The Future of Water
This story about the siphoning of water from the Sacramento River to the big corporate farms and cities of southern California says a lot about the future of water resources in the West, and the nation more broadly. Water is the #1 issue in western development. It’s a true axiom in American history that those who control water control power. With climate change, the West’s oversubscribed water supplies are more hotly contested than ever. It’s pretty clear to me that over time, the priorities for water are going to be a) cities, b) corporate farms, 3) slightly less corporate farms, 4) the environment. Meaning the environment will get as little as the will allow. And despite the very real power of agriculture, it doesn’t match the power of voters who are desperate for their own water.
you didn’t include non-agricultural industrial use — this uses more than half of the water in industrialized nations. I guess unless you meant this by cities
It would mostly be used there I would think.
As a resident of one of those SoCal cities, I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to lump us in with the big corporate farms. Despite the popular image of suburban water waste (which is certainly accurate), 80-85% of CA’s water is used by agriculture.
Tell that to the folks in the Truckee Basin.
30% of the Truckee River is diverted to grow alfalfa in the desert. Doesn’t this support my point?
And the other 70%?
Well, I’m relying on Wikipedia here, but I’m guessing that the resort areas around Lake Tahoe take a good chunk, but that the lion’s share goes to Reno. What remains after that and all the agricultural uses empties into Pyramid Lake, which I notice is surrounded by an Indian Reservation. Is that what you’re trying to get at? It’s probably pretty polluted by that point. I bet they’d like to have the water that’s currently growing alfalfa in the desert.
What’s your point? I don’t see how water use in NV really speaks to my original observation.
well I think you mean fresh water not just water and estimates I found run from 28% (http://www.sdnhm.org/archive/exhibits/water/socal.html) to 77% of freshwater *http://www.environment.ucla.edu/reportcard/article.asp?parentid=4870)
but I didn’t look very hard
Actually, that is my mistake. I was thinking of the Owens Valley rather than Truckee. The fact remains that LA is and long has been a massive water hog consuming a disproportionate share of the scarce water sources of the region. If it is any consolation, Las Vegas is worse on a per capita basis. This is not about “blame”, but rather the reality that there are finite water resources which are being stretched to or beyond their breaking point. We need to start making serious critical decisions about how we use our water and for what purposes. I have to say that green lawns in desert cities like LA, Las Vegas, or Phoenix is not high on my list of beneficial uses. Of course, neither is raising corn in western Nebraska or some of the agricultural uses in California.
Okay. I largely agree with you about the Owens Valley, and the Eastern Sierras in general–although I’d ask what “disproportionate” means in this context.
But this is central to my point, really. Yes, the many millions of people in SoCal suck up a lot of water, depriving other areas of it, and yes, they are often profligate with it. But everyone focuses on that, and almost no one focuses on agricultural use and misuse, which is a much bigger part of the problem. Stop growing alfalfa in the desert, and there would be a lot more water for cities and the environment.
Please note the last sentence of my post. It is very clear that there are abuses in the agricultural sector as well.
I think you are understating the case. Ag does indeed take the vast majority of the water in CA. Even if we urbanites cut our usage in half (and there have been xlnt reductions per capita in the last 20 years) you’d be talking about well under 10% of all water used in the state. Ian is quite correct – switching crops away from alfalfa, rice and cotton would make a *huge* difference.
The ag water lobby tries to make the farmers into victims just like the fundies try to make white Christians into a persecuted minority, but it’s all hooey. Corporate farms rule.
Which abuse is more significant, in your mind: the green lawns of LA (which is hardly a “desert city,” by the way) or the growing of water-intensive crops in inappropriate places, simply because one has acquired the water rights and political pull to make it work? Outrage at the former tends to obscure the latter.
Southern California is an arid zone and much of it is outright desert. Trying to transplant lifestyles developed in areas with 2-3 times as much annual rainfall is a recipe for disaster, especially in heavily populated areas. LA’s problems are compounded by its insistence on massive areas of lawns, unlike eastern cities. I agree about the problems of inappropriate agriculture, as I said in my comment above. This is not a contest and I think both problems are about equal. There is, however, a rather large issue when water is diverted from producing the food we need to eat to other purposes.
Frankly, LA, Las Vegas, and Phoenix should not exist in a sane world, since there are not the local water sources to support them. Given that they are there, we have to deal with them and find ways to support them. For LA, desalinization plants, like those in Israel, along with cutting back on lawn watering and private pools would help. Given climate change, water shortages and potential food shortages are only going to get worse.
Not the part that most people would call Los Angeles.
