With this subject, I wish we could get away from some of the regular knee-jerk blame ag / fracking. We should talk about it in absolute numbers:
- How much water falls per year (average and this year) (194.2 million acre-feet, don't have this year's)
- How much is used by people (roughly 10%, varies by how wet the year was)
- How much is used by Ag (roughly 30%, varies by how wet the year was)
- How much water was saved through conservation efforts 2015-16 (1.2 million acre feet)
- How much is naturally processed through the environment
This is where it gets confusing, and the state does a poor job reporting. They say 60%, but that is not just natural runoff. Much of that runoff is discharged through municipal wastewater systems and then out to the oceans. Urban environments - especially southern California - would do us all a favor by installing green tech / LID devices ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-impact_development_(U.S._a... ). This 60% also includes evaporation from moving water through our numerous aqueducts systems from north to south.
If we really want to address this let's start by getting real numbers - from the state and the media. This should include storm water that was flushed through wastewater discharge (something large urban areas don't want to talk about) and evaporation (something Southern Californians don't want to talk about).
Unbelievable the amount of bullshit happening here and I don't understand how so few people seem to know about it or care. Urban water use is such a tremendously small percentage of total water use, and they try to fix the problem by telling people to take shorter showers and flush the toilet less.
I still don't understand this argument. Yes, it matters that residents use less water than prior to the drought -- at least a lot more than you give it credit.
The residential water reservoir system in California isn't being plundered by Big Agri, Big Ranch, Big Bottled Water, or Big Frack. Yes, those things use most of the water in the state. No, the vast majority of that water would not otherwise make it into an existing reservoir that supplies residents. It would make it into a non-reservoir body of water or it would help replenish the water table (which is what they were using until this winter).
There is a finite volume of reservoir space and it currently takes several years to build new ones. There is a fixed and finite amount of surface area upstream of those reservoirs that collect and consolidate rainwater into the reservoirs. Average long-term usage by a slightly growing population (at least until recently) is still outpacing long-term replenishment rates of those reservoirs.
Yes, when California urban residents get fined for running their sprinklers mid-day, it helps align incentives. Yes, incentivizing residents to buy low-flow toilets helps (at least when they don't clog due to insufficient force to flush solids).
I'd rather we kick golf courses and sprawling estates off of the residential water system or at least charge incrementally more for more water used per property. But it still doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of water rights in the state is (1) used by industry that doesn't get their water from the same reservoirs that residences do and (2) the current water rights regime is enshrined in the California constitution so it would take a well organized campaign and a tremendous amount of political willpower to get it changed. I don't see that happening right now, especially since it threatens several major industries in the state.
It's quite simple. Residential water use is 10% of total state water usage, while Agriculture uses 90%. So, if you save 25% of Residential water, you save 2.5% overall, but if you save 25% of Agricultural water usage, you save 27.5% overall. So, common sense dictates you seek savings in the Agricultural space.
This is especially true where the Agricultural space does not use efficient free market principals to allocate resources, but uses an antiquated, arbitrary, and subsidized bureaucratic system that should be reformed but for powerful lobbying interests.
Your description of water distribution is not accurate. Water in Southern California, whether for Residential use or Agriculture, is mostly brought down from Northern California via the Colorado River and several man-made aqueducts. Since the water is distributed not based on any rational manner, we have Agriculture using water to grow rice in the desert. I won't even discuss the wacky environmental laws that prevent water from going to grow food because of some tiny fish somewhere.
It's not that simple though. If you reduce residential use by 25%, there is no impact to the economy -- actually there is a boost because of the increased revenues for landscapers and home improvement stores.
On the other hand, if you reduce agriculture by even 10%, it would destroy our state's economy.
Does demanding efficiency of a business that is heavily subsidized and enjoys trade protectionism lead to economic decline?
No, because the state is eating the cost of that inefficiency. It's time for agriculture to be subject to market forces - they've enjoyed easy money like the banks for decades.
I actually agree with you, I think we need to get rid of the farm subsidies. I'm just saying the issue isn't so black and white that you can just demand the farms reduce their water usage.
You could easily reduce agriculture water use by 10% just by banning the growth of super-thirsty crops like rice. The farmers would just shift to growing something else. And what orifice exactly did you pull "there is no impact to reducing residential water use" out of? There is certainly a huge inconvenience to residents, and it makes the state a much less desirable place to live.
Urban resident generate most of the revenue of the California government. Maybe we should get a say about how the state is run. And maybe we should not be lied to about who is using the state's water, and for what. Here's a clue: it's not restaurants serving glasses of water.
