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...
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
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.
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.
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...
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?
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"
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.
> 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...
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.
> 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...
> 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.
These are solvable problems, so excluding that water from the ~40 million acre feet of water California uses every year seems like a convenient way to balloon the other uses. Plus as cited earlier, of the 39% of water use attributed to agriculture, 28% of it actually has multiple uses in addition to agriculture and is recycled (the 11% figure). So only 28% of the total is actually exclusively used for agriculture.
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.
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.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-califor...
California can probably produce enough food for itself without overseas exports of alfalfa and almonds.
> 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...
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Oh you mean change the behavior of the poor, not the rich. Gotcha.
Progressive pricing of water for larger consumers helps alleviate impact on the poor.
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?
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.
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.
older: [1]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-afford-a-50...
pandemic related: [2]https://highlandsolutions.com/blog/survey-reveals-spending-h...
I'd also wager that changes in demand of gasoline is muted because some people will still need gasoline to get groceries and to work, where irrigating one's lawn is luxury by comparison. When I turn off my irrigation, I see a drop of 60-70% water usage.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/weekly/gasoline.php
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=a...
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.
Golf courses, cattle ranchers and almond farmers on the other hand....
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.
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.
But please, so tell me how people don’t react to prices!
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?
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).
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.
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?
Not with tiered pricing. The poor don't use any more water than the middle-class.
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.