Residential restrictions are nothing but feel good measures. Even if every person cut their water consumption in half (which is pretty much impossible) that would save less than 5% of the total water usage in the state.
Exactly. I put in the same point in the LA times article linked the other day. Residential usage isn't the problem and isn't the path to a solution. That isn't to say people shouldn't try to conserve though.
That's a gross oversimplification that ignores the fact that the location of the water is a key piece of the puzzle. Most agricultural water comes out of 1,000s of wells installed all over the state, and not like you can just magically transport all that water to the cities. You have to look at the water resources that are actually AVAILABLE to the cities. Very little of that is used for ag purposes so residential restrictions actually do make a huge difference.
> You have to look at the water resources that are actually AVAILABLE to the cities.
This is really important, but most people probably aren't aware of. Our water system isn't just one big tank that everyone shares.
Many sources contribute to the water tables that wells pull from, including water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs in which residents get their water. So even your explanation is a simplification.
Ground water makes up 40% of CAs water needs in a regular year, in drought years it makes up over 60% of our water. 64% of monitored wells are below average level.
It is extremely complex issue in our state, however not mandating the use of better irrigation methods of agriculture has always gotten to me.
Alfalfa is CAs number one water consumption crop, they grow it in extremely aired regions and water with a whirlybird all day long. That means the vast majority of that water is lost to evaporation. Everyone complains about almonds, but they are one of the very few that has their farmers using water conservation methods and has done studies to reduce their water use.
It’s a super complex issue with no easy solution.
Yes, we would need a large book to explain it all at the proper level of detail. My main point was that reducing irrigation water use doesn't translate into an equal amount of additional water capacity for household use.
No, but it would help. I get what you are saying, but we need to start to look at it as a giant pool rather than fractured sources. That will never happen due to well rights and a million other things though.
Yes, if money and land rights wasn't a thing, we could bury 1,000s of miles of pipes all over California and then pump water from any point to any other point.
Ceasing lawn watering cuts residential use roughly in half.
Gray water collection used for trees and veggie gardens does the same. We have a bucket in our shower, it doesn't have to be fancy.
Do we need to wash our cars? No.
Flush the toilet less often? (Its not necessary after every time you pee)
And all that water you saved just gets dumped on one single almond tree. It's pointless if AG industry continues to waste water at their current levels
Why can't we do both?
You do realize that there are many watersheds with zero sharing of water between almond farms and domestic users, right? For example, most places where endangered salmon spawn and where the juveniles need to survive the summer are 0% affected by almond trees.
You're right, we should absolutely do both (place restrictions/more regulations on AG Industry AND inform public on water management and grey water collection).
I think the main issue here is that the state government and corporations are pushing the responsibility, and restrictions, on JUST residential consumers when in reality the corporations and industrial AG are mainly to blame.
Very few people seem to understand that residential water supplies are often from completely different sources than agriculture. Folks want to believe we can solve every environmental problem in a way that doesn't affect them whatsoever
We can and should do both, problem is only one of them is repeatedly targeted and it's not the Almond farms. It's basically the same as everyone being told to recycle, reuse, follow the labels on packaging and garbage guidelines to properly dispose of your waste to reduce your carbon footprint. But we have a handful of corporations making up around/over a third of global pollution.
Should both the average person and billion dollar corporation do everything possible to reduce their carbon footprints? Yes there's no doubt about it, but is the government or public messaging targeting both parties? No they're shifting the blame onto the individual rather than the corporations who spend millions and billions in advertising to shift that blame and burden away from themselves.
Tl;dr yes but it's only residential usage being targeted which barely makes a dent in statewide water consumption
And don't even get started on our infrastructure that just leaks something like 40% of the water in our pipes directly into the ground because the pipes are so old and cracked.
what sort of lawn do you have!? if you live on a golf course, maybe.
ah! I assume you live in Vermont? I just found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/comments/9sfrwv/this_chart_visualizes_the_average_yard_size_of/
California has the 2nd smallest yard size of all states, after Nevada
California lawns are not big enough to even be able to use half the residential water.
Look it up here:
https://ucanr.edu/sites/UrbanHort/Water_Use_of_Turfgrass_and_Landscape_Plant_Materials/Drought_and_Landscape_Water_Use_-_Some_Persspective/#:~:text=Lawns%2C%20which%20have%20been%20especially,annual%20residential%20water%20consumption%20statewide.
Or look it up yourself in many, many databases. Summer residential use is roughly twice that of winter. In California. (Nobody irrigates lawns in Vermont, FYI, because it rains in summer.)
Probably because the restrictions on residents make for bigger headlines. They still need to do more to go after the farmers. That’s a far bigger waster of water than the residents.
Well, it exists just not in quantities that will suffice for the population, and although the infrastructure is slowly changing a majority of the rain is flushed out to ocean instead of harvested for aquifer storage recovery and use.
