My favorite factoid about the California drought is that subsidence in the Central Valley from groundwater over-extraction has literally sunk the ground by several inches.
This state’s agriculture conglomerates will literally sink this state into a massive sinkhole before they uproot almond groves and artichokes.
Or stop fracking (uses 2 mil gallons / day) or beef production (not sure gallons).
Fracking is terrible for people and the environment (and is limited in California mostly to the revival of some 100 year old wells in Kern County), but even if it used 2 million gallons every day for a year, that 730 million gallons is miniscule compared to the 1.1 TRILLION gallons used just by almond orchards in this state (10% of total water use in the state). Water use for beef production, even when you calculate indirect use (water use to grow feed, especially alfalfa), isn’t even on the same scale.
its extraordinary but not surprising how much misunderstanding there is in what’s causing the draught, from beef (an industry that should be destroyed as well) to bottled water to gardening. the agricultural industry is THE biggest cause, along with general global warming, causing the draught in california. and when we talk about draught in cali as this Big Thing that’s occurring, folks don’t even realize that there are already many regions in the southwest that have been experiencing genocidal draughts and lack of water access for years, particularly in rural indigenous communities. the agricultural industry is one of the biggest causes of communal and environmental destruction in the americas. the history of mass communal death caused by agriculture is far greater than any other industry that i know of. and monied urban, white, and rich communities in california are unlikely to suffer from draught in a meaningful way.
ppl also continually fail to mention California had been supplementing their LACK of water with other neighboring state’s water.
Basically any water supplied by the Colorado River is shared between multiple states and each state is given x amount of water. Arizona originally used to sell back portions of water we/they didn’t need to CA, until it got to the point where AZ ALSO NEEDED THAT WATER.
currently:
No one knows exactly how a shortage would play out, but Arizona will be the first to face cuts based on its junior priority to California. Reductions would hit farmers before cities like Phoenix that depend on the Colorado River supply.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2014/12/13/ariz-farmers-take-hit-stave-water-crisis/20346417/and:
What will be necessary is a fundamental reconsideration of 100 years of water-appropriation practices and patterns. Farmers, whose claims on Colorado river water are senior to all others, may have to give up, or sell off, some of their rights. Strict legal provisions that would turn whole swaths of the inhabited Southwest back into desert to slake the thirst of California cities will have to be reconsidered.
If the Western drought continues, Arizona would have to bear almost the entire brunt of water shortages before California gives up a drop of its appropriation from the river. Few observers of Western water affairs believe that’s politically practical, but few have offered practical alternatives.
A quick history lesson: The Colorado Compact, reached by six of the seven basin states in 1922 under then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, aimed to replace the tangle of state water allocation laws with a single legal regime in order to get the dam built. (Arizona finally signed the deal in 1944.) But the compact was based on a fraud — an estimate of river flows that Hoover and the states’ negotiators almost certainly knew was wildly optimistic.
Many times, the compact has been revised and supplemented to meet changing conditions. In 1968, Congress authorized construction of the Central Arizona Project, a massive aqueduct serving Phoenix and Tucson, by passing the Colorado River Basin Project Act. Arizona agreed to be last in line for water from the Colorado if a serious drought struck
The river’s apparent abundance has encouraged exceptionally wasteful usage. For example, thirsty forage crops such as alfalfa and pasture land account for as much as half the irrigated acreage in California, according to a report last year by the Pacific Institute. And as my colleague David Pierson reportedrecently, much of the harvest is shipped to China.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20140620-column.html#page=2When we hit elevation 1,075 (feet above sea level in Lake Mead), the states of Nevada and Arizona will start taking shortages,” he told congressmen.
- http://www.naturalnews.com/049135_water_wars_global_warming_Lake_Mead.html#
As a native arizonan who has been hearing about how awful california is about our SHARED water for over 15 years, FUCK CALIFORNIA’S WATER USAGE.
the 9.57 mil of Nevada and Arizona will have to be the ones to suffer from water drought and shortage first, don’t forget that. California’s gov’t has been nothing but greedy, wasteful, and a mess with our shared water.
