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).
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).