Millions must cut water use in drought-stricken California

The way you get this to actually work is by pricing the water "appropriately". If something is cheap, people use lots of it. If it is expensive, they use less. It's not actually rocket science....but it does baffle Marxists completely.

Hmmm The dust bowl. Maybe the Okies are going to come home.

If only they'd had someone like Joseph to urge them to build more reservoirs; because years of drought were coming. Of course Pharaoh Newsome resents wise advice.

OTOH, #1, rationing water is not unlike the liberal bent re housing as real estate in CA continues to sell, in spite of inflation, interest rates, etc. Sacramento now edicts that each city state the number of units to be made available for who ? the 'homeless'? That hasn't cured that problem in the past. Can rent control in the whole state be next even though it impedes investors and the rule of supply vs demand? The CA Coastal Commission just threw a monkey-wrench into a water desalination plant in Dana Point this week. The political acting CCC has wrecked CA progress.

Someone please remind me... Is this the state which dumps billions of gallons of fresh water into the ocean for some reason they can't really explain and also lets millions of people wander in from elsewhere (also for some reason they can't really explain)? I can't imagine what the real problem might be.... 🙄

Although the aforementioned months were dry in many areas, the rainfall totals are in the normal range in most areas and above average in most. Average is a single number, normal is a range, for those who haven't thought about those terms. At my place we are about 15% below average but well above the normal minimum. I haven't run the numbers yet but I would guess within the 90 percentile range of the normal curve. We have a very wide range here. 11 to 112 inches in the last 120 years. Normal 80 percentile runs 32 to 72 inches. I can see the el nino pattern in the data after some smoothing is applied. What we really need is better reserves and sequestration of water resources.

We have a little over an acre that includes a lot of lawn and get irrigation water once a week. We generally run the sprinklers for several hours, and so far it has worked out. This year the water cut-off will probably be early. The problem with irrigation water is weed seeds and the massive pump which drives up the power bill. Water only costs about $60/year. Wish we could afford a well for irrigation. Oh well.

Correct, #4. The root problem is too many people in a desert. More collection would be smart. But Dems are never smart. But that source is still finite. There is an infinite source - the Pacific Ocean. In the 1880s in coastal Chile, there was a large mining operation. Coastal Chile is one of the harshest deserts in the world, essentially zero rainfall for long periods. The solution to support the mining was a very simple solar distillation system. It was built on the beach area, and consisted of a series of concrete troughs hundreds of feet long, built on an east-west axis, zig-zagging back and forth. The individual troughs were roughly 4 feet wide, and the concrete floors sloped carefully to cause a slow flow from the uppermost corner, where the sea water was introduced by a small pump, across the hundreds of feet, then to the next lower, parallel trough, always slightly downhill, water flowing slowly but steadily by gravity. On the south interior wall, raised up a foot or two, was a side trough which emptied out at the end of each long run. The troughs were covered with glass panes, tilted southward at the latitude angle. The sun heated the sea water, some of it vaporized, then condensed on the inside of the tilted glass, and ran down into the upper trough, and flowed out to the fresh water outlet at the ends of the zig zag sea water troughs. At the end of the long path....the now more salty sea water, emptied back into the ocean. The only power required was to pump a sontinuous flow of sea water up to the top of the long, zig-zag gravity path. The system used a few acres and, IIRC, generated 50,000 gallons of water a day in a harsh desert from sea water and sunshine, and having no moving parts beyond the pump, operated for decades without problems. In the 1880s, the pumping was, I believe, by a small steam engine, coal powered. Southern California could have thousands of these systems, although it would take some land, they could desalinate huge amounts of sea water with low tech, relatively cheap, durable solar systems. Today, the pumping could be also run with solar panels. Set it up, keep the vandals away and it's going to make lots of fresh water for decades for "free". Hire a smart engineer, and many of these "problems" have some sensible solutions. It's especially useful to have an engineer who studies history of technology in his spare time, too.

But, at least the Delta Smelt will be OK.

What California needs is more illegals.

Checking my notes: The Chilean desalination 1870s-1880s plant operated for 40 years, produced 6,000 gallons a day (memory off factor of 8, sorry), and produced about 1 gallon of fresh water per hour for every 8 square feet of the collector footprint. A peak capacity of 100,000 gallon per hour plant should take roughly 18 acres of land. Of course, it only makes water when the sun shines, which is often in California - but only in the daytime. Ten plants makes a million gallons per hour. I suspect that this is not a whole lot when you have so many millions of folks in, say LA. But a few of these would make a dent in things, it would seem. And very low operating cost, unlike the very expensive "high tech" reverse osmosis plants which take a lot of energy.

