
How California Is Winning the Drought - kevin
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/how-california-is-winning-the-drought.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0
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giltleaf
Hydroponic farms, vertical farms, and agroecology could all do even better.
Unsustainable food production is more of a contributor than personal
consumption (though people's obsession with meaningless green lawns is also
ridiculous).

I wish the article did a better job of exploring various agricultural
solutions - drip irrigation is just a baby step when compared to something
like hydroponics. Hydroponic production uses anywhere (and I'm just trying to
remember the various claims I've seen in both studies and articles without
going back to them) from 75%-90% less water than conventional ag, beating drip
irrigation off the low end.

Agroecology challenges the monoculture system that (I think) caused this over-
consumption. By planting thirsty crops like corn and polluting the existing
aquacultures with the pesticides needed to preserve an area lacking any sort
of biodiversity, monocultures have created a fragile food supply that
increasing prices (and terrible subsidies) continue to highlight. Agroecology,
on the other hand, encourages a system of farming that takes into account the
cultural/social context of a region while suggesting methods (grounding those
suggestions in data) of production that respect local ecology and agricultural
practices for increased production.

~~~
trhway
Efficiency? What efficiency?! CA farmers are increasing nut trees acreage
because nut trees require a lot of water, and thus nut prices are going up in
the current drought, and thus the farmers are rushing to increase the
production of such profitable product. (Heard on NPR)

~~~
animefan
_CA farmers are increasing nut trees acreage because nut trees require a lot
of water, and thus nut prices are going up in the current drought_

It simply isn't possible for things to happen the way you describe them.

Prices are a function of supply and demand. When you say "nut trees require a
lot of water, and thus nut prices are going up in the current drought" this
implies that supply of nuts went down during the drought. Otherwise, consumers
would have no reason to care about the amount of water required to produce
nuts.

Given this, "CA farmers are increasing nut trees acreage" must be an
incomplete picture. Even if some farmers are increasing acreage, there must be
others who are decreasing by even more, otherwise prices would be going down,
not up.

~~~
anigbrowl
You're only looking at half his argument. Nut costs are up, because nut trees
are thirsty. Everyon eknows this, so consumers accept that nut prices go up
(also nuts are more popular than they used to be). As long as nut prices are
going up faster than nut costs, so will nut acreage. It's a mistake to rely on
simple supply-and-demand to analyse this situation because laws of supply and
demand are generally considered in an atmosphere of perfect competition, and
_ceteris parabus_ \- all other factors being held equal other than the water
cost, in this case. But neither condition is true. Nut pricing is not just a
function of production cost, but also of public taste, advertising,
availability of substitute goods, and so on.

~~~
animefan
_Nut costs are up, because nut trees are thirsty. Everyone knows this, so
consumers accept that nut prices go up_

That doesn't make sense. Consumers have no reason to care _why_ prices change.
Do you really think that when there is a drought, consumers increase the
amount of nuts that they consume at a given price, because they find the price
reasonable due to the drought?

 _It 's a mistake to rely on simple supply-and-demand to analyse this
situation because laws of supply and demand are generally considered in an
atmosphere of perfect competition, and ceteris parabus - all other factors
being held equal other than the water cost, in this case. _

It's a bigger mistake to assume consumers behave in ways that make no sense,
in order to justify someone else's verbal argument (which made no reference to
why consumers would act a certain way, and probably didn't even consider the
issue).

~~~
anigbrowl
It doesn't make sense because you didn't read it properly.

 _Consumers have no reason to care why prices change._

In a world of pure supply and demand considerations that would be true. but as
I've pointed out, we don't live in that world. We live in a world where many
consumers are experiencing the same drought as the nut growers, and are aware
of the impact it could have on prices, either because they live in the same
place as where the nuts are grown or because they like to read the news.

 _Do you really think that when there is a drought, consumers increase the
amount of nuts that they consume at a given price, because they find the price
reasonable due to the drought?_

No, and I didn't say that they did. I said they "accept that nut prices go
up." Someone who enjoys nuts will limit their consumption if prices go up so
much that the nuts are no longer affordable, but if they only go up a bit that
person may consume the same amount of nuts they did before at a higher price
because there isn't a suitable substitute. In other words, consumer
preferences can result in inelasticity of demand.

 _It 's a bigger mistake to assume consumers behave in ways that make no
sense, in order to justify someone else's verbal argument (which made no
reference to why consumers would act a certain way, and probably didn't even
consider the issue)._

Except a) this is an issue I happen to already be familiar with and b) I find
consumers' behavior quite rational when I consider the totality of the
circumstances.

~~~
animefan
> _In a world of pure supply and demand considerations that would be true. but
> as I 've pointed out, we don't live in that world. We live in a world where
> many consumers are experiencing the same drought as the nut growers, and are
> aware of the impact it could have on prices, either because they live in the
> same place as where the nuts are grown or because they like to read the
> news._

None of this explains how knowledge of supply shocks would change a consumer's
_intrinsic_ demand for nuts.

