# California Appears To Be In Real Trouble



## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Since a lot of the food we buy comes from California, this will likely affect our pocketbook sooner of later. 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/california-governor-orders-mandatory-water-restrictions-1.3018144

[h=1]California governor orders mandatory water restrictions[/h]
[h=3]Move would save some 1.2 million litres of water over next 9 months[/h]The Associated Press Posted: Apr 01, 2015 2:47 PM ET Last Updated: Apr 01, 2015 3:08 PM ET










Warm Winter weather has sped up the closure of several Tahoe area ski resorts - including Soda Springs, Calif. - following a promising start to the season. The drought is also forcing resort operators to find new attractions to lure tourists. (Randy Pench/The Sacramento Bee/AP)



California Gov. Jerry Brown ordered state officials Wednesday to impose mandatory water restrictions for the first time in history as the state grapples with a serious drought.
In an executive order, Brown ordered the state water board to implement measures in cities and towns that cut usage by 25 per cent.
"We're in a historic drought and that demands unprecedented action," Brown said at a news conference in the Sierra Nevada, where dry, brown grass surrounded a site that normally would be snow-covered at this time of year. "We have to pull together and save water in every way we can."


*Drought-ravaged L.A. looking to 'sponge up' every bit of rainwater*

*'Megadrought' threatens U.S. Southwest, Plains in decades to come, says study*
The move will affect residents, businesses, farmers and other users.
Brown's order also will require campuses, golf courses, cemeteries and other large landscapes to significantly cut water use; order local governments to replace 50 million square feet of lawns on throughout the state with drought-tolerant landscaping; and create a temporary rebate program for consumers who replace old water-sucking appliances with more efficient ones.
The snowpack has been in decline all year, with electronic measurements in March showing the statewide snow water equivalent at 19 per cent of the historical average for that date.
There was no snow at the site of the Wednesday snow survey.
Snow supplies about a third of the state's water, and a higher snowpack translates to more water in California reservoirs to meet demand in summer and fall.
Officials say the snowpack is already far below the historic lows of 1977 and 2014, when it was 25 per cent of normal on April 1 — the time when the snowpack is generally at its peak.
Brown declared a drought emergency and stressed the need for sustained water conservation.
The Department of Water Resources will conduct its final manual snow survey at a spot near Echo Summit, about 90 miles east of Sacramento. Electronic measurements are taken in a number of other places.
​​


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I don't know exactly how it happens, but generally when one part of the world is inundated with too much water in some form (yeah, I'm talkin' to you, Maritimes), another part is not getting enough. Like I say, I don't understand how hydration/precipitation can shift over large regions for a protracted period, but it happens.

At least some of the water conservation measures are intended not just to make for more drinking water, but to make farming sustainable, given that agriculture is a significant part of their economy.

Will it show up in food prices? I imagine so, but will be offset by reduced shipping costs stemming from plunging oil prices. If California stays bone dry *and* OPEC nations decide to shut off some of their oil pumps, then I think we can expect to see more noticeable changes in food prices, and salad bars allowing one trip for whatever you can fit on your plate, instead of multiple trips.


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

...and smaller plates.


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## Guest (Apr 2, 2015)

saltwater desalination

San Diego is building the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, at a cost of $1 billion.

_The massive project, in Carlsbad, teems with nearly 500 workers in yellow hard hats. 
When it’s done next year, it will take in more than 100 million gallons of Pacific Ocean 
water daily and produce 54 million gallons of fresh, drinkable water. While this adds up 
to just 10 percent of the county’s water delivery needs, it will, crucially, be reliable 
and drought-proof—a hedge against potentially worse times ahead_


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## Guest (Apr 2, 2015)

laristotle said:


> _While this adds up
> to just 10 percent of the county’s water delivery needs, it will, crucially, be reliable
> and drought-proof—a hedge against potentially worse times ahead_


For some perspective: 10% of the State's water use is for private, home consumption. So desalination as a means to keep people alive is actually very, very viable. And solar energy makes it actually affordable here.

What California is facing isn't so much the _end_ of water, it's the end of _free_ water. Especially for the farms in the Central Valley.

It's a very messed up place in some regards.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

laristotle said:


> saltwater desalination
> 
> San Diego is building the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, at a cost of $1 billion.
> 
> ...


I've often wondered why this was not done more. Seeing the capital and ongoing costs explains a lot. 

Draining the mighty Colorado river may seem cheap compared to desalination but when we see what the other costs are to the environment, wildlife, etc, the costs may not be that different.


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## bscott (Mar 3, 2008)

And there will be some whi think their green grass us more important than anything else.


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## marcos (Jan 13, 2009)

I know for a fact that golf courses are slowly starting to re-think course design by limiting the amount of grass on the course. Keeping just enough grass on fairways and not in the rough is the way to go. It just makes sense as some of these courses waste way too much water.


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## ronmac (Sep 22, 2006)

> *California governor orders mandatory water restrictions
> 
> Move would save some 1.2 million litres of water over next 9 months
> 
> *


Surely that can't be right. 1.2 million litres of water is nothing...


