When necessary yes. But again don't tell me how I need to ration water.Originally Posted by Spenni
When necessary yes. But again don't tell me how I need to ration water.
This isn't about choosing economic winners and losers. There isn't company A that makes low flow shower heads and company B that makes only high flows. This is a design standard, like a safety standard, that all companies have to follow. By using this means to conserve water everyone gets to flush their toilet as much as they want and take as long a shower as they want. The alternative, installing shut-off water meters in every home and business, would cost a comparatively large amount for everyone and would inevitably result in many people unable to shower, flush their toilet or drink water at the end of the month and businesses like restaurants unable to wash dishes or clean their bathrooms because their water ran out. It's not the better option.
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
Would you agree that it might be better to charge more for water first (or even charge for water use at all - apparently some people don't even have water meters)? I mean, then you already get an incentive to save money. Problem is of course that in at least the short term it will hurt farmers (a lot), and the poor. But I think that simply charging for water use would already help a lot. I don't know about the earn back time of water saving devices like these, to be honest - but I know that for example a new fridge can be earned back in a few years already here (or even one year, if it's a really crappy old one). But if there's no limit on use, and you pay the same no matter how much you use, then yeah, the only way to get water saving devices would be mandating it.
Either way it seems to me that while switching to less water draining houses is a good thing, it's a mere drop in the bucket in the total water use. Farms is where the use is highest (and the waste the biggest). But if water is subsidized to such a low price that you can grow rice in a place like California, apparently competitively.. well, it's why I find the farmers complaining about the government 'disturbing the free market' funny - because if they dropped all influence, the farmers would be in big trouble.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
I guess I can't say for certain how it works across the country, but at least where I live you have a meter reader come by monthly to check usage. I don't think it would add too much additional cost to also have them shutoff water to gross offenders at the same time. A better question is how this would affect apartments and duplexes that often share a single meter and don't measure usage with a high level of granularity.
Last edited by Enoch the Red; 04-14-2015 at 04:13 PM.
Shouldn't be too hard to install additional meters, something they should do anyway - after all,ifwhen the price for water goes up, I really don't want to pay for my water-wasting neighbours.
What kind of absolute and utter moron made this possible?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Then you get all kind of niceties about water use in shared areas etc., for example we don't have a personal energy and water bill because we share kitchen, washing machine, and heating, so it's impossible to individualise those bills, they are just split.
Probably historic from times when water shortage was less of an issue. I've been trying to read up on it but it's pretty complex from what I can tell. Over here, farmers generally are okay with just the rainfall plus groundwater sucked up by capillary forces, only in dry periods they irrigate. Price for that in my water authority district is €0,19/m3 for water they extract from the ground (compare to the prices California farmers are complaining about, which is around $1/m3 - though of course that's different from the fees for extracting ground water yourself, which was free in California until recently). But it depends per district, especially since some are polders where keeping the water levels and flushing water to keep the quality right can be complex.What kind of absolute and utter moron made this possible?
However, I can't really tell whether those prices are the complete picture for California - there's talk about water allocations, seniority in rights,* etc., which makes me wonder whether these are the prices a farmer pays, or if this is what he pays for buying more than his allocated water, by purchasing excess from others (which is what I am inclined to think, why else would farmers be selling their share of water)? And what the rules are for extracting water yourself (and whether that's even an option there). I'm also assuming they don't use tap quality water for irrigation, because otherwise they pay maximum 1/10th of the water price we have here (in a river delta, not a desert).
*over here, in cases of drought, farmers are not high in the priority list for who gets water - first tier is safety (think stability of water defenses), ground levels (drying out a polder or mire/peat areas makes the area 'sink'), and nature (for permanent effects), then potable water and energy supply, followed by capital intensive crops and process water, and only then other farms, shipping, industry, etc.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...-drought-grows
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...-water-wastersIn the northern Sacramento Valley, 50 rice farmers this year agreed to forfeit part of their crop and sell their water at double the usual price to drought-stricken peers to the south.For the rice farmers who give up some of their water, “the price comes down to what they would get for their rice, so the profits are about the same,” Trimble said.
...
