dedicated trash bags are thinner than what used to be in the store for your groceries.
This is a great example of regulations that feel good but are probably net negative. Paper bags require more energy and are worse for the environment than plastic bags on net [0][1]. Reusable bags are improperly sanitized and typically quite dirty, something that was pretty relevant in 2020 (and theoretically going forward). [2]
[0]: https://ecomyths.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/scho0711buan...
[1]: https://cascade.uoregon.edu/fall2012/expert/expert-article/
[2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-plastic-bag-ban-backfires-1...
By mr_toad 2022-08-294:41 Walking down the street a few days ago I saw someone had put out an entire trash bag full of reusable bags.
By metadat 2022-08-2823:04 You must not live in California..
The summer after they passed the plastic bag ban, I worked near the SF bay. Nearly every day, I'd watch a garbage scow go out full, and come back empty.
I often wonder if those scows are still operating. I'd guess one load put as much plastic in the bay as a year of litter.
By darkteflon 2022-08-293:421 reply You’re saying the city is dumping plastic in the bay? I may be misunderstanding your comment.
By hedora 2022-08-295:03 Someone definitely used to, even after the bag ban. No idea if they still do.
Agriculture is also a small portion of the state’s GDP and we could do without some of the most water-intensive crops, such as almonds. There won’t be food insecurity or famine if we cut back on almonds.
By CitrusFruits 2022-08-2816:529 reply I talk with my friend who works in water law a lot about this, and he always comes to basically the same conclusion as this. Almonds and pistachios are a huge waste of water. The problem is that farmer's water rights are constitutionally protected (California constitution). You need a super majority in the California senate to do anything about it, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
IMO I think we should tax the heck out of pistachio and almonds and just make them unprofitable to sell.
Pistachios are a high-value crop, and other places under drought like the La Mancha region of Spain are also switching from olives and wheat to pistachios.
Compare this to alfalfa, an ultra-low-value crop the Saudis are growing in California because they bought senior water rights, then shipping to Saudi to feed cows, essentially laundering water.
Agricultural water is heavily subsidized in California, and the absurd system of senior and junior water rights means a senior rights owner has absolutely zero incentive to be efficient, so instead of installing efficient drip irrigation, they simply flood fields. But reforming the system would take so much litigation no California politician has dared to do it.
By PaulDavisThe1st 2022-08-2820:531 reply This is not just the story of California, but the entire US southwest. Unlike back east, where water is subject to municipal authority and policy (thus allowing a town/city/county/state to decide what the best way to use the water is, especially in times of actual or imminent shortages), the western states ended up with this absurd "water rights" concept that prevents effective policy making.
Eh, back east water isn’t life and death - in the sense that for the vast majority of the east coast, everyone has plenty unless you’re a gigantic super metropolis.
In the west, water is scarce and the most limited resource in most areas - and literally life and death.
An old saw here is, ‘whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over’
By PaulDavisThe1st 2022-08-294:041 reply > Eh, back east water isn’t life and death
You'd have said that in the UK and Western Europe if you're less than 100 years old ... until this summer. Sure, it may not literally be life or death the way it could be if you were lost on foot in the deserts of Nevada, but the prospect of running out of water for agriculture in certain parts of what has hitherto been a well-watered part of the world became quite tangible this summer.
The old dividing line for "agriculture without irrigation" was the 100th meridian. It has already moved at least two degrees east, and there are some forecasts that predict that climate change could move it as far as the 90th. So "the east" is a bit of a mutable concept at this time.
‘literally life and death’ is exactly what I mean.
And it doesn’t require being on foot for it to be so. Las Vegas could literally not be more than a tiny town of desert rats without the water rights on the Colorado they have, same with Phoenix.
Instead they’re huge bustling metropolises.
Even with the issues going on in Europe, crops may die, farmers may go bankrupt - but no one will be literally without water and die from it, or even have to resort to overland tanking.
Las Vegas has been conserving water recently though. With like 50% more people they use like 50% less water than in the 1990's.
Okay, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong about the numbers, but the people went up and total water went down.
By lazide 2022-08-2919:28 According to this random PDF from one of the Universities there, the typical household has decreased water usage down to 222 gallons a day. Which is quite low compared to the average in the US, no question.
[https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...]
The current Las Vegas metro population (not counting visitors) is 2.2 million people.
So that’s roughly half a billion gallons of water a day, or 178 billion gallons of water a year. Just for residential, not counting businesses, which typically are much larger water users.
Las Vegas typically gets a bit under 5 inches of precipitation a year.
5 inches of water on an acre of land is equal to 135770 gallons (an ‘acre inch’ x 5).
So to support the current residences in Las Vegas off precipitation alone, they would need to capture 100% of all rain over an area of approximately 1.2 million acres, or 1875 square miles.
Again, that isn’t counting commercial use at all.
Damming up the river which is the final terminus of a watershed estimated at 246,000 square miles (aka the Colorado) makes this a drop in the bucket.
Constructing something equivalent independently?
Not so easy.
And Las Vegas doesn’t have geology amenable to making due with some local damming. Red Rocks is quite pretty and would make a dent, but isn’t big enough.
By jelliclesfarm 2022-08-2820:271 reply Pistachios grow on saline ground and can be irrigated with high salinity water. And that is precisely where it is (and should be) planted in CA.
We are looking at entire valley farms going to have to deal with salt water intrusion. Those farmers are hoping to cash in for housing, but pistachios would probably grow well in Salinas/Monterrey valley region.
By sodiumlife 2022-08-291:192 reply I haven't heard of anyone doing pistachios in Salinas Valley, and was always curious why. Seems that it is mostly salad greens and broccoli, with wine grapes quickly taking over.