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

The problem isn't people drinking or even using water at home (a very small percent of total usage). The problem is that California has huge industries in beef and almonds that uses the majority of the state's water. They are water intense industries in an arid region. It just doesn't make sense.


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## boyscout (Feb 14, 2009)

ronmac said:


> Surely that can't be right. 1.2 million litres of water is nothing...


Yeah, the statistic is actually 1.2 million acre-feet of water, an acre-foot being the amount of water required to cover one acre to a depth of one foot. Apparently the way farmers figure it, but for the rest of us it would translate to (guessing) hundreds of billions of litres (maybe someone here wants to do the math).

It is a problem for sure. One solution would be to kill the almond crop - the new measure only saves about 10% of the amount of water that almonds alone require in the state. Again, fuzzy on the detail and too rushed to look it up, but a single almond requires something like 30 litres of water to produce.

(someone, feel free to correct me, thanks!)


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

it makes me wonder.....we always talk about climate change and the dangers to mankind it may bring us, as if the problem is nature itself, or our supposed immense influence on nature...but I wonder if the real problem is in our own stubbornness to do things our way and put all too much faith into our own engineering intelligence....turning deserts into lush agriculture land, build cities on shorelines at or below sea level, houses on hostile oceanfronts, etc. Seems we make problems for ourselves.
Im surprised they haven't tried growing grapefruit and bananas in Manitoba.


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

Here's a partial solution.

Shut down Las Vegas.

What a disgusting waste of water.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

traynor_garnet said:


> The problem isn't people drinking or even using water at home (a very small percent of total usage). The problem is that California has huge industries in beef and almonds that uses the majority of the state's water. They are water intense industries in an arid region. It just doesn't make sense.


There is a LOT that grows in California, besides beef and almonds. And if everything about a growing region is _just right_, except for the amount of annual rainfall, what the heck is so wrong about supplementing that rainfall a bit? Seems to me to be smarter than growing English cucumbers in a greenhouse in Newfoundland. And it's not like California has always been perched at the edge of an environmental precipice. The current drought is a temporary thing.

Northeastern Australia had a drought that lasted for a dozen years, maybe more, and is now officially over. I recall chatting with a couple from Brisbane in 2007, who were visiting Vancouver. They described to me all the various municipal bylaws that had been instituted to regulare water use. Certainly gardens and lawns were discontinued, and washing the car was a matter of reusing dishwater. Under th0ose circumstances, one tends to realize just how many ways water is wasted, by flippant use.

"Water politics" WILL be one of the principle issues to contend with for the remainder of this century. That would include not just the regulation of consumption, but the regulation and national sharing of potable water sources across borders, municipal planning for water-related matters (which includes where to put all the damn snow, as well as zoning of waterfronts and planning for sea/lake level elevation), cost-sharing of floods, etc.


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## Guest (Apr 2, 2015)

ronmac said:


> Surely that can't be right. 1.2 million litres of water is nothing...


That sounds about right. And yea, it's nothing. The big changes have to come from agriculture. There's a ton of stuff that's grown in a _literal_ desert here called the Central Valley. Notably almonds and rice -- those are the two big, water hungry crops that are grown here that really shouldn't be. And then beef.

- - - Updated - - -



mhammer said:


> The current drought is a temporary thing.


Yup. Well, really, what's going to be temporary is free water for growing those things. That's going to change.

Farmers in the Central Valley, by and large, enjoy "settler's rights" to stream and ground water on their land. Meaning they can syphon off as much of it as they like with zero cost (when you come from Canada, where everything is metered, and you hear this is boggles the mind a bit). So they've been using free water, haphazardly, for nearly 100 years now. That'll come to an end as the government requires metered use and starts augment the local supplies with "imported" water that comes in via aquaduct.


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

Farmers should receive preferential costing for water.

Las Vegas should take it up the politician extrusion conduit.


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## Guest (Apr 2, 2015)

Milkman said:


> Farmers should receive preferential costing for water.


Hmm. Maybe. I don't think it should be free. Free makes people do stupid things. Like flood plains in the desert and grow rice there (an actual thing they do in CA).



> Las Vegas should take it up the politician extrusion conduit.


I'm curious to know how much water Vegas accounts for -- the entire state of CA's water use is only 10% non-industrial/agricultural. I think Vegas, despite the waste, probably doesn't use much water.


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

iaresee said:


> Hmm. Maybe. I don't think it should be free. Free makes people do stupid things. Like flood plains in the desert and grow rice there (an actual thing they do in CA).
> 
> 
> 
> I'm curious to know how much water Vegas accounts for -- the entire state of CA's water use is only 10% non-industrial/agricultural. I think Vegas, despite the waste, probably doesn't use much water.


Maybe. I just felt a rant coming on and this seemed like a good opportunity.

Still, Vegas wastes water lavishly. It IS a desert after all and there's water everywhere.

Cali will have all the water she needs once the big quake hits.

I know, not really funny, but that's the price of living in "paradise".