The inflated amounts paid for water reflects “the number of people who don’t have access to underground water, who’ve planted very valuable perennial crops,” said Richard Howitt, one of the authors of the report.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/bu...-low.html?_r=0You might expect water-scarce parts of the country to pay higher rates. But that's not usually the case. As you can see in this chart, water-use rates have little connection to geographic region, and even less connection to drought. Los Angeles and San Diego are western cities with more expensive rates, while Denver, El Paso, Phoenix, and Las Vegas are relatively inexpensive, according to Brookings:
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar...arket-20140328The price of water going into Americans’ homes often does not even cover the cost of delivering it, let alone the depreciation of utilities’ infrastructure or their R&D. It certainly doesn’t account for other costs imposed by water use — on, say, fisheries or the environment — caused by taking water out of rivers or lakes.Consumers have little incentive to conserve. Despite California’s distress, about half of the homes in the capital, Sacramento, still don’t have water meters, paying a flat fee no matter how much water they consume.
Some utilities do worse: charging decreasing rates the more water is consumed. Utilities, of course, have little incentive to discourage consumption: The more they did that the more their revenues would decline.
...
Their water rights are primarily subject to state law. In the West, they have been allocated by a method that closely resembles “first come first served.” The first farm that drew water had a right to whatever it needed pretty much forever. Junior users — who arrived later — had to stand in line.
Farmers pay if the government brings the water to the farm, say via an aqueduct from the Colorado River. But the fees are minimal. Farmers in California’s Imperial Irrigation District pay $20 per acre-foot, less than a tenth of what it can cost in San Diego. And the government has often subsidized farmers via things like interest-free loans to cover upfront investments. (An acre-foot is the amount it takes to cover one acre of land a foot deep in water.)
This kind of arrangement helps explain why about half the 60 million acres of irrigated land in the United States use flood irrigation, just flooding the fields with water, which is about as wasteful a method as there is. It also helps explain why underground water reserves declined by 53 million acre-feet between 2003 and 2014, about twice the volume of Lake Mead.
This is hardly the only obstacle to conservation. A farm that doesn’t use its full allotment of water risks forfeiting it for not putting it to “beneficial use.” And any water saved automatically flows to other farmers with junior rights.
Farmers in many states are theoretically allowed to lease unused water. But the many holders of junior rights can block them. And they are legion:California has granted rights to five times its average annual flow of surface water.
These restrictions have perverse consequences. San Diego, for instance, isbuilding the nation’s biggest desalination plant to produce fresh water at a cost of about $2,000 per acre-foot. But alfalfa growers in Southern California last year used hundreds of billions of gallons growing alfalfa that might fetch at best $340 a ton, or $920 per acre-foot of water.
But nearly half of California farms still use flood irrigation, when using sprinklers or drip systems could save nearly as much water every year as the 9 million acre-feet all 38 million of us use.
...
The cost to our environment is steep. California's salmon and steelhead populations are either extinct, endangered or in decline. The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, switching yard for most of the state's water supplies, is close to ecological collapse because too much water is pumped out of it or is diverted before it gets there.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Water use in shared areas? Watering the lawn is already restricted and I'm not exactly sure what else there would be that requires water. And no personal energy bill? Yeah, that's a great idea.
I'm sorry, but I don't consider those outdated and probably quite problematic installations an excuse.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Not sure what else? I already listed washing machines which are often shared (I admit sharing kitchens or even bathrooms is far less common). We share water, electricity and gas bills because we cannot know our individual consumption. Perhaps outdated but far from common. Anyway, you could get a ration for the entire building and just let the occupants work it out themselves.
But I don't think rationing us even necessary, simply charging for use is probably enough to reduce massive amounts. As quoted from an article above, in for example Sacramento half of the homes don't even have a water meter. And considering agriculture uses three quarters of all the water, savings in homes will only get you so far. Especially when you consider the last article that claims simply dropping flood irrigation would save more water than all households combined even use. So simply changing the water market would probably mean you don't even need to ration household consumption (though charging for use would be a smart thing to do).
Over here total water use has dropped in spite of population growth, and the use was probably less wasteful to begin with as water wasn't as cheap.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
We have washing machines which take coins (or similar tokens/solutions). Thus everyone pays according to their consumption - I mean, I'd be annoyed if my bill went up because the family below me got a baby.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
God? California rice production is mostly along the Sacramento River, in areas with crappy drainage that isn't suitable for other crops. For all that the region is relatively low-rainfall, the ecosystem before man came in was one of parched land during the dry season and tule marsh during the wet/melt season. Actually, the crappy drainage creating seasonal marsh-conditions might be a product of the general low rainfall.
