It's bad, but California has the California Water Project, a huge collection of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts built in the 1960s, to store water and move it around. Here's current reservoir status:
Levels were slightly lower in 1977, but the population of California was 16 million people lower then. The California Water Project was designed to store enough water to get through 3 years of drought. We just finished drought year 3. (The water year ends Sep. 30, before rainy season starts.)
San Jose has a new sewerage treatment plant so good it can be used to provide drinking water. It just came on line last summer. Right now, it's just being used for irrigation and recharging ground water, but if things get really bad, that backup is available. (http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_26160300/california-dr...)
So, yes, extensive preparations for this were made a long time ago.
Rain so far during this water year, starting Oct. 1, is slightly above normal.
Population has little to do with it. 80% of water is used by agriculture. The climate isn't helping, but actual water shortages are entirely manufactured by an industry that feels like it's infinitely entitled to grow plants in the desert.
Thank you for this reference! The good measures taken in the past seem to help tremendously.
Looking at the drought maps was depressing enough and that was compounded by the fact that the Bay Area does not feel anything like an area that is experiencing one of the worst droughts ever! I have always wondered how we (I live here) could survive all this time with water to spare for swimming pools, 24-hour tap-water supply, many-minute-long daily showers, restaurants full of water supply and wastage. Having been born and brought up at places where there were severe droughts and poor historic water management measures made me extremely cautious while using water, but it seems like that behavior was largely irrelevant here.
Whereas I like the comfort provided by California Water Project and pray for enough rainfall this year, I do hope that the approach of Bay Area Californians toward water preservation improves.
You can go even further back to the Central Valley Project started in 1933 by the federal government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project which led to the largest reservoir in the state, Lake Shasta. Agriculture was to be the primary beneficiary of the Central Valley Project, at a time when the state population was far smaller.
This drought seems pretty awful, and water resources in a lot of places in the US seem threatened by issues (either natural or man-made), which makes me wonder:
What if we were to build a bunch of desalination plants and just start pumping water into aquifers or something of the sort? Are there major issues with desalination on a large scale?
>What if we were to build a bunch of desalination plants and just start pumping water into aquifers or something of the sort?
If you're talking about conventional fossil fuel desalination, I invite you to do the energy audit on that activity. If you're talking about solar desalination in industrially-manufactured greenhouses, I invite you to do the energy audit on that activity. Don't forget to account for the energy-opportunity cost of land use.
I know there's a lot of hype surrounding desalination here, but a centralized energy-sucking plant (owned by the ultra rich naturally) is a counterproductive business-as-usual non-solution.
We can get a net-positive energy audit by redesigning our agricultural and storm water management. Right now they're designed with exactly the wrong goal in mind — shunt rainwater to the ocean in big straight hardware as fast as possible. This maximizes runoff instead of infiltration, so we're simultaneously preventing aquifer recharge and necessitating aquifer pumping by drying out the soil.
"Keyline" design—a method of cheaply altering landform to soak water—is probably a good start for these new infiltration maximizing strategies, but this is by no means a solved problem.
In California, like any desert, the name of the game is minimizing evaporation. This means all of the above, plus shading (e.g. date palms), sunken beds, buried drip irrigation, and dew/rain harvesting strategies like land imprinting.
Proper rainwater management is the lazy hacker's desalination. :D
This is a serious drought, but remember 80% of California's water goes to agriculture. More water is used to grow almonds than for all of residential irrigation. There are more non-farmers than farmers in the state; if the drought continues I expect the next step will be to cut back more on agricultural uses.
In terms of desalination, my recollection is that it's a reasonably mature technology now, it's used in many parts of the world that are freshwater-constrained, and San Diego is building a 50M gallon/day desalination plant that will go online in a year or two. But the per-gallon price is largely determined by the price of electricity, and California is rather hostile to new power plants going in. (I don't know enough about the state's aquifers; perhaps others do.)
Meanwhile in a few generations we may look back and wonder why we were flooding fields in California half a foot deep with increasingly scarce water to grow rice in an extremely dry climate. Especially when rice grows perfectly well in areas of the world that actually, you know, get rain all year round.
Fixing our water shortage with energy consuming desalination plants will just continue the global warming negative feedback loop. Better would be to simply change what farmers are growing to conserve water.
* Edit: Why the downvotes? Look, solving water shortages with desalination plants, is like trying to fix air pollution with air filtration systems. Unless you're powering the plant with 100% clean energy, you're just further contributing to the core problem.
And even if you're powering the plant with 100% clean energy, that clean energy could instead be used to displace fossil fuels elsewhere if water was conserved instead of desalinated to continue business as usual.
Desalination works great for residential water use. It doesn't help the farmers that want massive amounts of ultra-cheap water. Better farming techniques could help. What would help most of all is if water was properly bought and sold at market rates, so people with major water rights would sell instead of wasting.
I read that aquifers, at least the ones in the Midwest (as in Colorado) are essentially "fossil water", and that when you pump it out the rock collapses somewhat, making it impossible to pump replacement water back in.
