Forget almonds, 20% of California’s water goes specifically to Alfalfa. Most of which gets exported to feed cattle in Asia and the Middle East.
5 Likes
It is beyond baffling how squeamish people are about this idea, given that literally all water everywhere was someone’s or something’s toilet at some point. You’d think that people living in a frickin’ desert would already be recycling as much water as humanly possible.
1 Like
Alfalfa is a big problem, too. Apparently it accounts for 15% of California’s total water use. (Almonds are another 10%.) Much of it, like the almonds, is exported to China. Alfalfa and hay together are about half of the total agricultural water use here (which in turn accounts for 80% of water use in the state).
As mentioned, it’s expensive. And you don’t want to use expensive, desalinated water for agriculture. Because agriculture makes up 80% of the state’s water use.
1 Like
Sorry S. Californians, you’ve been living unsustainably for almost a century in a desert while piping in (we call that “stealing” round here) water from as far as possible. This isn’t exactly a surprise to anyone, not the least of whom would be the jokers in charge of water stewardship, but the best you can do even now is to hold a carrot out for some marginal savings? The list of things they’re doing would have been pathetic 10 years ago and are way too late now.
I will not be rolling out the welcome mat for West-coast water/climate refugees in the coming years. Something about chickens coming back to roost.
First, California isn’t a desert. There are deserts that overlap into Southern California, but it’s got more forest than desert (including rain forest). The problem with water is that 80% of it is being used by agriculture (for crops being exported to the rest of the country). A number of urban areas are recycling sewage into drinkable water. Agriculture has all sorts of water rights (which, unfortunately, were granted in water-rich times and means that farmers now have rights to more water than actually exists in the entire state of California - by many times over) and no real incentive to save water. So there’s a lot of wasteful water usage going on because it’s cheaper than the alternatives. Farmers in the central valley are sucking up groundwater that took centuries to fill to the point where it’ll be gone in a decade or two. There aren’t any rules concerning its use.
7 Likes
Especially as the science of Homeopathy reminds us, the more it’s been treated and diluted the stronger the poo effect!
4 Likes
It’s not the Southern Californians - it’s the farmers. They’re the ones using almost all the water, and wastefully, no less. The urban population, in particular the S. California urban population, has seen its water use drop significantly over the decades even as the population hugely increased. Our water woes would end if we just stopped producing fruits and vegetables for the rest of the country. Personally, I’m all for it - farming is such a low-worth industry compared to other things that agricultural exports just aren’t worth it. You don’t mind getting all your fruits and vegetables from Mexico, do you?
1 Like
Walk 43,560 feet in a day and you’ll know what acre-feet are.
2 Likes
I shant try to describe the history of California water rights – except to say that I spent about 4 years of my legal career working on water rights – but prior appropriation is the baseline rule for water rights west of the Mississippi River and, what it means in general is: there’s some river and it has an average flow of 1,000 arbitrary units. I came along in 1874 and put 100 units of that water right to productive use - crops, etc. – and (I have no reason to brook an argument here, I’m just telling you what the rule is) now, if I perfected that water right, I have a right to the first 100 units of water. Party B comes along and puts 250 units of water to productive use, party C comes along and puts 500 units, and party D – in a really wet year – puts 200 to use.
Okay, we now have 1,050 units of water claimed. But along comes a drought year, and there are only 500 units to be allocated. Well, Party A gets 100, Party B gets 250, Party C – there are only 150 left – Party C gets 150. Party D gets nothing. Okay, now were in superdrought land – 175 units. Party A gets 100, Party B gets 75, and everyone else gets nothing.
A water right is exactly that. I have a right – a property right – to take that much water out of the particular river. In the west, that’s just the rule (California has some modified rules, but this is the basic backbone of it all).
The eastern US has riparian rights where those parties would have water allocations rise and fall in proportion to one another. Much of Europe is similar.
I highly, highly recommend Marc Reiser’s Cadillac Desert if you want to understand how the western US is plumbed. Reiser’s a former Sierra Club guy, but I knew people from reactionary rednecks to agricultural barons to lefty kill all human luddites and everyone agrees that you just can’t understand the Western US until you’ve read that book.
3 Likes
My high school punk band played a punk-rockabilly song called “Acre-Foot of Gin”
Most people would probably be shocked by the amount of water being stolen and diverted in Humboldt County to grow that sticky icky.
I live in the coachella valley and I find the nestle bottling plant very troubling. Apparently it’s on native owned land which means no one is regulating it. Precious clean water that comes from melted snow sucked up to and shipped away in plastic bottles.
The amount of water that goes into landscaping around here is disgusting. Golf courses and resorts for as far as the eye can see. Some have desert landscapes for front yards but many still plant grass because it looks nice. People settled here many years ago because of the underground aquifers, it’s a shame to see it all going to waste because of negligence .
2 Likes
Pot may be even worse:
I’m not. Almonds are delicious, and better yet; every one eaten drives the US a little closer to economic disaster. I am a tasty-snack eating eco-terrorist! 
5 Likes
1 Like
Almond trees are part of the productive economy, golf courses are part of the service (i.e. consumption) economy. Service industries may result in economic benefit (railways, phones, aircraft) by facilitating the means of production, distribution and exchange. But golf courses, while they may motivate people to earn more money to afford them, are an economic sink. They are only an economic benefit in that they cause value to move from the place where it is created to the place where it is consumed.
2 Likes
They are an excellent idea, but widespread use would barely touch the surface of the problem.
At one time people were told to take showers rather than baths to save water, but modern showers can pump out a bathfull in a few minutes. A typical US washing machine uses well over 100 liters per cycle. The Western world is full of very wasteful water using appliances, including farming methods. If they were all fixed, we wouldn’t have a problem.
Googling it, it seems California is also quite big on fracking…
A triple-whammy of bad: due to greatly excessive water usage, huge damage to underground water supplies plus adding to the global warming problem.
Water supply problems are going to get much worse there 
1 Like