> _In other words, consumer preferences can result in inelasticity of demand._

Earlier you said _As long as nut prices are going up faster than nut costs, so
will nut acreage_

No matter how inelastic demand is, it is impossible for prices to increase
faster than costs. In the limit of infinitely inelastic demand, prices
increase at the same rate as costs (all costs are passed on to the consumer).

~~~
anigbrowl
I agree that supply shocks are not changing the intrinsic demand for nuts.
Rather, nut popularity happens to be increasing around the same time as a
supply shock.

 _No matter how inelastic demand is, it is impossible for prices to increase
faster than costs. In the limit of infinitely inelastic demand, prices
increase at the same rate as costs (all costs are passed on to the consumer)._

That only obtains under perfect competition, as I already said. I'm not trying
to convince you that this behavior falls out of basic economic laws, I'm
saying you're looking at it in the wrong context. Please look up the terms
perfect competition and monopolistic competition, or we will just be talking
past each other.

~~~
animefan
Re ceteris paribus, I address simliar criticism here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064126](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064126).
The key point is that the original post I was critiquing was already
implicitly keeping all other factors fixed. And I only aimed to critique that
post's reasoning, not the conclusions it made.

As for imperfect competition (which I'm also familiar with, I have a PhD in
economics), I see you mentioned it above but I still don't know why. Even if
not sellers were a monopoly or oligopoly, everything I said above would apply,
at least in very broad terms. You could probably come up with some demand
function such that increasing input costs of a monopolistic producer resulted
in an increase in production, but I don't see why you would think that
actually applied here.

------
russell
Cambria, where I live, halfway between San Francisco LA, is particularly hard
hit. Cambria is supplied completely by well water. We had been trying since
2008 to build a desalinization plan, but had been blocked at every turn by the
Coastal Commission and other regulatory bodies, because we would have had to
dig a pipeline across the beach to get to the salt water. As a result
draconian conservation measures were put into place. We were allocated only 50
gallons per person per day. If you exceeded your allotment, you were fined,
two periods in a row your water was cut off. There was an immediate 40% drop
in water usage. That wasnt enough. Last year with only a 6 months water supply
left. The Community Services District decided to build a brackish water
treatment plant. Treated water from the sewage treatment plant was to be
pumped into the aquifer and withdrawn and treated by a reverse osmosis
purification plant. Even then there were a whole bunch of regulatory hassles
including that the $3 million plant be used only for the current drought
without being recertified again.

EDIT: Cambria is in one of only three Monterrey Pine forests in CA,
essentially an urban forest. The drought has exacerbated the pitch canker and
beetle infestations. Forty per cent of the pine trees died last year. I lost
four of the five on my property. Another four had died earlier. We are in
danger of an explosive urban fire like the Oakland hills fire of 1991. One
huge problem is the pines are protected. You cannot cut down one without a
permit at $125 + $25 for each additional tree, plus restoration requirements.
Most lots are small and close together so it may cost up to $2000 to cut down
a tree. I had only four and I said screw the permit. But my neighbor has
hundreds. It will cost millions to clear out the dead trees in town, but no
state or federal grants seem to be forthcoming, but if you dont cut down your
trees, after all the red tape, you get fined.

~~~
Steko
Just to correct a couple things the brackish/treated water Cambria plant,
which cost $9 million not $3 million, was approved and completed in 'record
time' (quote below). The picture of intractable government being painted in
the comments here is only partially accurate.

[http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/03/18/3544036/cambria-
wate...](http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/03/18/3544036/cambria-water-plant-
wins-global.html)

 _In nominating the Cambria project, GWI said the fast-tracked construction of
the project “is unprecedented in California” and “sets a new benchmark for
what is achievable in the face of severe water stress.”

...

The nomination also said, “Although the city had looked at seawater
desalination before, Governor (Jerry) Brown’s declaration of a drought
emergency freed up the possibility of developing an alternative brackish water
option, which was exempt from a burdensome environmental review process,
enabling it to move ahead in record time.”_

If you want to see what life is like without environmental regulations take a
trip to any major Chinese city. Has the pendulum maybe swung too far in the
us? Perhaps, certainly in some ways and combined with nimby zoning there's
certainly a lot of room for improvement. But in other ways it's worked great
and with climate change you could argue the reverse.

~~~
bsder
Thanks for this. I was having trouble finding things newer than about 2010.

