
The Extraordinary California Drought of 2013-2014 - pc
http://www.weatherwest.com/archives/1797
======
kderbe
The Oakland Museum's Gallery of California Natural Sciences has some great
installations highlighting California's water management and usage. I was
taken aback by how much of California's total rainfall is captured and
diverted for human consumption. It's well worth a visit to learn about all the
infrastructure California already has for managing water and coping with
draught, and how severe this draught must be to overcome those safeguards.

~~~
sparkman55
I'd argue that California's water management infrastructure is doing a great
job. For example, the Crystal Springs reservoir, which supplies San Francisco,
has remained nearly full [1], and municipalities haven't undertaken rationing
or other drastic measures beyond "rat out your neighbors if they are watering
the sidewalk."

This means that not only is the reservoir system keeping water in the taps of
California's 38 million residents, but at least some of it is also keeping
enough of a reserve to deal with catastrophes like an earthquake severing the
pipelines that supply water to the San Francisco Bay Area.

[1] [http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-
progs/queryMonthly?CRY](http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryMonthly?CRY)

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alwaysdoit
What I don't understand is how we have gotten to the point where we are living
paycheck to paycheck in terms of water consumption. We know that it varies
from year to year... why don't we have some sort of cushion with which to plan
ahead?

~~~
cjensen
We have an enormous cushion and can survive multiple drought years. The
current water restrictions are just mild precautions against the chance that
this will be a multi-year drought.

Right now we are at the "please let your lawns get a bit brown" level. In the
1970s, the multi-year drought got to the point where the restrictions were "do
not use more than 50 gallons per person per day."

~~~
cpa
Who uses 50 gallons per person per day? People with a swimming pool? A 10
minute shower is ~25 gallons, so how on Earth can 50gallons/person/day can be
a "restriction"? (not being a judgemental asshole, but I'm not honestly
dumbfounded)

~~~
Retric
A dishwasher uses ~6 gallons of water per cycle. Flush can use 3 to 7 gallons
and are often flushed 2 or more times a day. Shaving and brushing your teeth
can easily use 2 or more gallons. Add in cooking and 50 gallons per day is
well below what the average person uses even without watering their lawn.

PS: Older showers used up to 4 gallons per minute, high flow showers can get
well above that. Worse and old style washing machine will often use 40 to 45
gallons per load.

~~~
khuey
That would have to be an ancient toilet to use 7 gallons of water. US law has
required a maximum of 1.6 gallons per flush for new toilets since the late
90s, and I've never seen one more that used more than 3 in my life.

~~~
rogerbinns
Don't forget the folks who rent. It looks like the national average is 35% and
California can be up to 50% in areas (hard to tell if the statistics are by
person or by household).

Landlords have no incentives to install toilets and appliances that use less
water (or electricity), and every incentive to go cheap (which will also be
less frugal). They don't incur any of the running costs. And since it is
private property they can't be forced into doing anything. Tenants rarely have
rights to install more efficient ones either.

~~~
YokoZar
If you get out of rent controlled areas like San Francisco, you'll find it's
actually quite common for landlords to foot utility bills (except
electricity), or at the least charge a flat fee per month that doesn't vary
with usage.

Having individualized water meters isn't nearly as efficient or convenient for
large apartment complexes as just doing it centrally, especially when the
landlord is also using a large chunk of the water (eg for communal lawns).
Rent control regimes prohibit separate fees (or higher rents) including the
price of the water, so landlords in rent control situations will pass such
costs directly to residents any way they can, even if it is inefficient.
They'll also pass the costs of upgrading fixtures like toilets and showers,
since they're not allowed to charge for them either.

~~~
rogerbinns
I lived in Santa Cruz, CA for 14 years where there is no rent control, and in
regular houses. While apartments may have utilities included for the reasons
you gave, individual houses don't because there is no need.

In one house it would have cost $20 more to replace a toilet with an efficient
one, versus repairing the existing leaking old one. I wanted to pay that $20
extra - they refused leaving me paying higher water for several years.

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trhway
that is kind of disconcerting here is that there are clear winners in the
drought - people who have water rights and who sell these rights at record
prices as it is just much more profitable to sell the rights than to put that
water to productive use. I wouldn't be surprised if these people haven't had
any effect on the state water politics.

On the other side, once price gets high enough, some enterprising folks will
charter some big tugboats and start towing icebergs to CA :)

~~~
hnnewguy
> _much more profitable to sell the rights than to put that water to
> productive use_

But this is exactly what selling the rights does: passes the rights on to
someone who can put the water to better use.

~~~
trhway
if somebody can use it better why would you get assigned rights to the shared
state resource like water in the first place? It is not like the water is
collected on your land or pumped from your well (such cases would have at
least some logic behind it)

~~~
fleitz
Because the state generally arbitrates what the 'best' use of a shared
resource is sub-optimally, usually according to politics, rather than
economics.

Hence when the state allocates water you get a situation where crops that
would be grown at a loss when paying for water, like rice and almonds, are
given severely discounted access to water to encourage misallocation of water
from profitable uses to unprofitable ones.

In a market economy when someone does something stupid, like thinking it's a
good idea to grow rice in a desert the market responds by making their
business unprofitable. In a political economy when someone does something
stupid, everyone else goes without so that morons can grow rice and almonds in
deserts. Therefore almond farmers being somewhat non-moronic will sell their
water rights to people who need to take showers rather than grow almonds
because they are at least intelligent enough to understand that more money is
better than less money.

For an example see, any centrally planned economy, ever.

~~~
_delirium
> For an example see, any centrally planned economy, ever.

