Of the remaining 18%,
~ 8% goes to commercial/industrial use
~ 10% goes to municipal residential use (outdoor: 6%, indoor: 4%) [1]
Water usage in industry is massive. Individuals aren't to blame and shouldn't take any part of the burden. Similarily, CO2.
I am more apt to agree with Hank Green [0] that success in major social restructuring requires involvement at the individual level, too, because this encourages secondary behaviors that reinforce the restructuring. People who are voluntarily quitting hamburgers and steaks are more apt to write to their representatives or donate to NGOs that do in support of this issue, initially and to check in later on that promises are kept.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvAznN_MPWQ
As another example, Alec, who publishes youtube videos as _Technology Connections_, recently published a video about using his house as a thermal battery [1] so he can offset his energy use to night time, rather than running his AC at peak hours. He suggests that utilities involve residents to widen this strategy, in favor of brownouts or other centralized tools for shedding load in extreme circumstances. A policy solution that did not burden individuals with brownouts, ex by overprovisioning generation, would fall back on their shoulders in the form of higher utility rates. I allege the same would be the case for adverse climate change or overallocated water usage.
Utah farmers get their water almost for free, while city residents pay closer to its marginal delivery cost.
This isn't wise public policy choice made by 21st century philosopher-legislators, but simply the path-dependent product of an anachronistic 19th-century framework of "water rights" plus 100+ years of lobbying. It doesn't help that the state senate (like all state senates) is designed to over-represent rural areas.
Second-order solutions like rationing beef might be morally laudable, I just don't think they're really in play until you address the main structural failures, which almost everyone agrees on.
Above all, you need an effective government at the core. Markets are fantastic for helping large groups of people make locally optimal decisions within global constraints, but you have to be able to establish those global constraints effectively. Water rights, climate impact, employment structures, supply chain resilience… none of that stuff is inherently baked into prices, and governments won’t fix those problems unless they’re solution-focused with low levels of corruption.
I don’t think this has been true since Reynolds v. Sims almost 60 years ago. Since then state senates have been pretty pointless (just small equivalents of the lower houses) and really should be abolished.
In California, for example, it’s just a mechanism for assembly members who want to stick around beyond their term limits to have a chance at another couple of terms. As I understand the problems of term limits I probably shouldn’t complain.
As long as unsustainable water usage continues to be subsidized, I, as a customer, have little ability to prioritize less water intensive products.
If you want consumers to make informed choices, either add the externalities to the monetary price, or enforce rationing.
It's not that 8% of the remaining 18% is commercial/industrial; it's that 8% of the total (not part of the 82% agricultural) is commercial.
In other words:
* 44% of non-agricultural use (8% of the total, within the 18% non-ag) is commercial/industrial,
* 33% of non-agricultural use (6% of the total, within the 18% non-ag) is outdoor residential, and
* 22% of non-agricultural use (4% of the total, within the 18% non-ag) is indoor residential
^Data are on page 4/16 of the linked PDF
[0]https://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/+symposium/proceedings/2019/Arti...
ref: https://grist.org/agriculture/u-s-southwest-already-parched-...
The amount exported is something like 0.005% of the evapotranspiration amount.
Here are some numbers [1] for Idaho crops. There might be some differences in Utah but they should be in the same ballpark.
> Not much water is exported with alfalfa hay. Potential irrigated alfalfa hay yield at elevations near 4000 feet is about 7.5 tons/acre. Hay harvested at 12% moisture removes 240 lbs water/ton hay, or 1,800 lbs/acre for a normal crop of alfalfa hay per year.
> Evapotranspiration (ET) is the primary use of water by alfalfa and averages about 36 inches/year (900 mm) at Kimberly. The ET at peak periods of 0.4 inches/day (10 mm/day) can reach 4080 tons of water per acre and 45 tons per acre per day.
[1] https://www.uidaho.edu/-/media/UIdaho-Responsive/Files/cals/...
It's so staggeringly wasteful it's hard to understand
Underground aquifers fill over decades and centuries, and in this environment, almost always laterally, not from seepage from rainfall. I think the demand for proof needs to go the other way, honestly. Presumptively this water is pretty clearly "wasted".
The evaporation figures I can find range from 30% to 50%, which is hardly virtually all. I've never been to the Utah desert, but in the California desert I've dumped out water and watched it disappear into the ground. The absence of streams only indicates that seepage and evaporation together get all of the water that would otherwise flow in them.
> Underground aquifers fill over decades and centuries, and in this environment, almost always laterally, not from seepage from rainfall. I think the demand for proof needs to go the other way, honestly. Presumptively this water is pretty clearly "wasted".
Unconfined aquifers will fill as fast as rainfall can seep in, which depending on the area can be a lot less than decades.
How is letting the Colorado flow into the Pacific more of a "waste" than using that water to grow food and letting the excess seep into the water table and fall as rain on the other side of the Rockies?
And "disappearing into the ground" is absolutely not water entering an aquifer! All you get is wet dirt. Which then... dries out. Again, this isn't how aquifers work.
