California Drought Update May 2022 [pdf]

Um, but the water in California is cheap and plentiful. Sustainably sourced, I don't know. But the root of the problem is that farmers do not pay a "fair" price, they get steep steep discounts. All the lawn watering, all the toilet flushes, all the swimming pools, etc. all amount to around 10% of water use in California. And those people already pay, on average, many multiples of what farmers pay per gallon.

Your on the right track. Pricing is the solution (and cause) for most scarce resource problems.

But in California, household consumption is very far from the main water problem.

Agriculture is a far bigger problem, and the pricing regime there is often completely insane.

There are other problem sectors.

>All it needs is a little bit of desalination.

And that brings us to the other biggest market problem that California has unsolved by collective action: energy markets.

Highways would be up there, too.

> Either way, Californians should stop pretending water is cheap, plentiful or sourced in a sustainable way. It simply isn't.

We literally live next to an ocean - water can be cheap, plentiful and sourced sustainably via desalination. Desalination has generally been prohibitively expensive, however that doesn't need to be the case, considering humans have already figured out how to generate clean energy.

I would venture most toilets in California are 1.6 gallons per flush or less. In 2014 it moved to 1.28 gpf. The replacement cycle has probably caught the majority, but you never know.

Drought tolerant landscaping took off in the 1990s, and you still see plenty of it. Lawns represent a real issue, but municipalities still force users to water at night, sometimes particular days to reduce usage.

The real issue is agriculture usage and high usage crops(almonds and alfalfa) which are often exported. These users get absurd discounts compared to residential usage (in the 90s there was moaning when prices went to 32 dollars an acre foot, or 325k gallons currently it’s ~$70).

Yes, this is a big factor. Water is too cheap - similar to carbon. Both need to be priced higher soon or we’re toast.

This seems to be a carefully-considered market-based solution to a complex problem, but there are a few details I'm struggling with.

Significantly increasing the price of a natural resource would have severe impacts on impoverished communities while having no effect at all on wealthy people and companies; is this intentional?

Around 45% of households in California are rentals. Renters are often restricted by their rental contracts in what they can and cannot do with a yard (if they are wealthy enough to have one). Should renters be stuck with extremely high water bills when their landlords require a green lawn? Or should landlords not be able to require certain landscape features?

And the toilets, should the renters living paycheck-to-paycheck be the ones replacing these units? ...actually, I'll retract that question, it's a silly one. On further consideration, I realize that if the cost of water exceeds the cost of replacing a toilet, then people working for minimum wage will be properly motivated to find some way to replace their landlord's fixtures with newer models.

Your examples are mostly focused on residential water usage, which has been about 10% of the state's overall water usage, and has been steadily decreasing for years. I noticed that you explicitly didn't want to point any fingers, but can you think of any examples that might not be residential? Something more specific, perhaps, than "more sustainable farming". As I'm sure you're already aware, water rights are an extremely sore point of political contention between farmers and the state, and one of the major drivers of conservative and "State of Jefferson" separatist politics up and down the entire I-5 corridor. Can you estimate, in dollars, the upper limit for the cost of agricultural water before someone starts shooting lawmakers at the capital?

You mentioned desalination. This solution works so well in Israel, I don't understand why it wouldn't work for all of California too. The Carlsbad desalination plant was completed and became operational just a few years ago. It only cost one billion dollars to build, an additional $50 million per year to operate, and will be able to provide about 7% of San Diego county's water needs. Do these numbers feel like they're making water expensive enough? California is mountainous, with a large central valley separated from the coast by a range of mountains that is in some places taller than the tallest mountain in Israel. Do you think it would be better to build massive pipelines over these mountains and pump water uphill from the coast into the central valley, or would it be better to tunnel through the mountains and pump the water that way? I wouldn't worry too much about the cost either way, since more expensive water is better.

Oh, speaking of cost: when there's a rainy year, should Californians be forced to continue buying water from desalination plants, or should the desalination plants be shut down and then restarted the next year?

As a matter of fact, animal agriculture - including the growing of crops required to feed the animals before slaughter - is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases. You're right that there are other awful practices that need to be remedied, but not doing one because of the other taking place seems short-sighted, no?

Not eating meat is simply the single most impactful thing you can do to reduce human impact on climate change. Plus, it may also help your conscience, as there is a strong dissonance in our relationship with animals.

Food and nutrition is certainly important, and there is plenty of research that shows vegetarian and fully vegan diets are healthy at all stages of life; ADA recognizes this as well: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/

The amount of options available have increased dramatically in even the last few years. Talk with your doctor and try it again sometime!

