
A Kingdom from Dust - devy
https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust
======
wallflower
That was an epic read. Thank you for posting it. I looked at the scroll bar on
the right side of my browser and it barely budged in 15 minutes of reading.

This is the documentary "Finding Lost Hills" mentioned during the story.

[https://vimeo.com/176388063](https://vimeo.com/176388063)

If you would like to read an article about the intertwining of the mudslides
and wildfires of the California wilderness that is increasingly encroached
upon by residential development from 1988 that is similar in breadth, depth,
and scope:

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1988/09/26/los-angeles-
ag...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1988/09/26/los-angeles-against-the-
mountains-i)

~~~
xivzgrev
I agree. I love when stories get all the viewpoints and follow threads raised
during conversations. I didn't even realize I spent about an hour reading it!

------
onlyrealcuzzo
From a literary standpoint, I loved this article. It seemed like the sequel to
Chinatown. The writing reminded me of a Michael Lewis story. Really enjoyed
this.

------
sologoub
> The extraction of water beneath the lake bottom won’t last forever. The
> state of California has adopted a new law that finally regulates the
> pumping. When it goes into full effect, in a decade or two, more than a
> million acres of cropland across the valley will have to be retired.

Every time I read something like this, it just baffles me. Not only are we
technologically capable of producing the water we need for aggreculture via
desalination, but we also have a delivery system already in place. Instead of
funneling water from northern rivers, those same systems can be filled with
water sourced from the ocean.

Power can be sourced sustainably as well, as it doesn’t matter what time of
day the water flows or if there are fluctuations, so long as it averages out
and can be balanced in the overall system.

A project like this could not only fuel CA economy for years to come, but also
make farming something that not only mega-business can sustain. As is, the
finances are fairly precarious and you need serious cash flows to be able to
withstand the bad years. However, we can avoid these bad years all together.

~~~
theparanoid
Desalination is not economical for agriculture. Crops like pomegranates,
grapes, etc requires large amounts of cheap water.

~~~
sologoub
It’s not economical because we have not reached the scale needed to make it
economical.

At the other end of the spectrum, current prices are artificially deflated by
aquifer use that’s unsustainable.

~~~
dredmorbius
Costs, ultimately, relate to the resources (and opportunity costs) required to
provide or provision something.

Desalinisation costs energy, and even with advances in technology, reverse-
osmosis processes require moving water across membranes that it doesn't want
to move across.

And that's on _top_ of everything else, so that you have to deal with pre-
filtering and straining (probably through gradations of rock, gravel, and sand
filters), _and_ the flushing of those periodically, and other effects.

Technology is not some majickal bottomless bag of tricks from which you can
extract endless efficiencies. There are limits, constraints within those,
risks, and side-effects.

And the volumes of water required for crops is _large_. The more so for tree
crops, as mentioned in the article, as they must be watered _for their entire
lives_. (There are orange orchards _still producing_ in Southern California
which date from Mission times -- over 200 years ago. Though most orchards have
an effective life of about 15 - 40 years or so, if I recall my research on
this a few years back.)

Contrast alfalfa, another high-water crop, in which, in a predicted dry year,
a farmer can simply forgo planting the crop (or allow it to die), _without_
incurring a long-term liability, as the next year's crop would have to be
planted afresh anyway.

~~~
sologoub
Article states their entire operation uses 400,000 acre-feet of water a year.
That’s 645,332,372 cubic-yards. Israel today produces 785 million cubic yards
of water per year, using it for agriculture, among other things. [1]

From the same article: “Desalination used to be an expensive energy hog, but
the kind of advanced technologies being employed at Sorek have been a game
changer. Water produced by desalination costs just a third of what it did in
the 1990s. Sorek can produce a thousand liters of drinking water for 58 cents.
Israeli households pay about US$30 a month for their water — similar to
households in most U.S. cities, and far less than Las Vegas (US$47) or Los
Angeles (US$58).”

At the $0.58 per 1000 liters, that farming operation would require $286
million to pay for the water needed. The article quoted profitability
scratching a billion, so it seems that it is both within technological means
and economically viable. For sure not as profitable as free water, but still
viable.

No magic required either.

[1][https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-
the...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-
desalination-era-is-here/)

~~~
dredmorbius
"...farmers in the Central California Irrigation District near Los Banos
(Merced County) paid $17 per acre-foot of water used..."

[http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/California-
drough...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/California-drought-
Charge-true-cost-of-water-6319943.php)

Via GNU units:

    
    
        You have: 17/(acrefoot)
        You want: /litre
                * 1.3782124e-05
                / 72557.755
    

Your Israeli desal source is 42,083.499 times more expensive.

~~~
sologoub
The acre-foot in the desal prices would be $715. All you are proving is that
$17 is an unsustainable price and not what non-ag consumers pay at all.
California as a landmass has sunk measurably during the few years because of
these unsustainable practices.

If you were to buy water at real unsubsidized prices in any metro area, you
would not be able to find $17/acre-foot.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm not arguing that the price is sustainable.

I _am_ noting that present levels of ag activity are in fact predicated on
that price. And that (as is prominently noted in the article) water is _the_
limiting factor for virtually all California ag.

And that any significant increase (other contemporary news articles are
talking of "only" 10x increases in water costs) would be devastating to
existing operations.

I'm finding your views charmingly optimistic. But highly unrealistic.

~~~
sologoub
The price isn’t the only limiting factor. Right now there isn’t water at any
price that you can buy in unlimited quantities through the current watering
system.

