Since about 70 percent of water delivered from the Colorado River goes to growing crops
Okay, so much for my suggestion of making illegal Las Vegas golf courses and lush Phoenix lawns. But at what point is California told to quit growing alfalfa for export, and to quit with the flooded rice paddies[0]? It's a serious question: does CA just keep growing such things until the tap literally runs dry, or are restrictions put into place before it gets that bad? What's the end game? Because it seems obvious that the situation isn't going to get better.
"Over a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts are grown in California."[0]
I'd be careful to imply blame on a single state, when it is a large part of the population that relies on the output. There are certainly ways to target water waste in agriculture, but the whole nation has a stake in successful water management.
Yes but I'm not sure they have to be. I live in Ohio. My wife and I grow lots of things pretty easily: kale, peppers, lettuce, onions, broccoli, tomatoes, all sorts of herbs, etc.
The thing is to my knowledge California is just cheaper/better because full sun and up until now you could just pull water from the ground and grow your crops.
IMO we need more urban and suburban gardens to supplement, and we'll have to just relocate some crops away from California and other drought-prone areas. Tough times ahead for some.
And as much as even I despise the suburbs, I think they're prime for retrofitting. We have a lot of land, we just need changes to zoning, a little more density, and more emphasis on the local community which can come from the former. Like why can't we all grow a few crops (nothing crazy) and just trade once/week at someone's house?
There is plenty of agricultural land in the midwest to grow vegetables, it's just that for the most part they are growing commodity crops (corn and soy) and not vegetables because California is cheaper and can provide fresh produce year-round (or nearly so). Regional farms could provide local produce that's more scalable than suburban gardens, but both are seasonal (without greenhouses and other infrastructure at least).
I think in the future we might see either community greenhouses, more local farming, and/or more suburban gardens and even greenhouses (HOAs permitting).
The thing is that the current model is basically export water in the form of crops from California because as you said it's much cheaper, but that low cost comes at the expense of water and the environment, a low cost to which Californian farmers are probably not bearing and certainly society in general isn't. Really we're exporting water from a arid locations to places like the Great Lakes. That's not to include transportation costs via cheap oil/energy.
I'm content to play chicken with the farm conglomerates and their bought-and-paid-for legislators. Go ahead, try and turn off the taps in a residential area because you want to keep growing water-intensive crops.
The result will be one of two things: either the farm industry will back down and adjust, or the corruption of the legislature through lobbying will be exposed in spectacular fashion.
They should move all this to the midwest where we grow crops. The Ogallala Aquifer will last forever!!! /s
Oh wait, we are depleting that at the rate of 18 Colorado Rivers per year. We are such a greedy species. We need some major changes to support the same number of people on this planet.
I tried to figure out where the water goes, but a complete answer eludes me. If it does indeed go to crops, maybe we need to rethink where we grow crops, much less how.
If we can use Mississippi river water to grow rice and get the countries which depend on our agricultural exports to pay for it we all win.
Sure, many of the crops grown in the west are ill suited to our climate. That said, there is a bigger solution to the problem which produces a better outcome for everyone.
It's also used to grow alfalfa in the middle of a desert region where alfalfa shouldn't grow to begin with. And the alfalfa is exported internationally. We are essentially exporting water out of the US.
It's crazy to me that in Norway they treat the oil reserves they found in the 60s as a good that is owned by the nation collectively, but we can't even treat water that way. Something that, if mismanaged badly enough, could kill us all in a week.
Yeah, that's mentioned in the article. But in a way it's worse:
> A majority of the water used by farms — and thus much of the river — goes to growing nonessential crops like alfalfa and other grasses that feed cattle for meat production. Much of those grasses are also exported to feed animals in the Middle East and Asia.
One thing TFA doesn't quite make clear enough (IMO) is that agriculture in the US southwest has been largely the result of a fever dream held by presidents and the Bureau of Reclamation after the 1905-1930 era was among the wettest in the last thousand or more years. This is why the estimates for flow in the Colorado were so optimistic, and it's why the idea got established that dams and irrigation schemes could transform the southwest. This view was bolstered by another brief blip of large precipitation levels in the early 1940s, just as the Bureau's work was reaching peak expansion.
Had the precipitation levels of the 1905-1930 period actually been the norm, then perhaps the dreams of "water + sun = a green eden" might have been viable. But they were not, and we're now facing a huge set of difficult choices, which the article lays out very well.
It's time for a national water grid. The climate is changing and we need to be able to rapidly adapt. We can't afford to let sections of our country turn into a dustbowl while others flood.
Yes, there are wasteful water practices that need to be addressed as well.
Yes, there are ecological impacts that need to be accounted for.
We need to think big. Our generation doesn't seem to have that sort of vision anymore. We need to prepare for a changing climate and a larger population. A water grid provides our nation with food security and helps mitigate a major effect of global warming.
I agree this should be looked into, but one issue is that moving water uses energy, since water naturally flows downhill, and pushing it to where it doesn't naturally flow goes against entropy.
