California doesn’t have a water issue, it has at worst a water allocation issue. However, even with dumb policy desalination has become cheap enough to be practical for costal communities. Paying ~1$ for 200 gallons just isn’t an issue at the household or retail level just agricultural and industrial uses.
Right, that is why there are people in the central valley living of water from trucks. And the ones that do have water need to dig deeper and deeper to find it.
"Don't look up" is a film that could be perfectly be based on the California groundwater crisis.
Right. And if they stopped doing that, the water level would not be replenished. Groundwater aquifers are not a renewable water source, and when you extract the water from underground you can compact the soil causing it to sink and lose its ability to store water, which is also happening over there according to the USGS.
> if they stopped doing that, the water level would not be replenished
How is that relevant? The point is they wasted water. They’re not victims, they’re the source of the problem. People moving into California’s cities are a rounding error to its farms’ wasted water.
Recharge rate isn’t consistent across different areas. It can be quite high if a river happens to be nearby, you’re next to a large park with zero use, etc.
It takes about 50 years for the groundwater in the aquifer system to replenish if I remember correctly, if it is not being pumped. Today it is being pumped faster than it replenishes with no signs of it slowing down.