Does central valley have high salinity water now? It's this becoming a problem in be Salinas Valley?
I have lots of family farming there, but am not directly involved in the farming myself, so could be out of the loop.
By mellavora 2022-08-297:51 I think pistachio needs cold spells to fruit properly.
"Pistachios require long, hot, dry summers and chilling in the winter, but don't tolerate ground that freezes. They require approximately 1,000 accumulative hours of temperature at or below 45° F during dormancy. ... Pistachios have the narrowest environment requirements of any commercially grown nut crop. ...In the United States, that pretty much limits growth to the San Joaquin Valley in California, southeastern Arizona, far west Texas and the high desert of New Mexico."
By jelliclesfarm 2022-08-2916:36 not now. the timeline is 35-60 years when salt water intrusion is a guaranteed reality. all those salad and strawberry fields wont exist anymore. there are a few people who own most of the chunk of acres there. it will likely all be housing developments.
By inferiorhuman 2022-08-290:161 reply
Alfalfa is used/needed locally for cattle feed. Unfortunately for all of the noise over growing nuts in the desert nobody's talking about the immense amount of water used to raise cows.Compare this to alfalfa, an ultra-low-value crop the Saudis are growing in California because they bought senior water rights, then shipping to Saudi to feed cows, essentially laundering water.https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-No...
Yeah, it's a bit like Prop 13 in that respect. One only needs to drive down I-5 to see how militantly opposed farmers are to water conservation. California's got a vast system of aqueducts dating back sixty odd years and we're only now getting around to talking about maybe covering them to reduce evaporative losses.But reforming the system would take so much litigation no California politician has dared to do it.By anonAndOn 2022-08-291:17 Those billboards you see along I-5 opposing water restrictions are largely funded by Stewart Resnick, "the wealthiest farmer in the United States".[0] Cutting off the water would make Stewart less of a billionaire.
By tomjakubowski 2022-08-2819:001 reply Couldn't a ballot initiative do the trick? Has anyone been working on that?
Yes a ballot initiative could do the trick. However it's hard to get urban voters to really appreciate the scale of the problem or what needs to be done. As long as their home water supply works and the bill isn't exorbitant then everything seems fine. Plus even with a ballot initiative to change the state Constitution, it would probably still be necessary to compensate current water rights holders at fair market value in order to seize or significantly curtail those rights. That type of eminent domain property seizure would be extraordinarily expensive, and so politicians hesitate to propose the tax increases and bond sales that would be necessary to fund it. But the current situation is unsustainable, so eventually we'll hit a true crisis where some large areas literally run out of water.
You don't take away rights, I don't even understand how you can tell someone they cannot access water.
That said, instead you make it illegal in... say, 5 years, to irrigate certain crops without drip feeding. You also provide grants to convert people over to it, for free.
Of course, it's still very expensive to maintain all that infra, it clogs, needs to be monitored, etc, but if the whole state has to do it, at least it's comparative competition.
> You don't take away rights, I don't even understand how you can tell someone they cannot access water.
What’s difficult to understand? Why should society be subsidizing these senior water rights holders? Nobody is saying they can’t access water, they should just fucking pay for it the same way the rest of the world does.
Society isn't paying subsidies to water rights holders. Water rights are property rights. Legally they can't just be taken away. You can complain that it shouldn't be that way, but that is the legal reality.
> Water rights are property rights. Legally they can't just be taken away.
That's precisely eminent domain, "the right of a government or its agent to expropriate private property for public use, with payment of compensation."
By nradov 2022-08-2916:48 Go back and read my comment above. I specifically described this in the context of eminent domain.
By kortilla 2022-08-305:11 > Legally they can't just be taken away. You can complain that it shouldn't be that way, but that is the legal reality.
The constitution can just be changed. They are not inalienable
By PaulDavisThe1st 2022-08-2820:511 reply They do pay for it. Their use of water is profitable, for them. Whether it is profitable for society as a whole is a different question.
By arrosenberg 2022-08-2821:221 reply They barely pay for it. Most of the people holding these rights pay an absurd fraction of what a city-dweller would pay for the same amount. That's the only reason it's profitable for the farmer.
They use different water systems. There is no single ‘water system’ or water source in the state. A senior rights holder has rights on a specific source of water.
Water itself is ‘free’ until there is no more - minus the infrastructure costs to get it where you want of course, which can be zero to insanely expensive depending on the source of water.
City dwellers are paying for the infrastructure to get clean, drinkable water to their doorstep at precise pressures 24/7 + any payments to water source rights owners.
Farmers are paying for bulk delivery of massive quantities of non-potable/drinkable water to their fields during specific times of the year.
These are not comparable things at all.
By arrosenberg 2022-08-292:011 reply Nah, thats just a completely revisionist history. All of these works projects were funded by federal dollars or city dollars, including the infrastructure to get it to the farmers. They pay a fraction of the delivery cost the cities pay. All the purification and recapture facilities are built and paid for on top of that. Western farmers have never, ever paid a fair price for the water they use.
That's bullshit, at least in California. Most of the problem water usage from Farmers, for example in the central and antelope valley, has been from private wells on private property they themselves sunk, or an equivalent small co-operative they were a member of did. They've been tapping huge underground fossil aquifers that way for nearly 100 years now, to the point it's been collapsing. No canals required. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence]
It's estimated the ground has permanently sunk ~ 28 ft. from this alone.
Before this started, the water table in the Antelope valley was at ground level in many places, with literal artesian springs popping up. It's now well over 2500 ft below ground level.
