Does California Have A Dire Water Problem?

Alot of enviormentalist say too much water goes toward lawns. I agree if not new seed but people also try to plant mid summer or hot temps which requires more water. I go as low maintainance as possible.

Over damming, building has caused numerous issues as well because water is captured or runs off the asphalt and concrete of urban living rather than being absorbed or hanging around.
 

This review of climate studies in the Sierra Nevada basin from 1650-1850 (a few studies he reviews encompass other years) explains another aspect of the current water shortage. The screenshot below from the paper is the review of a tree ring study that shows (last bullet point in the image) that one of the wettest periods in the area over the past 1,000 years was from 1937-1986. That 50ish year wet period saw a population boom of appx 26 million people for the area that's now insupportable as the climate has reverted to its more normal dry conditions.

From the pdf: https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-43/VOL_II/VII_C02.PDF


California drought.JPG
 
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Utah provides water to Arizona, Nevada, and California. We have a severe drought and are running out of water. Therefore, we can not share what we do not have. This adds to the others states water problem.

And yet very few places in our state are rationing water and businesses, schools, and apartments continue to water useless grass. It is insane.
 

JonDouglas said:
I don't automatically assume the validity of an image just because it has some official-looking logo (that I am unfamiliar with) and don't know the source where the sender got it. Also, photoshop is alive and well and can be found in the hands of people with agendas. Finally, the condition certainly seemed like something to be concerned with if really that dire.
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It is dire
 
Remy said:
This member wants to move back east but will never be able to.

I'm literally ill inside from the drought and fires. Depressed about it. I don't think people are trying to conserve water enough.
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The smoke from the California and other fires has really settled in Utah. There are places where you can not see beyond two blocks in the Salt Lake Valley due to the smoke. It’s hard to breathe. We drove down to Las Vegas this weekend.

There was smoke the entire drive and there was not a place we could get away from it. It’s awful for people, like me, with breathing issues.
 
Murrmurr said:
As you know, for years Calif has had all these rules about when and how much you can water your yard...about the equivalent of your family peeing on it once in a while. So a whole lot of people's yards died. Except the governor's. And wealthy people's. Their massive, lush yards are gorgeous. But anyway, with miles and miles of dead grasses and shrubs and trees all around normal people's houses, the whole freakin city a tinder-box. Mainly the residential area's. Except the governor and pals. You know they're be fine.
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I understand your post. I've also watched a few minutes of that Kardashians show and noted their large super green lawns.

The thing is though, I don't run my life based on the thought of 'well others do.' A bunch of rich people want to waste water, that in no way means I will. All kinds of people waste water though. I see it.
 
Aneeda72 said:
It is dire
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And...probably Not going to improve in the near future. Most weather forecasts aren't accurate for more than a few days, in advance. However, there are a couple of sites that have a pretty good track record of forecasting the weather weeks and months down the road.....The Old Farmers Almanac, and AccuWeather. Both are saying that current conditions....hot and dry in the West, and cooler and wet in the East....are likely to continue.

https://news.yahoo.com/accuweathers-2021-us-fall-forecast-134700669.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

https://www.almanac.com/weather/longrange/region/us/10
 
Remy said:
I understand your post. I've also watched a few minutes of that Kardashians show and noted their large super green lawns.

The thing is though, I don't run my life based on the thought of 'well others do.' A bunch of rich people want to waste water, that in no way means I will. All kinds of people waste water though. I see it.
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I wonder, tho, if keeping your yard green can actually save water if fire threatens your house. It makes me nervous that so much of my city is covered with dead grass and shrubs. There have been 14 fires in my area caused by embers landing on dead vegetation. One of the fires damaged a tire shop just down the street, which is next door to an apartment complex and a nursery school.
 
Murrmurr said:
I wonder, tho, if keeping your yard green can actually save water if fire threatens your house. It makes me nervous that so much of my city is covered with dead grass and shrubs. There have been 14 fires in my area caused by embers landing on dead vegetation. One of the fires damaged a tire shop just down the street, which is next door to an apartment complex and a nursery school.
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My apartment complex is near the edge of town and there are a lot of trees in this area. I worry about fire on this side of town myself. It's getting to the point where so many places don't feel safe anymore related to fire.

The dry vegetation should be removed.
 
Remy said:
My apartment complex is near the edge of town and there are a lot of trees in this area. I worry about fire on this side of town myself. It's getting to the point where so many places don't feel safe anymore related to fire.