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

There is plenty wrong with trying to tackle a problem in an ass backwards way. People having a glass of water at a restaurant is not the cause of the problem; the two aforementioned water intensive industries play a MUCH bigger role. Most of the proposed restrictions are largely about the optics of "doing something." The much larger problem lies in a wider system of production that is wasteful, leads to environmental change and (subsequently) brings about more severe climate crises/swings. The same system leading to the problem, is the same system not addressed by current "solutions." 

TG



mhammer said:


> There is a LOT that grows in California, besides beef and almonds. And if everything about a growing region is _just right_, except for the amount of annual rainfall, what the heck is so wrong about supplementing that rainfall a bit? Seems to me to be smarter than growing English cucumbers in a greenhouse in Newfoundland. And it's not like California has always been perched at the edge of an environmental precipice. The current drought is a temporary thing.
> 
> Northeastern Australia had a drought that lasted for a dozen years, maybe more, and is now officially over. I recall chatting with a couple from Brisbane in 2007, who were visiting Vancouver. They described to me all the various municipal bylaws that had been instituted to regulare water use. Certainly gardens and lawns were discontinued, and washing the car was a matter of reusing dishwater. Under th0ose circumstances, one tends to realize just how many ways water is wasted, by flippant use.
> 
> "Water politics" WILL be one of the principle issues to contend with for the remainder of this century. That would include not just the regulation of consumption, but the regulation and national sharing of potable water sources across borders, municipal planning for water-related matters (which includes where to put all the damn snow, as well as zoning of waterfronts and planning for sea/lake level elevation), cost-sharing of floods, etc.


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## Lincoln (Jun 2, 2008)

somewhere I read that the Colorado River, (the river that formed the Grand Canyon) no longer runs into the ocean. It is totally used up before it gets that far.

YouTube has some pretty good stuff on this problem too. California's reservoir system of man-made lakes are all pretty much died up.

People are drilling new water wells to try and make up for the drought. I read it was a 1 year wait to get a water well drilled in Cali these days, the drilling rigs are so busy.
After that comes fracking to find "new" water. Fracking in an earth quake zone.........nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan.


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

Lincoln said:


> somewhere I read that the Colorado River, (the river that formed the Grand Canyon) no longer runs into the ocean. It is totally used up before it gets that far.
> 
> YouTube has some pretty good stuff on this problem too. California's reservoir system of man-made lakes are all pretty much died up.



You should see the Rio Grande at El Paso, Texas.

By the time it gets there the river is a dried up ditch.

I think they call them dry backs now.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

Lincoln said:


> somewhere I read that the Colorado River, (the river that formed the Grand Canyon) no longer runs into the ocean. It is totally used up before it gets that far.
> 
> YouTube has some pretty good stuff on this problem too. California's reservoir system of man-made lakes are all pretty much died up.
> 
> ...


Yes, and there used to be a few Mexican farming communities at the mouth that used to irrigate from the Colorady - until all the water was 're-allocated' to LA and environs. Killed those communities, which apparently had no power against the govt upstream doing what it wanted. Pretty good reason why Israel is one of the leaders in desalination - all of their fresh water sources are generally not very friendly neighbors.

Mining aquifer is a dead-end game too. The water took tens of thousands of years to absorb - and they are draining it in 100 years. Those wells go deeper and deeper and deeper every year.

I saw a PBS documentary 25 years ago about this - called Cadillac Desert. I'd love to see it again, but haven't been able to find it. Read the book multiple times while looking for it though.


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## ronmac (Sep 22, 2006)

High/Deaf said:


> I saw a PBS documentary 25 years ago about this - called Cadillac Desert. I'd love to see it again, but haven't been able to find it. Read the book multiple times while looking for it though.


I just Googled it and found it on YouTube...


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

I keep hearing that fresh water is going to be the most valuable resource in the world in the near future. That is why large corporations like Nestle are currently securing ownership and rights to all the potable water on the planet, usually for next to nothing (hello British Columbia). As the Nestle CEO has been quoted, water is not a necessity, it's a economic commodity. Makes me shiver to think about it.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

ronmac said:


> I just Googled it and found it on YouTube...


Thanks for that. (and LOL, I'm so lazy)

I'm old school and if I couldn't find DVD's, "they didn't exist". Did find a VHS copy for about $300, but I'm not that old school. I will have to stream it eventually. It is long as I recall - 7, 8, maybe 9 one-hour episodes. But an eye-opening show, at least at that time. Water seemed limitless then.


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## Beach Bob (Sep 12, 2009)

I'm a bit of a water guy, so I've watched the California situation develop over years....

Over half the water used in urban California goes to water grass; essentially 10% of all the water used in California... a truly disturbing issue. Grass is the devil in my opinion (and yes... I have grass in my yard... I know I'm a hypocrite...) We use treated water to water grass...dump loads of chemicals on the grass to make it green...dump more water on it...and cut it.... not a very environmentally friendly process.

