Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.
I don't know about municipalities but it's already been happening between northern and southern farmers for a couple years. Land in the north is left fallow because the water is more valuable than the crop. Monsanto and ConAgra are the two biggest buyers in the south.
Those are good links.
Many reasons to love it.
it's the devil especially when you consider the environmental impact of all that plastic
This is not random. Tap water in Colorado tastes perfectly good, but tap water in Southern California is gross. I think it has to do with how far it has to travel in the pipes or something. But it's no coincidence that people drink more bottled water in places where the tap water is gross, which happens to be in the drought zones.
Great information. Doing some more reading it looks like it can be diverted to San Diego:Those are good links.
Sent me down the alfalfa rabbit hole for a couple hours last night and another couple hours this morning. I changed my mind on the topic. Very little of the huge Southern California low desert alfalfa crop could be put to better use. All of the water is coming from the Colorado River via the All American Canal per water rights negotiated long ago. Unbelievable how cheap that water is. If they don't use the water it's going to Mexico where the lack of irrigation infrastructure would dump it in the Sea of Cortez. Unlike some Northern California water, there's no economical way to divert that water to the desperate central valley growers. Bizarre as it seems, over-irrigating intensely thirsty alfalfa bound for Asia in a hot arid desert in the midst of the worst drought in centuries is the right thing to do.
It's like this everywhere in the West. The water levels for every dam, lake etc are at all-time lows.
Carlsbad isn't exactly hippy country and the environmental battle was "7 years of hell". I hope the other projects get approved, but no one's holding their breath. I linked to this project earlier in the thread and also a central valley desal project that I think is the "better" approach - using solar instead of reverse osmosis and agricultural drainage instead of the ocean. Reverse osmosis is a huge energy user. All of the above is probably the right answer. There's several huge "badwater" aquifers in the state. I suspect the environmental challenge of accessing them reduces years of court dates.
The time has come for solar desalination. The Saudis are on board and working on building them around the country:
The bolded is very impressive - less than 6 cents/kWh.
####### crops! who needs 'em?That's ####### nuts!I read somewhere that the almond crops alone account for 10% of Cali's water usage.
Almond prices are at an all-time high. Up in the Kern County area (where Bakersfield is), plenty of undeveloped land is getting bought up by farmers planning to grow almonds.
Looking at this paper on the economics of almond growing there's a good profit if they can get 2300 lbs./acre at $2 lb. Sure it's profitable but replace Truffala with almonds and you've got California's version of The Lorax.
I dislike California, but it's a terribly mismanaged state. Terrible.
They need to focus on making the agriculture industry more efficient and streamlining the legal path for desalinization plants. Nickel and diming people for taking a long shower or trying to reduce how much water people drink at restaurants is moronic.
I hope people don't put up with this tail wagging the dog BS. If someone is already using their water efficiently there is very little means at their disposal to cut water use by 25%.
I'm already being as careful as I can about using water and find insulting that farms are not taking any responsibility. We're building these expensive desalination plants because farmers are using (wasting) so much water yet the cost to going to be spread to everyone.
If you can get the entire bible belt to secede from the union I'll promise to keep my faucets running all night.
I am a native of the only part of the country to successfully secede. We seceded were others failed. I'll see what I can do.
Florida. Key West to be exact. But you didn't actually secede any more than Peter Griffin did.