The issue with desalination is the tremendous energy input, normally provided by the sun. At least right now, that would probably have to come from coal.
In the meanwhile, conservatives have "experts" like Anthony Watts to come and say that not only are we not in a horrible drought[0], but that our recent showers[1] are proof that the alarm over the drought is just part of the global warming conspiracy[2].
So, if you were wondering how conservatives in good conscience can oppose efforts to deal with climate change, here's one of the reasons. They have their own experts from a bizarre alternate universe, where they start with the same data but conclude that everything is opposite.
I like your approach, but let me see if I can get you to question some of your beliefs. First, Watts is actually only the author of your second link, the other two are guest posts by two other authors. I won't try to rehabilitate Watts, as he's likely already too tainted in your mind, but I'll guess that you don't yet have strong opinions about the other two. Please consider how well they fit the image that you have of them based on the articles you read.
The first piece was written by Robert Moore (http://www.nrdc.org/about/staff/rob-moore). Personally, having looked at the actual paper, I thought his article was more accurate than most of the media coverage. Moore does not "oppose efforts to deal with climate change". To the contrary, he's an analyst with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which is one of the largest, staunchest and most effective environmental groups in the US, and lists "Curbing Global Warming" on the top of it's list of priorities. If you look at Moore's credentials, I think you'll be positively surprised -- he's legitimately an expert, and unquestionably an environmentalist.
The paper uses a very specific definition of "worst drought". It's a reasonable and defensible one (cumulative deficit on the PDSI scale), but it's probably not what most people would guess. As Moore says, the paper does not say that it's the longest dry spell, or the period of least rain. Would you have guessed from the other media coverage that despite the phrase "worst drought", there have been two other years with less rain just in the last 100 years? That there have been longer droughts?
I think Moore believes what he says in the piece: "Do these facts mean that we are in good shape re California’s water supply? No! But we shouldn’t be framing the search for a stable California water supply by starting from a wildly incorrect statement that seems focused on creating public panic." He's bothered (as I am) about the level of hyperbole and inaccuracy in the media reports of climate change, and wrote the piece to counter that. Neither he, nor Watts, nor Tim Ball (the author of the third link) believes "that recent showers are proof that the alarm over the drought is just part of the global warming conspiracy".
While I fear that some of the kookier commenters at WUWT might believe that (I don't read the site, although I highly recommend Steve McIntyre's climateaudit.org) many of those you demonize care a lot about the environment and climate change, but disagree on the causes and the approach that should be taken to deal with it. For example, try reading this piece on Urban Forests by Tim Ball to see if he matches the pathological business-comes-first stereotype often associated with "climate deniers": http://drtimball.com/2012/importance-of-urban-trees/
I haven't seen anyone mention the drought in Brazil. It's possible that deforestation in the Amazon is at least partially responsible for that[1]:
Some scientists have suggested that the recent
uptick in deforestation in Brazil may be partly
responsible for the drought, since loss of
evapotranspiration from trees is known to reduce
cloud formation.
I know its the other hemisphere, but it's certainly possible that drought, deforestation, and changing weather patterns in South America would also affect us. Yes, no? I'm just spitballing here.
[+] [-] Animats|11 years ago|reply
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.act...
Levels were slightly lower in 1977, but the population of California was 16 million people lower then. The California Water Project was designed to store enough water to get through 3 years of drought. We just finished drought year 3. (The water year ends Sep. 30, before rainy season starts.)
San Jose has a new sewerage treatment plant so good it can be used to provide drinking water. It just came on line last summer. Right now, it's just being used for irrigation and recharging ground water, but if things get really bad, that backup is available. (http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_26160300/california-dr...)
So, yes, extensive preparations for this were made a long time ago.
Rain so far during this water year, starting Oct. 1, is slightly above normal.
[+] [-] tpurves|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KedarMhaswade|11 years ago|reply
Looking at the drought maps was depressing enough and that was compounded by the fact that the Bay Area does not feel anything like an area that is experiencing one of the worst droughts ever! I have always wondered how we (I live here) could survive all this time with water to spare for swimming pools, 24-hour tap-water supply, many-minute-long daily showers, restaurants full of water supply and wastage. Having been born and brought up at places where there were severe droughts and poor historic water management measures made me extremely cautious while using water, but it seems like that behavior was largely irrelevant here.
Whereas I like the comfort provided by California Water Project and pray for enough rainfall this year, I do hope that the approach of Bay Area Californians toward water preservation improves.
[+] [-] jackfoxy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingkawn|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rtpg|11 years ago|reply
What if we were to build a bunch of desalination plants and just start pumping water into aquifers or something of the sort? Are there major issues with desalination on a large scale?
[+] [-] schiffern|11 years ago|reply
If you're talking about conventional fossil fuel desalination, I invite you to do the energy audit on that activity. If you're talking about solar desalination in industrially-manufactured greenhouses, I invite you to do the energy audit on that activity. Don't forget to account for the energy-opportunity cost of land use.
