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Thanks, will check that out :up:Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
edit: your link does mention that if you exclude those disconnected areas and look at net use, agriculture is at 62% (and that it's 77% of gross use for human use, which is presumably what the LA Times article referred to).
Well, let's wait until the aquifers run dry - then they'll have fun when the ground begins to sink :)
As I said, if you only talk about water used rather than water in the system, and if you don't include whole sections of the state where there isn't much agricultural use at all and water gets used for other things, then yes, you can really boost the proportion you consider devoted to agricultural use. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and saying they're just using a statistic in error and not deliberately distorting the picture themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
I wonder how the cost compares between desalination and building some sort of aqueduct infrastructure from Oregon, or maybe Washington, down to California. It rains a hell of a lot up there - why not catch some of that rain and run it down south in some kind of big-ass high-flow pipe line?
How does Florida fit in your scheme of things? Most of the tourist areas were built by changing swamps (the Everglades) into Disney Land, resorts, airports, and roadways...using federal tax dollars.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
I think you have a distorted, idealized view of what Capitalism means to Liberty and Freedom.
We'll be fine. All we need to do is kick Nestle out. Search 'Nestle stealing water'.
I did. And the actual reporting (vs crappy blogging) I found centered on the reporting coming from the Desert Sun. Which is about a plant that operates through a deal with a Native American tribe and reservation. And those water rights are untouchable, a matter of treaty.
But hey, you're the type that thinks that thinks fiscal outlooks can be changed just by confiscated a few fortunes.
It doesn't matter how much water Nestle pumps to sell as potable plastic, drinking water is and remains a very small percentage of water use. The fact that you have communities like Palm Springs at all is far more problematic. Forgive me if I don't care about their gold courses.
Holy crap...that's a rule 12 violation if there ever was one. REPORTED! BTW, the Nestle thing was meant tounge-in-cheek. I thought that would be obvious from the search results.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
This whole debate confuses me. People are arguing as if there aren't any viable ways to reduce agriculture's freshwater use without irreparably damaging the industry through high costs or restrictions. This is patently untrue. Much drier places in the world have thriving agricultural sectors. The solutions are technological and not necessarily that expensive - but they do require a change in culture and, likely, regulation.
First off, the idea of using some 40% of your freshwater for agriculture (vs. only ~10% for households) beggars belief. Treated wastewater can dramatically reduce freshwater usage. It requires some more infrastructure, yes, but is far cheaper than desalination and directly replaces freshwater. I would assume that currently most of California dumps their (treated) sewage rather than using it, which is a criminal waste of perfectly useful water. I believe Israel recycles upwards of 80% of their freshwater for agriculture, and as a result has dramatically lowered their freshwater usage (the vast majority of their freshwater is used for households). In the middle of the Great Plains, there might not be enough wastewater to make such infrastructure worth it (given the low population density and infrequent metropolises), but in California there's plenty to go around. That's a good start, and it doesn't require agriculture to dramatically reduce their consumption.
Then there's irrigation methods, already mentioned here. Drip irrigation should be the norm, and very wasteful water usage should be banned. Oh, if that offends the sensibilities of the free marketeers here, one could slap a high tax on water simultaneously with tax credits for switching to drip irrigation... consider it a Pigovian tax and call it a day. Wasteful household usage should also be curbed through a combination of financial incentives and education.
Then there's all of the technology that the water authorities can use to limit waste. Vast amounts of water are typically lost due to leaks and the like in a system. Smart monitoring systems can dramatically reduce water loss during transport at fairly reasonable prices.
And after all that - assuming that doesn't solve California's woes - there's always desalination. It's a bit energy intensive and expensive, but costs have been driven down through new technologies and scale.
As far as I can tell, almost none of the above has actually been implemented, even in 'extraordinary drought' conditions. There are plenty of countries with experience in this - Israel, Australia, the Gulf states, etc. - and they make do with dramatically lower freshwater supplies. Yes, these suggestions will probably make water a bit more expensive, but there are lots of relatively cheap low hanging fruit. This is not an insoluble problem, merely a political failure to act.
Why would I think it was tongue-in-cheek? That's exactly the sort of position I expect from you and the sort of material you usually draw on to support them.
Don't blame me for your obtuseness.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
Tha's a pretty sweeping allegation. Much of that "dumped" treated sewage is used in place of reservoir releases. Got to keep the smelt happy you know.Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
They use at most a couple million acre-feet of treated sewage for agriculture (LF's link with admittedly old data said 0.2-0.5 maf pa). They could use a hell of a lot more. Yes, some of their treated sewage is used to recharge groundwater and the like, but much of it is wasted.
