An open plea to the California water managers...

[widebody911]

Could we please, please, pretty please store some of this rainfall, and not just flush it out to sea?

Thanks!

[bleucamaro]

We have to keep the dams open to prepare for the snow melt.

[craigster59]

We need high speed rail in the Central Valley more than stupid catch basins.

[Moses]

Overpumping of Central Valley groundwater creating a crisis, experts say - LA Times

This is WAY worse than anyone thinks.

California's farmers are sucking water out of the ground so fast that the aquifer may be permanently damaged. And farming contributes less that 2% to the state economy. And they use 80% of the available water. And the water they are using is FREE. They only pay to maintain the water pipes. Madness.

Yes, more storage would be great, but in reality we need to stop the biggest corporate welfare scam around... California agriculture.

[widebody911]

Central Valley sinking fast in drought, NASA study shows | The Sacramento Bee

Originally Posted by Moses

Overpumping of Central Valley groundwater creating a crisis, experts say - LA Times

This is WAY worse than anyone thinks.

California's farmers are sucking water out of the ground so fast that the aquifer may be permanently damaged. And farming contributes less that 2% to the state economy. And they use 80% of the available water. And the water they are using is FREE. They only pay to maintain the water pipes. Madness.

Yes, more storage would be great, but in reality we need to stop the biggest corporate welfare scam around... California agriculture.

[Moses]

Originally Posted by craigster59

We need high speed rail in the Central Valley more than stupid catch basins.

Just a thought... How does high speed rail plan to deal with the rail beds dropping 8-12" a year in some areas? Yikes!

[sammyg2]

Unfortunately, environmental lawyers filed suit with California several years ago on behalf of environmental extremist groups.

California lost.

They were forced to re-fill mono lake, a DEAD lake, and also to flush fresh water down the Sacramento river delta to keep it from getting seasonally brackish because an invasive, non-native 2" long smelt (bait) lives there now and it would be endangered if the water managers stopped flushing all that clean, clear water out into the ocean.

Billions of gallons of it.

So don't blame the water managers or water districts or even the politicians. The blame falls squarely on the enviro-wackos.

[Gogar]

Originally Posted by Moses

Just a thought... How does high speed rail plan to deal with the rail beds dropping 8-12" a year in some areas? Yikes!

I think craigster was kidding...

[rusnak]

Yup. This pales in comparison to the water consumed by farmers.

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Unfortunately, environmental lawyers filed suit with California several years ago on behalf of environmental extremist groups.

California lost.

They were forced to re-fill mono lake, a DEAD lake, and also to flush fresh water down the Sacramento river delta to keep it from getting seasonally brackish because an invasive, non-native 2" long smelt (bait) lives there now and it would be endangered if the water managers stopped flushing all that clean, clear water out into the ocean.

Billions of gallons of it.

So don't blame the water managers or water districts or even the politicians. The blame falls squarely on the enviro-wackos.

[sammyg2]

A couple articles re:

In 2005 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a Biological Opinion that the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project were not having an adverse effect on the recovery of the delta smelt.

The Natural Resources Defense Council sued, and in 2007 Fresno U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger found the BioOp was arbitrary and capricious and ordered protections for the delta smelt while the BioOp was redone.

In 2008, at the close of the court's deadline, the FWS issued a new BiOp.

This time the FWS came to the opposite of its earlier conclusion, finding the water projects were jeopardizing the continued existence of the delta smelt.

When six new plaintiffs sued, Judge Wanger preliminarily ordered the FWS to give him weekly justifications of delta flow restrictions and appointed four scientists as his own expert witnesses.[25] After haranguing FWS expert witnesses as “zealots”, in December 2010 Judge Wanger, again, found the FWS BioOp was arbitrary and capricious and, again, ordered the FWS to complete a new one.

In 2014 a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Wanger.

While the new BioOp was “a ponderous, chaotic document, overwhelming in size” it was found not arbitrary and capricious.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed that the water projects were jeopardizing the existence of the delta smelt, and, given TVA v. Hill's command that endangered species must be saved "whatever the cost" Circuit Judge Jay Bybee opined that California could only use the smelts' water after receiving an exemption from the God Squad.[30] In January 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court declined review without comment.

The smelt is unpopular among farmers, with a common complaint being that 200,000 acres of farmland have been left fallow due to "four buckets of minnows".

Although allegations have been made that this protection has hurt California's agricultural sector, with the devastation of hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the Central Valley, a 2009 UC Davis study estimated that job losses due to smelt protection were closer to 5,000.