The aquafirs in California has been depleted for a very long time; one of the big issues with urban density is storm water management. Cement doesn't absorb water, so you have to deal with the rain. So, instead of trying to get the water into the ground somehow, they cemented all the storm system so that the water just flows into the ocean instead of feeding the aquafirs.

they just kept pulling water off of the Colorado without ever changing their consumption habits (in fairness, San Diego has encouraged selective flushing for decades (i.e. If it's yellow, let it mellow, if its brown, flush it down")), pulling more and more water in via aqueducts (which they don't bother to cover, so there is a large evaporation issue) and more or less robbing Peter to pay Paul until most of the western US will be dragged down.

Desalinization plants are a very mixed blessing... expensive... and create an enormous environmental liability with the brine they produce; it used to be that it was just dumped into the ocean, but it is so salty that it destroys everything down current... most now try to mix it down with industrial waste water before dumping into the sea; essentially minimizing the salt dump issue at the expense of dumping whatever chemical mix is in the industrial waste water into the ocean.

Water rights has been a huge legal issue in California, and that will only expand over time (hello Texas...looking at you next). It won't be our generation that really feels the impact of water shortages, but the writing is on the wall and until we really look at a bigger picture and adjust how large scale operations use water, it will get worse.


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## Guest (Apr 3, 2015)

Beach Bob said:


> Over half the water used in urban California goes to water grass; essentially 10% of all the water used in California...


Not quite, but you're not far off. Here's the current break down:










It's 10% if you include Commercial Urban.



> Grass is the devil in my opinion (and yes... I have grass in my yard... I know I'm a hypocrite...) We use treated water to water grass...dump loads of chemicals on the grass to make it green...dump more water on it...and cut it.... not a very environmentally friendly process.


No argument from me on that.

Want to know how California got its nickname, The Golden State? It's actually not because of the sunshine -- it's the hills. The Oakland hills to be specific. The go gold in the spring, summer and fall. They're lush green in the winter. They're starting to change back to yellow-gold now. I'll snap some pictures, it's pretty cool. The grasses on them can absorb enough moisture from the air in the winter to go green.


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## boyscout (Feb 14, 2009)

mhammer said:


> There is a LOT that grows in California, besides beef and almonds. And if everything about a growing region is just right, except for the amount of annual rainfall, what the heck is so wrong about supplementing that rainfall a bit? Seems to me to be smarter than growing English cucumbers in a greenhouse in Newfoundland. And it's not like California has always been perched at the edge of an environmental precipice. The current drought is a temporary thing.


Nothing wrong in principle with supplementing, it's the practice that has caught up with California. The current drought and low snowpack has not caused their water crisis, it has just exposed the fact that their water systems were already stressed with virtually no room for contingency. It cannot be dismissed as "a temporary thing".

Almost 350 miles north of thirsty consumers in Los Angeles is a stark example of the longstanding problem, a lake south of Reno called Mono Lake. The shoreline of the 180km2 lake is caked with salt crust and its waterline is ~1,500 feet or more from where it obviously used to be. Along the shore are the remains of two abandoned marinas and other signs that the lake was once a popular water playground and beautiful vacation spot in the mountains of northern Californa. Now its a virtual wasteland, so salty that only a few adapted creatures such as briny shrimp can live in it. Most of its visitors have wings and feed on the shrimp and horrendous clouds of flies; people don't use it much anymore.

Why? In the early 1900s engineers began diverting the freshwater creeks that had fed Mono Lake for thousands of years to the water needs of Los Angeles, and by mid-century were taking nearly all of the water that used to flow into the lake. Evaporation of the saline water in the lake, with little replenishment from fresh inflows, eventually took nearly 3/4 of the volume of the lake and increased its salinity intensly. Except for the shrimp and flies and birds, it became a wasteland.

There are similar lake stories dotted around California.

Another example: elsewhere in the state farmers have expanded their croplands so aggressively - often by making farmland out of desert - that their water requirements have exceeded anything available to them from state-planned irrigation canals and rationing systems. Their solution has been to drill deep wells down into the aquifer beneath their own lands, an aquifer that took thousands of years to develop. 

The aquifer is not an infinite resource either, and this activity has been lowering the levels of underground water such that some are now drilling as much as 2km deep to get water. And the guy with the deepest well wins; as he sucks out water his neighbors' wells can go dry and they have to dig even-deeper wells. You can see where it's going. Well drilling will become impractical as the aquifer collapses. Then what? In wet years they could pump water back into the aquifer but they haven't had surplus water for years and they'd need DECADES of pumping water down to restore the only water reserve they have.



mhammer said:


> "Water politics" WILL be one of the principle issues to contend with for the remainder of this century. That would include not just the regulation of consumption, but the regulation and national sharing of potable water sources across borders, municipal planning for water-related matters (which includes where to put all the damn snow, as well as zoning of waterfronts and planning for sea/lake level elevation), cost-sharing of floods, etc.


