Any Californians here afraid of the drought problem?

[kyrax12]

I wonder how they are going to fix it.

 

[Jay5]

im suprised they havent blamed bush on it.that state is plagued with liberals

Keep the political trolling out of Off Topic. -Admin DrPizza

 

[sandorski]

Worry would seem a better word than Afraid, IMO.

They should be worried.

 

[quikah]

They can't "fix" it. Just need rain. Farmers will get the brunt of it. Probably lose a lot of farms if the drought persists for long. Higher food prices. Worse come to worse the cities can get by no problem, either build desalinization plants or just import water.

 

[matt3D]

The ALS ice water challenge sure isn't helping...

 

[Craig234]

im suprised they havent blamed bush on it.that state is plagued with liberals

You don't know what the word plagued means. We're plagued with sunshine, more educated citizens, better politics, more wealth, leadership from tech to Hollywood, the most productive agriculture in the country, many of the most beautiful places in the world, a lot better healthcare system that red (for bleeding?) states, all kinds of things you nutjobs hate.

There are thousands of things to blame Bush for he and Republicans deserve blame for. We don't need to find false issues.

As for this one, well, it is related to climate change, an issue we'd be doing a lot better on the 2000 election had gone to its actual winner, Gore, who would have taken good actions to reduce the effects, instead of the sellout Republicans who destroy the future of the environment and the country for short-term benefits. But it's not really a short term issue, so it might not make that much difference.

In the meantime, keep up the ignorance and playing the victim pretending attacks on Bush aren't justified and are just unfair witch hunts. If you weren't deluded, you'd be a liberal.

As for the issue - it's not touching the citizens much yet, but I think it is of great concern to the agriculture. We're likely to see the main impacts in less food and higher prices.

California always has water challenges (which we've usually solved by taking 'our' water from whoever has it), but a drought is harmful.

Conservation is likely to increase - the ALS 'bucket challenge' got a response saying to think twice before wasting the water, which is pretty silly.

80% of our water goes to agriculture, for what it's worth.

 

[Red Squirrel]

There's probably a lot they could do, but all that cost money and governments tend to not spend money very effectively so they wont do things that make sense such as desalination plants.

 

[shortylickens]

They need reverse osmosis on a large scale.

The states entire west border is an ocean. This really cant be a difficult problem.

 

[Mai72]

Yep. Blame it on the liberals. They control the weather. Didn't you guys know that? It's the liberals! The liberals are coming!!

 

[dethman]

mildly.

 

[Remobz]

I wish it would rain more often where I live

 

[Red Squirrel]

I wish it would not rain as often where I live... you can have our rain.

Winter may as well had started August 1st here because there's only been a few days where I could do stuff outside.

 

[djnsmith7]

I'm not afraid of it, but it is a serious problem. We could use a very wet winter.

 

[FleshLight]

Cost of a 50 MGD desalination plant is ~$0.5 billion (the carlsbad one is $1 billion but it is the first large scale one in california).

Using LADWP, which supplies water to the City of LA as an example: LADWP bought ~220,000 AF of water from MWD in 2012. That's 220,000 * 325,000 gal/AF = 71,500,000,000 gallons per year or 195 MGD. To meet LADWP imported water demands, you'd need at least $2B worth of desal plants. Given that it is nearly impossible to build anything on the coast, I'd estimate the cost would be at least double.

So for every major city in California dependent on the state water project, expect to spend $2 billion each.

 

[mikeford]

They need reverse osmosis on a large scale.

The states entire west border is an ocean. This really cant be a difficult problem.

Its controversial, but a plant is going in someplace around Huntington Beach with contracts to supply water to several cities. Many places around the world do it, seems like an area likely to grow rapidly.

 

[Craig234]

One simple point: oppose any water privatization.

There is massive interest in private companies making a killing on inflated water prices.

 

[mikeford]

Water commerce is going to grow, maybe with pipelines running large distances.

OTOH in Calif way before it hurts, you could just outlaw lawns etc. All non farm users likely waste huge amounts of water just from sloppy practices and non essentials.

 

[mikeford]

One simple point: oppose any water privatization.