That would require a solid infrastructure - it's pretty much par for the course to treat the symptoms instead of getting rid of the cause. I still don't understand how US-Americans can accept chlorinated water.Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
It doesn't offend my free market sensibilities. It offends my natural ecosystem sensibilities. I'm going to reiterate something I pointed out earlier and which people ignored. Massive flooding (a great deal of it endoherric) is the norm for the ecoystem over here, and significant endoherric flooding one of the two primary sources of recharge for our rather active aquifer (the other being seepage from watercourses in the bordering uplands).Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
Drip vs flood irrigation is about more than just the most efficient water-delivery for some generic concept of "crops." Ditto for complaints about seepage. A water-management system that minimizes the water not flowing into the ocean is not one that is actually supporting a healthy ecosystem and hydrologic cycle.
That your aquifers are rather "active", that I doubt. Not to mention that they've managed to actually poison several of them through wastewater.
You're free to think anything you want. Your almost total ignorance about a subject has never kept you from rushing to judgement in the past and I certainly don't expect it to here or in the future.
Once again, spare me your holier-than-thou attitude. I wonder however how one does refill aquifers which took millenia to fill. Feel free to ignore that problem, doesn't fit your narrative.
Goddamnit, I had a full reply and then firefox ate it.
Yes, we have a rather active aquifer. Pre-development equilibrium flow into and out of the aquifer was ~2 million acre-feet annually. Now we're pumping out millions of acre feet, some of which seeps back into the aquifer. Between the natural-flow recharge and that returned despite/because of human activity, actual overdraft is limited to an estimated 800,000-1.5 million acre feet annually, with some storage space permanently lost to compaction of permeable deposits consequent to water withdrawal.
There have been periods when pumping pretty much stopped for a while and the aquifer had risen back to the levels prior to the previous period of intense pumping within a decade (although because of the compaction, some of that was an illusion).
Some aquifers, so-called fossil water, like the Ogalalla below the US Central plains, or that one drawn on by Qadaffi's project in Libya, are not going to recharge. Other aquifers do recharge but rather slowly, like the Great Artesian Basin in Australia. The one here isn't like either of those sets.
LF, if you'd prefer I change my suggestion that irrigation practices should only follow the recommendations of hydrologists, then I'll gladly agree. Somehow, though, I doubt that current irrigation methods are in any way designed based on natural processes to recharge depleted aquifers.
I didn't say a word about intent Wiggin. I was objecting to your claim that anything but the most voluble possible flow of water into the oceans should be banned as "wasteful". Your arrogant and highhanded assumption that your way was the One True Way regardless of what actually fits the local conditions.
I'm doubtful that you can compare this time period to those before. Technological advances, increases in farming, population increase.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
Those before. . . you mean like the '60-70s? A heavy drought in the early 60s led to intensive aquifer use causing significant subsidence across the Central Valley which lies on top of the aquifer. Because of the subsidence and because the rains came back, irrigation shifted to run-off use and agricultural pumping stopped almost completely. By '76, the aquifer water levels had apparently returned to their pre-60s levels (though not fully, due to the illusion created by compaction which I've already mentioned).
How, exactly, do you think "technological advances" or "population increase" alter the aquifer's gross natural inflow? Or are you just trying to completely change the context of discussion and silently drop your initial point, in a reflection of how "Your almost total ignorance about a subject has never kept you from rushing to judgement"?
It's not the inflow. The problem is the outflow - I'm doubtful of your stated "fact" that they'll refill just fine on their own - you already said that (partial) collapse can be a result of draining too much water. (see: http://water.usgs.gov/ogw/pubs/fs00165/ )
And that the levels "had returned to their 60's levels" - this paper here quite disagrees with you: http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2013/5079/SIR2013-5079.pdf
I'm only seeing stagnation at the best. Any actual increases are only shortlived.
http://i.imgur.com/XoUp531.png
And my dear, maybe you should look into that bible saying about specks of wood and planks. Because frankly, your ranting gets a bit hypocritical. I find it quite humorous how you're portraying yourself as a better person, berating me for my tone, when you yourself use the very same tactics.
Takes one to know one, my dear. :)
Perhaps I was unclear earlier (also, I'm not sure how what I said suggested that the highest possible flow into oceans was desired...?). When I said:Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
I did not mean to exclude entirely any non-drip irrigation method - just ones that are explicitly 'very wasteful'. I am not a hydrologist, but I would imagine that flood irrigation is not 'natural' in many of the circumstances in which it is used, and that there are ways to minimize other losses (to e.g. evaporation) without killing the aquifer.Quote:
Originally Posted by me
My point isn't that drip irrigation is always best - though in habitually dry areas it does dramatically reduce the use of freshwater and/or treated water - but that choosing irrigation methods willy-nilly based purely on cost and ease of use does not seem particularly wise to me. What I've heard out of the reporting and data in California suggests that farmers are not particularly interested in tailoring their water usage to meet either a 'natural hydrology' demand or a 'minimize water consumption' demand, but rather a 'minimize costs to create the highest margin produce' demand. Maybe that sometimes ends up meeting your hydrology requirement, but I doubt it's intentional or particularly common.