You realize your position is contradictory, right? If nutrition is important, then people in the city should sacrifice their water, so that farmers can grow more almonds. If you're saying that corporations need to take more responsibility, you're asking farmers to grow fewer almonds, means consumers eat fewer almonds anyways, but they'll also be more expensive.

This is why we’ll never “stop the climate crisis.” Everybody thinks somebody else is causing the problem and that somebody else needs to change more than they themselves do.

The truth is, stopping the climate crisis involves everybody changing how they live in a significant way. Anything short of that and you better hope your great grandkids like eating crickets and forest fires.

The sadder truth is that the climate crisis is unstoppable so it doesn’t really matter how many cows you eat.

Is there actually fracking in California?

Fish perhaps?

> Disclaimer: I tried being a vegetarian for 2 years, I didn't feel good mentally and physically so I went back to consuming meat.

No wonder. 2.5 million years of meat eating has evolved the human to what it is today.

In the California Bay Area cherries go for 4.99/lb and if drive out to Brentwood and pick your own cherries it's $4/lb.

"50% environmental" - This term is very deceptive. It's basically water that can't be used anyway, and clouds the fact that really agriculture uses 80-90% of the actually available water. It artificially grows the denominator.

> > Climatologist Bill Patzert estimates that more than 80% of the region's rainfall ends up diverted from urban areas in Southern California into the Pacific . “All those trillions of gallons of rain, which sound so sweet, really end up in the ocean,” he said. [0]

You don't need to be a climatologist to figure this one out, just being a resident there you figure out very soon how flash flood areas are possible (specifically in SoCal) since every square inch is paved the rain water, when it actually falls, is destined to cause damage and/or make it's way to the gutter system: often overwhelming the drains depending on the area. It doesn't seep into the Earth to replenish the aquifers because everything is paved relative to just undeveloped land.

This is an entirely absurd missed opportunity to build the infrastructure for water reclamation, and while we're at it the Australian model to extract the waste water and reclaim it and create fertilizer for plants from human waste should be explored as well. The money is there, and a need for jobs is, too.

Even if CA were only to spend 50% of the ~$90 Billion it would still be able to do a great deal to ensure it's longterm future by investing in this critical infrastructure.

* There used to be a running bet of what celebrities mansion in Malibu would end up sinking into the Pacific when i was a kid in the 90s as it was so common back then. It was a Schadenfreude based bet with more amusement than just playing the lotto apparently. Incidentally enough, those homes were soon replaced with another the following year(s) anyway more often anyway.

Golf courses use reclaimed water. There are a lot of things wrong with golf courses in California, like pesticide and herbicide use that runs off into the ocean and other water ways, but fresh water waste isn't typically one of them.

Great. This saved zero water though. You instead allowed the production of an additional handful of avocados (about 50 gallons each). I hope that was a fair trade.

What does this mean? That farmers don't get enough water to wash their hands now? That there will be no crops coming out of California unless they were grown on well water? Where can I look up this reduction rate?

A reduction in water consumption is needed.

Agriculture uses 80% of the water - and pays far less for it than other users.

Doesn't seem very complex to me?

In 1991 there was talk of a Columbia river project. This article basically sums up the attitudes: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-21/columbia-ri...

The amount of water we use is several orders of magnitude greater than oil. I believe I once saw a calculation that you would need like 10 96 inch pipes just to serve California households let alone agriculture.

We have that too, but to water our trees that would mean I need a truck and at least a 250 gallon tank. Hardly an efficient or green solution since I’d be burning quite a bit of fuel to do this.

Sure: its already done many places. Look up "purple pipe" systems.

As far as money, here is a recent addition where 2.5 miles cost $17.5M: https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/05/05/apple-campus-and-area...

Its expensive, but maybe less expensive than you'd think. The goal is to connect large commercial users, not individual households.

As others have said - we already have it. I literally have it in my street, but it can only be connected to by commercial or city (think schools) entities. So the incremental cost of connecting me and my neighbors is very small and allows amortizing the original investment over even more customers. Capacity might be a question, but from what I’ve seen it’s the same size as the water main.

It’s a solved problem - backflow prevention devices will not let water from one user to flow to others, with inspections, etc there is no issue. Want recycled water? Pay for inspections and protective devices. Business users have been doing this for years.

A given property has one potable water entry point - the water meter. So no, it’s not one bad apple and all get bad water. Also, there is no regulation here, just fear of liability by water boards.

4. Farmers are historically a cossetted political class that politicians are rarely wont to cross.

It's frankly insulting that people still push this line of thought. No, we will not starve to death if California stops growing almonds and pistachios. We will it run out of livestock feed if we stop growing alfalfa and other hay grass in California that is then exported overseas.