There is massive interest in private companies making a killing on inflated water prices.

Legally farmers for example own the water they pump from wells on their land and already are selling it to areas short on water.

 

[DrPizza]

Cost of a 50 MGD desalination plant is ~$0.5 billion (the carlsbad one is $1 billion but it is the first large scale one in california).

Using LADWP, which supplies water to the City of LA as an example: LADWP bought ~220,000 AF of water from MWD in 2012. That's 220,000 * 325,000 gal/AF = 71,500,000,000 gallons per year or 195 MGD. To meet LADWP imported water demands, you'd need at least $2B worth of desal plants. Given that it is nearly impossible to build anything on the coast, I'd estimate the cost would be at least double.

So for every major city in California dependent on the state water project, expect to spend $2 billion each.

In some of the cities around here, it's not uncommon for $100/month water bills. What's the population that the LADWP would serve? Estimating 4million people, 2 billion dollars is $500 per person. Spread out over 10 years (120 months), that's a little over $4 per month per person. What's California waiting for??

edit: or if it's 10 million in Los Angeles County, then it works out to $200 per person, or $6.67 per month for a family of four, over 10 years.

 

[Craig234]

Legally farmers for example own the water they pump from wells on their land and already are selling it to areas short on water.

Well (no pun intended) yes, but that's a small part of the water they use.

The issue involves the water the state facilitates.

 

[Craig234]

Water commerce is going to grow, maybe with pipelines running large distances.

OTOH in Calif way before it hurts, you could just outlaw lawns etc. All non farm users likely waste huge amounts of water just from sloppy practices and non essentials.

Lawns -> voters -> democracy in action.

Don't expect lawn bans any time soon. Remember Carter 'conserve' led to the Reagan mess.

 

[rockyct]

In some of the cities around here, it's not uncommon for $100/month water bills. What's the population that the LADWP would serve? Estimating 4million people, 2 billion dollars is $500 per person. Spread out over 10 years (120 months), that's a little over $4 per month per person. What's California waiting for??

edit: or if it's 10 million in Los Angeles County, then it works out to $200 per person, or $6.67 per month for a family of four, over 10 years.

We're waiting to make sure the Carlsbad plant actually succeeds. The first big plant in Tampa is kind of a mess so there's not guarantee this one will work at full capacity yet. There are a dozen other proposed plants if the one in Carlsbad works well and desalinization is pretty much the plan for future water projects. We still have water for our cities right now, but agriculture uses 80% of our water like Craig says so it's the farmers that are going to suffer. We'll never have enough desalinization plants to supply them water though so even in a serious drought like now, they will still suffer to some extent.

 

[mikeford]

The history of Calif is full of water rights issues. People upstream built dams, diverted water, and got rich from it.

LAMWD bought water rights or leases all over other parts of Calif and leave those areas dry.

Calif already has restrictions on watering lawns and washing cars, just not on building more houses.

 

[sportage]

When I lived out there for years, old CA seemed always to have water problems. I remember the state of CO threatened to cut off the southern CA water supply channeled from the CO river.
Basically CA is a desert (or is it desert)? A little of both I guess.
They need a long term fix of some kind.
I'd say using the pacific ocean as a water source.
Treating that ocean water into usable water.
But that would take a heck of a lot of $$$ to build those water treatment facilities.

 

[mikeford]

At the time I read about the sea water to drinking water the main complaint was that decades old technology was being used, but like anything you read in the media, facts rarely are allowed to get in the way of the story.

The catch with water from the sea is that it needs power as well as money. Maybe running off peak demand would be sufficient, but its trading one issue for another.

Calif is semi arid, something like 4 to 6 inches annual rainfall, mostly during a month or so in late fall and early spring, and that is on the wet west side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

A little Google turned up the following;

Half the cost of the plants is the power to run them.

$2,000 an acre-foot is typical of costs in a modern plant.

Pulling up groundwater from wells and recycling water can now cost the same or more, desalination is suddenly relatively affordable for many areas.

Surface water from reservoirs and mountain runoff, in plentiful years, can be as cheap as $100 an acre-foot.