Waste Not: A Solution for California’s Water Woes
July 24, 2009 by Editor
Filed under The Southwest
By Noah Buyaher, WSJ Blogs
The knives came during California’s budget battle — literally. But there’s still at least one big tussle in the Golden State left this year: solving the state’s water crisis.
As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month, Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders are planning a big push to address water shortages in the state, which has suffered a three-year drought. Everything from new reservoirs to urban conservation efforts is being considered.
But a big lever, according to a new study out of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, is getting farmers to use H2O more efficiently.
The finding is no great surprise. The Institute’s co-founder Dr. Peter Gleick has long advocated a “soft path” for water (freeing up new supply by curbing waste). And he’s been a critic of what he calls misinformation about the plight of Central Valley farmers. He says that they’re getting more water than they claim, and that the causes for astronomical unemployment rates in some farm communities owes more to the recession and poverty than the drought.
What’s interesting about the analysis is just how much the authors think a combination of irrigation technologies and management practices can save: 5.6 million acre-feet in an average year. That’s 17% of all water used by California farmers, and more than twice the total the state’s millions of city-dwellers could save if they wised up about their water use. It’s also a whole lot more than the enormous desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif. will produce when it comes online.
The report reiterates what demand-siders in both the water and energy debates have been saying for a long time: Spending money on capital-intensive projects (like desalination plants and huge solar arrays) makes little sense when there are cheaper and bigger opportunities in improving efficiency.
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Source: Wall Street Journal
[...] than enough clean drinking water. Just about everyone has flush toilets. California has a terrible water shortage that threatens its big farm business. But, the worst case for most Americans is that the city tells [...]
Years of drought on the Colorado River, and below-normal rainfall and snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains, combined with environmental restrictions on pumping water, have severely reduced the region’s water supply. http://bit.ly/10tkMF As a result, we are currently heading into Mandatory Conservation. What this means is that restrictions or fines on water usage could be imposed in order to address our water shortage. Therefore we need to make a conscious effort to reduce and minimize our water usage. Easy things we can do to help save water include fixing leaky sprinklers, installing water efficient shower heads, toilets and sprinklers etc. Check out all the tips on the site and pass it on to fellow Southern Californians! http://bit.ly/2pJfTX