>>>"If you reduce residential use by 25%, there is no impact to the economy -- actually there is a boost because of the increased revenues for landscapers and home improvement stores."
This argument is addressed in the 'opportunity cost' section of the "Parable of the Broken Window" Wikipedia page.[1] Briefly, the economic activity is most apparent when spent replacing the broken window, while the opportunity costs are more diffuse, as that money may have been spend in small amounts on other things, but there is no overall increase in economic activity, only a transfer.
There is not a total separation between water underground and water in rivers. Streams can replenish the water table around them, or be replenished by the water table. Simply extracting as much water from the ground as you can will generally cost people 'downstream' water. In the long term there is only one source of natural fresh water, precipitation and it's finite abet renewable.
I don't really know what are the exact regulations, but I've read the article. It says:
> The rules do not apply to agriculture, which is covered by different regulations and makes up the bulk of water use in the state. Cuts in supply based on seniority were imposed in the last year. Some of them have been rolled back already as water has become more available.
Doesn't that mean that there are also regulation on the agriculture part of water consumption?
The movie Chinatown was a "based on true events" kind of deal relating to California water rights when the state was going through growing pains in the post-WW1 boom.
The best I can figure, water rights (basically a contract which establishes how much water you have a right to use from which surface water sources) has to do with seniority. In 2015, the state regulators adjusted the coefficients in an effort to prevent starvation of downstream water rights[1].
I don't know how residential water districts compete with legacy water rights ownership, but I do know that residential water districts for the vast majority of the state's population get their water from just a small handful of inland reservoirs.
This is the absolute best long read I've seen on the Colorado River and California water rights.
Interestingly, many forms of water conservation for agriculture actually have a negative impact. If farmers keep the same allocation but use it more efficiently, they're able to grow more, and there's less runoff so less groundwater recharge and less return to the river.
(that's residential + business + government). For residential, "Landscaping accounts for nearly half of all residential water use."
Notably, most of the restrictions were on watering lawns, which isn't crazy as one part of a bigger picture water conservation strategy. It's not going to work miracles, but it could conceivably cut total statewide water use by 1-2%.
(With a goal to cut statewide water use by 20%, that's not actually an insignificant amount. Obviously, there's a ton of agricultural use remaining to be reduced.)
Several of these make sense:
2. Flooding or runoff is prohibited.
3. A shut-off valve is required for hoses used to wash vehicles, buildings, etc.
4. Applying water to driveways and sidewalks is prohibited, except where necessary to address an
immediate health and safety need or to comply with a term or condition in a permit issued by a
state or federal agency.
5. Water in fountains or other decorative water feature must be recirculated.
6. Irrigating outdoors is prohibited during and within 48 hours after a measurable rainfall.
9. Irrigation of ornamental turf on public street medians is prohibited.
10. Landscape irrigation for new development must comply with state and local building codes.
11. Leaks must be fixed as soon as possible.
Some are fairly stupid:
7. Restaurants and other food service operations shall serve water to customers only upon
request.
> Some are fairly stupid: 7. Restaurants and other food service operations shall serve water to customers only upon request.
I think the idea is to raise awareness of the problem, especially among tourists. Or maybe restaurants just prefer not to have to set water out, so they can sell more drinks? Either way, I can't say it bothers me much.
Why would anyone care about raising awareness among tourists? They are amongst the smallest users of water (only in the state for a short period, no lawn to water, no crops to grow).
Your source for 20% says that 20% is a "conventional estimate" and doesn't seem to provide a source for that estimate. It seems pretty high compared to other numbers I've seen.
Acknowledged - I didn't shop around carefully for primary sources for my link. I think the overall point holds even if you drop it to 10%, though -- there's probably 1% of overall water use to be trimmed through the more-effective residential cutbacks.
(It's worth distinguishing between potable and non-potable water in these analyses, though, because from a municipal perspective, there are additional benefits to keeping a cap on potable water use.)
Actually now that I think about it, governments show restraint when the water is running out, but show no such restraint even when the money is all gone - they just keep spending it. The difference is you can't go into "water debt".
Climate change is a long-term thing. No single weather event can definitively be tied to it.
This drought is just one event in a long line of documented historical droughts in California. Yes, it's worse than the other ones in recorded history, but we've only been recording for ~200 years so the sample size is small. We can observe further back via tree rings and other creative forensics, but you also have to factor in the different climate. It's not like California didn't have any major droughts before global warming.
Additionally, humans have gutted the only major rainforest in our hemisphere in just the past 30 years. It's entirely possible that the California drought has much more to do with the Amazon being slash-n-burned than due to carbon emissions (although they both contribute to global warming).