Will be? Water politics very much *is* a central fact of life in much of the American southwest and has been for at least fifty years. Farmers especially, but now also urbanites, have an awareness of water issues that we lucky Canadians know nothing about and the debates about what is the right and fair thing to do are everywhere, all the time. One example: after fighting in the courts for over twenty years, citizens around Mono Lake won a legal injunction a few years ago requiring the water systems to restore some of the freshwater flow into Mono Lake. It will take 20-30 years, but the lake may eventually be enjoyed by people again. And of course, their victory only exacerbates Los Angeles' water problems.

It seems inevitable that Canada's vast resources are going to become part of the politics. It will undoubtedly be a white-hot poker that will destroy political careers, but eventually Canadians may come to accept the idea of selling water to the U.S. southwest. Or stop eating almonds. Or both.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Good post!


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

Astro turf.

I know it doesn't generate oxygen but I would be fine with it.

Anyone have a zero grass yard?


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## Guest (Apr 3, 2015)

Milkman said:


> Astro turf.
> 
> I know it doesn't generate oxygen but I would be fine with it.
> 
> Anyone have a zero grass yard?


My parents do! They've spent the past few years moving their front yard to some gardens with low-care planets and river stone. And the backyard is either stone or deck now. I think my dad sold his lawn mower last fall.


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## Guest (Apr 3, 2015)

my lawn is mostly weeds, clover, wild carrot and other stuff. I've 
never watered it in the 21 years we've been here. but it's green.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

iaresee said:


> My parents do! They've spent the past few years moving their front yard to some gardens with _*low-care planets*_ and river stone. And the backyard is either stone or deck now. I think my dad sold his lawn mower last fall.


I hate those planets that take up all my time, dusting them off, keeping them in orbit...................:smiley-faces-75:


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## Guest (Apr 3, 2015)

with one less to deal with.
pluto's no longer a planet, don'cha know.


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## Guest (Apr 5, 2015)

What? You guys don't keep Uranus in your front yard????


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## allthumbs56 (Jul 24, 2006)

My neighbour has turned his front yard into a "garden" and I hate the damned eyesore. Pulled out all the grass, Added a few tons of plain gravel and three big wooden boxes for tomato plants and such. Replaced the grass on his boulevard with mulch. Looks like crap and the sidewalk is always littered with gravel and mulch.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

allthumbs56 said:


> My neighbour has turned his front yard into a "garden" and I hate the damned eyesore. Pulled out all the grass, Added a few tons of plain gravel and three big wooden boxes for tomato plants and such. Replaced the grass on his boulevard with mulch. Looks like crap and the sidewalk is always littered with gravel and mulch.


Free food!


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

iaresee said:


> What? You guys don't keep Uranus in your front yard????


I keep it in my back yard. It would look very stupid in my front yard.:smile-new:


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## Adcandour (Apr 21, 2013)

iaresee said:


> My parents do! They've spent the past few years moving their front yard to some gardens with low-care planets and river stone. And the backyard is either stone or deck now. I think my dad sold his lawn mower last fall.


I've always enjoyed looking at those.gardens.

We also let our lawn do what it's gonna do - I do cut it though.

I always wonder who started the idea that weeds were bad. There's one weed where the flower is the most beautiful orange/red. I guess it just stemmed from weed control in crops.

There's a netflix documentary that ends in a positive note concerning the water crisis. I was happy to see it, since.i found the rest of the show stressful.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

boyscout said:


> In wet years they could pump water back into the aquifer but they haven't had surplus water for years and they'd need DECADES of pumping water down to restore the only water reserve they have.


Great post. But I don't think aquifer works like that. As I understand it, the water has to absorb very slowly, you can't just fill it up like an empty tank. But I could be wrong.

- - - Updated - - -



Milkman said:


> Astro turf.
> 
> I know it doesn't generate oxygen but I would be fine with it.
> 
> Anyone have a zero grass yard?


If the moss has its way, I will eventually. It's a war every year out here on the wet coast.

As someone else said, who decided weeds were bad (who decide what were 'weeds'?). Moss isn't awful - its soft and green. But the local biddie committee has decided moss is bad and we all fight the moss, which is obviously much, much, much better evolved for this climate. At least we are rich out here - rich in fresh water, that is.

Sometimes I wish my grass was EMO, so it would cut itself.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

High/Deaf said:


> Great post. But I don't think aquifer works like that. As I understand it, the water has to absorb very slowly, you can't just fill it up like an empty tank. But I could be wrong.


At our branch in Canada, we cool the buildings with water. The local government allows it but a return well was required to meet environmental standards, so the water is pumped out, goes through plates to absorb the heat in the buildings in order to cool them and then returned to the ground via another well.

Now, this is pretty small scale in comparison to California but if there were many wells and each landowner did it, it may be a quicker way of replenishing the aquifer as it would get any access water back in the ground before it evaporated.

You also have to wonder about the massive space that is being created by sucking all those millions and perhaps trillions of gallons of water out of the ground.


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## boyscout (Feb 14, 2009)

High/Deaf said:


> Great post. But I don't think aquifer works like that. As I understand it, the water has to absorb very slowly, you can't just fill it up like an empty tank. But I could be wrong.


