[orlp]

"Californians are being asked to reduce their water use by 15 percent over 2020 levels to protect water reserves and help maintain critical flows for fish and wildlife wherever possible."

And by that they surely mean agriculture, right? Right? The industry responsible for 80% of the water usage in California? They surely couldn't just be asking urban consumers to reduce?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/23/california-d...

Nope, it's households and small businesses.

[jillesvangurp]

Either way, Californians should stop pretending water is cheap, plentiful or sourced in a sustainable way. It simply isn't. Instead of pointing fingers at each other, the best way is to price it accordingly. The root problem is that this is not the case and it's too cheap. And it's only cheap because it comes from non renewable sources that are getting scarcer. Everybody feels entitled to the cheap water and then ends up wasting it because it is so cheap.

More expensive water leads to people taking better care of what they do with it. E.g. watering a lawn because you like it to be green should not be close to free. Especially not in what is essentially a desert (which large parts of California effectively are). That's an epic waste of water. You should have the freedom to buy that water at a fair price and waste it as you please. But it should cost you. Lawns should be an expensive hobby.

Same with toilets. There's no need to flush five gallons every time you use the toilet. Less wasteful toilets exist. And of course, farmers can learn a thing or two about farming more sustainably. But why would they when that does not save them any money?

There is no shortage of water. California borders on the largest reservoir of it on the planet (the pacific). All it needs is a little bit of desalination. Lots of other countries do this at scale; typically because it is preferable to not having clean water. This takes energy and money but it can be done sustainably. If water was priced correctly, more water would be desalinated. Instead, aquifers are drained, former lakes are turned into salt lakes, etc.

[rmah]

Um, but the water in California is cheap and plentiful. Sustainably sourced, I don't know. But the root of the problem is that farmers do not pay a "fair" price, they get steep steep discounts. All the lawn watering, all the toilet flushes, all the swimming pools, etc. all amount to around 10% of water use in California. And those people already pay, on average, many multiples of what farmers pay per gallon.

[throwaway09223]

Exactly so. Water is cheap, plentiful and available in nearly limitless quantities in the amounts used for urban living.

The only scarcity centers around the far larger amounts of water used by agricultural industry -- which are in large part not growing food needed for sustenance. Much of what we grow is exported, and could more easily be grown elsewhere. For example, Saudi Arabia has been expanding hay and alfalfa farms in California because they wish to reduce the depletion of the Saudi aquifers. California water policy simply allows this to happen, at the expense of our own aquifers.

Domestic water curtailment programs are a fraud. The only issue is industrial allocations of farm water.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-w...

[gruez]

> But the root of the problem is that farmers do not pay a "fair" price, they get steep steep discounts.

What are the reasons for these "steep discounts"? The obvious explanation is "lobbying", but I remember a comment from a while ago mentioning that the farmers "own" water rights and those can't be expropriated from them without a costly legal process.

edit: comment mentioning the water rights aspect in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593372

[wahern]

Discounts is a very misleading word in this context. The core issues relate to the fundamental legal doctrines surrounding water rights, particularly the Prior Appropriation Doctrine. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior-appropriation_water_righ... and https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&ht...

People with prior appropriation rights to water don't need to pay for the water at all, except perhaps incidental fees and taxes. The right to use the water, contingent on availability, is a property right.

The prior appropriation doctrine threads through all water issues in the Western U.S. States also have appropriation rights as between each other. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact And then the Federal government introduces another dimension of complexity as they can pick and choose flow rates and distribution.

Theoretically, and AFAIU, there's nothing fundamentally anti-market with the prior appropriation doctrine. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem and also the above paper by Micha Gisser. And there are markets in prior appropriation rights--farmers buy and sell their prior appropriation rights. But apparently these markets aren't very extensive, presumably hindered by a century of complicating legislation and political bickering layered atop the underlying legal doctrines.

[lupire]

The costly legal process is no problem. The gov can get that back by raising the price of water afterward.

[pkaye]

The water that farmers use in not treated so there is no treatment cost.

[ac29]

Agricultural water varies in price greatly but it is often like 1000x cheaper than residential water in CA.

Its not the treatment process - I think a substantial portion of actual costs of water is in delivery. This source estimates 2GW needed to move water around in California on peak days: https://energy.lbl.gov/publications/water-supply-related-ele... That's about 5-10% of total electric use in the entire state.