The Delta Mendota canal (finished in '51) was an extension and redo of a number of existing canals that were there far before. The army corp of engineers did a lot of the work then - but it wasn't that new. And this was all water just a few feet above sea-level and that would shortly become seawater if left unmolested.
Most of these original Canals from the Sierras existed before the concept of a state water organization existed. Some of them existed literally before the state did, and were from Spanish colonization/slavery. They weren't as mechanized or as large scale, but they were there.
By arbitrary_name 2022-08-290:441 reply The water that agriculture requires is transported from government reservoirs, through government channels and canals, using government pumps.
We as a society are paying for it, they get it far cheaper than cost.
They are very comparable: both are water, being provided from a very finite source.
By lazide 2022-08-290:58 It usually is not, depending on what you mean by ‘government’.
Even some of the large metropolises don’t get much water from state sources - San Francisco and the Bay Area for instance is almost exclusively using Water sources it purchased a long time ago. It’s why most of the hills east of Milpitas are private property of San Francisco Water, for instance. Most of the water that feeds LA, the city itself bought control over (and quite controversially so).
Often it is pumped from private wells on private land.
Often when it isn’t, it is part of large regional co-operatives of farmers, who buy land and then sink wells under it for water.
The rare times that isn’t the case, the ‘government’ is the local county water control board, not the state or feds.
The rate times THAT isn’t the case, it’s often overflow from flood control, or part of outflows from reservoirs built for flood control - where the water HAS to be let out or there will be flooding, depending on the season.
I’ve lived in California my entire life, and I’ve only gotten water from anything state owned on very, very rare occasions (aqueduct) and it’s terrible.
By specialist 2022-08-291:171 reply IANAL, so don't know the right words, but water in my jurisdiction has something like opportunity costs. Any water not used for agriculture or humans is available for fisheries, power generation, and habitat.
By lazide 2022-08-293:37 FYI, most hydropower and flood control dams have minimum flows they must sustain to avoid overtopping during spring flood seasons, and a maximum height they are allowed to store water at because of it. It's called the Exclusive Flood Control Storage Capacity.
If they can use that for power generation, it's 'free power' - they'd literally have to put it through the spillway instead of the turbines instead. That water also ends up in whatever farming areas can use it during that time too.
The issue of course is that weather is unpredictable, and if there ISN'T a flood, that was storage that could have been used for water for later. Either power, or crops, or drinking, etc.
What you're referring to I believe is prioritization of water - humans get x percent up to a certain cap, then the rest is fish and wildlife, or on demand power, etc.
That is what folks in the thread are generally referring to as 'water rights'.
What does "you don't take away rights" even mean? And why say such a thing?
Of course rights can, and should, be taken away, if they don't make sense anymore. And these particular rights clearly don't make sense anymore.
By nradov 2022-08-293:20 Legally speaking, water rights are one type of property rights. Those rights can be taken away, but the owners must be compensated at fair market value. The state government can't just arbitrarily seize private property.
By inferiorhuman 2022-08-290:202 reply The Colorado River is the source of water for a huge chunk of Southern California, six other states (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming), and Mexico. You're not going to change that unilaterally without causing an international incident.
By Bud 2022-08-292:57 Several huge incidents are going to occur regardless of what we do. That is already baked-in to this situation.
That includes fantasies about pretending that we can do nothing. Which we can't.
By arbitrary_name 2022-08-290:461 reply Uhh, we just literally told Mexico they are getting less allocation then usual, because the states also had to take cuts to ensure minimum flows/levels.
There is no international incident if everyone understands why the water is not there.
And that is not a reason for the states to avoid collectively reconsidering what they are using the water for. We all need to look for ways to cut usage, including passing the true costs on to agriculture.
By inferiorhuman 2022-08-291:48 Yeah, allocations were reduced after months of negotiations prompting a ton of teeth gnashing. Tijuana, for instance, gets almost all of its water from the Colorado River and is already subject to water outages.
Agreed.We all need to look for ways to cut usage, including passing the true costs on to agriculture.
By LadyCailin 2022-08-2823:01 > I don't even understand how you can tell someone they cannot access water.
“There’s no water left, you used it all.”
By missedthecue 2022-08-2821:211 reply How is that laundering water? Do you mean arbitrage?
By fmajid 2022-09-019:45 There’s not much difference between packing a freighter with alfalfa and filling a tanker with water:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-w...
By throwaway09223 2022-08-2817:081 reply There's always the proposition system. It costs several million dollars to hire signature collectors to get a proposition on the ballot. Californians could vote on it via direct democracy.
Frankly I'm astounded some of the municipal water companies or development-oriented industries haven't banded together to make this happen.
By bombcar 2022-08-2817:13 Because the problem hasn’t gotten bad enough. Once it does something will occur.
By Dave_Rosenthal 2022-08-2817:201 reply The answer is to use taxpayer money to buy the water rights from the farmers who will sell it the cheapest. The state can then use it for something they deem more valuable, perhaps urban usage.
That sounds like a workaround for a ridiculous & pathetic inquity that never should have been, that has metastasized into a societal scale suicide pact. The state forever paying people to give up an infinite right to natural resources the state didnt have may be a legal answer but it's immoral & this buying-out "solution" keeps the injustice going uncorrected.
Change the constitution.
British paid out slave owners and abolished slavery decades before the USA did and without killing 1.5 million people. Sometimes it is better to pay out an injustice.
By edflsafoiewq 2022-08-2822:25 Who should get the payout, the slave owners or the slaves?
Incidentally, Brazil abolished slavery without a war and without paying out anyone.
The US civil war was primarily over different modes of production, not slavery directly.
The British working class was forced to pay the former slavers until a few years ago, while the former slaves got nothing. That was in no way just or good or useful.
