[mc32]

Farms work on thin margins, so jacking the price on them might not be the first step to take.

A few things we can do:

Increase rates to households.

Fix the delivery system to residences so that we don't lose approx 30% to leakage

Invest in desalination and make it a viable alternative

Incentivize drip irrigation where applicable (ie. almonds, but not rice)

Of course increased water conservation.

[anigbrowl]

Too goddamn bad, maybe it's time some more farmers went bankrupt. Reducing household water usage is not going to be enough to offset the hugely wasteful consumption by agriculture. My water bill is not too high, but I have to say that I am not too enthused about watching it go up this years after we cut my household usage by around 30% over the last year. I didn't see a corresponding drop in the bill because most of the sum is fixed charges for delivery and sewage treatment, and my actual metered usage is the smallest part of the bill. So despite putting a lot of effort into conservation I'm being asked to further subsidize the most wasteful users of water in the state.

[mc32]

If farming in Calif went bust, a few things would happen:

Foodstuff would get more expensive.

We'd import more food, meaning fewer 'local' products. Localvores would have to become 'televores'.

Much of the no-education, low education jobs would disappear for people who have little other than their physical ability to offer the job marketplace.

[anigbrowl]

You'd also see a special election to recall the Governor, I think - Central California trends heavily Republican and people there have convinced themselves that it's all the fault of the coastal cities for not building desalination plants. They're not sympathetic to the environmental arguments.

Gray Davis was recalled for less back in the early 2000s, although Arnold Schwarzenegger turned out to be a lot more moderate and forward-thinking than the Republican voters anticipated. Gov/ Brown is already in bad odor with the farming lobby, although the successful passage of the water infrastructure bond ballot proposal has given him more of a mandate than he might otherwise have had.