I hope that you are correct; I’d certainly be on the list to advocate that(even if we have to extend some sort of buy-out to get people to GTFO, it’d be better than letting them crater the very last aquifers and then come to us, hat in hand); but cities keep bidding to host the olympics, so I don’t have too much confidence that we’ll approach the situation rationally.
Fishing(although that’s a multi-nation-state problem, not just a multi-state problem) is also an area that doesn’t inspire much confidence. Despite attempts to the contrary we appear to be going down the ‘just fish harder until there is nothing left but slime, then think of something’ path).
Growing them fast 'n cheap, especially if you ignore all pertinent regulations and best practices because what you are doing is all kinds of federal charges anyway, is certainly polluting and water-intensive; but there isn’t anything intrinsic to the plant that is terribly demanding; it’s just that informal agriculture practiced with zero eye to the future and no legal hook-ups to water sources is never pretty.
The people who pursue the other main grow-op strategy(ultra-high density and yield, indoors) are a bit energy intensive unless they’ve finished switching from metal halide bulbs, and are hampered by the clandestine nature of the operation and lack of purpose built facilities; but I suspect that they are on the other extreme when it comes to water use. There’s a reason why customer lists for hydroponics supply places are popular with drug-feds.
Desal is an expensive, carbon-intensive technology that is a is a terrible solution for LA’s water situation. Water recycling, a proven technology that cost’s less than a third of desal, is the obvious first place to go. My town already recycles 90% of it’s water. Then next obvious improvement is storm-water capture, which is much cheaper and easier than desal, not to mention much nicer to life with (less concrete, more plants).
Interestingly. A Connecticut hedge fund with a history of inducing bankruptcies is trying to get Orange County to spend a billion dollars on a Desal plant that won’t increase water supply for rate payers. As part of that effort, I m seeing stories making the case for desalination that I can trace back to that hedge fund.
Is Kiki Sander’s deeply flawed and profoundly misleading post highly another of these?
But yeah, we certainly should require cities to purchase the most expensive water source available so that we can continue to subsidize hedge-fund-owned agribusinesses by giving them cheap water using infrastructure built by socialism.
It’s a 40 billion dollar a year industry…
What they need to do is scrap the entire method with which water is allocated for agriculture and start over. Read up on it, its insane.
And the growers need to do what they do now differently - including changing what they grow, how they grow it and how it’s irrigated.
Further, I want to know why we have an electric grid, but not a proper water grid?
We have populated huge swaths of the country with people in areas where water is scarce. The way that’s been handled probably hasn’t changed much since the first dams were built. That’s not enough.
Also, no new grass should ever be allowed to be planted for landscaping.
And no new construction of any building of any kind should be built without solar.
Water-conserving agricultural methods could save HUGE amounts of water now allowed to evaporate or percolate into the ground. Drip irrigation, hydroponic or even aeroponic growth syaytems are proven technology and should be promoted, subsidized if appropriate.
The main solution to the California water crisis is to get rid of the existing insane system of water rights based on seniority. Right now, some of the biggest agricultural users can allowed to take all the water they want and others have to buy it at much higher rates. That means that a lot of users have zero incentive to conserve water. Almost anything would be better than the status quo.
Urban use is a small part of the problem and relatively easy to solve. Waste water reprocessing, storm runoff treatment, and desalination can all be part of the solution, and even desalination is not cost prohibitive compared to the existing retail cost of water. Everything is expensive compared to water appearing in a lake automatically, but such is the price of living in a near-desert.
I don’t think my article was pushing desalination at all. In fact, the opposite. I was trying to make the point that desalination is a solution for some, but not all locales because it is so expensive, and that there are other solutions that should be considered.
Did you read my article? My last name is Sanford, by the way. And, I resent your implication that financial ties led me to write this article the way that I did.
Yup. However, the agricultural users don’t just use as much as they want. They have to use as much as they do or risk losing their water rights. It’s kind of a use it or lose it scheme.
I do think you are right with the idea that California needs to get rid of the water rights system that it currently has… not just California though, the entire West needs to restructure where water is concerned.
Easier said than done… farmers are already self-regulating in little bits by growing different crops, but change to the system as a whole will not come quickly unless legislated.
Do what we did in Victoria Australia, have 5 year drought, build a super expensive salt water treatment plant, and then as soon as it is finished, the drought breaks and it rains and rains and the plant sits there doing nothing except destroying the popularity of the state government.
The easiest solution to urban usages is Guilt.
An ad campaign, people start giving their neighbours disapproving looks for watering their garden.
It was very effective here in Melbourne Australia. Wasting water got the same hate as smoking or improper use of recycling bins.