I do know that something like 40% of the water supply is locked to environmental use (preserving habitats, maintaining flow for the salmon spawn, etc), but a lot of that is in the wet northern portion of the state and is mostly unconnected to the rest of the state, hydrologically.
And I can't begin to tell you how many things are wrong with that LA Times article, starting with that "About 75% of water used in the state goes to agriculture" bit. To get that, it A) had to be talking only about the allocated and used water and not the water supply in general, it had to exclude any and all environmental use so that it was only talking about agricultural and urban use, and then it had to be talking about gross use and not net so it's not counting water returned back into the system. And that's just the first error in the article.
If you care to go browsing sources, I suggest you start with this one
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/rep...HChapter2R.pdf
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Thanks, will check that out
edit: your link does mention that if you exclude those disconnected areas and look at net use, agriculture is at 62% (and that it's 77% of gross use for human use, which is presumably what the LA Times article referred to).
Last edited by Flixy; 04-14-2015 at 06:41 PM.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Well, let's wait until the aquifers run dry - then they'll have fun when the ground begins to sink
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
As I said, if you only talk about water used rather than water in the system, and if you don't include whole sections of the state where there isn't much agricultural use at all and water gets used for other things, then yes, you can really boost the proportion you consider devoted to agricultural use. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and saying they're just using a statistic in error and not deliberately distorting the picture themselves.Thanks, will check that out
edit: your link does mention that if you exclude those disconnected areas and look at net use, agriculture is at 62% (and that it's 77% of gross use for human use, which is presumably what the LA Times article referred to).
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
I wonder how the cost compares between desalination and building some sort of aqueduct infrastructure from Oregon, or maybe Washington, down to California. It rains a hell of a lot up there - why not catch some of that rain and run it down south in some kind of big-ass high-flow pipe line?
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
How does Florida fit in your scheme of things? Most of the tourist areas were built by changing swamps (the Everglades) into Disney Land, resorts, airports, and roadways...using federal tax dollars.
I think you have a distorted, idealized view of what Capitalism means to Liberty and Freedom.
We'll be fine. All we need to do is kick Nestle out. Search 'Nestle stealing water'.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I did. And the actual reporting (vs crappy blogging) I found centered on the reporting coming from the Desert Sun. Which is about a plant that operates through a deal with a Native American tribe and reservation. And those water rights are untouchable, a matter of treaty.
But hey, you're the type that thinks that thinks fiscal outlooks can be changed just by confiscated a few fortunes.
It doesn't matter how much water Nestle pumps to sell as potable plastic, drinking water is and remains a very small percentage of water use. The fact that you have communities like Palm Springs at all is far more problematic. Forgive me if I don't care about their gold courses.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Holy crap...that's a rule 12 violation if there ever was one. REPORTED! BTW, the Nestle thing was meant tounge-in-cheek. I thought that would be obvious from the search results.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
This whole debate confuses me. People are arguing as if there aren't any viable ways to reduce agriculture's freshwater use without irreparably damaging the industry through high costs or restrictions. This is patently untrue. Much drier places in the world have thriving agricultural sectors. The solutions are technological and not necessarily that expensive - but they do require a change in culture and, likely, regulation.
First off, the idea of using some 40% of your freshwater for agriculture (vs. only ~10% for households) beggars belief. Treated wastewater can dramatically reduce freshwater usage. It requires some more infrastructure, yes, but is far cheaper than desalination and directly replaces freshwater. I would assume that currently most of California dumps their (treated) sewage rather than using it, which is a criminal waste of perfectly useful water. I believe Israel recycles upwards of 80% of their freshwater for agriculture, and as a result has dramatically lowered their freshwater usage (the vast majority of their freshwater is used for households). In the middle of the Great Plains, there might not be enough wastewater to make such infrastructure worth it (given the low population density and infrequent metropolises), but in California there's plenty to go around. That's a good start, and it doesn't require agriculture to dramatically reduce their consumption.
