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.
> 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.
> giving landowners farther upstream and closer to the waterworks greater ability to extract water
This is not exactly correct. Water rights in the west are governed by prior appropriation. It's in a sense first-come, first-served, but has to do with who first made "beneficial use" of the water, not who is farther upstream.
"Disputes arose when newcomers made diversions upstream from existing operations, because water was so scarce that dividing the flow among multiple miners could make it useless to all. Early farmers faced identical conflicts. The solution, through much of the West, was a new conception of water rights whose central tenet was “first in time, first in right.” Proximity to the source counted for nothing, because miners and farmers sometimes had to move water long distances. The critical factor was the date of first use."[1]
> Too much is available for agriculture, and too little is available for the people.
California is probably overpopulated. You can tweak agriculture policy all you want, but we can't pretend there isn't an inevitable problem with trying to support ever more people in a mostly arid region.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The water rights laws cannot be underestimated. This is mostly the result of the 1983 case National Audubon Society v. Superior Court [1]. Based around the public trust doctrine this case originally was about LA draining water from feeder streams to Mono Lake. The real effect has been many counties using this ruling as basis for restricting landowners from selling water from their properties outside the county. Hence farmers either let it go to no use or on lower value crops.
As for the rainwater issue, well they engineered themselves into that but that cistern idea was great.
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.
[+] [-] s_q_b|10 years ago|reply
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|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] crystaln|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdglenn|10 years ago|reply
This is not exactly correct. Water rights in the west are governed by prior appropriation. It's in a sense first-come, first-served, but has to do with who first made "beneficial use" of the water, not who is farther upstream.
"Disputes arose when newcomers made diversions upstream from existing operations, because water was so scarce that dividing the flow among multiple miners could make it useless to all. Early farmers faced identical conflicts. The solution, through much of the West, was a new conception of water rights whose central tenet was “first in time, first in right.” Proximity to the source counted for nothing, because miners and farmers sometimes had to move water long distances. The critical factor was the date of first use."[1]
[1]http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/the-disappearin...
[+] [-] a8da6b0c91d|10 years ago|reply
California is probably overpopulated. You can tweak agriculture policy all you want, but we can't pretend there isn't an inevitable problem with trying to support ever more people in a mostly arid region.
[+] [-] sorenbs|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s_q_b|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] airza|10 years ago|reply
That is not an "there's no drought in this region" error factor.
[+] [-] Tloewald|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harshreality|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|10 years ago|reply
As for the rainwater issue, well they engineered themselves into that but that cistern idea was great.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Audubon_Society_v._Su...
[+] [-] bkeroack|10 years ago|reply
I imagine it would be incredibly difficult/expensive to treat that water even to graywater level, let alone potability.
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
The big one that just went up in San Diego only cost $1 billion, and will provide 7% of the total water needs of San Diego county.
[+] [-] CHsurfer|10 years ago|reply
It should be cheaper than digging up streets.
[+] [-] bsimpson|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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