California is Running Out of Water

newtboysays...

What do they mean “running out”? We’ve been out of water for decades.

As bad as this sounds, I think he’s under selling the problem big time.

Federal officials announced in February that California farmers will get no federal water this year, zero (that’s the Central Valley Project), while the state has allocated agriculture only 15% of normal from its distribution systems.
Meanwhile the state has also demanded agricultural water districts and cities stop diverting water from rivers and streams along the San Joaquin River. This includes 200 cities in and around the Bay Area, like San Francisco which gets up to 85% of its water from those rivers and streams.
Some rivers and streams in California have stopped flowing, all have reduced flow. The Mad River, just blocks from me, is usually 6-8’ deep bank to bank (75-100’) for at least 6 months out of each year, the last 3 years it never reached its banks and remained a shallow stream all winter, becoming a creek in summer. It is abnormal, most rivers are worse off.
Aquifers have already been depleted so much that the entire Central Valley is sinking rapidly. Reservoirs are WELL below 50%, despite what this clip said (Shasta is reporting at 40% today, but driving over it it looks like maybe 10-20% full with no inflow).
So far this year along, over 1000 residential wells have gone dry. This includes many entire communities losing their drinking water supplies completely. The number of agriculture wells that can no longer function is uncountable. It’s estimated we will lose 2700 drinking water wells this year state wide.

The California water problem isn’t a pressing future issue, it’s an ongoing unmitigated disaster we’ve ignored for far too long. At this point, it’s likely insurmountable, and a collapse of California agriculture will make today’s inflation seem like the good old days when average workers could afford to eat. Start a garden, it’s going to get weird.

cloudballoonsays...

Countries like Israel, due to its geolocation/geopolitical climate, it's a desalination powerhouse. California can do the same. But a balanced approach (environmental harm vs. human necessity vs. commercial viability) is hard to achieve:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-rejects-plan-desalination-plant-2022-05-13/

Hope that California can gets its act together quick enough w/ more water recycling plants:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/worlds-largest-water-recycling-plant-located-in-orange-county-getting-major-expansion/ar-AAYLkXL

Some real & fair regulation & enforcement, with violators getting punished helps (HA!).

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