You're not wrong. Thus my assertion above that it would take decades to replenish the aquifer *IF* there were supplies of surplus water to pump down. However since Californians have been overdrawing (overdrafting? I forget the term) these aquifers for years, reversing the flow doesn't seem much more likely than monsoon rains any time soon. (My assertion is supported by discussions in California and with a friend who is one of the Ontario government's water experts, as well as by reading on the internet where everything is true.)

It's quite the mess, exacerbated by the fact that even with increased awareness and rising costs and rationing life is still ticking along without the significant change that may be a looming requirement. For example in urban planning: in greater Los Angeles alone the population has increased by about two million people since 2000 (about 13%) yet significant planned parts of the various water system projects to support growth have not been completed; some have been stalled for many years. If water infrastructure projects built in the middle of the last century weren't so far-sighted we'd have seen today's headlines long ago.

At the following link there's an interesting graph at the top of the page showing population growth (whole state, not just LA) compared to infrastructure spending. The bulge in spending in the middle of the last century would (I'm guessing) be significantly on those far-sighted water infrastructure projects (vast reservoirs and dams) and on highways. Completion of planned water works, and development of new ones, aren't getting the attention they need, as the current drought has brought home with a thud.

http://cpr.ca.gov/cpr_report/Issues_and_Recommendations/Chapter_4_Infrastructure/INF18.html


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## boyscout (Feb 14, 2009)

Referring back to the OP's title for this thread, "yes it does, and no wonder".

The story at the link below is about a single incident, but then it isn't. It's an example of the kind of extreme and sometimes-senseless dogmatic action that 'green' groups have entrenched deep in the regulations and bureaucracy of California (and in this case involving federal agencies too), and have thereby strangled development of critical infrastructure for water and (remembering another recent thread here) electricity supply.

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/california-spend-4-billion-gallons-water-fish/

Water and electricity (and the food they help produce)... who needs 'em? As long as the handful of fish survive, farmers and their customers can suck it.


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## Guest (Apr 12, 2015)

That Wired article sums up so well how f'ed up it is here with respect to the different levels of government and how they interact. There's this whole "the feds are at the top" attitude but it's countered by a "we can just get lawyers involved" response on the bottom and it's totally adversarial.

It's the same way between the state and local governments and the farmers. The governments want to limit and meter runoff water use, the farmers (obviously) don't want to pay for water, so they get lawyers involved and the governments end up powerless.

Hey, related to runoff water use, my father-in-law was telling me the other day that the Ontario government is going to meter well water use -- is that true? That's a bit fucked up too if it is.


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## Guest (Apr 12, 2015)

boyscout said:


> http://www.wired.com/2015/04/california-spend-4-billion-gallons-water-fish/
> 
> Water and electricity (and the food they help produce)... who needs 'em? As long as the handful of fish survive, farmers and their customers can suck it.


really!? water for 174,301 people or 6 fish!?


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## Guest (Apr 12, 2015)

laristotle said:


> really!? water for 174,301 people or 6 fish!?


_Endangered_ fish.


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## Guest (Apr 12, 2015)

Are they all named Wanda? lol.
Net them, put them in a cooler full of water and transport them to the ocean.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

laristotle said:


> Are they all named Wanda? lol.
> Net them, put them in a cooler full of water and transport them to the ocean.


One better be named Phil.
Let the river flow. Open the flood gates and let that 3.9 billion gallons (12,000 acre feet) of water go....now, in one shot. Give the fish a free ride, help flush out the river a bit and possibly add to the aquifer better than it sitting behind a dam evaporating. Then go to B.C. and move some of the steelhead from there to California.....they could all be the same fish. Then go back to not using the big field broadcasters for irrigation....they loose too much water to evaporation. 
Or just wait for the next big run of earthquakes.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

From many of the fine comments in this thread from you members, doesn't it really expose bureaucracy that caused the problem in the first place and bureaucracy that is exacerbating the problem?


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## Guest (Apr 12, 2015)

Steadfastly said:


> From many of the fine comments in this thread from you members, doesn't it really expose bureaucracy that caused the problem in the first place and bureaucracy that is exacerbating the problem?


A bit. But there's a lot of Old Law in play here too: settler's rights and watershed claims play a big part in why Big Agriculture has had unregulated access to free water in the Central Valley here.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Steadfastly said:


> From many of the fine comments in this thread from you members, doesn't it really expose bureaucracy that caused the problem in the first place and bureaucracy that is exacerbating the problem?


Part of the problem is you can't do a lot about some of the causes. You can't make it rain or snow more than it does. Part of it is demand and supply.....people want fresh fruits and vegetables all year round. All exposing the bureaucracy does is gives people someone other than themselves someone to blame. "Yeah it's Regan's fault....passing all those bills when he was governor." A year or two from now they could have record snow and rain falls and then all will be better.....until the next time.