By lightsandaounds 2022-08-291:132 reply Why are you trying to white wash the civil war? It was fought over slavery. That is what the declarations of independence signed by the confederate states actually say. They spell it out.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
By fennecfoxen 2022-08-292:57 Whitewashing the Civil War as grandparent post did was in error, but don’t let the evils of slavery blind you to the leadership’s more immediate, stated war goal: to preserve the Union. Freeing slaves was an ancillary matter at best.
If the actual explicit bona fide war goal was freeing the slaves, Reconstruction would have been a lot less oppressive and its Jim Crow regimes would have faced more obstacles.
By dontlaugh 2022-08-2915:04 You misunderstand me. The ruling class in the north didn’t care about slavery, just their own profits. It just so happened that they were in competition with the ruling class in the south, whose wealth depended on slavery.
Of course many workers did care about slavery and wanted to end it, so they allied themselves to the northern ruling class.
> That was in no way just or good or useful
I think the people who stopped being slaves, along with their descendants, would disagree.
By dontlaugh 2022-08-2915:07 It was not good that the slavers were paid, instead of paying reparations to the former slaves.
By rektide 2022-08-2821:56 Itself a perpetration of iniquity- the state spending vast amounts to make vastly wealthy immoral undeserving people who should never have had a thing further wealthy.
Buying out unjust holders changes the form of injustice being carried, makes the illegitemacy less viscerally real & more palatable. But, imo, it's embarassing that law offers itself no options to fundamentally correct it's problematic past. It feels like a misalignment, to protect property & capital above all else, even in the most absurdly unfair & illegitemate of situations.
Perhaps in places such events are politically necessary for change. But I dont think I am alone in finding that these past events & this present one reek, that it is low actions to escape the crime but still enable & make profit of the stunning injustice. To govern without ever permitting any actual rebalancing feels inadequate to build a worthy way.
The Dems already have a super-majority in the california senate, so that problem has been solved?
By CitrusFruits 2022-08-2819:10 From what I understand it's not a democratic vs republican thing, it's a rural vs urban. There are enough rural democrats that they wouldn't be able to pass a constitutional reform.
By tffcccdredf 2022-08-2820:55
By chmod600 2022-08-291:51 "You need a super majority in the California senate to do anything about it"
I heard that it's worse than that: the water rights in California are structure enough like property that there might be a US constitutional challenge based on the 5th amendment's property clauses.
I’d imagine the trees themselves don’t even get much of the water. Could we find a way to get water directly next to the roots?
By throwaway09223 2022-08-2820:28 Yes, we could but we don't because the farms have little incentive to invest in irrigation infrastructure when water is so cheap.
By TulliusCicero 2022-08-2820:36 You can propose constitutional amendments in California via the initiative process, I believe.
By seventytwo 2022-08-293:15 Water rights are a giant problem in the west.
I suspect the few feral govt will have to step in at some point to completely re-do the system.
...in the same sense that we are literally importing water whenever anyone buys a computer (~400 gallons), a phone (~200 gallons), a polyester shirt (~3500 gallons), or a pair of jeans (~1800 gallons) not made locally.
I.e., not at all. Most of the water used to make those things doesn't end up in those things. Same with almonds.
By throwaway09223 2022-08-2820:321 reply Your analogy doesn't hold water, if you'll pardon the pun.
The discussion is about water being consumed. Production consumes water, and when we then export the product it is reasonable to say that the function is, in essence, exporting the water, because the water is consumed during production.
Saudi Arabia grows their alfalfa in California instead of locally. The only reason they've done this is to use our water instead of theirs. More water is consumed by industries which turn water into exported products, like alfalfa, than is used by all homes in the entire state put together -- including all lawns, pools, golf courses and parks put together.
By UncleEntity 2022-08-2821:412 reply > The only reason they've done this is to use our water instead of theirs.
I’ve spent some amount of time in Saudi Arabia and they don’t have a lot of water there for them to use.
I also take issue with the term “our water” like you have some “manifest destiny” to seize someone else’s property rights because you feel you are more entitled to it than the current legal owner. They thought ahead, bought property/water rights and are using them in a way you disagree with. Fair enough, pay them more than the utility they currently derive from their usage and everyone walks away happy campers.
By throwaway09223 2022-08-2823:10 "I’ve spent some amount of time in Saudi Arabia and they don’t have a lot of water there for them to use."
Interestingly, I have as well. They're having to desalinate water for growth just like we are planning to do.
"Fair enough, pay them more than the utility they currently derive from their usage and everyone walks away happy campers. "
Purchasing the farms with water rights is a very reasonable path forward, actually. It would be cheaper to buy farms and shut them down than to build the water conservation initiatives California's currently engaged in.
The problem is political. CA leaders don't actually want to solve the water crisis - they want to grandstand.
"I also take issue with the term “our water” like you have some “manifest destiny” to seize someone else’s property rights because you feel you are more entitled to it than the current legal owner. "
The state does have this power, as a matter of fact. So there you go, the perspective is reality based.
I always regret that I didn't plan ahead enough to be king of the world so that no one would have any moral right to disagree with my legal right to do whatever I want.
By UncleEntity 2022-08-292:401 reply Seriously?
You think someone acting within all legal bounds is immoral because they are using a resource in a manner you disagree with?
By diffeomorphism 2022-08-295:311 reply Illegal and immoral are entirely two different words.
So if you are accused of doing something immoral and your only replay is "but it within legal bounds" my only take away is that you agree that it is immoral as hell, but would rather not talk about it.