[kolanos]

This might just be me, but I prioritize agriculture over swimming pools.

It's strange that it is agriculture to blame when LA doesn't source its own water and instead diverts water from the central valleys away from agriculture. Agriculture doesn't "pay their fair share", yet LA is actively taking water away from agriculture and also draining 5-7 year reservoirs. When wild fires are in full swing we're going to really regret not having those reservoirs. [0]

Most farms have had their water share cut to zero already. [1]

People would rather waste water on LA lawns and swimming pools (or dump it in the Pacific, which is what happens to most of it that reaches LA [2]) rather than produce food with it. This is just baffling to me.

[0]: https://californiaglobe.com/articles/ca-reservoirs-filled-to... [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-califor... [2]: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...

[mdavis6890]

The point is that if you add up ALL the swimming pools in California, it totals ~0 water. Not even a rounding error. Farmers measure water use in MILLIONS of ACRE FEET. There is even an acronym for it: MAF.

There are rice paddies surrounding the capital city of Sacramento.

Why do we keep asking residents to sacrifice for even trivial pleasurers like swimming, when it makes no difference at all?

[ezsmi]

> There are rice paddies surrounding the capital city of Sacramento.

Believe it or not but the area where they grow rice in Sacramento is actually a flood plain. [1] Given your handle maybe you knew that? Surprisingly rice's water needs aren't all that high either. It's not the lowest but it's not the worst by a long shot. [2]

[1] https://www.ppic.org/blog/the-yolo-bypass-its-a-floodplain-i...

[2] https://localwiki.org/davis/Rice_Paddies

"In an arid state with growing pressures on water availability and use, it may surprise many to learn that rice is one of our most water-wise crops, requiring 25 gallons to produce each serving, like oranges, while almonds require 80 gallons per serving"

[dragonwriter]

> There are rice paddies surrounding the capital city of Sacramento.

Rice paddies don't consume lots of water (flooding rice improves yield, but the rice doesn't consume most of the water, it's still available for downstream uses.)

> Why do we keep asking residents to sacrifice for even trivial pleasurers like swimming, when it makes no difference at all?

Because if you cut agricultural use, and thereby the tax base, residents will have to make sacrifices, too.

[kolanos]

Who is sacrificing exactly?

> The federal government said Wednesday that it won’t deliver water to farmers in California’s agricultural belt, which produces roughly a quarter of the nation’s food, due to the extreme water shortages that are expected to deepen if the direly dry conditions continue through March. [0]

HN is throttling me, so I'll put this here. the CVP is the largest in the country.

> In a normal year the CVP delivers about 7 million acre-feet of water for agricultural, urban, and wildlife use. [1]

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-califor... [1]: https://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/central-valley-proj...

[mdavis6890]

Yes, but the article doesn't share any numbers that give a sense as to how much water that actually is. How much water does the Central Valley Project normally deliver? What fraction of total water use is that? What fraction of ag water use is it?

My hunch is that this is a small fraction of the amount of water farms use.

There are a lot of articles like this that make it sound like farms are really hit hard and having to endure sacrifices. There was one from a few months back talking about farmers that had to destroy a bunch of almond trees they couldn't afford to water anymore. About 400 acres worth. There was a dramatic photo of a farmer standing next to a bunch of uprooted trees. Reality: there are 1.6 million acres of almonds in California. Pulling up 400 acres is nothing.

[hellisothers]

Wait I’m confused now, what is the relationship of this 0% water to the 80% figure that ag. gets?

[toomuchtodo]

No political will to force ag and industrial water users to curtail usage to sustainable (less than aquifer replenishment rate) levels.

[kolanos]

Farmers have been curtailed to zero. [0] Now what ?

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-califor...

[tacitusarc]

I thought the drought was exclusively in southern California?

[musicale]

> rather than produce food with it

California can probably produce enough food for itself without overseas exports of alfalfa and almonds.

[kolanos]

Where are you and these other commenters getting this falsehood that a significant portion of alfalfa is exported? Is it one of those articles about that Saudi owned land exporting their alfalfa?

> Based on USDA data for 2021, only 3.9% of all U.S. hay produced and 6.4% of all alfalfa hay entered the export market. [1]

In case that's unclear, 96.1% of hay and 93.6% of alfalfa is consumed domestically.

