
California Is Sitting on the Solution to Its Drought Problem - adventured
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3044988/california-is-sitting-on-the-solution-to-its-drought-problem
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s_q_b
One cannot address California's drought problem without first addressing
agriculture.

Agriculture consumes the vast majority of the state's water. Distribution of
water is governed by a system of "riparian rights" that (in brief) have an
all-you-can-use first-come-first-served basis, giving landowners farther
upstream and closer to the waterworks greater ability to extract water. The
result is that this system gives many farmers no incentive to minimize water
use.

Currently, agriculture consumes most of the output of the state's vast water
engineering projects, especially to irrigate the Central Valley. This has not
been helped by the farmers growing monocrops that are not suited to the area's
environment, such as fruit and rice.

For God's sake, they're growing monsoon crops in what is naturally a desert!

Now these same farmers are drilling ever-deeper wells that are draining the
aquifers beneath them at pace greater than their recharge rate. As a result,
household wells are going dry, the river is dust, and consumers are being
asked to cut back water usage by 25%.

But you cannot fight a drought in this manner when residential water use makes
up barely 14% of statewide water consumption.

Like most resource crises, California has more than enough water to supply
itself, but the problem lies in distribution. Too much is available for
agriculture, and too little is available for the people.

Californian water, even in these drought years, is plentiful, but due to legal
strictures, a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of its supply.

Efficient distribution cannot be achieved until the arcane system of riparian
rights for agriculture is abolished, and water is recognized as a truly public
resource.

The solution to the crisis must be political as much as environmental.

~~~
dpark
> For God's sake, they're growing monsoon crops in what is naturally a desert!

This is misleading. Most of California, and even most of the Central Valley
specifically, is not a desert. The southern part of the central valley is
naturally quite dry, but even that is generally considered a semidesert.

None of this is to say that California shouldn't address how, where, and why
water is being used for agriculture, but they cries of "They're irrigating a
desert" are a distraction at best.

~~~
jacobolus
Even if it’s not a desert, it’s also clearly not an environment suited to
growing many of these crops without heavy irrigation.

If we priced water appropriately, low-value high-water-use crops like rice,
cotton, and alfalfa, which really have no business being grown at the expense
of draining our reservoirs and aquifers, would be priced out of production,
and the land could be devoted to more valuable or less water intensive crops.

~~~
dpark
Sure. I won't argue with that.

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sorenbs
Over the last five years or so many communities in Denmark has made it
mandatory to treat rain water separately from sewage to reduce the pressure on
our water cleaning utilities and reuse the rain water directly. It is done by
either running two separate sewer systems or using/disposing rain water on
premise.

~~~
s_q_b
That's the state standard for new sewer systems in many locations in the
United States as well. It's also actively subsidized through a complicated
system of grants by the Federal government. The motive, however, usually isn't
reuse of the stormwater runoff, but to reduce pollution.

Almost all older sewers in the United States use a combined sewer system, with
a CSO (combined sewer overflow) into a nearby river. So when there's a heavy
rain, the system dumps the excess combined rainwater and sewage into the
river. Most U.S. towns and cities are this way.

Right now, whenever a system is ripped out, the combined state and local
regulations and incentives usually drive the municipality to put in separate
sewer systems, with the stormwater system using the old overflow site as its
outlet.

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airza
2004 was the rainest year in over a century in LA. Without it, the average
deficiency from 2005-2015 is about 3 inches of water (20% of the total) per
year for _ten years_.

That is not an "there's no drought in this region" error factor.

~~~
Tloewald
The article isn't arguing that there's not a drought, it's arguing that even
in a drought Southern California wastes more water (runoff) than it consumes
and it would be easy to capture and use it.

~~~
allendoerfer
What he is trying to do is attack the premise of the article. The leaky bucket
method does not work if you overflow the bucket once every ten years and then
stop filling until the next flood. The bucket would have to be enormous and is
therefore not the solution.

I think it is a simple solution that should definitely be used to the full
extent.

~~~
Tloewald
Even without the 38" year the average rainfall still makes the argument work;
quoting a 4" deficit and singling out the highest year is disingenuous. The
lowest year was also an outlier.

~~~
airza
Here is the data that I used, the author's is something rather similar:

[http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we13.htm](http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we13.htm)

You can add the following values (from
[http://ggweather.com/ca2013rain.htm](http://ggweather.com/ca2013rain.htm) and
similar URLS): 2012-2013: 5.85 2013-2014: 6.08

(I actually missed these in my original napkin math, but they make my argument
even better, so...)

My point was that if in the original data set, the only way that you get those
favorable numbers is if you start at the present and arbitrarily go back until
you hit a very high number. Any other averaging of rainfall from the present
to a year in the last 20 years looks absolutely horrendous.

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harshreality
summary: Capture and utilize rainwater much more, and recycle water from waste
treatment plants, rather than dumping most of it into the ocean. Reform the
water rights system so that nobody has to use their allotment for fear of
losing it in the future.

~~~
bkeroack
I suspect capturing runoff is not nearly as simple as it seems. In SoCal/LA it
rarely rains, so when it does rain a few times a year the runoff is a black,
horrendously toxic stew of petrochemicals and urban detritus. For a day or two
following a rainstorm there are advisories to avoid swimming at the beach
because all that crap goes into the ocean and makes it hazardous.

I imagine it would be incredibly difficult/expensive to treat that water even
to graywater level, let alone potability.

~~~
cleaver
I'm not intimately familiar with the California climate, but this project in
India dealt with infrequent rainfall and capturing runoff:
[http://www.permaculturereflections.com/2009/07/india-
talupul...](http://www.permaculturereflections.com/2009/07/india-talupula-
site-part-iii.html)

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CHsurfer
Could the sisterns be used on the farms? Scrape off the top soil, install
sisterns, replace top soil. Plant crops.

It should be cheaper than digging up streets.

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bsimpson
If the solution is so damned simple, why is this the first I've heard of it
after years of FUD?