By UncleEntity 2022-08-2910:152 reply Literally no one has given an argument on the morality of using water to grow food, they just assume that their opinion is the correct one and anyone who doesn’t agree is, I don’t know, worthy of ad hominem attacks. I expect a lot more from HN honestly.
I really don’t care about the morality of water usage in California because that’s someone else’s problem, what I do care about is all the talk of using the government to seize private property because they think they both have the right and they can use it better than the rightful owners — this is the kind of moral issue I worry about.
By throwaway09223 2022-08-2915:05 "using the government to seize private property"
Hey, I hear you. Property rights are important.
The thing is, not all property rights are equal. Some are more established than others.
Owning land and owning our own tangible possessions are some of the most firmly established rights. Even in these cases there are carve-outs for public good (taxes, eminent domain) but I'm right there with you that we should seek to preserve these property rights above all else.
But there are other property rights which are much less well established, and which change over time. Copyright, for example, is a relatively new property right and it has changed, expanded, significantly since its inception. When we talk about reducing the scope of copyright, are we talking about seizing private property? Well, maybe, but only in the same sense that extending copyright is seizing public property and making it private.
Water rights in human history are older than copyright, but the particular structure of western water rights in California is newer and less well-established. In fact, the basic structure of water rights is very different in the western US than in the eastern, and this difference is a major source of our water troubles. This didn't matter for a long time, but now it matters a lot.
Talking about correcting these types of incongruities inherent in the way we structure ownership is substantially different from the banal picture you paint of seizing tangible, real private property.
By diffeomorphism 2022-08-2914:461 reply > Literally no one has given an argument on the morality of using water to grow food
Correct, that is a complete straw man. The argument was about wasteful use of water, which is legal but arguably immoral.
> I really don’t care about the morality of water usage in California because that’s someone else’s problem,
Are you sure you wanted to say that part out loud?
> seize private property because they think they both have the right and they can use it better than the rightful owners — this is the kind of moral issue I worry about.
You are aware of "eminent domain", no? That is not a new thing. Also it is not about "private property" but about entitlements bought from the government.
By UncleEntity 2022-08-2915:111 reply > Are you sure you wanted to say that part out loud?
Sure, why not.
I’m currently in the Central Valley and every other farm has a sign about water something or other, they don’t need me advocating for them.
> You are aware of "eminent domain", no?
Of course but that’s not what was being proposed. The suggestion was to kick out the Saudis because they are growing crops in California and that’s not okay because reasons.
The basic proposal is to nationalize foreign owned assets like they do in places like Venezuela and I’m not fine with that. We have the rule of law for a reason and violating the property rights of a group of people so they can be used as a scapegoat is not something I want to be done in my homeland or in my name.
If people really want extremist viewpoints on water rights then I propose that if you aren’t a native born Californian then you are the problem. California water for Californians is my new slogan…
By throwaway09223 2022-08-2918:10 I don't think anyone proposed nationalizing foreign owned assets. I introduced this topic and I certainly didn't propose that. I offered the Saudi situation as an example of commercial exploitation of resources for the benefit of non-Californians, not as a target to focus on.
California has already been changing water rights over the past few decades, requiring meters on wells and so on. This will continue out of necessity as it is the only meaningful way to curtail water consumption. These programs do not single out any particular groups.
I'm a third generation Californian, fwiw, and before that my family operated farms elsewhere in the PNW. Contemporary agribusiness in California is a big problem and it's not just the water. Labor is a huge issue as well. California farms don't have much standing to be righteous about their current position.
By bittercynic 2022-08-2818:59 s/literally/effectively
> Agriculture is also a small portion of the state’s GDP
Be careful not to fall into the GDP trap. This is a place where free markets looking for efficiencies will cost you in p99 events. It's one thing when there's a toilet paper or semiconductor shortage. It's another when it's food, so it makes sense for governments to subsidize farm production, whether it's though cheap water or buying surplus product, to ensure a stable food supply.
By gruez 2022-08-2819:31 But if the state wants to protect its food supply, surely there are better ways to do that than growing overpriced nuts?
By PeterisP 2022-08-2820:36 We're not talking about staple crops here, there's no impact on food security - in this context "food" means agricultural products like almonds and pistachios, and if a farm gets restrictions so that they don't have enough water to farm almonds, they can start growing something less water-intensive like wheat.
By lokar 2022-08-2821:45 I can live with almond milk going up 50%
By aaaaaaaaaaab 2022-08-2820:21 LOL. Sure, FEMA will distribute rations of almond milk and pistachios when shit hits the fan!
By ripper1138 2022-08-2822:16 Totally right about almonds and ‘luxury’ crops. FYI measuring agriculture in general by its GDP isn’t really useful. Stable food supply via agriculture is the foundation of the economy. It allows people to specialize in technology, medicine, etc that generate more GDP. The entire Ag industry is around 5% of GDP in the US and farms account for 0.6% of GDP. That doesn’t mean Ag in general shouldn’t get first priority for water usage.
By bergenty 2022-08-2820:25 To you, but to the farmers growing it it’s everything.
Degrowth is a loser mindset. Why not focus on getting more water, i.e. from the sea as done in Israel?
By jonas21 2022-08-2820:35 California is building desalination plants, for example [1]. However, these are expensive to construct and energy-intensive.
It's definitely worth the expense to ensure that people will have access to water, even in a future with intensifying droughts.
But is it worth it to ensure that people's lawns have access to water? Probably not. Especially when there are plenty of landscaping options that have much lower water requirements than a lawn.
A "growth mindset" generally refers to growing the amount of economic value produced - not the amount of resources consumed. Often, such growth can come as a result of technological improvements that increase efficiency. For example, more fuel-efficient aircraft allow airlines to fly more passenger-miles with reduced fuel consumption. Water conservation technologies - including some things, like xeriscaping, that you might not immediately recognize as technologies - are in the same category.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsba...