[0]: https://hayandforage.com/article-3825-year-end-hay-exports-s...

[musicale]

Probably they are considering the data for California (relevant to this discussion) rather than the US as a whole. Although the link you posted doesn't break out the percentage for California, it does say that 20% of western state alfalfa is exported.

However, the percentage is less important than the overall amount.

"If California only produced enough almonds for the United States, than it would have about 8 percent more available water. If California only produced enough alfalfa for the U.S., it would have at least 3 percent more available water."

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/stor...

[la64710]

Why is this comment greyed out?

[the_only_law]

Comments will appear lighter the more downvoted they are.

[BurningFrog]

Your on the right track. Pricing is the solution (and cause) for most scarce resource problems.

But in California, household consumption is very far from the main water problem.

Agriculture is a far bigger problem, and the pricing regime there is often completely insane.

There are other problem sectors.

[QuarterReptile]

>All it needs is a little bit of desalination.

And that brings us to the other biggest market problem that California has unsolved by collective action: energy markets.

Highways would be up there, too.

[synaesthesisx]

> Either way, Californians should stop pretending water is cheap, plentiful or sourced in a sustainable way. It simply isn't.

We literally live next to an ocean - water can be cheap, plentiful and sourced sustainably via desalination. Desalination has generally been prohibitively expensive, however that doesn't need to be the case, considering humans have already figured out how to generate clean energy.

[aerostable_slug]

Activists will do anything they can to block progress. Surfrider and other orgs blocked San Luis Obispo County from putting a pipeline in between the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant desal facility and a deep well in Nipomo — the idea was to replenish the groundwater to prevent seawater incursion.

The grown-up Jeff Spicolis went "no way, dude" and screwed everyone. If the seawater continues to infiltrate we'll lose valuable ag real estate, but that hardly matters to them. See also: Chumash and their undersea "heritage sites" (which are often artifacts that fell out of capsized fishing boats, not actually places where people lived). The Chumash literally teamed up with commercial fishermen to stop a renewable energy project offshore of Vandenberg. Madness.

[gpapilion]

I would venture most toilets in California are 1.6 gallons per flush or less. In 2014 it moved to 1.28 gpf. The replacement cycle has probably caught the majority, but you never know.

Drought tolerant landscaping took off in the 1990s, and you still see plenty of it. Lawns represent a real issue, but municipalities still force users to water at night, sometimes particular days to reduce usage.

The real issue is agriculture usage and high usage crops(almonds and alfalfa) which are often exported. These users get absurd discounts compared to residential usage (in the 90s there was moaning when prices went to 32 dollars an acre foot, or 325k gallons currently it’s ~$70).

[timst4]

Yes, this is a big factor. Water is too cheap - similar to carbon. Both need to be priced higher soon or we’re toast.

[FollowingTheDao]

Since when has raising the price of anything changed anyone’s behavior?

Oh you mean change the behavior of the poor, not the rich. Gotcha.

[dcsommer]

Sugar taxes are effective in decreasing consumption of sugary beverages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax

Progressive pricing of water for larger consumers helps alleviate impact on the poor.

[mrguyorama]

Progressive pricing is good yes, but the parent is right that a non-progressive price increase is born mostly by the poor. In fact I'd wager that's why sin taxes are effective, because the largest consumers of cigarettes, soda, etc are poor people

[chasd00]

> In fact I'd wager that's why sin taxes are effective, because the largest consumers of cigarettes, soda, etc are poor people

I'm not a fan of sin taxes. To me, taxes are for funding the government and should not be a form of punishment. If you punish people with taxes or try to change their behavior then you're just breeding resentment against taxes. Then the population votes to decrease taxes every chance they get because they're associated with punishment. Also, isn't a sin tax basically a fine with no chance to plead your case?

[FollowingTheDao]

> Sugar taxes are effective in decreasing consumption of sugary beverages.

You missed my point. I agree they reduce consumption, but only on the poor. There will never be any progressive pricing that will affect the wealthy in any substantial way unless we determine the price as a percent of income.

[gruez]

> Since when has raising the price of anything changed anyone’s behavior?

Making water 2x more expensive probably isn't going to cause you to drink less water, but it might make you consider a variety of water conservation measures, like low flow showers, dishwashers, or low water landscaping.