We're pretty centrally planned here in Denmark, and it works well. :)

The key is to centrally plan infrastructure, but not _everything_.
Electricity, healthcare, heating, oil/gas production, transport, education,
and other basic infrastructure is mainly centrally planned, but plenty of the
economy isn't. Things are also not always centrally _operated_ (transit is
usually bid out to private companies to operate), but infrastructure, energy,
and other common resources are generally centrally _planned_. I think overall
this produces results that are less chaotic and short-term-profit-maximizing,
and more sensible.

Central planners can also use market mechanisms where appropriate, so planning
and markets aren't exclusive. For example, the university system is 100%
public and generally rationally planned, but there are also market mechanisms
within it that reallocate funds based on various metrics, such as tying # of
admissions slots in various fields to employment outcomes. I don't think it's
perfect, but I strongly suspect a laissez-faire market would produce worse
outcomes.

(You do, of course, also need a functioning civil society, so that the
planning isn't abysmally stupid, but that is basically a prerequisite for
democracy to work at all.)

~~~
spullara
The key is to have a country 2x the size of Massachusetts (one of the smallest
states in the US) — Denmark is the 133rd largest country. Using a country of
your size with a population only 2/3rds NYC to argue for global planned
economies is incredibly disingenuous.

A more apt comparison would be China or the former USSR.

~~~
redacted
Disregarding the EU is also disingenuous.

Rather than consider the USA as a single monolith and comparing to a single
European nation like Denmark, compare to the equivalent monolith (the EU has
46% of the area, 158% of the population, and 103% GDP of the USA). Most EU
countries have heavy central planning for all the things _delirium mentioned,
probably all EU countries if you use the USA as a baseline.

~~~
spullara
Right, the EU is more applicable if you compare each country to a US state. US
States typically do have central planning, like doling out these water rights.

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r0h1n
Just a few days ago some HN commenters were saying it's perfectly fine to
waste food in America because, hey, you can't really know how much food you'll
really need while buying it. Someone ought to correlate what is the
environmental impact on California from wasting 35 million tonnes of food
annually.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
It takes somewhere between 441-12,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of
beef, depending on whether you want to believe the stats from the beef
industry or an ardent environmentalist/vegetarian:
[http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-
big...](http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-water-
footprints)

My guess is that the real number is somewhere in between, but that still
represents an order of magnitude more water consumption than producing plant-
based foodstuffs.

The 35mm tons of wasted food is terrible, for numerous reasons, but we
shouldn't stop there. There are a lot of things we can and should do to
drastically reduce our water consumption. Like eating alternative foods.

Fwiw, I essentially haven't eaten beef in about 17 years. I eat a fair amount
of poultry and fish, and occasionally eat pork, but I skip beef both for
personal health and general environmental reasons.

~~~
Shivetya
It is not so much water consumption that is the problem, it was the
ridiculously subsidized price of water to this area that made it a problem.
Locating water intensive farming away from a natural resource was only asking
for problems.

Then to top it off with far too many people who want that picturesque green
lawn and just throwing water on it.

------
Teodolfo
Anyone interested in managing water should read the book Living with Water
Scarcity (free pdf here
[http://livingwithwaterscarcity.com/](http://livingwithwaterscarcity.com/))

------
johndolan
When you really stop to think about it, the amount of things in our lives that
depend on the weather are overwhelming.

~~~
Dewie
My electricity bills seem to have been more expensive last summer than last
winter (obviously no heating in the summer, and no cooling), which I suspect
is because of less precipitation (though I haven't looked into it).

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mjcohen
My wife and I had an argument about whether we would ever move from our paid-
for house in zip 90045. I said if the drought gets bad enough, she said never.
Hope we never have to decide, but I am worried.

~~~
jamesaguilar
I don't get it. Why would you think about moving just because you can't wash
your car or water your lawn for a couple of months?

~~~
swartkrans
The drought could get much worse than disrupting home irrigation. Depending on
how bad it gets, the price of water could rise and force people out, leaving
them with no choice but to leave. I don't know what that would look like or
how it would affect households already economically strained with limited
capacity to move, but I doubt it will be a good situation.

The disruption to California's ability to produce food will also affect people
outside of the state, raising prices.

There's probably water around to import if the price is right if it came to
that, so I think it just becomes a question of market forces and how the
drought will impact California's economy and the country. I don't think many
people are going to die of thirst, although that is a real possibility for
immigrants who cross the border illegally who may encounter less water because
of the drought.

~~~
spydum
If history teach us much, the scarcity will spark innovation in water
efficiency. Most of the US has been pretty lax when it comes to water usage.

Perhaps large scale desalination efficiency will be found, or atmospheric
moisture extraction will take off.

Imagine if you could get some order of magnitude improvements on these
technologies..

Consider reversing the flow of water now: pump from ocean, back up the land,
and let each consumer desalinate on premise?

~~~
deciplex
Another thing history might teach is that when critical resources like food
and water are so poorly and corruptly managed that the result is famine and
drought, millions of people can die. I suppose we're going to call that
disruptive innovation?

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phkahler
I always come back to air traffic. Did patterns change significantly in the
last few years? I could swear the weather here in MI changed a bit after delta
bought northwest and made Detroit a non-hub. But that's just anecdotal. Does
anyone study weather pattern correlation with air traffic routes?

~~~
honestcoyote
As you might remember, there were a few days after 9/11 when all air traffic
nationwide was grounded. Some scientists took it as a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to examine what effect air traffic might have on climate.

Here's an article in Nature talking about it.

[http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081231/full/news.2008.1335.h...](http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081231/full/news.2008.1335.html)

~~~
phkahler
Thanks for the link. I was well aware of that week. Michigan skies were
exceptionally deep blue and cloud free - all week. I am also aware that NASA
recorded an increase in the daily temperature range (details escape me). My
question getting modded down to -4 is an amazing example of... something.
People thinking climate is all about CO2? I dunno, but I'm gonna go follow
that nature link. Thanks again.