As the result, new land development of more sustainable ag is effectively
blocked by more senior water rights.

We even legislate into our consumer laws that you cannot use water for your
landscaping at any price beyond a certain amount or risk being completely cut
off.

I find this absolute limit situation highly questionable, because as we have a
physical ability to not have these limits in a much more sustainable sense.

------
theparanoid
A nice read on the hubris of unsustainable development. Having grown up in
area with fights (legal and physical) over water, the tragedy of the commons
is all too frequent.

------
dredmorbius
Chiming in with others to say what a fantastic read this was. So much detail
and insight.

I prefer more substantive endorsements, but there's just so much to chew over:
farming, water, drought, wealth, poverty, business, health, and more. I'll be
revisiting this for examples and insights in numerous areas.

------
DoreenMichele
I lived in Fresno for over 2 years. While there, I read a couple of books
about the history of water rights and water development in California. One is
called _Salt Dreams_ and is mostly about Southern California. The other was a
local history about irrigation canals and water rights in Fresno County.

That area was initially desert. The only greenery was along river banks. One
canal was built with essentially no money. Individuals would be assigned a
section to dig and, in exchange, gain water rights. They sometimes had to take
a break from digging it to get a job for a time. When financial drama and
legal drama came along later, this canal was fine because money had never been
a large part of the equation.

A later canal had money from the start. When financial and legal drama reared
its ugly head, this canal really suffered. The fact that money was central to
its development turned out to be an Achilles heel.

There were a number of important court cases in Fresno that helped shape water
rights in California. California water law is influenced by two conflicting
sets of rules. There is an old English principle that you can't take so much
water from the river that you are depriving people downstream. This is one
expectation of California water law. The other is _first come, first served._

As the canals got dug, the once barren landscape grew lush. The book had
interesting before and after photos of old farm houses in a barren landscape,
then the same house surrounded by trees and greenery.

A number of canal building tools were developed in Fresno and patented. Fresno
County played something of a keystone role in water development and water
rights development.

They also developed ground water recharge systems. The success of the canals
led to the emergence of ponds in low lying areas due to a rising water table.
They worked to direct this into the aquifer and help support local wells.

Fresno probably has better water security than the rest of California. It has
gone through periods where it was successfully improving the status of its
aquifer, probably while most other aquifers in the US were being inexorably
drawn down, leading to subsidence.

I am somewhat skeptical of the doomsday pronouncements of articles like this.
I suspect there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of using drip
irrigation and other conservation farming methods.

Having lived in Fresno, which is absolutely not a barren desert these days,
and read about it's water history, I find myself a bit bemused by the fact
that it gets so little attention for how it was transformed. People harp on
the farmland in the desert. They fail to recognize that Fresno is something of
a modern Hanging Gardens of Babylon scenario in part because it's current
lushness goes back more than a hundred years, so we don't really recognize
that it's current state is a case of widespread, persistent terraforming.
However it only gets about 11 inches of rain a year. Without constant tending,
the current greenery there would not survive. It would revert to desert.

Anyone interested in water issues in California should read _Salt Dreams_ and
also read about the history of water development in Fresno County.

~~~
dredmorbius
Is the donated labour / financed canals story in _Salt Dreams_?

Sounds interesting.

~~~
DoreenMichele
No. It was in a book about the history of the Fresno canal system /irrigation
district. I think it had the name of the canal system or district in the title
and was written by a local. It was an extremely interesting book.

You might need to get a librarian to help you ID it. Searching online is
failing to readily find anything.

~~~
dredmorbius
Does _The Alta Empire_ ring a bell?

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/alta-empire-the-story-of-
conq...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/alta-empire-the-story-of-conquest-and-
development-in-the-san-joaquin-valley/oclc/19093455&referer=brief_results)

Otherwise, I'm trying some keywords:

[https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=kw%3A+fresno+water+canal+h...](https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=kw%3A+fresno+water+canal+history&qt=results_page)

Author or date would help a lot.

~~~
DoreenMichele
No, that doesn't ring a bell. I can't tell you the author or the date.

I read it in the Sunnyside branch of the Fresno County library system.
Sunnyside is an unincorporated community on the edge of the city of Fresno.
The Fresno County library system could probably help you find the book. It had
a light blue cover.

I remember the name as being something very boring and straight forward but
open to misinterpretation, like "The history of the normal canal" where
_normal_ sounds like a description but was really the name of the canal (but
_normal_ is probably not the actual word in question and it may have been
_irrigation district_ or similar instead of canal).

 _Consolidated district_ is a vague possibility, where it sounds descriptive
but is actually the name of the thing in question.

I am seriously bad with names and titles. My mind is a sieve for such.

Edit:

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/kings-river-and-irrigating-
di...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/kings-river-and-irrigating-ditches-
fresno-california/oclc/52601961&referer=brief_results)

 _King 's river and irrigating ditches_ is not the book, but it is some of the
same subject matter.

~~~
dredmorbius
This looks suspiciously close:

[https://sjvls.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/fhq/search/detailno...](https://sjvls.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/fhq/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:1148475/one?qu=canal+history&qu=-panama&qu=-erie&qf=FORMAT%09Format%09BOOK%09Books&qf=LIBRARY%09Library%091%3ASUN%09Sunnyside+Branch+Library+%28Fresno+Co.%29)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Our replies crossed in the ether:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16306447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16306447)

I think that is it, though yours has a grey cover.

