This is the kind of thing that makes ambitions to colonize other planets seem silly. If we can't even maintain or control the environment of a planet that is highly livable, how are we expected to terraform Mars?
Colonizing a close planet like Mars only has any sense as a way of avoiding extinction in case something really nasty happens in Earth. I can't think any other motive to try that.
Wouldn’t you say that the very existence of, say, Las Vegas, is evidence of the possibility of altering an extreme environment to be fit for human conditions?
The Hoover Dam only exists because of the Colorado river. The closest Mars has are the polar ice caps, which isn't at all close. (If it were, I doubt Denmark would be sending economic subsidizes to Greenland.)
Mars could be a laboratory for learning to do these things. As a species, we might feel more comfortable trying exotic methods of controlling the climate on Mars than we might here on Earth. Though I am not sure what the ethics are for terraforming a planet which does not appear to currently have life, it might be less ethically and practically hazardous to experiment with global-scale climate alterations on Mars. Such experiments might have fewer severe consequences on Mars (in terms of flora/fauna extinctions, human deaths, etc.) than a similar experiment on Earth.
At this point it would take an absurd amount of rain to compensate for the drought. We've been getting insufficient rainfall for years and been consuming water at an unsustainable rate that whole time. Our reservoirs are all extremely depleted. To really be safe we'd have to refill all the reservoirs AND make up for the rainfall deficit on an ongoing basis.
There's an easier way than climate control - it's called a pipeline. I'm quite astonished that the richest state in one of the richest countries in the world can't sort this out.
[1] Yes, Congress used to have an office designed to help members of Congress understand science and technology. Congress, under Newt Gingrich, defunded it.
A social fix would probably be cheaper than a technological fix.
They stated the real core of the problem at the beginning of the article: they cannot afford to move and they cannot sell their house. If you could restore that option, you wouldn't need to solve drought.
Not really. They would selling to someone and so the population would not diminish and demand would not diminish. Good luck selling "Great house but we have this drought problem."
I think there is probably some sort of reasonable argument for governments to undevelop undesirable housing (i.e., with a bulldozer, and some sort of modest but reasonable recompense to the current owner).
The very idea makes us gnash our teeth, but over decades, just getting rid of unsustainable/poor/etc. housing will likely be a net benefit to society.
It is extremely dubious that even if we had the technological mean, we should do it. Because altering the rain pattern in California will have repercussions elsewhere we can't probably assess very well. There are already plenty of tensions when a river is used for irrigation in multiple countries. People downstream are usually unhappy if there are not enough water left...
There is one way that is both extremely simple and politically impossible: start charging farmers market rates. They pay too little, use too much, and represent a gigantic portion of total water consumption.
I'm confused. You think that those poor people living in that town could afford to pay more for their water than farmers? The water they are getting is DONATED at the moment. Free.
The market is not the best way to distribute water if the people in those are willing but cannot pay.
Even if you're poor, I doubt having to drive to the fire house and fill buckets or 55-gallon drums with free water is going to be cheaper than a municipal water system (paying for gas, paying for those buckets, the time that you can't spend working at an hourly job).
I would expect that if this persists, a commercial water delivery industry will spring up in the area. Of course, either way, you are very motivated to use much less water than you would if your well worked for actually free.
They're also not even on the state water system at all, so what Central Valley farmers do or don't use doesn't affect the particular situation written about in this article. The article is about people in remote areas, off the water grid, who have private wells that draw from shallow aquifers replenished by rainwater. Since there is very little rain, the wells are dry this year, so they have to truck in water in plastic drums.
The agriculture vs. residential vs. industrial policy/pricing debate is more about how to split water between entities connected to the big state-run aqueduct system, e.g. Central Valley agriculture vs. LA/SF. Which is also important, but a different situation from this one.
This is a problem of zero rain, not water consumption. These people are living out in an area where there is no municipal water hookup. If you have never lived in a rural area with no municipal water, or never lived on a farm, or never been real poor then I can see how your post might seem like a great solution to you. The fact of the matter is that there has been a drought for 3 years and this area happens to be one of the hardest hit. Their lack of water is because the rain hasn't come to replenish the ground water.
You make some very qualifying statements.... Would you like to provide evidence that farmers pay too little for water? That they use too much water? And what is this gigantic portion of water consumption that you are referring to? I mean, they do kind of need to use water to grow their respective foods... sooooo I guess I wonder what world you expect to live in where farmers don't use more water than the average person?
"Agriculture accounts for 80% of water consumption in California, for example, but only 2% of economic activity. Farmers flood the land to grow rice, alfalfa and other thirsty crops. By one account, over the years they have paid just 15% of the capital costs of the federal system that delivers much of their irrigation water."
Trying to grow rice in California is as ludicrous as the Saudi plans to grow wheat in the desert with oil-desalinated water. I appreciate this is a bad situation for the farmers and in an ideal world the climate change mitigation fund would compensate them for stopping.
Personally, it makes sense to me to try and move water from the oceans through pipelines, even if the desalination process might be costly, as judging by the extent of the droughts this isn't something you can expect rainfall to fix any time soon.
What is the waste water treatment process like? Is any effort being made to replenish the original sources? My understanding is that the water is brought in with pipelines from across a natural water shed that way almost none of the extracted water will return to its original place, instead it will either evaporate and carried out to the sea if used for irrigation or flushed out as waste water.