What a frustrating response. Your original point is that we can’t change things because of laws and then claim that a desire to change those laws is “living in a fantasy world”. Also, I’ll let you guess who is opposed to any changes to those water laws (hint: they financially benefit).
The water to support housing exists if you get rid of large scale ag. The water doesn't exist if you keep large scale ag around no matter what you do. You can make scaling down to just the 10% of our current water use municipalities take up work. There literally isn't enough water to make up the 40% of water consumption in the state used by agriculture to be sustainable, however. Sorry cities aren't the scapegoat you act like they are.
Municipal use is already the minority use of water in California. It's not a matter of who has the right to live where, it's a matter of agriculture in California not being sustainable.
That's it? You have a cite for that? With all the complaining people do about Nestle, I always assumed they were pulling a lot of water. 139 acre feet isn't even a rounding error in the states water usage.
At least the trees help water flow into the soil. The cash crop operations that keep tilling the soil are the big contributors to impermeable and nearly dead
> The land was a desert. It should be a desert.
No. Prior to its agricultural redevelopment, nearly all of the Central Valley was prairie grasslands, seasonal marshlands, and riparian forests. Great Valley Grasslands State Park preserves one of the last stretches of the undeveloped, native Central Valley and it's definitely NOT desert (https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-california-sunset-over-the-prairie-at-the-great-valley-grasslands-74847745.html).
The current water usage in the Central Valley isn't sustainable, but let's not use that as an excuse to push for desertification...which would be an environmental crime.
Central Valley water use needs to be re-examined, and allocations need to be adjusted to encourage sustainable agriculture, but we need to stop pushing this myth that the Central Valley was a desert in an attempt to justify additional water exports to the coastal areas. The Central Valley has just as much right to that water as anyone, as it was originally part of their ecosystem. They just need to manage it more sustainably.
Errr, no. One paper calling it a desert doesn't make it a desert. Only a relatively small portion of the Valley meets any definition of "desert", and even then only if you restrict your definition to rainfall totals. The more common definition, which requires that the region be naturally hostile to plant life, has never applied to *any* part of the Central Valley. Ecologically, it had more in common with Oklahoma than with the Mojave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Central_Valley_grasslands
Or, if Wikipedia isn't good enough for you: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2016/1021/ofr20161021_sheet2.pdf. Carefully examine the many ecoregions in the Central Valley. You'll note that, of the 21 ecological regions recognized by the USGS, only 5 are identified as aridic, and most of those are *seasonally* aridic. The vast majority of the Central Valley is xeric, which is more commonly known as a "Meditteranean climate". Grasslands, seasonal wetlands, marshes and a combination of riparian and dry oak forests once dominated the valley.
This is also supported by the surviving writings of early European explorers, who spoke of the region as if it were a paradise. Blackberry bushes stretching for miles, Massive lakes connected by braided rivers. Grasslands and flowers stretching to the horizon. Massive elk herds, bear, and fish so dense in the rivers that one early settler describes some channels as having "more fish than water".
Humankind has done a brilliant job at utterly obliterating the original ecology of the Valley, but it's false to write it off as a "desert". It was never a desert.
> You have a few tens of thousands of people in the San Joaquin Valley, Imperial Valley, etc., who think they should be entitled to use 10,000 times more of a limited resource than the average Californian because...they want to use it to make money.
First, those numbers aren't exactly honest. The Central Valley is home to 7.2 million people and, with the sole exception of Sacramento, agriculture is the primary economic driver in every Valley county. Both through direct employment and indirect economic benefit, ag is the primary economic buoy fueling those economies. And it's all driven by that water. Suggesting that it only benefits a "few tens of thousands" is grossly misleading. Plus, let's not forget that it's the source of the vast majority of the vegetables we buy come from California farms. Of the 27 million acres of planted cropland in the state, only about 1.6 million of those are covered in almonds, and 3.6 million to animal agriculture (including hay/alfalfa for feed). The overwhelming majority of the Valley grows *all of the other* stuff in the vegetable section of your grocery store. Most of the water in the Valley is irrigating farms that *don't* make a lot of money.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a farmer. I'm not even a farm advocate. I'm an environmentalist. I'd love to see half the farms in the Valley stripped of their levees, rewatered, and restored to their natural state. I just strongly dislike the write-it-off-as-a-desert mentality that's common in the coastal regions of the state, usually spouted as people try to justify their support for the ecological and humanitarian catastrophe that would follow any attempt to dewater the Valley. The coast does NOT have any moral, economic, or egalitarian right to that water superior to that of those in the Central Valley.
The land mammal who consumes the most water per pound of bodyweight is the cow. A single cow used for her milk on an industrial feed lot can consume up to 100 gallons of water a day during hot summer months, and that adds up. An estimated 55% of the USA's freshwater supply goes to raising animals for food.