Desalination is exceptionally expensive compared to just waiting to have water fall from the sky.
You can do it in extremely arid climates, for example to provide water to cities, but it makes no economic sense when you already have huge amounts of free water that you waste on inefficient irrigation techniques.
California is extremely rich. You have a water shortage. Water is important
By manholio 2022-08-2820:40 Those three premises are still insuficient to warant desalination.
"Shortage" means little, what we have is a restricted supply curve, that can still meet demand at a higher price. And if that price is insuficient to pay for desalination then it won't happen: when you build your desalination plant and try to sell water at production costs, you won't find any takers. They'll tell you yes, we have a shortage, water prices have exploded by 100%, 2 cents instead of 1 cent, but they certainly won't pay you 10c for desalination.
By adgjlsfhk1 2022-08-2819:38 Because desalination is expensive?
By ok_dad 2022-08-2819:14 I was going to come in here and say something like this. Targeting lawns which use maybe 5% of the water is the wrong thing to target, but much like recycling or air pollution from cars, the corporate machine has attached itself to the discussion and ensured that no eyes are looking their way, away from the "little guy" who is now responsible for fixing environmental catastrophes via individual action (which won't work).
I don’t see why the argument “We aren’t the worst offenders by a long stretch” would ever imply “we shouldn’t be prosecuted”
I agree they should target the other groups, but I also don’t see why they shouldn’t target people using precious water just to have a green lawn in a place where lawn grass can’t really survive without watering.
Because the sacrifice should be shared by all water users, and homeowners are far from the primary consumers of water.
When agriculture uses most of the water, and the most water in agriculture goes to luxury foods like almonds and pistachios, it’s ridiculous to be investigating homeowners while not asking farmers to reduce consumption.
They literally constitutionally cannot ask the farmers, and you need a very mobilized populace to change the constitution. That's only going to happen when people see the consequences of inaction, and its probably better that happen gradually for useless laws then suddenly for all drinking water.
By twblalock 2022-08-2823:18 That's not the only way ballot measures and propositions have been passed. Previous governors have advocated for measures, got them on the ballot, and encouraged people to vote for them. The current governor could do the same.
By rendall 2022-08-298:48 > They literally constitutionally cannot ask the farmers...
The California constitution disallows the government mandating water restrictions for luxury crops?
> luxury foods like almonds and pistachios
"Luxury foods" oversells them a bit. The retail price per pound is close to ground beef.
By greedo 2022-08-2819:07 That's because their retail price doesn't reflect the externalities. Cheap subsidized water makes them much cheaper than if the farmers had to pay a fair price.
By adw 2022-08-2819:18 Ground beef - all meat, really - is a luxury food.
By s0rce 2022-08-2821:34 Beef also uses a ton of water, probably more than almonds.
By zeraynor 2022-08-2819:05 Sound like they would be more expensive if the farmers didn't have such advantageous water rights.
By colinmhayes 2022-08-293:21 Because the farmers don't have to pay for the water they use...
By gweinberg 2022-08-290:59 More like 3-4 x as much.
By kortilla 2022-08-2820:18 The people with the green lawn are already punished far more than agriculture. A farmer can literally grow 400 acres of lawn and not pay anything for the water.
By trimbo 2022-08-2818:53 No California water thread is complete without the Delta Smelt
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article256930082.html
By s0rce 2022-08-2821:30 I think the best strategy is laid out for the Colorado basin by the Southern Nevada Water authority and could be applied across the American west, see the suggestions at the end with the first being the most important
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22136304-2022-8-15-n...
Create new beneficial use criteria for Lower Basin water users, eliminating wasteful and antiquated water use practices and uses of water no longer appropriate for this Basin’s limited resources.
By kurupt213 2022-08-291:45 Yeah, let’s restrict food growing when prices are already skyrocketing. I would say lawns are the lowest priority water use in the state.
By akira2501 2022-08-2817:20 > Some of the water used by each of these sectors returns to rivers and groundwater basins and can be used again.
I'd really like to see what the percentages are _there_ for each industry mentioned.
Agriculture is required. We gotta eat food. Having big lawns with water guzzling lawns isn't needed.
Of course, we need incentives for efficient use of water by ag too.
By seventytwo 2022-08-293:18 Not all agriculture is required, and certainly not in naturally arid regions like southern CA.
By jdkee 2022-08-293:49 Why? Let them pay market rates for water.
By jdkee 2022-08-293:38 That is why the market should be used as an efficient distribution mechanism.
By AlotOfReading 2022-08-291:30 We've spent decades optimizing urban use and restricting lawns/ pools. We haven't spent decades meaningfully optimizing agricultural water usage, despite it consuming more water all other human usage categories combined.
Now we're facing a shortfalls where eliminating the entirety of residential water usage might not be enough. Maybe it's time to focus the more of our efforts on other categories.
By seventytwo 2022-08-293:19 We don’t need all agriculture, and it’s the biggest user.
By patwater10 2022-08-2821:31 Eh there's a lot of nuance within those broad categories: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-d...
By snickerbockers 2022-08-2821:281 reply Agriculture produces something useful, a lawn does not
By s0rce 2022-08-2821:33 This is true at a fundamental level in that we need food to eat but there is a really strong argument that a huge fraction of the agricultural water use in the American west is not "useful" or at least should pay market rate. Examples include flood irrigation which could be readily converted to drip and reduce water usage or growing animal feed (particularly for export), simply stop doing these here and do it in places with more water.