[bombcar]

If your water bill is $100 is $200 really going to change what you do much? Unlikely, unless you're already poor.

[bumby]

This comment seems wildly out of touch. When a majority of Americans can't afford a $500 unexpected emergency expense[1][2], you think a $100 increase is trivial?

older: [1]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-afford-a-50...

pandemic related: [2]https://highlandsolutions.com/blog/survey-reveals-spending-h...

[yongjik]

Counterpoint: I'm making a comfortable living as a developer in California, and my wife also works. We don't exactly have a mansion or a personal airplane, but it's not like we're short of money, ever.

My wife will still be very angry if water bill goes up from $100 to $200.

Price anchoring is a really powerful tool: you can cut down plastic bag usage drastically by simply mandating that they should be sold at 10 cents.

[gruez]

A penny saved is a penny earned, so I'd definitely consider water conservation measures if water prices went up 100%.

[arrosenberg]

It’s only too cheap for these huge farms due to how corrupt and poorly thought out the water rights process was in the 1800s. The rural poor in CA already have water problems (e.g. Tulare county) and the urban poor already pay full freight.

[JKCalhoun]

Obviously there are progressive ways to do it. You make it tiered such that the the typical household never leaves the lowest pricing tier.

Golf courses, cattle ranchers and almond farmers on the other hand....

[tzs]

So you don't raise the price of water for typical households, which is only a small percentage of their budget, and instead raise the price of food, which is generally a much larger percentage of their budget?

[gruez]

1. you're trying to imply that because food budget is greater than water budget, that raising water prices on farmers will affect households more. This does not make any sense. Only a fraction of the price of food paid by a household is attributable to the price of water, so you can't really conclude that just because households spend more money on food than on water, that increasing water prices on farmers will cost them more.

2. even if that were the case, it's a necessary evil to incentivize lower water use crops. Suppose there were only two types of food, apples and oranges. They both cost around the same right now, but oranges require 10x more water. Raising water prices will raise orange prices, but that's arguably a good thing because it forces consumers to choose more water efficient foods. I don't see how the alternative (ie. continue subsidizing oranges even though they're more costly to society) is any better. Not to mention, you can redistribute the excess earnings back to citizens to make this revenue neutral.

[JKCalhoun]

I'm not sure there is a better solution though. Perhaps cattle and almonds were not meant to be raised/grown in California.

Tangential example: I understand aluminum recycling plants dot the Columbia river because (hydro-electric) power is cheap. In a similar way, water-dependent agriculture and animal husbandry ought to follow the water.

[labcomputer]

Oh noes! All the people for whom almond consumption represents a significant amount of their daily calories will have to switch to some pedestrian food! Quelle horror!

[refurb]

Well there is a direct correlation between gas prices and the purchase of fuel efficient vehicles.

But please, so tell me how people don’t react to prices!

[thaumaturgy]

This seems to be a carefully-considered market-based solution to a complex problem, but there are a few details I'm struggling with.

Significantly increasing the price of a natural resource would have severe impacts on impoverished communities while having no effect at all on wealthy people and companies; is this intentional?

Around 45% of households in California are rentals. Renters are often restricted by their rental contracts in what they can and cannot do with a yard (if they are wealthy enough to have one). Should renters be stuck with extremely high water bills when their landlords require a green lawn? Or should landlords not be able to require certain landscape features?

And the toilets, should the renters living paycheck-to-paycheck be the ones replacing these units? ...actually, I'll retract that question, it's a silly one. On further consideration, I realize that if the cost of water exceeds the cost of replacing a toilet, then people working for minimum wage will be properly motivated to find some way to replace their landlord's fixtures with newer models.

Your examples are mostly focused on residential water usage, which has been about 10% of the state's overall water usage, and has been steadily decreasing for years. I noticed that you explicitly didn't want to point any fingers, but can you think of any examples that might not be residential? Something more specific, perhaps, than "more sustainable farming". As I'm sure you're already aware, water rights are an extremely sore point of political contention between farmers and the state, and one of the major drivers of conservative and "State of Jefferson" separatist politics up and down the entire I-5 corridor. Can you estimate, in dollars, the upper limit for the cost of agricultural water before someone starts shooting lawmakers at the capital?