If California had a proper market price for their water, they could alleviate this problem a lot easier than outright restrictions. People will be a lot more careful with their water usage if it's more expensive, that includes the big companies and farms that use the water, no one wants their margins cut into.
If people think that's regressive, give a discount to people in low income housing...but current water prices are mostly just subsidizing the rich and corporate farms. I would rather not subsidize anyone, but I'd rather subsidize the poor than have corporate welfare.
So rich people can still spend huge amounts, while low-income people have even more problems? We are not talking about luxury items or services here, water is a basic need for everyone.
Food is a basic need for everyone too and we don't set the price artificially low because of that.
If the poor don't have enough money to buy the things they need, the correct thing to do is to give them money. Not artificially distort the prices of things. Doing the latter misaligns incentives and leads to inefficient allocation of resources.
That doesn't mean that we should subsidize every other industry. End all corporate welfare, you aren't going to do that by subsidizing another industry with the excuse that it's been done in the past. That's how you get entrenched interests sloshing around in government funds.
That's to protect entrenched interests, not to lower food prices. It dates back to FDR and his asinine economics, dumping perfectly good milk out, crop burns, slaughtering hogs and letting the meat go to waste. We still do crop burns and the government buys crops and lets them rot or just destroys them. It has nothing to do with food prices being low, it has to do with protecting profits for the big farms. We have taxes and tariffs on some crops coming from outside of the U.S., such as sugar cane. Has nothing to do with lowering food prices.
The price issue isn't rich homes vs poor homes. It's agriculture vs homes. Municipalities are already paying many times more for water than farms.
A water market would allow municipal water systems to purchase water and provide lower water bills for all people -- residential use is a tiny, tiny minority of water use in the state.
The folks cutting back would be the alfalfa farmers in the central valley, who essentially transform water into grass and sell it (and export it out of state).
Residential prices are fine. The problem is the artificially low prices for agricultural use. A great deal of valuable California water is being transformed into less valuable plants because the price is low enough for that to be viable. Charge a price more in line with value and that will stop.
So leave the lower price tiers where they are and raise the higher price tiers. That first glass of water each month will still be practically free, the millionth might cost you a quarter.
Unless we are talking about mad max level droughts, market rates for water would have little effect on water cost provided by utilities. The cost of treatment and distribution is the biggest cost by far.
You can also regulate the cost of bulk water differently than residential water. Make the first X gallons available cheapily and then charge more for usage over that amount.
I posted this in reply to another comment, but it's the best long read on the Colorado River, and water in the West, in general, that I've ever seen. It's well worth your time if you haven't read it and you want to understand byzantine water rights rules.
Thanks, that is a fine article. In return, if you haven't seen it, you might enjoy this account of a rare opportunity to float the Colorado from the mountains, through the delta, to the gulf: http://www.outsideonline.com/1928261/day-we-set-colorado-riv...
> still partly filled parched reservoirs in Northern California and, more critically, partly replenished the mountain snowpacks that provide water into the spring and summer.
This article is so misleading. As I recently pointed out in another thread both the California snow pack and reservoirs are only a bit below average for this time of year. CA always has water issues this year is no exception.
I'm not sure temps have been that far above average this spring, but we've had a lot of late season rain which fell on the snowpack and accelerated melt. So, it's not great, but it IS additional precip.....
Considering our winter was in an El Niño weather pattern, we should have significantly higher than average reservoirs (not snow pack since El Niño is associated with higher winter temps).
With this subject, I wish we could get away from some of the regular knee-jerk blame ag / fracking. We should talk about it in absolute numbers:
- How much water falls per year (average and this year) (194.2 million acre-feet, don't have this year's)
- How much is used by people (roughly 10%, varies by how wet the year was)
- How much is used by Ag (roughly 30%, varies by how wet the year was)
- How much water was saved through conservation efforts 2015-16 (1.2 million acre feet)
- How much is naturally processed through the environment
This is where it gets confusing, and the state does a poor job reporting. They say 60%, but that is not just natural runoff. Much of that runoff is discharged through municipal wastewater systems and then out to the oceans. Urban environments - especially southern California - would do us all a favor by installing green tech / LID devices ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-impact_development_(U.S._a... ). This 60% also includes evaporation from moving water through our numerous aqueducts systems from north to south.
If we really want to address this let's start by getting real numbers - from the state and the media. This should include storm water that was flushed through wastewater discharge (something large urban areas don't want to talk about) and evaporation (something Southern Californians don't want to talk about).