That suggests to me that there are all sorts of externalities involved in water use for agriculture - certainly negative ones, but possibly also positive ones (e.g. aquifer recharge). Rationalizing incentives and prices to minimize the negative externalities and maximize the positive ones seems an eminently sensible policy, and one that is long overdue. I have no doubt there is subtlety and nuance involved in the ideal outcome, with wide variation over the very different geographies, types of agriculture, etc. present throughout California. What I'd like to see, however, is some rationality brought into the market. Unfortunately, said complexity suggests that crude market instruments such as higher pricing are likely to only improve matters somewhat. It needs to be coupled with appropriate changes in culture and education (using incentives if necessary) to craft better-tailored solutions for different regions and individuals.
That's a very long way of saying that I think agriculture practices in California and other dryish places need to change, and that they probably need a combination of price pressure and targeted incentives to do it.
You said that aquifers only recharge on a non-human timescale of thousands of years. You have been maintaining that attitude like it is a universal truth of aquifers and that any claim of an aquifer with an inflow that doesn't fit such a scale is just so much crap.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
Are we looking at the same diagram? Because the one you just posted shows the exact thing I said. I didn't say increases, I said a rise back to the level prior to the periods of intensive pumping. For some reason you call recovery to prior levels "stagnation"Quote:
And that the levels "had returned to their 60's levels" - this paper here quite disagrees with you: http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2013/5079/SIR2013-5079.pdf
I'm only seeing stagnation at the best. Any actual increases are only shortlived.
http://i.imgur.com/XoUp531.png
You get what you earn, Khend. The fact that you so frequently get met with fire after waving your own torches around is a statement about you, not about those responding to you.Quote:
And my dear, maybe you should look into that bible saying about specks of wood and planks. Because frankly, your ranting gets a bit hypocritical. I find it quite humorous how you're portraying yourself as a better person, berating me for my tone, when you yourself use the very same tactics.
Takes one to know one, my dear. :smile:
It certainly SOUNDS like that's what you're saying and since we are talking about one specific context, one which you continually fail to address in favor of repeated your more generalized position, I can only assume that you do in fact mean it the way it sounds.Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
You clearly have stronger feelings about this than me. I'm really not interested in slugging this out with you when I suspect that we more or less agree. So, have fun arguing with Khen.
Actually, I'm a bit amused. Do you honestly think I really care? It's just funny to see a person show his true colours.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
And I'm not quite sure where you're seeing a "recovery" in this. Unless you've redefined "recovery" to mean: "The gradient is zero"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
Sounds like he is. But since he didn't reply to Choob's questions about the specifics, and says "liberty" trumps governmental mandates, it's hard to know. :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by Spenni
The Agricultural Industry practically writes every Farm Bill, and gets its federal subsidies, because they have more politicians in their pocket than any 'green' company does. Ditto for the Energy Industry. It's still dominated by petrochemical/fossil fuel conglomerates whose massive amounts of money and political clout are valued more than WATER, even though their processes (Fracking) or transport (pipelines) use and/or contaminate WATER.Quote:
Again allow people freedom to use it how they desire. If they want to water their lawn and make up the savings with low flush toilets - good for them. If they don't mind their lawn going to crap but like to take 3 hour shows good for them. Its about liberty and the government NOT choosing economic winners and losers. Because guess what 'green' companies give money to politicians and oh wow their competitors get regulated out of business. Hmmmm...
Lewk, do you really believe arid, desert, or swamp states became part of the US economy due to Freee Market Capitalism...without any intervention from a federal government in the first place?
Of course the 'federal government' does not have to be involved in order for arid, desert and swamp states to become part of of the US economy. Hell in many cases it is the federal government that is preventing the exploitation of valued natural resources that would be a boon on the economy!
Check history. Florida, California, and Texas would not be "important" states without prior funding from federal agencies. It's pretty rich that you complain about federal government interventions when your Texas comforts were built on subsidies for the petroleum industry.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
It's back with a vengeance. Check our reservoir levels.
https://www.americangeosciences.org/...irs-california
And it seems California also has an "unbearable" problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PntS2STpWuY