You mentioned desalination. This solution works so well in Israel, I don't understand why it wouldn't work for all of California too. The Carlsbad desalination plant was completed and became operational just a few years ago. It only cost one billion dollars to build, an additional $50 million per year to operate, and will be able to provide about 7% of San Diego county's water needs. Do these numbers feel like they're making water expensive enough? California is mountainous, with a large central valley separated from the coast by a range of mountains that is in some places taller than the tallest mountain in Israel. Do you think it would be better to build massive pipelines over these mountains and pump water uphill from the coast into the central valley, or would it be better to tunnel through the mountains and pump the water that way? I wouldn't worry too much about the cost either way, since more expensive water is better.

Oh, speaking of cost: when there's a rainy year, should Californians be forced to continue buying water from desalination plants, or should the desalination plants be shut down and then restarted the next year?

[richiebful1]

The problem is the highly subsidized cost of water for agricultural users. If farmers using irrigation water had to pay a bit more, they wouldn't waste as much. And they are wasting a lot of water relative to the small amount residential users are wasting

[gruez]

>Should renters be stuck with extremely high water bills when their landlords require a green lawn? Or should landlords not be able to require certain landscape features?

Isn't the landlord responsible for maintaining the property, not the renter?

>And the toilets, should the renters living paycheck-to-paycheck be the ones replacing these units?

In theory that's what building codes/rental regulations are supposed to solve (ie. a law that says rentals must provide low flush toilets).

[sologoub]

On mountains and inland valleys, CA population is concentrated on the coast, so this is not as much of an issue. Just build enough for households of the largest metro areas and leave the rest the water we would have used.

This doesn’t solve the agricultural issue at all, but given that a lot of what they produce is exported and not used locally, they should figure their own business out and not be even further subsidized by consumers/tax payers.

[TomSwirly]

> On further consideration, I realize that if the cost of water exceeds the cost of replacing a toilet, then people working for minimum wage will be properly motivated to find some way to replace their landlord's fixtures with newer models.

I hope you're joking here. This just has to be sarcasm - right?

Replacing your toilet is an investment that pays off over years. How is a minimum wage earner supposed to do that?

[gopher_space]

They're making a Modest Proposal.

[fennecfoxen]

AfterPay

[JKCalhoun]

> Significantly increasing the price of a natural resource would have severe impacts on impoverished communities while having no effect at all on wealthy people and companies; is this intentional?

Not with tiered pricing. The poor don't use any more water than the middle-class.

[mistrial9]

Please understand that in the suburbs of Contra Costa County, where swimming pools are very common and a few still raise livestock, there was a county initiative (pre-2007) to dramatically rise the price of water use for those properties using more than 1000 gallons of water per day, and there was a mass scene at the Board of Supervisors meeting with irate home owners. The initiative did not pass.

[JKCalhoun]

Why would home owners be irate? Do they use over 1000 gallons a day? Because it smells to me like "astroturfing".

[bamboozled]

This!

It's also why I don't like being told to stop eating beef / meat to stop the climate crisis when fracking and other ridiculous practices are still legal.

Food and nutrition is important.

Disclaimer: I tried being a vegetarian for 2 years, I didn't feel good mentally and physically so I went back to consuming meat. I'll probably try again another time.

[boston_clone]

As a matter of fact, animal agriculture - including the growing of crops required to feed the animals before slaughter - is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases. You're right that there are other awful practices that need to be remedied, but not doing one because of the other taking place seems short-sighted, no?

Not eating meat is simply the single most impactful thing you can do to reduce human impact on climate change. Plus, it may also help your conscience, as there is a strong dissonance in our relationship with animals.

Food and nutrition is certainly important, and there is plenty of research that shows vegetarian and fully vegan diets are healthy at all stages of life; ADA recognizes this as well: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/

The amount of options available have increased dramatically in even the last few years. Talk with your doctor and try it again sometime!

[Aunche]

You realize your position is contradictory, right? If nutrition is important, then people in the city should sacrifice their water, so that farmers can grow more almonds. If you're saying that corporations need to take more responsibility, you're asking farmers to grow fewer almonds, means consumers eat fewer almonds anyways, but they'll also be more expensive.

[paulcole]

This is why we’ll never “stop the climate crisis.” Everybody thinks somebody else is causing the problem and that somebody else needs to change more than they themselves do.