This is basically a straw man, no one is saying to stop growing food to save water, but we can save a lot of water without anyone starving. Beef would be more expensive and some other countries would lose cheap imported feed (alfalfa, teff, etc).
By RichardCNormos 2022-08-290:175 reply By beej71 2022-08-291:27 I doubt this is true, but if it is, it will only encourage urbanites to set water policy more against you.
By CobaltFire 2022-08-290:29 If you don't like democracy you might be in the wrong country.
By wonnage 2022-08-290:25 weird thing to be proud of
By alexnewman 2022-08-290:50 By killyourcar 2022-08-292:15 [flagged]
By plankers 2022-08-2820:36 agriculture provides me with food to eat. lawns do not. i would rather have food to eat than useless patches of grass.
Doesn't agriculture uses its own underground water that is usually not used for human consumption?
By s0rce 2022-08-2821:35 mostly no, although they do use wells but aquifers are drying up leading to salt water intrusion and subsidence. Further, most underground water can be more easily treated for drinking than surface water.
Yes, we must sacrifice everything in order to save these unsustainable cities built in deserts.
It doesn't matter if the agricultural users have prior claims. They should just realize that their worth is so much less than the coastal elites. How dare they stand in the way of the lifestyles of coastal elites.
By majormajor 2022-08-2820:542 reply How many of the 13 million people in, say, the greater LA area do you think the term "elite" can plausibly encompass?
Edit: If LA (or SF, or SD, or Phoenix, or literally any other city) runs out of water, it's not going to be the elites who have a hard time dealing with it or moving somewhere else.
By UncleEntity 2022-08-2822:14 I’m originally from California, lived the last 23 years in Arizona, seen the writing on the wall and am literally two days away from taking ownership of a house 0.5 miles from the Mighty Mississippi. I think I’ll never have to worry about someone complaining about watering a lawn or washing a car ever again — other than lack of because I’m kind of lazy and forgot to do things…
The funny thing is I was listening to a random radio program a few weeks ago and they were making fun of California advertising to get people to move there. Which kind of makes sense to do in Florida since they have a problem with too much water flooding neighborhoods at high tide or something like that.
All the ones at the levers of power that matter.
It is utterly ridiculous to build a giant city in the middle of a desert, and then to cry bully everyone else into giving up their water so that the ridiculous city can continue its unsustainable path.
By majormajor 2022-08-290:38 So the people in power in LA are actually spending hundreds of millions to billions on things like water capture, water recycling, etc, to get ready to have less external water in the future. And they're also instituting conservation measures, restricting watering, incentivizing replacing with drought-friendly plants and yards, incentivizing getting more efficient appliances, etc, etc. It would be a bad look to do nothing and just blame others, but that's obviously - from the linked article here alone - not what's happening. People on Hacker News are "crying bully" about agriculture, but meanwhile, there's a lot being done in internal preparation and improvement. And worst case? It's next to an ocean, so it's not like there's no source. There's red tape to all of it, of course, but if the urgency gets high enough... that tape could be cut through.
Meanwhile, would you seriously argue that it's not ridiculous, and in any way sustainable, to build agriculture in the central valley? Look at the numbers above: agriculture uses far more water than the cities so less water being available is going to hit it far harder than it'll hit the cities.
Los Angeles (or other cities) finding other sources of water isn't going to save central valley agriculture, so what's the obsession with the vast majority of the population who are using <15% of the water?
(And if we're calling the land where Los Angeles was built a "desert" instead of a Mediteranean climate we really should do the same for the central valley, after all. Drive through that land for three quarters of the year and it's immediately obvious that maybe it's not a great idea to farm there...)
By RosanaAnaDana 2022-08-2817:004 reply I just want to make a note and an aside to the whole conversation happening around water right now.
Aside from the 9000lb gorilla of ag/industrial versus urban/ suburban water use, I think that its clear that tiered rate based structures are a clear failure. We knew this half a decade ago, but its become impeccably clear with articles like these.
Its very very easy to see blame the millionaire/ elite class in this situation, but its important to acknowledge that the fact that these homes use 20-40% of a water districts total use has been well known for years. Likewise, water districts are not incentivised to decrease this class of water users overall use because that 20-40% of water use might represent 60%+ of a water districts total income. This is due to tiered rates. The reality is that famous person XYZ never ever sees the water bill and they just don't care. This is something one of their assistants or manager deals with, and relative to their income, even if their water bill is 50k a month, it just doesn't matter.
So to be clear, districts, through tiered rates, have been incentivised to not act on who they already know are their most wasteful customers. Those most wasteful customers do not care how they spend on water a month.
I'm not sure if this claim really makes sense - if water districts are incentivized by income, and if high users really have such inelastic water consumption, then wouldn't the water district continue to raise the tiered rates at the highest level?
Thus, under these assumptions, the current tiered rates should accurately reflect the marginal price that the wasteful users are willing to pay, and any rise in price would result in a decrease in consumption.
By RosanaAnaDana 2022-08-2817:492 reply Water districts are not able to do so with their tiered rates. They aren't necessarily for profit corporations (some are), although in many ways they are managed like them. The additional revenue allows for the addition of staff, the implementation of new programs, it helps cover the cost of aging infrastructure. Its not necessarily a bad thing. Tiered rates with straight caps might make more sense, but again, districts are disinterested from this. They generally need to make 'across-the-board' reductions of some set amount (say 20%). For a long time, it has not been in their interest to reduce the usage of these highest rate paying tiers of users.
By googlryas 2022-08-2819:13 Well, then keep ramping the rates up for big users and start giving smaller users more free water. A lot of people will just use the same amount of water even if their bill is eliminated.
