> allowing crops to be irrigated and drinking glasses to be filled.
Ugh. Drinking glasses are going to be filled regardless of how much rain we get. I don't want to diminish the importance of agriculture, it's important and I'm excited that we had a very wet winter to keep things going, but residential water supplies have never been at risk throughout this whole drought.
On the contrary the town of Cloverdale faced serious water shortages in 2014 that were alleviated only with help of the local Bear Republic Brewery. [1] Microbrew fans have yet another reason to be cheerful buying their beer, which was pretty outstanding even without this story.
Almonds for export has to go. Anyone have a list of names of almond farmers? Or if its not "families" what are the names of the big almond agribusiness operations going on? As they are responsible for the majority of water consumption and causes of drought problems.
Almonds are an efficient use of water compared to cattle, and you would save California water by switching to almond milk from cow milk. California almonds use only 10% of California's water (not "the majority of water consumption") and supply the vast majority of the world's almonds. Alfalfa for cattle uses 50% more Californian water than that and ultimately produces a relatively (to almonds) miniscule amount of calories for human consumption.
And, the real kicker to me, that Alfalfa is overwhelming exported over seas to countries that can't grow it themselves because of, drumroll please, prolonged drought conditions.
Did you know that 100% of the almonds consumed in the US are grown in California, and 70% of all almonds consumed worldwide are grown here? It's a multi-billion dollar industry in California.
Sadly, it's not so black and white to just say "cut 'em off!"
Agriculture is absolutely nothing compared to other sectors in California. They are at 2% of gross state product. So yeah. "cut 'em off". 2% of our GSP and using all the water because they have family/historical water "rights".
> Ugh. Drinking glasses are going to be filled regardless of how much rain we get.
I live in the Bay Area and many restaurants here have notes on their menus explaining that they only serve water on request due to drought. This is much different from a cavalier auto-fill that is customary in some places.
This is a silly rebuttal. At a restaurant, I assume they fill quite a few more than 48 glasses of water a day. They only have to print the piece of paper once. Most of your pulp wood comes from the south east.
California most likely imported that paper, so no loss. In fact, worrying about water used in paper production is itself entirely ridiculous. Paper production is better known for it's bad smell and release of toxins to the air and water. You must never have experienced the eye watering stench of a paper mill.
The point isn't that the paper costs more water to print. The point is that drinking water is such a tiny miniscule part of water usage that it is ridiculous to waste time on it. It's all just for show so politicians can pretend they are doing something when they really should be regulating agricultural usage. The water used to water lawns, fill bathtubs, flush toilets, and shower with is less than 10% of water usage. So the drinking water you didn't drink from your glass is a fraction of a percent of that 10%.
You would probably serve the public good more by encouraging them to drink water by putting it out by default. Thus increasing water intake and decreasing sugary drink consumption.
While what you say is factually true, I think the thing you are missing is the psychological effect of putting up such signs and having these policies. It gets people in the mindset that this is serious and we can't ignore it. It's very easy to get caught up in the mob mentality when it comes to personal water usage which leads to, I think, feelings of helplessness and an ignorance when it comes to the larger problems like agricultural water usage.
If you aren't encountering these sorts of things on a daily basis, you lose sight of the greater issues. However when the entire community is affected, it changes how people act and feel. People are much more likely to stand up and say something when they are personally affected (either by choice or by situation). Even if only a small percentage of people started caring more about conserving water because of these laws, I think it's a good thing.
There is the popular argument that it takes many more glasses to wash the glass than it contains, but the people quoting this statistic never talk about bread plates or all the cloth on the table.
These aren't impossible things to study, to determine the impact and optimize customs more appropriately, even though it seems likely that a minuscule capital outlay in the California water system would take care of drinking water and restaurant laundry and dish washing indefinitely.
The same goes for the psychological impact of the regulation. In popular treatments, any social science related statement is valid simply by being said. "Maybe" forgoing water at the table makes people feel that they've "done their part" and they are then more likely to do no more, and "maybe" they use up all of the energy they have to devote toward water issues. Given that dysphagia is notoriously unexpected, "maybe" the health impact of no water at the table far outweighs the zero-effect it has on water consumption.
All of these maybes are terrible ways to determine public policy. Instead, take a look at the relevant literature, and do some valid experiments.
I think these bad things get entrenched because people likely to get passionate about the issue aren't likely to explore the math, and people who have an intuitive sense of the numbers, don't want to sound crazy by getting worked up enough about the issues to balance out the people who have good intentions. Sure, it doesn't hurt that much to fine restaurants or make people ask for water, but if doesn't do anything productive then the net effect is still negative.
I really understand your side of things, and the engineer in me wants the same for everything. However, an imperfect solution that can easily be sold and understood has a far more likely chance of succeeding and producing change. It's the classic balance between marketing and engineering. What can be sold vs what can be produced. Sometimes we have to compromise, and I think as the technical audience we are, we always search for the non-ideal parts of a regulation like this and say "well it could be better if...!". It's a totally valid thought process, and an important one, but it has to be tempered by what is actually possible in the political system.