The truth is, stopping the climate crisis involves everybody changing how they live in a significant way. Anything short of that and you better hope your great grandkids like eating crickets and forest fires.

The sadder truth is that the climate crisis is unstoppable so it doesn’t really matter how many cows you eat.

[seanmcdirmid]

If someone focus’s on 1% of the problem and never touch the 99%, the former is going to get frustrated and give up.

[maccard]

Agriculture is responsible for far more than 1% of the problem - USDA says about 10.5% [0]. And those of us who do advocate for making more sustainable decisions are not ignoring the other 89%, we're actively trying to reduce that too.

[0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environmen...

[paulcole]

If everybody doesn’t treat climate change as a problem that they’re both the cause of and solution to, we’re never going to touch the 99%.

You think these corporations are growing almonds in the desert and raising cows because nobody buys them?

[eweise]

You're asking a lot if you think consumers should know what the effect of buying almonds has on the water supply. Simply charge the almond farmers more for their water, almond prices go up, consumers buy less of them.

[peyton]

We’ve had fifty years of behavior change messaging. It’s time to take a different approach.

[paulcole]

Societal change (down to the individual level) is the only thing that's going to work. People will have to change how they live and make different decisions. Full stop. There's no magic solution waiting to be discovered.

Whether the change comes voluntarily or through war, famine, and misery for future generations the likes of which we can't imagine is up to those of us alive today.

[Aunche]

Behavior change is completely necessary if you want societal change. If you reduce the supply of meat/oil with policy without reducing demand, it would increase prices and people would protest, so we'd be back at square one.

[QuarterReptile]

Is there actually fracking in California?

[nradov]

Yes there is some fracking now but the state government has stated that they will stop issuing new permits for it.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/04/23/governor-newsom-takes-acti...

[mistrial9]

yes - Bakersfield, Calif. and a few other places, mostly in SoCal.

[JKCalhoun]

Fish perhaps?

[eixiepia]

> Disclaimer: I tried being a vegetarian for 2 years, I didn't feel good mentally and physically so I went back to consuming meat.

No wonder. 2.5 million years of meat eating has evolved the human to what it is today.

[nabla9]

It seems that Water Resources Control Board is already pushing the limits of it's mandate to curtail agricultural water use governed by water rights. The issue will be settled politically and/or in courts.

2021:

>California has reduced water rights only a handful of times in the past, but it will probably become more routine as the climate crisis worsens, Jay Lund, the co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, told the LA Times.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/04/california-d...

>Water Resources Control Board voted unanimously to curtail nearly all agricultural water diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed ... However, if drought and the board’s no-diversion policy continue into 2022, they will almost certainly ignite a high-stakes political and legal conflict over whether the state can essentially usurp historic water rights and dictate how local farm water systems are to be operated. https://calmatters.org/commentary/2021/08/california-water-r...

[saboot]

Reduce so they can sell it off for more money elsewhere ..

"Sacramento To Sell 3 Billion Gallons of Water After Declaring ‘Water Alert’" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmw7kVgrrW4

[xtiansimon]

Why would California agriculture conserve, when last week in Long Island, NY we were enjoying California cherries at 5.99/lb? Though, one wonders if that profit might not be less due to high gas price to get them here.

[GloriousKoji]

In the California Bay Area cherries go for 4.99/lb and if drive out to Brentwood and pick your own cherries it's $4/lb.

[xtiansimon]

The economy around fresh produce is crazy.

[kolanos]

> Climatologist Bill Patzert estimates that more than 80% of the region's rainfall ends up diverted from urban areas in Southern California into the Pacific . “All those trillions of gallons of rain, which sound so sweet, really end up in the ocean,” he said. [0]

> Statewide, average water use is roughly 50% environmental, 40% agricultural, and 10% urban, although the percentage of water use by sector varies dramatically across regions and between wet and dry years. Some of the water used by each of these sectors returns to rivers and groundwater basins where it can be used again. [1]

[0]: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet... [1]: https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/jtf-water-use.pdf

[mdavis6890]

"50% environmental" - This term is very deceptive. It's basically water that can't be used anyway, and clouds the fact that really agriculture uses 80-90% of the actually available water. It artificially grows the denominator.

[aerostable_slug]

That's untrue. It's freshwater that is purposely diverted to streams and rivers to sustain the local ecology. This is what farmers are complaining about in the Central Valley.