Another comparison to consider: California is 20 times bigger than Israel.

We would prefer you don't summarize US until we are fully awake. :)

I don't like the excuses that things are harder to solve in the US because it's so big, diverse or whatever. If anything I think it should be easier in the US because it can solve a lot of problems without having to think about what the impact on neighboring countries is. As far as water goes, the US has pretty much all types of climate zones under its control so it could divert water or move agriculture to more favorable locations. A small country like Israel doesn't have access to water rich areas but the US has.

The only reason why the US can't solve problems is because it's dysfunctional and people prefer to fight each other and not accept facts they don't like.

If it was a scale instead of policy issue, there would be places in the US with effective policy, but because of scale not everywhere…

Israel is “74.2% Jewish, 17.8% Muslim, 2.0% Christian, and 1.6% Druze. The remaining 4.4% included faiths such as Samaritanism and Baháʼí as well as "religiously unclassified", the category for all who do not belong to one of the recognized communities.” So, it arguably has more religious diversity than the US.

The US is largely Christian with no other religion making up more than 2% of the population.

Isreal may have only 1/4 the population of California (~10M vs 40M), but they have only 1/20th the land (~20k sq/km vs 400k sq/km). That $4B is aid from the US is a drop in the bucket to their ~$500B GDP, and mind you, states get aid packages from the federal government every year too. I don't have any figures about what California received in recent years, but I'm sure it is far more than $4B.

The challenge of the rich owning the land where a desal plant would go is an issue that can be solved in the current legal framework, but they'd rather scream about the problem than solve it. Desal is also not the only solution, there are political solutions too. Lower income folks could even solve the problem too, with their vote. It's not just a problem the wealthy are preventing from being solved. It's a problem the entire population of california is preventing from being solved.

I see a few responses saying how you can't compare Israel to California because they are smaller, but I would think a larger economy with better economies of scale would be better able to solve problems, not less.

To be fair I think a little blame can lie with the large slice of the American population (which are extremely well represented on HN) who are not mega wealthy but happily sing the songs and lick the boots of the hyper wealthy because they’re convinced there’s something in it for them.

3. What is purple pipe? 4. They have to get their water from somewhere, and clearly there is not anywhere else to get it. Wells are not the problem - farming is the problem. 5. SoCal and Desert communities don't use a meaningful amount of water. This is the whole point. ALL communities, businesses, industry, etc - put together - use very little of the water. Nothing is helped by limiting those uses of water. Only farming matters.

1. Place a moratorium on any new water rights. (So no starting new farms with new claims, etc)

2. Identify all existing water rights holders. Every single farm/lot with some kind of water privileges. I'm sure there are thousands.

3. Determine how much water they used over, say, the last 5 years. This is obviously the hardest part, but it's no harder than many other large government projects. You'd probably have to use some estimation, formulas, etc - and it won't be perfect. It would take a couple of years and there would be a lot of wrangling. Similar maybe to housing assessment values. Probably include an appeal process as well, just like you can appeal a house assessment.

4. Give each user a new numerical water cap (say, 500k acre-feet), that is 125% or so of above usage. This will avoid hurting existing farms by allowing them to continue using water as they have been, with even some room for growth - but still puts a fence around the problem.

5. Require metering of all ag water, with random audits for enforcement and stiff penalties for violations.

6. Use the state's very large budget surplus to buy up those numerical water rights from the lowest bidders until the water crisis goes away.

really simple. If a city wants more water it writes a big check and buys it from someone who has it.

I am in Oakland Hills.

> And where in the USA would you go that’s so much better? I assume fundamentalist, anti-science red states are off the list. I can see arguments for Colorado if you can stand the dryness.

I want efficient government that has a good bang for the buck. Arizona, Texas, Florida, North Carolina seems awesome. I really don't see Red vs Blue, most large cities even in the most red states are blue majority. Although, I am considering voting for the red party this November for the very first time.

Happy to pay a lot of taxes if that results in a beautiful place/community to live in. Not happy to pay taxes if they're going to administrative class that institutes woke bullshit, grooming children in schools, leads to dysfunctional cities, crumbling infrastructure and fosters a community of hate. This is the progressive politics of Oakland. Scary part is people are going along with this.

Also not my experience in northern California, except for bad roads. The only power outage I can remember in recent memory was a drunk driver hit the neighborhood transformer a few years ago.

The Northeast has awful weather but we make up for it with a pragmatic liberal vibe, great history and culture, and some pretty great nature.

“horrible governance” seems pretty strong. I think you get what you pay for. Road signage and access in Washington state is awful; Florida is astonishingly corrupt; Texas’s energy management policies will kill you during weather extremes.