I also note that one of the things that makes life more difficult for the
water situation there is that they lost use of an aquifer due to gasoline
contamination by Chevron.

~~~
russell
Chevron was forced to clean it up. Last fall the contaminated well was tested,
found contaminant free, and brought back online. Since the cleanup was
something like 20 years ago, I feel safe in drinking the water.

------
prewett
Interesting article, but I feel like I am missing something here. According to
the article, California can accommodate maybe another year or two of drought,
so beyond that would be a problem? Also, the drought it causing the farmers to
further deplete the depleting aquifers. So I'm not seeing how this is "winning
the drought." It sounds more like maintaining the current unsustainability
through better irrigation and depleting aquifers, but when the aquifer is gone
it's going to be bad.

~~~
ianlevesque
But "the state’s economy grew 27 percent faster than the country’s economy as
a whole", and that's all that matters!

~~~
allendoerfer
And says exactly nothing. Say the US economy has barely grown by 0.1 %. If
California's economy would have grown by 0.2%, it would have grown 100% faster
than the country's economy.

~~~
oaktowner
GDP growth for the US has been at 2.2-2.4 for the last 3 years[1]...if
California is growing 25% faster, it isn't huge but it isn't negligible,
either.

[1]
[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG)

------
bradleyjg
>> Last fall, prodded by Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration, the California
Legislature passed a sweeping groundwater law, taking California from having
the least regulated groundwater in the country to being a model.

Unfortunately by the time the law envisions the new rules being fully
implemented — 2040 — aquifers across the state are likely to be permanently
damaged or destroyed by over-pumping.

~~~
e40
I'm curious if you have more information about that.

~~~
ChuckMcM
As a number of folks have commented when water is removed too quickly from the
aquifer it subsides and can't be refilled by percolation.

In a sad, and very close to home, way Sunnyvale has been drawing more heavily
on wells in the area to back fill water allocations and that appears to have
created some subsidence near my home.

But from a technical point of view, one wonders if it would be possible to
build replacement aquifers underground. I'm imagining something related to a
tunnel boring machine but leaves behind a structure capable of holding water
and supporting the ground above itself when "empty" sort of a loose lattice
network of structures.

~~~
bradleyjg
It might be possible, but I don't think it would be practical. It's easy to
forget how big the numbers are when dealing with water.

For example, all three Chunnel tunnels add up to less than 4500 acre-feet in
volume.

------
wmil
> 70 percent more tomatoes per 1,000 gallons of water

Am I reading this wrong? The "1000 gallons" seems superfluous since we're
already talking about percentages. Replace it with "gallon of water" or even
"amount of water" and the 70% doesn't change.

~~~
cjensen
Yes, it's mathematically superfluous. Real human communication is an evolved
trait which often is logically or mathematically weird. Ask a person how many
brownies to bake for a party and they might say "at least 10 to 20." The "to
20" is mathematically without meaning, but it seems to communicate
_something_.

~~~
jessedhillon
Is "to 20" superfluous? If they had said "at least 10" that leaves you open to
baking a thousand. The "to 20" caps the possible range and makes the statement
more confined.

~~~
Scotlandr
I don't believe that it does cap the range. I see it as: At least x (where x =
10-20). X is the minimum, and you can always exceed it, whether it is a single
value or a range.

If you bake 100 brownies, you satisfy the requirement of baking at least 10
brownies, as well as the requirement of baking at least 10 to 20 brownies.

------
sandworm101
Win a drought? This isn't chess. The wording should be 'survive', cope with or
even struggle through. (Take that nature!) There is no winning. I was in
California six months ago and was taken aback by the lack of worry. Nobody
seemed to be doing anything. The lawns and fields were green, the backyard
pools all full and people were washing cars like normal.

~~~
mikegioia
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, but I saw the same thing in Palo Alto
earlier this year. I walked through the neighborhood and twice saw hoses left
_on_ leaking water on the home's front walkway. That doesn't count the 10-20
sprinklers that were running mid-day.

I understand that personal use is nothing compared to agricultural use, but
it's as if everyone will continue business as usual until all the water is
gone, and then it feels like " _shrug_ oh well guess we'll move".

~~~
russell_h
Rationally, what is anyone supposed to do?

In March people were claiming the state had 12 months of water remaining. Lets
assume that number is holding and we've got about 7 months of water left.

If the entire state simply halted all urban and industrial water use, that
would buy about 3 extra weeks before the state runs out of water. And that is
in a scenario where 40 million people (and all non-ag industry) simply cease
to consume water at all.

Not washing cars or watering lawns is a great emotional gesture, but nothing
short of real policy or weather changes will make any meaningful difference.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Water doesn't work that way. Shutting off urban water supplies would not
increase the supply available to growers, and the other way around, too.
Growers can run out of water (delivered by the CWP/SWP) while cities (which
each have their own water systems) might be set for years.

------
azinman2
For those wanting real info, watch this video from the state's water board's
director to the MIT NorCal alumni club. It's super fascinating.