The dry vegetation should be removed.
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A number of people here have totally replaced their yards with drought-resistant landscaping, like cactus gardens and pampas grass. But that's expensive. I really wish the county or state or feds would help people with this. It'd be cool if city crews would come out and level these yards. Even if they just put in gravel, it would help a lot.
 
Murrmurr said:
A number of people here have totally replaced their yards with drought-resistant landscaping, like cactus gardens and pampas grass. But that's expensive. I really wish the county or state or feds would help people with this. It'd be cool if city crews would come out and level these yards. Even if they just put in gravel, it would help a lot.
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I agree. PG&E could help pay for it since they have burned down a significant amount of this state. I'm not even joking. I'm sick of this greed. Something like this would be helpful and provide jobs. People can also water with grey water they save in the house. I know not everyone can carry a bucket or container of water, but I still can.

I have few plants on my patio but they are watered with the cats water when I change it.
 
Don M. said:
The combination of dry grasses and huge forests of evergreen trees quickly become a disaster in weather conditions like now. When fires hit, evergreen trees are like cans of gasoline.
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I agree. They’re very popular with developers because they grow quickly and are cheap and pretty. Too many people became overly thrifty and let their cedar shrubs die and now they’re extreme fire hazards. They could water the roots in the middle of night. Hoses can be set up put on an inexpensive manual timer. We had extreme warnings the other day and people were out watering their dead vegetation. Next spring we’ll be hearing tales of woe about all the shrubs they’re replacing.

Remy said:
The dry vegetation should be removed.
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It’s time for local governments to force people to remove dead vegetation. Ever since one town had a major fire, they do free pick up on a regular basis of dead vegetation/shrubs.
 
Alligatorob said:
Israelis get along using a whole lot less water per capita water than Californians.
California can get by just fine on the water resources they have, just need a bit more rational practice.
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Compared to the average water use in my town of 15 hundred cubic feet per month per household, my average water use is 6 hundred cubic feet per year. Yet, although the average household uses 30 times as much water as I do, my water bill of $110 a month is close to 90 percent of the average.

The problem is not the people of California, who use less than 10 percent of the total, but the city and state policies that punish those of us who conserve and use very little water, and which reward the (usually richer) people and families which use exorbitant amounts.

Likewise, the farmers and electric utility companies get their water either for greatly reduced rates or else FREE, which is totally ridiculous.

What the cities should be doing is to charge people based on their actual water use, and stop with the meter fees, sewer, garbage, and green waste fees, because all of those are directly related to the water use of each household. What they are actually doing is charging for infrastructure (i.e. illegal taxes), which has nothing to do with the usage of water. Also, these fees are required!

Based on actual water use my bill would be less than $5 a month, and people who use excessive amounts of water would also pay their fair share, instead of getting a discount. Likewise the farmers and electrical companies, especially PG&E. should be paying their fair share of the costs and provide better service for lower rates, instead of confiscating and giving the excess fees to themselves.

Those are the people who are creating all the problems, not the people in their households.

Murrmurr said:
Since dead yards are fodder for flames, I wish that, while Calif and the fed gov't is doling out Nat'l Emergency $$, they would fund or incentivize people getting their yards landscaped with drought-friendly vegetation. They didn't used to hesitate to fine people hundreds or even thousands of bucks for NOT watering their lawns and/or not mowing them (here in Calif, anyway).
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I completely agree. I would love to have a drought resistance landscape, but it would take too much money and work.
Gravel, pavers and/or stones would absorb and retain quite a bit of heat, so perhaps a different alternative would be better.
 
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Murrmurr said:
As you know, for years Calif has had all these rules about when and how much you can water your yard...about the equivalent of your family peeing on it once in a while. So a whole lot of people's yards died. Except the governor's. And wealthy people's. Their massive, lush yards are gorgeous. But anyway, with miles and miles of dead grasses and shrubs and trees all around normal people's houses, the whole freakin city a tinder-box. Mainly the residential area's. Except the governor and pals. You know they're be fine.
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"a tinder box"?
Remember MurrMurr, Don't have sex! Any friction may set off a spark! hahaha!
 
Alligatorob said:
Point is we in the US, including California, are quite wasteful in our water usage. For example California grows about 550,000 acres of rice a year. Rice is a very high water user and alone accounts for 6% of California's water consumption (https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2015/05/amid_drought_california_fields.html). There is no rice shortage in the US, and it grows just fine in places like Louisiana that have a lot more water to work with than California. Just using water conservation measures already developed and refined elsewhere California could reduce its water consumption and get by with the water it has quite well.
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Consumer Reports .... Arsenic in Rice https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-much-arsenic-is-in-your-rice/index.htm
All types of rice (except sushi and quick cooking) with a label indicating that it’s from Arkansas, Louisiana, or Texas or just from the U.S. had the highest levels of inorganic arsenic in our tests. For instance, white rices from California have 38 percent less inorganic arsenic than white rices from other parts of the country.
 