Then there's irrigation methods, already mentioned here. Drip irrigation should be the norm, and very wasteful water usage should be banned. Oh, if that offends the sensibilities of the free marketeers here, one could slap a high tax on water simultaneously with tax credits for switching to drip irrigation... consider it a Pigovian tax and call it a day. Wasteful household usage should also be curbed through a combination of financial incentives and education.
Then there's all of the technology that the water authorities can use to limit waste. Vast amounts of water are typically lost due to leaks and the like in a system. Smart monitoring systems can dramatically reduce water loss during transport at fairly reasonable prices.
And after all that - assuming that doesn't solve California's woes - there's always desalination. It's a bit energy intensive and expensive, but costs have been driven down through new technologies and scale.
As far as I can tell, almost none of the above has actually been implemented, even in 'extraordinary drought' conditions. There are plenty of countries with experience in this - Israel, Australia, the Gulf states, etc. - and they make do with dramatically lower freshwater supplies. Yes, these suggestions will probably make water a bit more expensive, but there are lots of relatively cheap low hanging fruit. This is not an insoluble problem, merely a political failure to act.
Why would I think it was tongue-in-cheek? That's exactly the sort of position I expect from you and the sort of material you usually draw on to support them.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Don't blame me for your obtuseness.
Tha's a pretty sweeping allegation. Much of that "dumped" treated sewage is used in place of reservoir releases. Got to keep the smelt happy you know.
Last edited by Being; 04-17-2015 at 08:34 PM.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
They use at most a couple million acre-feet of treated sewage for agriculture (LF's link with admittedly old data said 0.2-0.5 maf pa). They could use a hell of a lot more. Yes, some of their treated sewage is used to recharge groundwater and the like, but much of it is wasted.
That would require a solid infrastructure - it's pretty much par for the course to treat the symptoms instead of getting rid of the cause. I still don't understand how US-Americans can accept chlorinated water.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
It doesn't offend my free market sensibilities. It offends my natural ecosystem sensibilities. I'm going to reiterate something I pointed out earlier and which people ignored. Massive flooding (a great deal of it endoherric) is the norm for the ecoystem over here, and significant endoherric flooding one of the two primary sources of recharge for our rather active aquifer (the other being seepage from watercourses in the bordering uplands).
Drip vs flood irrigation is about more than just the most efficient water-delivery for some generic concept of "crops." Ditto for complaints about seepage. A water-management system that minimizes the water not flowing into the ocean is not one that is actually supporting a healthy ecosystem and hydrologic cycle.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
That your aquifers are rather "active", that I doubt. Not to mention that they've managed to actually poison several of them through wastewater.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
You're free to think anything you want. Your almost total ignorance about a subject has never kept you from rushing to judgement in the past and I certainly don't expect it to here or in the future.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Once again, spare me your holier-than-thou attitude. I wonder however how one does refill aquifers which took millenia to fill. Feel free to ignore that problem, doesn't fit your narrative.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Goddamnit, I had a full reply and then firefox ate it.
Yes, we have a rather active aquifer. Pre-development equilibrium flow into and out of the aquifer was ~2 million acre-feet annually. Now we're pumping out millions of acre feet, some of which seeps back into the aquifer. Between the natural-flow recharge and that returned despite/because of human activity, actual overdraft is limited to an estimated 800,000-1.5 million acre feet annually, with some storage space permanently lost to compaction of permeable deposits consequent to water withdrawal.
There have been periods when pumping pretty much stopped for a while and the aquifer had risen back to the levels prior to the previous period of intense pumping within a decade (although because of the compaction, some of that was an illusion).
Some aquifers, so-called fossil water, like the Ogalalla below the US Central plains, or that one drawn on by Qadaffi's project in Libya, are not going to recharge. Other aquifers do recharge but rather slowly, like the Great Artesian Basin in Australia. The one here isn't like either of those sets.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
LF, if you'd prefer I change my suggestion that irrigation practices should only follow the recommendations of hydrologists, then I'll gladly agree. Somehow, though, I doubt that current irrigation methods are in any way designed based on natural processes to recharge depleted aquifers.
I didn't say a word about intent Wiggin. I was objecting to your claim that anything but the most voluble possible flow of water into the oceans should be banned as "wasteful". Your arrogant and highhanded assumption that your way was the One True Way regardless of what actually fits the local conditions.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
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