An additional 16,000 job losses in the Central Valley were attributed to the drought California had been experiencing in recent years.

wiki

2 new lawsuits to save S.F. Bay-delta smelt
By Bob Egelko
Published 4:00 am, Sunday, November 15, 2009

Two environmental groups sued the federal government Friday seeking greater habitat protections for two San Francisco Bay-delta fish species, one of them the delta smelt, a small but important creature in California's water wars.

One lawsuit asks a federal judge in Sacramento to require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to respond to the groups' March 2006 request to change the delta smelt's status from "threatened" to "endangered." That action would somewhat tighten federal standards for development or water-use permits.

A second suit, filed in San Francisco, challenges the federal agency's decision in April to deny protected status to the bay-delta population of the longfin smelt. The agency said the local population is not a distinct group entitled to protection because some of the fish migrate up the coast to breed with other longfin, a conclusion the environmental groups called a reversal of the government's longtime position.

"Formerly abundant fish at the base of the food chain in the San Francisco estuary are being driven to near extinction," said Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the suits along with the Bay Institute.

Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Steve Martarano said his agency is still reviewing the status of both fish, and cited recent federal surveys showing both populations at historically low levels. The agency issued a biological opinion on the delta smelt in December that triggered a government order of reduced water shipments from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, angering Central Valley farm groups and prompting an unsuccessful protest from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Martarano also said there's no practical difference between the law's protections for endangered and threatened species, both of which are entitled to government designation of critical habitat and a recovery plan.

Miller agreed but said the lawsuits, if successful, would strengthen environmental safeguards that affect other species - Central Valley salmon, sturgeon and steelhead - and counter the state's pressure for water development.

He criticized legislation signed by Schwarzenegger this week that puts an $11.1 billion water bond on the November 2010 ballot, including funding for delta protection and restoration, new dams, and potentially a peripheral canal to carry water around the delta. Environmental groups are split on the measure.

Biologists say the delta smelt, 2 to 3 inches long, is an indicator of the health of the ecosystem. Court rulings and regulatory decisions since 2007, designed to save the once-abundant fish from extinction, have substantially reduced pumping of water from the delta to Central Valley croplands and Southern California households.

[JavaBrewer]

Lake Cachuma. Sediment dredging is bad. No water for you.

[Flieger]

Didn't we just do this thread a few months ago?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

But... but... but... if not for California agriculture then where would all those "jobs that no Americans want to do" come from?

Oh the horror! Won't someone please think of the illegalos?

[Daves911L]

Originally Posted by Moses

And farming contributes less that 2% to the state economy. And they use 80% of the available water. And the water they are using is FREE. They only pay to maintain the water pipes. Madness.

Yes, more storage would be great, but in reality we need to stop the biggest corporate welfare scam around... California agriculture.

Yes, we did this before. And I remember this pie chart posted then by Moses. If I were an artist, I would create a graphic that shows the way the world really is. But since I'm not, you'll have to imagine it:

Consider that same pie chart with ag/mining removed, and the circle closed so that the remainder of the California economy totals 100%. Then take the 2% ag/mining you removed, and turn it into a golf tee, supporting the circle. The problem, which Moses can't see, is that relatively small piece of economic output supports everything else. Only agriculture and resource extraction (mining/energy) actually create wealth. Everything else transforms and multiplies the wealth created by agriculture and resource extraction.

Well, some things anyway. The construction and manufacturing create needed products using ag/mining output, for 14%. That combined output is moved around, supplied where needed, or farther transformed for another 16%. How about the rest? 68% of the economy provides services, making money from money. Everything, one way or another, is dependent on that basic seed of wealth created by harvesting sunshine, or extracting resources from the ground.

The true water cost of California's population is grossly misrepresented. It is not the farmers who are consuming all that water. The farmers merely handle it, processing it into a different form for consumption by the remaining 98% of the population. Most of us consume 2000-4000+ gallons of water per day in the form of food, goods, and energy. What is typically reported as human water consumption is that which municipalities report delivering in liquid form through pipes, for our homes and lawns.

[wdfifteen]

What would the rest of Californians do with the farmers water if they got it?

Would they use it for something that contributed to the economy or use it to water lawns and wash cars?

[SilberUrS6]

Originally Posted by Daves911L

Only agriculture and resource extraction (mining/energy) actually create wealth. Everything else transforms and multiplies the wealth created by agriculture and resource extraction.