[http://ttv.mit.edu/videos/31839-california-
water-2015-felici...](http://ttv.mit.edu/videos/31839-california-
water-2015-felicia-marcus-chair-california-water-resources-control-board)

------
russell
The article was wrong in stating that pretty much all the agricultural was
usage was for food. 15-20% of the water is for growing alfalfa. That may be
cow food, but it is a huge waste of water. A lot of press is given to the fact
that 10% of the water is used for almonds, but they are at least a a high
value crop. Another high water usage crop is cotton, again not food. Give it
back to the South. And rice; you have to be nuts to grow rice in the desert.
It's not worth destroying the aquifers for such crops.

~~~
xraystyle
Almonds aren't that high-value. Agriculture in total accounts for 2% of the
state's GDP. I'm guessing less than 5% of all ag in the state is almonds. The
California economy is expanding at faster than 2% per year currently.

I'm pretty sure we could tell the almonds to take a hike and not even notice.

~~~
greeneggs
"I'm guessing less than 5% of all ag in the state is almonds."

Based on what? Are you just making up numbers? By round numbers, it seems to
be around 10% of agriculture. This report states that it is 15%, but the
report is funded by the Almond Board and is probably making generous
assumptions [1].

[1]
[http://aic.ucdavis.edu/almonds/Economic%20Impacts%20of%20Cal...](http://aic.ucdavis.edu/almonds/Economic%20Impacts%20of%20California%20Almond%20Industry_Full%20Report_FinalPDF_v2.pdf)

~~~
tbabb
Let's not forget that orchards represent many years of investment. Killing an
orchard has a much, much higher cost than simply choosing to grow a different
yearly crop.

------
dlevine
For anyone interested in this, I would recommend checking out The Water Knife
(fiction) and Cadillac Desert (non-fiction).

~~~
eitally
And I suggest reading Cadillac Desert without first looking at the publishing
date. It's shocking that we have been so lackadaisical about water consumption
for so long.

------
Mz
_For a century, California has pioneered innovations that have changed the way
we all live._

For probably over a century in fact. And California has pioneered
environmental laws for decades as well, going back to about (or "at least"?)
the 1960's.

 _Salt Dreams_ is a fascinating book about the history of water usage, the
Colorado River and the Salton Sea going back hundreds of years, to before the
existence of the Salton Sea. I also recently read a history of another water
use district in the Central Valley. I cannot recall the name of that book, but
the history of water usage and water law in California is rich and fascinating
and a lot of pioneering things have happened out here.

------
bcheung
No mention of aquaponics?

I'm growing food in the backyard with it and it is awesome.

It uses much less water and is much less of a hassle. Better yields too.

~~~
bro-stick
In the '80s California, I had some nudist, hippie neighbors. And of course
they did hydroponics (not just for pot), but did grow some vegetables
including tomatoes in both horizontal vats and vertical trellises. I really
think it's a lot more efficient because it uses less far less land than
current methods.

(Btw: don't buy products which contain palm oil due to the prevalence of
"green washed" intermediaries lying to downsteam suppliers, which in turn
leads to persistent forest -clearing fires and land theft in places like
Borneo and Indonesia to grow massive palm oil plantations to make cheap,
Western consumer goods.)

------
tn13
This is a classic example of post-hoc analysis. It like American presidents
who are always there to claim credit for any minor economic or job growth but
quick to blame the job loss and any other negative effect on economy on
"someone else who is evil".

So California had water shortage and they decided to use the resource wisely?
Everyone except federal government knows that you can spend the resource you
dont have.

I would like to know why California as a state and other cities have not
invested in increasing number of reservoirs, not allowed desalination and
other things despite the population of California has doubled in last 30
years. Part of this is the bone headed environmentalists who would rather save
few trouts than saving human beings but I think the the local bodies arent
putting up a fight either.

~~~
bro-stick
It's hard for most people to accept that the situation is often beyond
immediate and total human control, and instead use blame as a shortcut and
abdication of responsibility and power. It's like sociolological bikeshedding
instead of working on positive solutions to modify lifestyles toward
prevention. Such is human nature, but thankfully it's not an universal
condition.

------
known
We can learn from Israel dip irrigation system;

------
plicense
Or how the drought is loosing to California..

------
brightball
Necessity is the mother of invention

------
xigency
"At least as clean tap" really reads as "almost as clean" without an adequate
explanation.

~~~
kbenson
What? How do you read the opposite meaning because there isn't an explanation?

~~~
xigency
Because there's no source cited for the information and it's provided in
editorial journalism.

What's described is a large polluted source of water and presumably it's being
filtered with microscopic screen filters. While I'm sure if I were aware of
the engineering behind it, that I would agree that it was potable and
sanitary, just reading it sounds kind of iffy.

------
quinndupont
You had me up until "morning coffee brewed matter-of-factly with recycled
water." HELL NO.