When you pump water over a hill you need energy to pump it up and can retrieve some of that energy when it flows down hill. That's why CA uses some of its reservoirs as hydroelectric storage batteries, pumping water up when electricity is cheap and letting it flow down when electricity is expensive.
The energy required to pump water UP to the elevations of much of the southwest is astronomical. Huge parts of it are at 5000-7000', so even if you manage to avoid actual mountains, you still have a huge lift from either the coast or the Missouri/Missippii rivers. I have no doubt that there would be ways to move some water in such a manner, but not much.
If you bring water in from the rest of the US and supply the regions which depend on the water flowing down from the mountains you allow the high altitude regions to retain more of their water.
Sure, that means you generate less hydropower in the downriver dams, but overall I think it's a wash(pun intended).
We need to think big. Our generation doesn't seem to have that sort of vision anymore.
I personally have 0 hope for it. We're an entire generation removed from the Cold War, an era where governments actually did shit. And in the 30 years since, it's done nothing but shatter trust in every way (and in new ways!) imaginable.
Moving water around a grid like we do with electricity is prohibitively expensive. We need to move people instead. Cities in deserts are just not sustainable.
Cities themselves seem in reasonably good shape. Commercial agriculture in deserts, created in the wake of the fever dreams of the Bureau of Reclamation after two of the wettest decades ever (1900-1920) ... much less so.
Deserts are usable land if you bring water. You can grow food and manufacture things. Are you saying we should just let the deserts be empty and non-productive? Where do the people in the cities get their food from?
Maybe it would be cheaper to build water pipelines + green powered desalination + pipe water from the great lakes or wherever it's in abundance. Especially if we can't or won't move crops? It seems like that growing environment artificially watered does improve yield?
Maybe it will happen if we accurately price water, just like we need to with oil, so that the incentives actually align with the bad consequences of the status quo.
I wish the infra bill spent most of the money on green energy and plans like this. Spending it on cars and fortifying against floods and weather seems like a losing battle if we don't fix the underlying driver of this chaos.
Why are people in the Great Lakes region so paranoid about their water? There are many sources of freshwater in North America. Would you have a problem with reclaiming some of the St Lawrence outflow before it reaches the sea?
By establishing a national water grid, you reduce the likelihood that the Great Lakes will be damaged by water use. You allow the Great Lakes to be replenished if there is ever a climate driven drought. You allow water to be taken from the mouths of all of the great rivers in North America, reducing the burden on any single one of them.
> Why are people in the Great Lakes region so paranoid about their water? There are many sources of freshwater in North America.
“Why are the people of the Colorado river so paranoid about their water” might have been a theme 60 or 70 years ago. I guess the answer is: because once that exploitation starts, it will only intensify in the future.
How about covering fields and lawns with plastic (I know its petroleum) sheeting part of the time. Greenhouse-like. Reducing evaporative losses while letting sunlight penetrate could reduce water needs significantly. If its reflective, it might reduce the heat load as well.
I have thought about this for the last year and tried to learn as much as I can. Yes, it is expensive.
Does it matter at this point?
Most experts don't seem to think there will be enough precipitation over the next decade to refill existing reservoirs let alone replenish the almost wiped out aquifers. This isn't a case of 1 or 2 rainy seasons making up for what is lost.
If the US wants to continue growing into inhospitable areas and growing crops in areas where water is unavailable, serious work needs to start on desalination efforts.
It will be expensive. There will be an environmental impact. It will take years to build as the US no longer can do public works quickly.
Desalination is the only long term solution for the US west if you do not want to limit land use.
Israel gets 80% of it's water from desalination, it works out about $0.65 per cubic meter (tonne) so it's more expensive then literally falling out the sky but certainly affordable for a first world country...maybe even the US.
Climate migration is already here, it's just unevenly distributed.
More pointedly: the capacity of our society to graciously absorb climate refugees of every sort is very limited. NIMBYism is a very poor predicate for accepting large numbers of displaced and relatively poor migrants.
C.f. attitudes to Dust Bowl farmers for one precedent.
A friend pointed me to Chico (CA) as an interesting test case. The rapid shift from gracious "Christian" charity to increasingly right-wing hostility, in the face of large intake of people displaced by wildfires (or fear thereof), is a canary.
It is a good time (now) to contemplate how this is going to amplify Fox-fueled xenophobia, tribalism, dehumanization of political opponents, and increasingly open organized domestic terror and violence in de facto Brown Shirts.
The Water Knife is a mediocre novel, but a relevant sketch of how bad things might in theory get, wrt water in the American west should aridification accellerate. As it may well.
It's not too early to begin organizing a rational response. We prepare for earthquakes; this one is all but certain.
Okay, so much for my suggestion of making illegal Las Vegas golf courses and lush Phoenix lawns. But at what point is California told to quit growing alfalfa for export, and to quit with the flooded rice paddies[0]? It's a serious question: does CA just keep growing such things until the tap literally runs dry, or are restrictions put into place before it gets that bad? What's the end game? Because it seems obvious that the situation isn't going to get better.
[0] https://localwiki.org/davis/Rice_Paddies