By ethbr0 2022-08-2819:17 > The additional revenue allows for the addition of staff, the implementation of new programs, it helps cover the cost of aging infrastructure.
We could do away with usage tiers, but then we'd have to fund the missing utility revenue out of state/local budgets.
Although, for states with modern-sized populations, managing and funding water infrastructure at the state level seems to make more sense.
By amluto 2022-08-2819:17 What, exactly, is the problem here? Water districts can turn money into water, even in a drought. This can be done with desalination, sewage reclamation, nonpotable graywater distribution, development of new pipelines, etc.
It seems weird to say that higher prices for the rich are the problem. It seems like they should be part of the solution?
Yes, that means rich people fund the system. Ideally instead of just paying for staff and maintenance, this also funds new sources of water, like desalination plants, which benefit everyone in a drought.
I mean, you don't want poor people paying for that stuff, right? For one thing, they don't have the money.
Poor people do have the money to pay a market rate. It’s not expensive if you’re not trying to water a lawn.
By skybrian 2022-08-2821:37 There are California communities where people complain about very high water rates, and desalination plants have been blocked with the excuse (among others) that it is unfair to poor communities who can't afford it. But they have a lot of rich neighbors. Not to mention hotels and the like.
It seems like this could be solved by having improvements paid for by people who don't mind paying so much and would like more water. And in a drought, it means there is more supply, as well as people who can cut back on water usage without much sacrifice.
Raising tiered rates enough, intuitively, is effectively the same as a cap.
Yes, it's absurd to think about charging ex. $50k a gallon for gallons over 10k, but that's basically a cap. No one has the money.
(But yes, I'd say we should implement caps rather than being ridiculous)
By RosanaAnaDana 2022-08-2817:20 I don't have the data in front of me, but iirc, its kind-of your standard pareto. Around 20% of the users use 80% of the water in a district. I mean you say no one has the money, but that 20% might be 2-3 oom higher in total use than the median of the 80%.
I think there are two or three issues bundled into one here. One is that water is managed at the district level. Districts are a patchwork of county, city, and private entities, some with elected leaderships, some with appointed leadership. The state has no direct control over water use in this way, although they have significant authority in other ways that can very much impact water use. However, that authority is split between a set of state agencies that have research and policy power, but no regulatory authority, and an elected/ appointed state water board that is just chasing the next election cycle. Finally, at the district level, these organizations are just a hot mess. Its a complete clusterfck of frankly, shockingly arcane methods for assessing and managing water (ever heard the term miners inch?). Half of these districts barely know where their water is going. I see the whole mess as a failure of neoliberalism, an undue faith in markets.
Typical stupid California government response. Rather than charge the market rate for water we’ll come up with elaborate Orwellian schemes to have people get visibly shamed and have to visibly cutback to comply. Meanwhile this reduces total state water usage by maybe 0.5% while industrial and agricultural use hums along each consuming far more than all of residential combined.
This is banning restaurants from handing out cups of water 2.0. But now it has the added bonus of getting to spy and rat out your neighbors.
By dubyah 2022-08-290:55 Prop 218 hamstrung the ability to use market-based restrictions. Rate tiers designed to encourage water conservation are substantially harder to bring into force since Capistrano Taxpayers Association v. City of San Juan Capistrano ruling. Water rates need to correspond to the actual cost of providing water and anything beyond needs to be 2/3rds voter approved as opposed to a simple majority.
Water is a necessity. Making it unaffordable literally is a death sentence. Those who would mass murder poor people rather then have a yellow lawn are morally reprehensible.
You could charge tiered rates where the quantities we're talking about are incredibly expensive, enough to discourage use, without affecting what households that use far less pay.
(Or, you could, if this was legal under California law)
By sgc 2022-08-294:53 That would always wind up bankrupting at least some poor soul caught unawares. I would only support that if there were clear warnings delivered to the specific user in question beforehand (not a blanket notice to everyone that they might, but to one person indicating that they will be charged if they don't change, because they have already gone into a draconian penalty tier), in a way that you were absolutely certain the person had received notice.
By kortilla 2022-08-306:00 Forest for the trees my friend, forest for the trees.
If every water user paid market rate, including industrial and agriculture, the residential rate would likely be lower than what it is right now.
You fell into the same classism distraction trap designed to cause residential users to go at each other’s throats rather than address the whale users.
Did someone force all of these people to move to cities built in the middle of a desert?
By s0rce 2022-08-2821:36 Those cities (particularly Las Vegas) are actually mostly quite water efficient. Its ag in the desert that is the issue.
By PaulDavisThe1st 2022-08-2821:031 reply Do you want the food that is produced in the CA Central Valley (a huge, huge proportion of all US produce) or not?
This is a straw man, no one is suggesting to stop growing food on irrigated farmland but to focus on efficient irrigation and grow things more suitable for the limited water, see the suggestions from the SNWA
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22136304/2022-8-15-ne...
By PaulDavisThe1st 2022-08-2821:421 reply Why do you think people live in the cities in the desert near the CA central valley?
I'm not sure what you mean, what cities in the desert near the central valley? Reno, Lancaster?
By PaulDavisThe1st 2022-08-293:581 reply I'm not sure "cities in the desert" the GGP was meaning. Typically this means places like Phoenix, but that's not in California.
All of socal is a desert. So Bakersfield, San Bernardino, etc. pulling from the Colorado river.
Sacramento, Fresno, etc pulling from the Sierras.
Heat has little relevance here, so LA is just as bad as PHX for residential water consumption (excluding lawns).
By JoshuaDavid 2022-08-310:59 I am pretty sure Bakersfield does not pull water from the Colorado river.