The government can easily create water desalination stations that can draw in sea water, desalinate it, and irrigate farmlands while recharging reservoirs. Easiest problem in the world to solve.
 
WheatenLover said:
Consumer Reports .... Arsenic in Rice https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-much-arsenic-is-in-your-rice/index.htm
All types of rice (except sushi and quick cooking) with a label indicating that it’s from Arkansas, Louisiana, or Texas or just from the U.S. had the highest levels of inorganic arsenic in our tests. For instance, white rices from California have 38 percent less inorganic arsenic than white rices from other parts of the country.
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Thanks, that is interesting. Had not been aware of the arsenic thing. On my father's side I come from a long line of Louisiana rice farmers, in fact a part of the old farm is still in the family and has been for over 100 years, so I have more interest than most.

The Consumer's Reports thing is worth thinking about, it does not rise to the level of acceptable scientific peer review, but that doesn't make it wrong, just in need of duplication. I could not find that it had been replicated, but maybe it has.

No matter my point was that high water crops like rice should not be grown in a water short state like California, and I still believe that is true.

Not to say that we should not pay attention to toxins found in rice, or any food for that matter. Lead and cadmium are also problems in rice, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7663342/
 
Murrmurr said:
I wonder, tho, if keeping your yard green can actually save water if fire threatens your house.
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Dead grass can burn quite quickly. One of my neighbors was burning some trash in March, about 5 years ago, and he went back indoors to watch TV. Within a few minutes, the sparks caught his yard on fire, and by the time the fire trucks arrived, half the siding on his house was melted, and it took the fire dept. a couple of hours to put out the fires in the woods.

Knowing how fast dry grass can burn, I bought a couple of extra dump truck loads of creek rock when I did our driveway, and spread the rocks all around the house to a distance of about 15 feet. Now, if we ever have a forest fire, we may get a lot of smoke, but the house should survive.
 
Murrmurr said:
Since dead yards are fodder for flames, I wish that, while Calif and the fed gov't is doling out Nat'l Emergency $$, they would fund or incentivize people getting their yards landscaped with drought-friendly vegetation. They didn't used to hesitate to fine people hundreds or even thousands of bucks for NOT watering their lawns and/or not mowing them (here in Calif, anyway).
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Not sure what the rebates are from your municipal water district, but in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as many other MWDs in CA, such cash incentives have been common for several decades.

People moving into the fire-prone WUI (wildland urban interface) areas is not just a CA problem. Drought-resistant landscaping will not help prevent a firestorm.

Many years ago fresh water was forecast to become the next important resource that would become the source of political tension. You can see it happening in China vs Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.

And the depletion of groundwater is happening all over the U.S., unfortunately:

National Climate Assessment: Great Plains’ Ogallala Aquifer drying out
The Ogallala Aquifer underlies parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. From wheat and cows to corn and cotton, the regional economy depends almost exclusively on agriculture irrigated by Ogallala groundwater. But according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), producers are extracting water faster than it is being replenished, which means that parts of the Ogallala Aquifer should be considered a nonrenewable resource.
Major aquifer for Central Plains farms being depleted
 
John cycling said:
Compared to the average water use in my town of 15 hundred cubic feet per month per household, my average water use is 6 hundred cubic feet per year. Yet, although the average household uses 30 times as much water as I do, my water bill of $110 a month is close to 90 percent of the average.
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There is almost nothing rational about water pricing in the US, not in Western states anyway. California may be the worst. A good first step in water conservation would probably be to charge water users what the water they use actually costs.
 
British Columbia interior has/had the worse fire season on record. We had record setting heat, at the times beating Las Vegas records. There was little snow pack last winter, minimal record setting amounts of rain. It seemed as if it wasn’t us on evacuation alert/order, it was friends. Massive areas of the province have trees that were killed years ago by bark beetle. The fires were just waiting to happen. The interior lost much of the growing season. People lost homes. Usually firefighters will come in from other provinces or the western US, or we will send help south. There was no sharing that could be done this year. We’re on extreme water restrictions. The only good thing is that our temperatures are now below normal.
 

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