[Melting_Harps]

> > Climatologist Bill Patzert estimates that more than 80% of the region's rainfall ends up diverted from urban areas in Southern California into the Pacific . “All those trillions of gallons of rain, which sound so sweet, really end up in the ocean,” he said. [0]

You don't need to be a climatologist to figure this one out, just being a resident there you figure out very soon how flash flood areas are possible (specifically in SoCal) since every square inch is paved the rain water, when it actually falls, is destined to cause damage and/or make it's way to the gutter system: often overwhelming the drains depending on the area. It doesn't seep into the Earth to replenish the aquifers because everything is paved relative to just undeveloped land.

This is an entirely absurd missed opportunity to build the infrastructure for water reclamation, and while we're at it the Australian model to extract the waste water and reclaim it and create fertilizer for plants from human waste should be explored as well. The money is there, and a need for jobs is, too.

Even if CA were only to spend 50% of the ~$90 Billion it would still be able to do a great deal to ensure it's longterm future by investing in this critical infrastructure.

* There used to be a running bet of what celebrities mansion in Malibu would end up sinking into the Pacific when i was a kid in the 90s as it was so common back then. It was a Schadenfreude based bet with more amusement than just playing the lotto apparently. Incidentally enough, those homes were soon replaced with another the following year(s) anyway more often anyway.

[aerostable_slug]

> missed opportunity to build the infrastructure for water reclamation

Unfortunately, Gavin Newsom would rather direct funds to an imagined "surplus" so he can buy Democrat votes. If we had intelligent leadership we'd be building reclamation infrastructure and at least thinking about the unfunded public pension liability.

[JKCalhoun]

During the last big drought year in California (was it 2015 or so?) we turned our lawn into a drought-tolerant one — no more grass, no more watering the lawn. It was a little annoying to see the lush golf courses carry on with business (literally) as usual.

[scruple]

Golf courses use reclaimed water. There are a lot of things wrong with golf courses in California, like pesticide and herbicide use that runs off into the ocean and other water ways, but fresh water waste isn't typically one of them.

[mdavis6890]

Great. This saved zero water though. You instead allowed the production of an additional handful of avocados (about 50 gallons each). I hope that was a fair trade.

[JKCalhoun]

I don't eat avocados, so I don't understand your comment.

[jeffbee]

Dead wrong. The state water project is not delivering any water to agricultural customers this year. Ag is on a mandatory 100% reduction.

[frickinLasers]

What does this mean? That farmers don't get enough water to wash their hands now? That there will be no crops coming out of California unless they were grown on well water? Where can I look up this reduction rate?

[jeffbee]

California "farmers" all live in Beverly Hills. And yes, they are pumping out groundwater as fast as they can.

[aerostable_slug]

> California "farmers" all live in Beverly Hills.

That's untrue and a harmful stereotype. I personally know farmers who live in and around where they grow in Watsonville, SLO county, and other places, and they are hardly living the Kardashian lifestyle.

[softjobs]

https://yashalevine.com/books/oligarch-valley

[JumpCrisscross]

> it's households and small businesses

Is it? The people I know who reduce use self select. The ones who don’t want to ignore these directives.

[AceJohnny2]

Agricultural Water Rights are a complex issue...

[michaelt]

A reduction in water consumption is needed.

Agriculture uses 80% of the water - and pays far less for it than other users.

Doesn't seem very complex to me?

[darkerside]

Just because it doesn't seem complex doesn't mean it isn't.

[throwaway0a5e]

That is an ignorant and short sighted viewpoint. There's all sorts of legal precedent tangling this up. While the math of where the water goes is straightforward you can't just invalidate prior agreements and rules and whatnot without going through the process otherwise you just cause more problems because you send a message and set a precedent that the state will not honor its own rules. In the long term that is very damaging.

[cataphract]

If the circumstances significantly changed in an unforeseen way since farmers were given water rights, many in 1800s, the State should be able to curtail those rights in the public interest. I do agree that there must be proportionality and due process, of course.

[s1artibartfast]

Stripping rights isn't due process. Buying rights is.

[jjoonathan]

Entitlement knows no bounds.

[nikanj]

It’s complex: agricultural water usage is by giant corporations with expensive lawyers. Home water usage doesn’t get defended by an all-star legal team.

Hence it’s much easier to cut down the home usage