We are in violent agreement about the need for more efficient residential water use. Still, we come back around to my initial point: why, given that residential CA uses only about 10-15% of CA’s water, would you think “both problems are about equal”? Rip out every lawn in greater Los Angeles, fill in every swimming pool, confiscate every hosepipe, and make people pee in a bucket, and you’ve only reduced CA’s water use by maybe 5%.
And let’s be clear: growing alfalfa in the desert is not “producing the food we need to eat.” It’s a cheap way to support the environmental and health disaster that is the modern beef industry–and as another commenter pointed out, it’s only possible because of lavish water rights that were secured more than a century ago.
So, again, we’re in agreement about the need for radical residential water use changes. But CA’s water problems are not mostly about all those swimming pools in LA; they’re mostly about an agricultural system built on cheap water. And this is a national problem, one that everyone is culpable in.
I don’t mean to minimize the water issues that Southern California faces, but this is a foolish yardstick. By this measure NYC shouldn’t exist, since it has to bring its water in from upstate reservoirs, more than 100 miles away. Cities never have the local resources necessary to support them.
No argument there.
Not the part that most people would call Los Angeles.
The average rainfall in LA is about 15 inches/year (2 inches a year more than we get here in western Montana) which makes it an arid zone. It is not technically a desert, though semi-desert or arid brushland would not be far off. The mountains are somewhat better watered and are home to Mediterranean forests.
Correct. Compare that to Phoenix at 8.3 inches/year or Las Vegas at 4.5.
Does LA actually consume more water per capita than other counties in CA or surrounding states? If someone knows, I’d be delighted to learn, but my impression of this issue has always been that people assume some ownership of the water rights in the Owens Valley by the locals and, for the life of me, I have never understood why. The water should go to where the people are. They shouldn’t waste it, but if there are a lot of them they’re going to need a lot.
Coastal counties use far less water per capita than inland counties. But at a glance, LA is more or less on a par with arid cities like Vegas or SLC, and uses much more water than cities like Tuscon and Denver.
The difference here is that in the inland counties, most of that water is for agricultural purposes and in LA, it is for residential and commercial use.
No: inland residential water use is much higher than coastal residential water use. Hardly surprising, given the temperature differences.
What we need is a big desalination project.
Big enough to allow the Colorado to reach the sea.
Yeah, yeah. Another soshulistic fascist gummint program. Hell, we’d have to cancel a couple extra aircraft carriers or sumpin’.
I believe there is a desalination plant for the Colorado in Yuma. By treaty we must send water of some specfic quality to Mexico and the Colorado is not of high enough quality.
This is correct.
I’m talking about supplying enough water in California to restore large amounts of flow to the Colorado, Sacramento, and other western rivers.
Desalination plants can have catastrophic effects on local aquatic environments. Although I suppose that might seem more fair than draining other people’s rivers dry.
I know they can.
The western water situation is such an environmental catastrophe at this point, and about to get worse, that we have to think in terms of least-bad options.
Jesus, that article is crap. There is no actual information about the likely impact of the tunnels anywhere in the whole piece. It talks about the delta residents’ fears and paints a lovely portrait of idyllic rural life for paragraph after paragraph and offers only a bald statement of what the tunnel project is and the benefits tunnel supporters claim the project will produce.
Nowhere is there any information from anyone who has done environmental assessment of the delta or the tunnel. There is no informed projection of how delta salinity will change and what that will mean for the species involved. There is no discussion of tunnel vs. surface transport impact on fish populations. There is no mention of the delta smelt at all, which is funny, considering its impact on delta water decisions in recent years. And there is no mention of the earthquake risk associated with transporting water to southern California through the delta.
The reader is informed of the existence of the controversy and given a picture of one of the (many) stakeholders, and then the article trails off without any contaminating information.
I’m reminded of an old movie starring Van Heflin and Lionel Barrymore, wherein Lionel Barrymore diverts the river away from Van Heflins sorry excuse for a farm, not so much because he wants to, but because he can. I forget the rest. I think Howard Taft makes a weewee on Van Heflins porch.
The only movie I can find on IMDB with Lionel Barrymore and Van Heflin is that godawful biopic about Andrew Johnson, with Barrymore as Thaddeus Stevens. Which I guess is a similar plot if you substitute the presidency for water.
I was about to say, “Gee, someone should make a movie!”
Let me explain something to you, Stormcrow. Commenting requires a certain amount of finesse.
Well that should reduce the comment threads to single digits here, then
What can I tell you, kid? You’re right. When you’re right, you’re right. And you’re right!
Perchance you’re not referring to…damn there isn’t a film I can think of that fits either actor that well. The way you describe it sounds a bit like Ruby Gentry, but that’s not even a very good fit.