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## boyscout (Feb 14, 2009)

Electraglide said:


> <snip> Let the river flow. Open the flood gates and let that 3.9 billion gallons (12,000 acre feet) of water go....now, in one shot. Give the fish a free ride, help flush out the river a bit and possibly add to the aquifer better than it sitting behind a dam evaporating. Then go to B.C. and move some of the steelhead from there to California.....they could all be the same fish. Then go back to not using the big field broadcasters for irrigation....they loose too much water to evaporation. Or just wait for the next big run of earthquakes.


The broadcast sprayers can still be seen but are waning with waning water supplies. For many field crops it's fairly common to see some variation of the system below. Inside the cistern I could hear a strong cascade of water - not sure where it was coming from. The cistern fills a network of small tubes buried at the roots of the crop. If you look closely you can see some of the tubes at the ends of the carefully-formed rows of earth, which are made to reduce evaporation of the water being trickled to the roots.

"Flush out the river"? I'm not an expert, but would guess there's a bit of misrepresentation about delta salinity by the officials demanding the water release. Most of the delta is already below sea level, and is surrounded by levees to hold back San Francisco Bay and protect the mostly-farmland of the delta from it. They call the area "California's Holland", or something like that. Don't believe everything you read, especially if it's the government talking.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

boyscout said:


> The broadcast sprayers can still be seen but are waning with waning water supplies. For many field crops it's fairly common to see some variation of the system below. Inside the cistern I could hear a strong cascade of water - not sure where it was coming from. The cistern fills a network of small tubes buried at the roots of the crop. If you look closely you can see some of the tubes at the ends of the carefully-formed rows of earth, which are made to reduce evaporation of the water being trickled to the roots.
> 
> "Flush out the river"? I'm not an expert, but would guess there's a bit of misrepresentation about delta salinity by the officials demanding the water release. Most of the delta is already below sea level, and is surrounded by levees to hold back San Francisco Bay and protect the mostly-farmland of the delta from it. They call the area "California's Holland", or something like that. Don't believe everything you read, especially if it's the government talking.


'Flush the river'....you open the damn and let the 3.9 billion gallons of water go, all at once. Like flushing a toilet. Clears everything out of it's way and puts water where it hasn't been for quite a while but doesn't really get into the lower part of the delta unless the levees give way. 
The trickle system works but is expensive to put in and unless the way they farm most crops is changed has to be put in every year. Basically it's got to be pulled before you plow and reinstalled before you plant.
A major contributing factor there is the same as here this year. Low precipitation. My son is quading in places where there is normally 5 or 6 feet of snow. Yet back east I think a lot of places are still digging out.....go figure. Next year things might change and it will rain a lot there.....who knows.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

iaresee said:


> A bit. But there's a lot of Old Law in play here too: settler's rights and watershed claims play a big part in why Big Agriculture has had unregulated access to free water in the Central Valley here.


Isn't that bureaucracy as well? It's going back decades but it was bureaucrats that gave those settler's rights and allowed the watershed claims. History also shows there was greed mixed in with those decisions. It also shows how shortsighted we are as humans.


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## Guest (Apr 12, 2015)

Steadfastly said:


> Isn't that bureaucracy as well? It's going back decades but it was bureaucrats that gave those settler's rights and allowed the watershed claims. History also shows there was greed mixed in with those decisions. It also shows how shortsighted we are as humans.


It's more the planned absence of bureaucratic oversight. It was done in the spirit of helping to encourage settling the West and that whole don't-tread-on-me ethos. I don't think they foresaw Big Agri type farming and California becoming North Americas fruit bowl. 

Shows you can't have it either way and it will be perfect.


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## boyscout (Feb 14, 2009)

Electraglide said:


> 'Flush the river'....you open the damn and let the 3.9 billion gallons of water go, all at once. Like flushing a toilet. Clears everything out of it's way and puts water where it hasn't been for quite a while but doesn't really get into the lower part of the delta unless the levees give way. <snip>


Pardon?! The levees are on the *outside* rim of the delta, on the west and north, protecting the delta from sea-level waters including partly-saline water that tidal action helps pump east from the saline waters of San Pablo Bay (San Francisco Bay). The Stanislaus River is one of several that ultimately flow *into* the delta, and therefore a portion of another large 'flush' of the Stanislaus *would* make it to the delta.

However my hunch is that any effect on salinity in the delta would be modest and very temporary, like the modest number of fish for which some officials have decreed the big flush of scarce water. Officials tossed in the issue to bolster their weak argument for a second multi-billion gallon release; just spin, says I.



Electraglide said:


> The trickle system works but is expensive to put in and unless the way they farm most crops is changed has to be put in every year. Basically it's got to be pulled before you plow and reinstalled before you plant.


Cost is relative - the rising cost and reduced availability of water obviously makes more-expensive irrigation methods economically-sensible. Variations of the ground-feeding system in the photo above are seen frequently in the Central Valley and in southern California. (The one above in in the south, near the Salton Sea.) A common variation is furrow irrigation - water pumped into furrows like those in the photo above and allowed to soak into the soil - where the evaporation rate is likely higher than the above but still far lower than sprinkler irrigation. Another common variation has fairly large porous pipe in the furrows, rather than buried in the ground.

