[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.

[kolanos]

We don't need to rely on hunches.

> In an average year, about 39% of California's water consumption, or 34.1 million acre-feet (42.1 km3), is used for agricultural purposes. Of that total, 11%, or 8.9 million acre-feet (11.0 km3) is not consumed by the farms for crop production but is instead recycled and reused by other water users, including environmental use, urban use, and agricultural use, yielding net water consumption for food and fiber production equal to 28% of California's water consumption, or 25.2 million acre-feet (31.1 km3). [0]

The 80% figure is false.

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

Suffice to say the CVP supplies a significant portion of California's water. It is the largest such project in the country.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Agricultur... [1]: https://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/central-valley-proj...

[diggernet]

From your Wikipedia link:

> Water use in California is divided into approximately 51% for environmental uses, 39% agricultural use and 11% urban uses, though that varies considerably between regions and between wet and dry years. Solely relying on these statewide volumes is controversial because they don't consider the fact that most of the volume of water used for environmental purposes includes flows down Wild and Scenic Rivers in the North Coast where there is no practical way to recover it for either agricultural or urban use because it lacks many connections to the statewide water supply system. It also doesn't factor in the amount of water required to keep salty water from the Pacific Ocean from intruding into the Delta beyond a certain small concentration.

If we set aside the 51% of California's water that isn't actually used by people, that 39% of total water becomes 79.6% of water used. So, yeah, 80% of usage.

[hellisothers]

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

[stonemetal12]

Fairly simple, water is a State thing, zero Federal involvement.

If it gets declared a disaster then Federal disaster relief will try to help. So 0% of the extra water brought in for disaster relief will go to farmers. They have insurance for that.

The 80% figure is farm use of water in the state.

[dragonwriter]

> Fairly simple, water is a State thing, zero Federal involvement.

This is completely false. The federal Central Valley Project that the article concerns is a major water delivery system that is key to much of the state.

(There are other federal roles beyond the CVP in California water supply—e.g., there is a federal role in Colorado River water management, but the CVP is the big, big federal involvement.)

> If it gets declared a disaster then Federal disaster relief will try to help. So 0% of the extra water brought in for disaster relief will go to farmers.

This has nothing to do with disaster relief. This is allocation of the water flow through the CVP, which is routine supply, not something that only kicks in in a disaster.

> The 80% figure is farm use of water in the state.

No, it's the ag share of non-environmental water use in the state.

[mdavis6890]

Thank you for that explanation! I was genuinely interested in this.

[mdavis6890]

Exactly.

[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...

[mdavis6890]

See my other comment below. Farms are not at zero.

[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.