And, they Coastal Commission just recommended rejecting the decades-long desalinization water plant that's trying to be build in Huntington Beach. They act like they don't have an issue, or a crisis by rejecting such a prospect for regular, dependable water supply. They could stop flushing millions of gallons each year down the Sacramento Delta just to protect some small bait fish. Also, why aren't people building water pipelines? It wouldn't take too much effort, and it would ensure what's always described as "the 6th largest economy in the world if not part of the United States" to remain an active economic engine for the country. Lastly, they should stop using much of the water in all government buildings, universities, schools first, particularly to water lawns and areas like that.

Maybe the California plan was to make it almost impossible for anyone to afford to live there, then if that plan failed to move enough people out, then just let crime and homelessness get out of control, and people would leave. I even heard a story the other day about a ridiculous plan to build a tunnel to transfer water from the Mississippi river to Lake Mead. Wouldn't it be cheaper to build desalination plants using the Pacific Ocean?

But do they still divert millions of gallons a day to preserve that little salamander??? Just asking...

God forbid they should build some reservoirs.

People and lawns are not the problem. AT ALL. Here's a rough breakdown of where California water goes: Farming (mostly high water usage cash crops): 92% Industrial uses (manufacturing etc): 3% Residential (drinking, lawns, car wash, pools, everything): 2-3% Wastage through run off, evaporation, etc: 2% So, we could get rid of every single person in the state and their water usage and have almost no impact on the effects of the drought. All this residential water use limits are pure virtue signaling of no real world value to solve the water problem.

We drove into Pasadena this morning. The gardens in even the simplest neighborhoods are full of blooming bougainvillea (its bracts don’t turn color if they get too much water and the colors are glorious), jacaranda trees are about to become blue-purple clouds, fortnight lilies everywhere, and roses, roses, roses…. We’ll be fine.

Thanks #16 for a bit of reality. The usual suspects always show up on these threads. We miss Hollywood Bill, who used to set them straight. Someone mentioned on TV a few days ago, when the high price of living in California was mentioned (the mantra of many who live in the flat square states)… The response: ”You get what you pay for”…. This Native Californian. who would live nowhere else, heartily agrees...

California (through Caltech/Stanford/etc.) should investigate implementing small nuclear desalination plants anchored well out at sea with their pure water output piped to the coast. That would safely resolve the problem... assuming all bureaucratic red tape could be abolished.

As someone who has lived under drought restrictions in California I have a few thoughts. As #16 said, there is a lot of virtue signaling here. It is so frustrating to have to cut 25% of your water bill and letting your yard die while seeing the business customers receiving no restrictions at all. When I lived in San Jose my local private water company was housed in a rented building with lush grass landscaping that stayed a lovely shade of green while residential lawns turned yellow and crunchy. They didn’t have to cut back because “they were a business.” Farmers in the lower Central Valley were allocated only a portion of their normal water amounts yet the rice farms in north of Sacramento (for rice that went to Asia) had no restrictions placed on them. Do you know how rice is grown? Flood a field 1’deep and keep it flooded the entire time the rice grows. How much evaporation occurs in the multitude of 100+* days in the Central Valley? And don’t get me started on water storage! California’s wonderful reservoir system was built by Pat Brown, Jerry Brown’s father, and no reservoirs have been added since. The population has increased in the state by orders of magnitude but nothing has been done to secure enough water for the residents. And all those “historically low” reservoirs? Often, though this is NEVER mentioned, old reservoirs are drained for repairs, usually during a drought. They never seem to drain them when the state is flush with water. Why? Optics. I remember taking a tour of the San Jose Water District’s property and our guide was an engineer, not a docent (they were short handed so he volunteered to help.) We passed an empty percolation pond and the engineer was asked if there wasn’t enough water to fill it. With surprising candor he said no, the district had plenty of water and had it stashed all over in the county (he would know, that was his job.) He admitted that the “higher ups” liked to keep the more public percolation ponds empty because it helped convince people to save water. And, sure enough, two days later the water company announced 20% drought restrictions, and a picture of the percolation pond we had viewed was figured prominently in the media. Oh - and people’s lack of participation in reducing their water footprint? After years of restrictions many people have already cut back as much as they can with outside watering and are now faced with having to reduce indoor water use. That is so much less discretionary! No more baths? 3 minute showers? Wash huge loads of clothes 1 time/week? Use paper plates? Some people CAN’T reduce anymore and remain sanitary. But car washes and public pools will remain open! The Water War in California is mostly driven by crazy elitist partisan politics, caused by poorly thought out policies that please progressives least affected by their own decisions. Arrgh! Ask me how I really feel!! So glad I moved.

Re, #14, I believe it is a fish called a river smelt, and last I heard, billions of gallons flushed to keep some useless rare, tiny fish healthy, while wiping out hundreds of square miles of orchards and productive fields.

Yeah, the great unwashed will be rationed, but Nanyang Maxine, etc al, their swwill fill their swimming pool and stand u der there three headed showers because they are special

A better story would be "Leftist Politicians in California are dying for lack of water."

If you live in a desert you don't need an English green lawn.