My original rebuttal repeated: there's probably much less broadcast sprinkler use there than you think.

Californians have been dealing with water issues for decades, and have a number of alternatives to sprinklers, but they do still use them. Maybe crop-dependent, I dunno. Lettuce crops, for example, seem often to have sprinklers; maybe they need that for some reason. But I'd bet that a substantial majority of tree crops are now ground-fed by one variation or another, and a great many field crops are too. They're not as irresponsible as you implied in your previous post above.

BTW, part of the debate there is about which crops they should be growing with their scarce water resources. The largest agricultural water consumers are forage crops and alfalfa for - mostly - cattle. (These are often sprinkler-fed too.) They are relatively low-value crops, even when their use by cattle we use is factored in. Topping the water-consumption list in directly-human-used crops are things like almonds and rice and cotton. Almonds are a high-value crop, the other two less so. Discussions about incentives and disincentives designed to ensure high-value agricultural use of scarce water are part of the constant studying and battling of the water issue.



Electraglide said:


> A major contributing factor there is the same as here this year. Low precipitation. My son is quading in places where there is normally 5 or 6 feet of snow. Yet back east I think a lot of places are still digging out.....go figure. Next year things might change and it will rain a lot there.....who knows.


Also said in another post: this year's drought is not the problem, it has just underscored and made bigger headlines about the problem. The problem is much longer-term than you suggest it is. It's a decades-long problem of living near the edge of a water crisis and inching closer to the edge all the time as population growth, agriculture growth, and funding-impaired and 'green'-impaired development of water system infrastructure all catch up with California.


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## djmarcelca (Aug 2, 2012)

Are there any large scale rainwater collection efforts going on?
farmers can catch rainwater and store it in cisterns aka barrels. And use it

my grandmother did this for her growing needs. She had a 8 acre garden


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## Guest (Apr 13, 2015)

djmarcelca said:


> Are there any large scale rainwater collection efforts going on?
> farmers can catch rainwater and store it in cisterns aka barrels. And use it


Doesn't that require rain? That's part of the problem here -- we're not getting any rain. Our normally rainy December - February months were not rainy at all. Even in the mountains they got record low precipitation this winter.


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## Guest (Jul 28, 2015)

[video=youtube;e6lTl9JIW5Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6lTl9JIW5Y[/video]


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

Steadfastly said:


> Isn't that bureaucracy as well? It's going back decades but it was bureaucrats that gave those settler's rights and allowed the watershed claims. History also shows there was greed mixed in with those decisions. It also shows how shortsighted we are as humans.


when has bureaucracy not been replaced with just another bureaucracy?


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## Guest (Jul 28, 2015)

Neighbours painted their lawn before they put the for sale sign on the house. Must have worked. I think they listed their '70's shack for $780,000 and it sold in a day for $973,000 -- all-cash deal!


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

iaresee said:


> Neighbours painted their lawn before they put the for sale sign on the house. Must have worked. I think they listed their '70's shack for $780,000 and it sold in a day for $973,000 -- all-cash deal!


WOW! Nice deal!

Any idea as to the cost of painting an average size lawn?

Cheers

Dave


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## Guest (Jul 28, 2015)

greco said:


> WOW! Nice deal!


Indeed. Market here is NUTS.



> Any idea as to the cost of painting an average size lawn?


Neighbour said it was included in the staging fees they paid the agent, so: nope.


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## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

Maybe California could start painting some water in their reservoirs?


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## boyscout (Feb 14, 2009)

iaresee said:


> Neighbours painted their lawn before they put the for sale sign on the house. Must have worked. I think they listed their '70's shack for $780,000 and it sold in a day for $973,000 -- all-cash deal!


Someone I know just bought a beautifully-kept 3-bedroom bungalow, move-in ready, on a large fenced lot in a good neighborhood for $153,000! His is just outside Houston. Your neighbors could buy six and have change left over!

Along with problems with water and energy, this is another of California's urban problems. Vancouver nearly as bad, parts of Toronto getting there.


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## Guest (Jul 28, 2015)

boyscout said:


> Someone I know just bought a beautifully-kept 3-bedroom bungalow, move-in ready, on a large fenced lot in a good neighborhood for $153,000! His is just outside Houston. Your neighbors could buy six and have change left over!


But then they'd also have no jobs. 

There's some allure to Austin for us, actually. There's a good tech sector there with comparable wages and a much lower cost of living. Not quite as cheap as Houston, but not Bay Area crazy. And the schools are uniformly excellent. Of course, it's Texas...and land locked...so there's that.

We're just kind of biding our time, waiting for things to crash a bit here. Patience pays off in this town.



> Along with problems with water and energy, this is another of California's urban problems. Vancouver nearly as bad, parts of Toronto getting there.


I actually think Vancouver might be worse. Ian Young made a convincing argument for it: http://canadalandshow.com/podcast/hongcouver -- they have the high prices but they don't have the high paying jobs in the volumes that the Bay Area has them.


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