>It's all just for show so politicians can pretend they are doing something when they really should be regulating agricultural usage.
Blaming farmers is scapegoating. California doesn't have a water waste problem. Everyone there is trying to save water. California has a water supply problem. Which is inexcusable for a state with that much coast line. After 30 years of drought, only now are politicians deciding to build desalinization plants. They were perfectly happy to collect taxes and spend it on anything other than infrastructure to support the growing population.
But go ahead and "conserve" agricultural water. Watch the top soil and all its nutrients blow out to sea.
Besides the fact that it also saves on all the water used to clean the glasses, both the paper and ink used to print the signs were probably created somewhere other than California, meaning the printing of that piece of paper does not negatively impact the drought situation in CA in the slightest. Your comment is ignoring this and treating the usage of water anywhere in the world as if it's relevant to CA's drought situation.
It's more about public outreach than saving a few cups of water. Reminding people that there is a drought every time they go out to eat is an effective way to get people to talk about water conservation, and perhaps even make some changes in their lifestyle to reduce water usage.
Not sure I follow the criticism. California is a pro-regulation state, you posit, and I'll posit that Texas is an anti-regulation state. Yet, population adjusted, California ranks higher in economy by Gross State Product than Texas.
Amazing how I didn't make any economic claims whatsoever about either state.
People like you ruin conversations about politics. I don't give half a shit how much money California pulls in, I'd never go back, I'll never hire a californian, so it has zero bearing to me.
I'd thank you for the info, but you only posted to try and prove me wrong about something I didn't even say in the first place.
This is not a reasonable commentary on the law. The obvious rejoinder to your point is that the paper is printed once, and the glasses are filled many times a day. Another plausible rationale is that by creating a rule that applies to people's everyday lives in a visible way, the public becomes more aware of water savings in every context. Another plausible rationale is that politicians want to signal concern over water shortages to their concerned constituents, but for a variety of (probably well-intentioned) reasons don't want to change actually impactful regulations about water distribution, so they make a symbolic one.
Like you, I assume that these are stupid reasons which don't warrant making the law. But pretending that they don't exist is not a good way to think. Argue against something real.
> Printing the paper saying we won't fill glasses used 48 times[1] more water than the water in the glass!
One sheet of paper can be cut up and used for over a dozen small notes so maybe it cost them 4 glasses of water per table which they may save every week easily. And while the paper could have come from California, it's much more likely to have been made elsewhere in a non-drought area.
I think the key thing that most people aren't aware of on this is that there are two rates people can and will pay for water. One is for agriculture water supplies and one is for municipal. And they differ by orders of magnitude. That's why desalination can help solve any municipal supply problems but won't make an iota of difference for agriculture.
The severe concern that has existed about the cost of desalination and other alternative water supply techniques and their impact on the cost of agriculture is somewhat misleading. It's true that agriculture as it currently exists is structurally dependent on low water prices which may not be attainable with alternative resources whose utilization may nonetheless become necessary. However, this situation exists in agriculture partially because it has heretofore been a more reliable cost-savings to invest in efficiency in other resource utilization rather than water. An increase in the price of water will spur investment in higher water efficiency. So the cost increase to the consumer will not necessarily be the cost increase of the water times the water usage, and will probably be less.
So farmers can grow some crop, which embodies a great deal of water, and then sell it. Even something like grapes, which are mostly water. Why can't they just sell the water? Maybe process and bottle it.
There are too many stakeholders in water-rights that would all have to agree to any renegotiation, which makes adopting such rules essentially impossible.
As far as I know, many agricultural water rights came attached to the land they bought and for a specific purpose. I don't know how specific it must be though so I'm not sure if you can go from growing almonds to brewing beer.
Touche. I should have stated that in areas where agriculture have raided groundwater supplies, which take much longer to refresh than reservoirs, residential water supplies may be at risk.
Even still, people can generally afford whatever it costs for water to supply their towns. I doubt any towns will collapse because they don't have access to cheap water, whereas there are a lot of crops that do depend on that.
You’re talking about a place that gets its drinking water from wells, rather than from state reservoirs.
Notably, there wasn’t (and still isn’t, but it’s been improved a tiny bit) sufficient regulation about water pulled from the ground, so residential wells in small rural towns are in direct competition with neighboring farms which can pretty much pull as much water as they want, even if it makes nearby residents go thirsty.
This is not a problem for the general CA water supply.
Ugh. Drinking glasses are going to be filled regardless of how much rain we get. I don't want to diminish the importance of agriculture, it's important and I'm excited that we had a very wet winter to keep things going, but residential water supplies have never been at risk throughout this whole drought.