I know there's a lot of hype surrounding desalination here, but a centralized energy-sucking plant (owned by the ultra rich naturally) is a counterproductive business-as-usual non-solution.
We can get a net-positive energy audit by redesigning our agricultural and storm water management. Right now they're designed with exactly the wrong goal in mind — shunt rainwater to the ocean in big straight hardware as fast as possible. This maximizes runoff instead of infiltration, so we're simultaneously preventing aquifer recharge and necessitating aquifer pumping by drying out the soil.
"Keyline" design—a method of cheaply altering landform to soak water—is probably a good start for these new infiltration maximizing strategies, but this is by no means a solved problem.
In California, like any desert, the name of the game is minimizing evaporation. This means all of the above, plus shading (e.g. date palms), sunken beds, buried drip irrigation, and dew/rain harvesting strategies like land imprinting.
Proper rainwater management is the lazy hacker's desalination. :D
[+] [-] declan|11 years ago|reply
In terms of desalination, my recollection is that it's a reasonably mature technology now, it's used in many parts of the world that are freshwater-constrained, and San Diego is building a 50M gallon/day desalination plant that will go online in a year or two. But the per-gallon price is largely determined by the price of electricity, and California is rather hostile to new power plants going in. (I don't know enough about the state's aquifers; perhaps others do.)
Meanwhile in a few generations we may look back and wonder why we were flooding fields in California half a foot deep with increasingly scarce water to grow rice in an extremely dry climate. Especially when rice grows perfectly well in areas of the world that actually, you know, get rain all year round.
[+] [-] abootstrapper|11 years ago|reply
* Edit: Why the downvotes? Look, solving water shortages with desalination plants, is like trying to fix air pollution with air filtration systems. Unless you're powering the plant with 100% clean energy, you're just further contributing to the core problem.
And even if you're powering the plant with 100% clean energy, that clean energy could instead be used to displace fossil fuels elsewhere if water was conserved instead of desalinated to continue business as usual.
Am I wrong?
[+] [-] Dylan16807|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhartl|11 years ago|reply
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/arithmetic.html
[+] [-] kabdib|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sliverstorm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|11 years ago|reply
Maybe not too major but what to do with the salt?
[+] [-] Decade|11 years ago|reply
So, if you were wondering how conservatives in good conscience can oppose efforts to deal with climate change, here's one of the reasons. They have their own experts from a bizarre alternate universe, where they start with the same data but conclude that everything is opposite.
[0]http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/worst-drought-in-calif... [1]http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/04/the-perfect-storm-cali... [2]http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/23/people-starting-to-ask...
[+] [-] nkurz|11 years ago|reply
The first piece was written by Robert Moore (http://www.nrdc.org/about/staff/rob-moore). Personally, having looked at the actual paper, I thought his article was more accurate than most of the media coverage. Moore does not "oppose efforts to deal with climate change". To the contrary, he's an analyst with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which is one of the largest, staunchest and most effective environmental groups in the US, and lists "Curbing Global Warming" on the top of it's list of priorities. If you look at Moore's credentials, I think you'll be positively surprised -- he's legitimately an expert, and unquestionably an environmentalist.
The paper uses a very specific definition of "worst drought". It's a reasonable and defensible one (cumulative deficit on the PDSI scale), but it's probably not what most people would guess. As Moore says, the paper does not say that it's the longest dry spell, or the period of least rain. Would you have guessed from the other media coverage that despite the phrase "worst drought", there have been two other years with less rain just in the last 100 years? That there have been longer droughts?
I think Moore believes what he says in the piece: "Do these facts mean that we are in good shape re California’s water supply? No! But we shouldn’t be framing the search for a stable California water supply by starting from a wildly incorrect statement that seems focused on creating public panic." He's bothered (as I am) about the level of hyperbole and inaccuracy in the media reports of climate change, and wrote the piece to counter that. Neither he, nor Watts, nor Tim Ball (the author of the third link) believes "that recent showers are proof that the alarm over the drought is just part of the global warming conspiracy".
While I fear that some of the kookier commenters at WUWT might believe that (I don't read the site, although I highly recommend Steve McIntyre's climateaudit.org) many of those you demonize care a lot about the environment and climate change, but disagree on the causes and the approach that should be taken to deal with it. For example, try reading this piece on Urban Forests by Tim Ball to see if he matches the pathological business-comes-first stereotype often associated with "climate deniers": http://drtimball.com/2012/importance-of-urban-trees/
[+] [-] nkurz|11 years ago|reply
https://sites.google.com/a/umn.edu/daniel-griffin/home
Has a PDF of the study:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~griffin9/pubs/griffin_anchukaitis_201...
[+] [-] PhantomGremlin|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141024-sao-p...
[+] [-] code_duck|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leke|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ygg2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crystaln|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cynicalkane|11 years ago|reply
California politicians talk a lot about lawn irrigation because they can't criticize the farm lobby and get away with it.