Huh. It’s interesting, one of the segments on Backstory this week was about the John Wesley Powell map and the way that short-term corporate and expansionist instincts in the West trumped good long-term planning. Powell was certainly prophetic about what the number 1 issue would end up being in the West; I’m not sure if his map would have completely changed the equation vis a vis water usage, but it at least would have organized the interests of the people in a logical way instead of the haphazard rectangular organization we ended up with.
Eric,
I don’t know if you’re taking requests, but it would be fun to see a good analysis of Ryan’s positions on environmental issues. I am sure that, like basically all Republicans, he is terrible, but my initial googling suggests he’s even worse than one might think.
Isn’t that always the case? Didn’t Delong offer up a theorem on that or something along the lines of “Worse than you imagine, even after taking into account that its worse than you can imagine.”
Folks near Sacramento do have access to dynamite, right?
Rice paddies in the desert. Politicians of both parties lined up to support this practice, including trying to force the Japanese to buy some of this rice.
That pretty much sums up the issue.
As a (former, due to the recession) California water, I’m finally in a position to make a substantive comment on this blog.
First, this has every hallmark of a planted article. (heh.) Anyone who knows anything about cross-Delta water issues knows that the Endangered Species Act is the driver of the range of all possible solutions. The reason that people are looking at tunnels versus peripheral canals is global warming; nobody can create an accurate model of what the world will look like in 100 years. Yes, the Delta farmers are targeted to be losers in whatever solution comes about, but their farming has no long-term future anyway. Those levees will inevitably start to fail, or cost state-wide taxpayers staggering sums of money to maintain.
As to why the water moves south as opposed to flowing out the Golden Gate, the simple answer is that we Southern Californians (both ag and urban) own it. Yes, Westlands Water District is a particularly obnoxious player in the water wars, but there of lots of others who are just putting some of the best ag. environment anywhere on the planet to productive use.
Cotton is not much grown anymore, too much of a water hog. Too much of a risk of getting dragged up in front of the State Water Resources Control Board (the adjudicator of water rights in Cal.) and losing water rights based on a lack of beneficial use determination. But alfalfa is a vital crop to the cattle industry (also huge in Central Cal. — both milk and meat) and the farmers in Imperial County put their very old and very senior water rights to Colorado River (not Delta) water to growing this crop. Why shouldn’t they? Their ownership of those water rights dates back to before the 7-States Compact.
etc. California water law / politics / infrastructure is way too complicated to talk about in a blog post.
Maybe because the population of those seven states has increased somewhat in the last century?
Although the water plumbing in California is interconnected in ways both subtle and bold, this here doesn’t have much to do with ag water.
The tunnels are intended to complete the State Water Project, which will deliver insignificant additional ag water and is in effect a subsidiary of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies M&I water– municipal and industrial water. The water needed to fill swimming pools and hose down driveways in suburbs yet unbuilt.
The purpose of the tunnels is to move about two million acre-feet yearly across the Delta for the purpose of real-estate development in the remaining wastelands between Los Angeles and San Diego. There are a number of laws standing in the way, and the Endangered Species Act is one of them, because it is impossible to get the water across the Delta without wiping out what is left of an ecosystem or two.
Courtland is practically a suburb of Sacramento (look at a map) and probably won’t be hurt at all. Pear orchards five, ten, twenty miles downstream will suffer, because once tunnels are built there will be no economic reason to maintain the existing levees and the Delta further south will wash out. As the plumbing exists, you see, the levees that protect interior Delta pear orchards are also needed to maintain northern California water in drinkable condition as it crosses the potentially salty Delta.
Eric is exactly right in his feared list of priorities. Of course “the environment” will be last, and farms underwritten by Bank of America will be right behind Met in the ultimate arrangements, although they have fairly secure supplies mostly through the federal Central Valley Project. I would change Eric’s category “cities” to “real-estate development.” The cities aren’t there yet, unless you call places like Irvine cities.
The State Water Project promised this water in the 1960′s, but hasn’t been able to deliver. Investments were made on the promise. A lot of monkey wrenches were thrown by a lot of people, as it became more apparent who the losers would be and what the costs would be, but there was never any real question about who would win in the end.
Of course southern California chokes in the end. But the end is off the edge of the discount tables.
Tread is too long to see if anyone made these two comments
1 Mark Twain: Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting
2 The California water equation: Northern California provides it + California farmers use it = Southern California pays for it.
I’ve always thought the Great Lakes states and Ontario ought to secede from their respective countries, form a new country called the Great Lakes Union, and go OPEC on the rest of the world.