There's no free lunch here. Growing plants in a desert under the open sky requires a staggering amount of water. It just does. If you want to push efficiency measures look at greenhouses.
Are you confusing confined aquifers and unconfined aquifers? That's exactly how unconfined aquifers work. Where I live the wells never go dry because every time it rains they are replenished.
Maybe the desert doesn't have unconfined aquifers and that's why you're so strident on this? I really don't know, but I'm curious so please elucidate if you can.
Flood irrigation here is just as bad as if they were doing it in Phoenix or Las Vegas
If you stand on the border of the Mojave, you probably have one foot in the Great Basin desert that covers the west half of the state. The parent probably simply described or generalized to the wrong desert.
A climate map [1] shows that the only parts of the state which aren't desert are arid mountains; the Salt Lake area has a bit of lake effect snow but that's not in the Colorado River watershed.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Utah_K%C...
Replace water-intensive crop with something more appropriate.
Replace flood irrigation with something like aquaponics which is leagues more water efficient.
Deserts have ecosystems that are adapted to life with limited water. Trying to transplant a crop that evolved with plentiful water into an ecosystem with very little is a bad idea. Even worse is the capitalistic incentive to divert natural watercourse to farm in an arid region.
The thing we should do in this situation is increase our ocean desalination efforts (not to an extent that would counteract sea level rise, but it wouldn't hurt), alongside creating more water pipelines to achieve better distribution into areas which need it. We aren't going to stop crowing crops in desert conditions. It's too effective. We should build more water pipelines to bring water into regions like the California central valley and Colorado and Utah where water is more scarce but crop conditions are good aside from the water availability.
> 82% of Utah water goes to farmers.
In 2021, we don't need to grow Alfalfa in the desert. Especially not when it's being exported out of state anyway.
This is a micro sized problem of the larger scale fractal problem of climate crisis and industrial shifts needed to address it.
It’s also not just the knowledge and technology capital involved, like many startups here, it’s connection to markets that matter to produce income. Ag wise it’s not clear what other, lower water-usage crop one would switch to, or how our system would encourage, or require, or incentivize that change.
Just one example: If we switched to electric cars and eliminated the need for the midwest to grow corn for ethanol, then a tremendous amount of farmland would open up. So you're right to ask the macro question, it's just that the answer is complicated.
I'm not so sure. CorpFarmUSA will still want to continue growing the exact same crop, and would probably just find alternate buyers. They have so much clout with their lobby. Knee jerk reaction is to Save The Farmers!!!, yet if people actually stopped and looked at what how these farms are operating, the knee jerk reaction might change.
However, it is 2021 and I'm very cynical, so I do not believe people are willing to consider any view outside their own to be able to come to comprimise.
I'm not arguing it's not worth disrupting, but it's not a simple problem.
The water used in agriculture will mostly evaporate or become part of the plant. Little of it will make it back to the source.
It's better than what we usually do: destroy natural bio-diverse habitats along rivers and coasts and replace them with housing and strip malls.
And yet, due to this land being near a major metroplex, we are busy paving it over with roads and buildings. Mostly what is grown now is Kentucky bluegrass, which doesn't do so great here (or anywhere besides Kentucky?) and so needs frequent applications of pesticides and water to stay green.
Market forces, I know. But from a larger perspective, how does this situation make the slightest bit of sense?
63% goes to California for growing almonds and oranges? and 0% left for Mexicans?
https://www.kold.com/story/25067593/colorado-river-flows-int...
You might as well just say people shouldn't be living in most of the western US then since a majority of it receives very little rainfall.
It's very easy to call these people out when you're not directly affected. Yes just strip them of their major sources of income. No issue there....
You need a better plan than just telling the Governor to shut up and be ok with losing money.
Lay down a layer of rock landscaping over landscaping fabric around a home in suburban Minnesota without maintaining it (e.g. by aggressively applying weed preventer and weeding it) and in 3-5 years it will be covered with native prairie grasses and weeds growing between and around the rock.
It does not. I lived in the midwest for the majority of my life and never once had to water my lawn to keep everything green and alive.
Ok then they'll use it up and the problem will solve itself.
I don't agree that you can live there and have the infrastructure to support jobs, food etc. with "very little impact"
[0] https://jobs.utah.gov/jsp/utalmis/#/occupation/452093/report
Where?
You act like these farms are just there because they like wasting water. Someone is buying the product or they wouldn't exist.
If you want a modern lifestyle deal with it. Deserts are going to have to be used for growing stuff.
All of which is to say, our water problems are as much a political problem - due to overuse in farming - as anything.
Flooding fields is not required for rice farming. Its done to control weeds, not because the rice crop demands it.
That said, arguments like yours present a powerful reason not to waste resources on what is largely illusory security.
In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, especially just to ship them out of the country. Unfortunately the Governor of Utah makes his money (you guessed it) growing Alfalfa in a desert, and he recently gave an impassioned speech about how those of us asking for certain types of agriculture to stop in our desert don't understand how important farming is.