Quoting from the article: "Hundreds of these homes are hooked to wells that are treated as private property: When the water is there, it is solely controlled by owners. Because the land is unincorporated, it is not part of a municipal water system, and connecting to one would be prohibitively expensive."
So, the waster water treatment is septic, the original source is rainwater, and there are no pipelines like what you are talking about.
Solution to problem: Raise water rates. Why is this so hard? Might force people out of the state, but clearly there are too many given the present resources.
This is a subtle way of saying that there are too many undesirable people. Because clearly raising the rate would only drive away people who could not afford them.
Raising the water rates would punish the people using millions of gallons of water for agriculture and industry. It would have essentially zero effect on the people using it for personal use, even the very poor.
I've seen similar plans for electricity. The more you use the higher the price goes. For an average persons use the price would be the same (or even lower than previous depending on the scale).
If it's raised for everyone one that's just not true. For the very poor even a small increase in their bills could have huge implications that you and I just can't appreciate. And they're the ones who can't necessarily just pack up and leave because they don't have the resources to.
Raising the rates for the right parties is what we should really be talking about but the question then is, who? Small farms and industry would be hit very hard but the ones with deep pockets likely wouldn't blink and they're the biggest problem.
In my opinion it would need to be a sliding scale. Not just a "$x for n gallons" pricing structure but the more you use the greater the cost per gallon. That would hit the biggest users the hardest while leaving the average person unaffected (unless for some reason they're using absurd amounts in which case they need to be affected).
We have a system like what you describe here, but for electricity.
The "problem" is that the large users go off the grid (via solar, etc). Well, that is not a problem. The problem is that this introduces variability into the grid. That variability is expensive to smooth over, with the result that it can actually be more expensive as a fully loaded cost to supplement your power with solar than getting it from the grid, due to the equipment needed to manage the sun's mood swings.
The result of all this is it is really hard to get the incentives right for pricing electricity. I suspect the same is true for water; it is hard to store, there are demand spikes, and there are things like private wells that have weird effects on the water available to everyone else.
Easy solution, don't allow people to connect/add power to the grid. Want solar panels? Great! Use your panel power or lose it (or store on your own batteries but no hooking up to the grid and selling it to others). Or, if you want to hook up to the grid because you don't want to waste that energy then give it freely to the transmission company who has overhead managing the lines and smoothing out the power loads.
Discussing lawn watering is a distraction. It's literally a drop in the ocean. Industry, power generation, and agriculture are where all the water goes. Pretending that residential usage matters at all is to take ones eye off the ball.
Can someone explain why raising water rates is not a logical solution to this problem? The primary reason why Californian water utilities don't have the resources to invest in large scale reclaimation projects must be related to not charging enough enough for the product. Furthermore, water availability is far more important than water affordability.
I'm reading George Gilder's book The Israel Test, and the Israelis have made enormous improvements in the desert to sustainably farm with advanced greenhouses, and they have pioneered desalination methods. I don't know how Californian water utilities operate, but I presume that increased fees from water consumption would go directly toward improving the water acquisition and distribution network.
Now, there isn't much that can be done about private wells, but responsible water management across the state (farms) will reduce draw down and lengthen the lives of these wells.
EDIT: I see the major issue being that farms probably have private wells anyway, so utility regulation does nothing. Also, well regulation or raising rates would not put most farms out of business, but change farming practices. Total loss of water access puts farms out of business. This argument misses the big picture. Its all moot of farms can dig wells as they please. The state is seeking to implement controls.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/us/politics/desperately-dr...
From an economics point of view, it matters whether the water utility has a monopoly. If the people who would end up paying the higher rates have difficulty switching to a different competitor utility, then the incentive to invest in providing more water cheaper is not there. This is generally why many basic utilities, like water and electricity are highly regulated. I don't know much about California's water utilities though, so maybe the competition is in fact there.
Valid point, but you are implying market rate, or what someone is willing to pay for an item. I am merely suggesting that the water rate reflect the cost of goods sold, where that cost includes the implementation of a more robust and sustainable network to prevent bone dry water sources. No market gouging, just proper long term planning.
Sounds great, if I have a private well. (The people in this article have a private well.) It forces everyone else to pay for higher water rates so that my free well has more water.
Therefore, won't increasing the rates simply encourage more people to build a private well and avoid the fees when, say, watering the lawn?
> Schorr believes that the Israeli system, at least in theory, is ideally suited to protect the natural environment. Environmental woes, however, beset the country. Due to falling water tables or surface diversions nearly all the streams, including the Jordan below the Sea of Galilee, have been dried up. Some serve as sewage canals causing extensive damage to flora and fauna, The levels of the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee are dropping precipitously. Falling water tables in the Coastal Aquifer have caused saltwater incursions. Clearly there is a theory-practice disconnect in Israeli water law. ...
> He finds that the public food is generally motivating Israeli water policy less than the interest of a particular sector: agriculture. The state might officially own water, but officials are allocating the water in response to agricultural interests.
I think we should gradually raise the cost of water, especially to farms that pay orders of magnitude less than residential. If rice farmers can't stay in business if we reduce water subsidies then they should go out of business.
I would note that Isreal has a total land area of around 21,000 km^2. California has 400,000 km^2 of land, and has about 175,000 km^2 of of agricultural land alone. While there is sure to be something to be learned from the Israeli experience, there's no reason to believe that those lessons scale to the size of the problem CA has. In particular, things like use of greenhouses on commiserate scale is probably infeasible.
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