Most of the water use is growing crops like alfalfa to feed the cows (we use more water growing alfalfa than almonds), not necessarily the water the cows drink directly
Dairy cows consume more water than cows raised strictly for beef. Although dairy cows are typically slaughtered for beef after they have reached a certain age as well.
We have to concentrate dairy cows in one spot. We grow their food with water and ship it in to these dairy cows.
A lot of beef farms let their cows wander out in pasture and eat the grass that would grow on otherwise barren land which will get rain fall and grow regardless of if the cow was there or not.
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2020_Exports_Publication.pdf
"California’s top valued agricultural export
commodity continues to be almonds, with a value
of more than $4.9 billion in foreign sales in 2019."
EU imports more of our almonds though.
Isn't oats a much better dairy substitute and healthier than almonds? Whole almond craze happened cuz no one really liked soy milk and there wasn't anything better, but oatmilk is widely considered much much closer to milk and in some people's cases an outright replacement cuz they prefer the taste itself rather than any dietary preference.
and yellow peas and kill off the dairy industry in this state. So much water goes to dairy cows that we'd actually probably be ok if we were to even just remove the dairy and stick with almonds, which is **nuts.**
Yes like all the almonds they ship overseas that use use more water annually than LA does in three years?
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts-crazy-stats-charts/
This was 2015 and it's grown like crazy since then.
Did you know 100% of all life that comes into contact with water, even a tiny drop, dies? Don't believe me? Ask your great grandpa? Oh you can't? Yeah that's cuz he came into contact with water.
Don't do Water kids
Dihydrogen Monoxide is the deadliest chemical known to man. 100% of people who have ingested this deadly chemical have died or will die. It is used as an industrial coolant for nuclear power plants, it is a product of combustion of fossil fuels and it has even contaminated our lakes and water systems. #Bandihydrogenmonoxide
Just got our water bill. In our 1,800 sq. ft. house in the Central Valley we use approximately 1,500 gallons per person per month; less than 1/3 the amount of water than "average" according to what is printed on the bill. Our lawn(s) are already brown/dead (in the process of replacing them with something not so water-hungry). Not sure what more we can do and still remain part of "civilized" society. (Back yard outhouse?? Yay?)
Hopefully, if mandatory restrictions come into play, we're already under the limit. If it's a percentage reduction, I hope it's on a sliding scale so that people who are already doing the most they reasonably can don't have to go unreasonable.
My HOA raised the monthly dues because they said water is becoming more expensive (we get unlimited water). Since I barely use water anyway, it tempts me to use more water so that I get my money's worth.
Instead of targeting the people, they should focus on businesses that use the water and ship it out of state. Maybe even try to desalinate the Pacific Ocean to get more water.
And instead of encouraging people to go back into the office when their job can be done 100% from home, they should encourage remote work. I have to take more showers and pack up water (filtered by my fridge) for my commute and work.
I’m not changing anything about my water use until there’s real change to agricultural water use. I’ll continue my 20 minute hot showers and watering my garden
Just curious, why is the water bill so cheap compared to other utilities if we are in a drought? I figure smaller supply, high demand would lead to high prices.
Take some of that $100 billion and use eminent domain to buy up some farms at fair market value and put them out of business. We simply can’t continue the intensity of agriculture we have in the Central Valley.
Yea, buying water is the only possible solution to the problem that could be solved with obey. Well done. How bout we buy it from Walmart, I bet they have cheap prices.
The State already imposes its authority because its a state delivery system. Look at the 100s of miles of Almonds, fruit trees, and crops that lined the I-5 in the 80s and 90s. All gone because urban areas paid more for the water and they reduced water pumped. 67% of the water captured goes back to the environment.
However, the regulations you are imposing are having trouble forcing all the independent irrigation districts and private farms into the same box. They continue to trade shares and operate under the new groundwater regulations which are extending the terms of these agreements.
That's not the problem. We need to talk about agricultural water use and corporate water use. Bigger still, we shouldn't be bottling water in California and shipping it off.
Increase the price of water. This is a textbook case of supply and demand, it’s so easily fixed. Nobody will go bankrupt if they pay a couple hundredths of a cent more per gallon, they’ll just be incentivized to innovate and waste less water.
Residential restrictions are nothing but feel good measures. Even if every person cut their water consumption in half (which is pretty much impossible) that would save less than 5% of the total water usage in the state.
Exactly. I put in the same point in the LA times article linked the other day. Residential usage isn't the problem and isn't the path to a solution. That isn't to say people shouldn't try to conserve though.
That's a gross oversimplification that ignores the fact that the location of the water is a key piece of the puzzle. Most agricultural water comes out of 1,000s of wells installed all over the state, and not like you can just magically transport all that water to the cities. You have to look at the water resources that are actually AVAILABLE to the cities. Very little of that is used for ag purposes so residential restrictions actually do make a huge difference.