Let's take mining out. Agriculture sucks up most of the water, not mining. And if you're talking about California's economy being supported by ag and mining, it just isn't. If those things went completely away, California's economy would not disappear. Just like in every other place where some industry or commerce replaced extractive industries. It's when you don't have a replacement that the economy falters. Like the harvest of timber, for example.

In California, if you take the example of almonds, each almond takes about one gallon of water to grow. Yeah, it's better than growing beef or doing dairy, but still. Two-thirds of those almonds are exported out of the U.S., so the benefit of their growth is almost the exact same thing as pumping the water out of the ground, and selling it overseas. Sure, the farmers make money, and they spend some of it in California, but at only 2% of the state's economy, that effect is not large. Just as an example of how much water the almond crop takes - every year, California almonds consume the same amount of water that the city of Los Angeles uses in three years. About 10% of the total water used in California goes to growing almonds. And almost all of it is coming from underground. And to top it all off, almonds are a small part of the total agricultural output of California. Of no almonds were grown next year, I don't think anyone in California would notice any economic effects at all, except the growers and the exporters.

[jyl]

From some quick reading, it seems like if the winter continues wet - pretty likely, being a very strong El Nino - the state's reservoirs could end winter like 70%. Then with above normal snowpack, melt could top the reservoirs up even more.

Groundwater recharge in just one year won't be that much, it sounds like that needs many years of rain - California farmers and other water users have sucked out decades of groundwater in just a few years of drought.

Thinking beyond the human water uses, I wonder if this rainy winter has come in time for trees?. California's trees have been under big stress. Lot of trees dying or vulnerable to disease. Enough to change the nature of some forests.

[jyl]

Originally Posted by Daves911L

Yes, we did this before. And I remember this pie chart posted then by Moses. If I were an artist, I would create a graphic that shows the way the world really is. But since I'm not, you'll have to imagine it:

Consider that same pie chart with ag/mining removed, and the circle closed so that the remainder of the California economy totals 100%. Then take the 2% ag/mining you removed, and turn it into a golf tee, supporting the circle. The problem, which Moses can't see, is that relatively small piece of economic output supports everything else. Only agriculture and resource extraction (mining/energy) actually create wealth. Everything else transforms and multiplies the wealth created by agriculture and resource extraction.

Well, some things anyway. The construction and manufacturing create needed products using ag/mining output, for 14%. That combined output is moved around, supplied where needed, or farther transformed for another 16%. How about the rest? 68% of the economy provides services, making money from money. Everything, one way or another, is dependent on that basic seed of wealth created by harvesting sunshine, or extracting resources from the ground.

The true water cost of California's population is grossly misrepresented. It is not the farmers who are consuming all that water. The farmers merely handle it, processing it into a different form for consumption by the remaining 98% of the population. Most of us consume 2000-4000+ gallons of water per day in the form of food, goods, and energy. What is typically reported as human water consumption is that which municipalities report delivering in liquid form through pipes, for our homes and lawns.

We've discussed this, in a very long previous thread. California agriculture is not all about producing the food that we (Americans) need to eat. A large amount - a majority, I think - of the industry's water is used to grow stuff that most of us could care less about.

Alfalfa exported to China for their dairy farms, cotton exported to mills overseas, almonds exported to the rest of the world as a luxury crop, etc. This sort of stuff consumes a huge amount of water, is unimportant as far as domestic food needs go, produces minimal value-added (very little processing done), and generates very little of the state's GDP and very few of is jobs. Essentially, that part of the state's agricultural industry - and it is a large part - is simply repackaging and selling water, that it gets for very cheap.

The stuff we normally think of as "California produce" - the greens and fruits in the fresh food aisle - is only a part of the industry.

See table 5, page 18 here. Also fig 10, page 19.
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44093.pdf

Biggest water crop is alfalfa, followed by almonds and grazing pasture.

Some of those crops support very few jobs. Alfalfa for instance. Fig 11, page 20.

[Danimal16]

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/drought-or-stupid-rescue-killing-delta-smelt/

Is an interesting read.

[jyl]

The groundwater situation is serious. Shallow aquifers are recharged from surface water, slowly. Deep aquifers are not, or recharge takes many decades. Water usage that relies on deep aquifers is unsustainable. In California, drilling and pumping groundwater is unrestricted.

My feeling is that California should be actively recharging its groundwater in rainy years, by injecting water into wells, not relying on surface water recharge.

If You Think the Water Crisis Can't Get Worse, Wait Until the Aquifers Are Drained