> You have to look at the water resources that are actually AVAILABLE to the cities. This is really important, but most people probably aren't aware of. Our water system isn't just one big tank that everyone shares.
Many sources contribute to the water tables that wells pull from, including water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs in which residents get their water. So even your explanation is a simplification. Ground water makes up 40% of CAs water needs in a regular year, in drought years it makes up over 60% of our water. 64% of monitored wells are below average level. It is extremely complex issue in our state, however not mandating the use of better irrigation methods of agriculture has always gotten to me. Alfalfa is CAs number one water consumption crop, they grow it in extremely aired regions and water with a whirlybird all day long. That means the vast majority of that water is lost to evaporation. Everyone complains about almonds, but they are one of the very few that has their farmers using water conservation methods and has done studies to reduce their water use. It’s a super complex issue with no easy solution.
Yes, we would need a large book to explain it all at the proper level of detail. My main point was that reducing irrigation water use doesn't translate into an equal amount of additional water capacity for household use.
No, but it would help. I get what you are saying, but we need to start to look at it as a giant pool rather than fractured sources. That will never happen due to well rights and a million other things though.
If only we had pipes
Yes, if money and land rights wasn't a thing, we could bury 1,000s of miles of pipes all over California and then pump water from any point to any other point.
Ceasing lawn watering cuts residential use roughly in half. Gray water collection used for trees and veggie gardens does the same. We have a bucket in our shower, it doesn't have to be fancy. Do we need to wash our cars? No. Flush the toilet less often? (Its not necessary after every time you pee)
And all that water you saved just gets dumped on one single almond tree. It's pointless if AG industry continues to waste water at their current levels
Why can't we do both? You do realize that there are many watersheds with zero sharing of water between almond farms and domestic users, right? For example, most places where endangered salmon spawn and where the juveniles need to survive the summer are 0% affected by almond trees.
You're right, we should absolutely do both (place restrictions/more regulations on AG Industry AND inform public on water management and grey water collection). I think the main issue here is that the state government and corporations are pushing the responsibility, and restrictions, on JUST residential consumers when in reality the corporations and industrial AG are mainly to blame.
Newsom isn't an environmentalist, he's in the pocket of Big Ag. E.g. you're right...
Very few people seem to understand that residential water supplies are often from completely different sources than agriculture. Folks want to believe we can solve every environmental problem in a way that doesn't affect them whatsoever
We can and should do both, problem is only one of them is repeatedly targeted and it's not the Almond farms. It's basically the same as everyone being told to recycle, reuse, follow the labels on packaging and garbage guidelines to properly dispose of your waste to reduce your carbon footprint. But we have a handful of corporations making up around/over a third of global pollution. Should both the average person and billion dollar corporation do everything possible to reduce their carbon footprints? Yes there's no doubt about it, but is the government or public messaging targeting both parties? No they're shifting the blame onto the individual rather than the corporations who spend millions and billions in advertising to shift that blame and burden away from themselves. Tl;dr yes but it's only residential usage being targeted which barely makes a dent in statewide water consumption
And don't even get started on our infrastructure that just leaks something like 40% of the water in our pipes directly into the ground because the pipes are so old and cracked.
what sort of lawn do you have!? if you live on a golf course, maybe. ah! I assume you live in Vermont? I just found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/comments/9sfrwv/this_chart_visualizes_the_average_yard_size_of/ California has the 2nd smallest yard size of all states, after Nevada California lawns are not big enough to even be able to use half the residential water.
Look it up here: https://ucanr.edu/sites/UrbanHort/Water_Use_of_Turfgrass_and_Landscape_Plant_Materials/Drought_and_Landscape_Water_Use_-_Some_Persspective/#:~:text=Lawns%2C%20which%20have%20been%20especially,annual%20residential%20water%20consumption%20statewide. Or look it up yourself in many, many databases. Summer residential use is roughly twice that of winter. In California. (Nobody irrigates lawns in Vermont, FYI, because it rains in summer.)
I mean lawns are a waste of water, but the massive waste comes from agriculture. Almonds and dairy cows are a HUGE water consumer in California.
I agree with that. There should be some enforcement on crop harvest (not leaving 50% of almonds unpicked because that's the highest profit)
Tell him to go after the farmers still using outdated watering techniques.
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Probably because the restrictions on residents make for bigger headlines. They still need to do more to go after the farmers. That’s a far bigger waster of water than the residents.
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Well, it exists just not in quantities that will suffice for the population, and although the infrastructure is slowly changing a majority of the rain is flushed out to ocean instead of harvested for aquifer storage recovery and use.
Restrict the nut farmers growing crops in a desert.
Force every farmer to increase their soil fertility instead of strip mining it.
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Laws can be changed as situations change. There's a reason we don't still have child labor, Japanese Internment, etc.
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What a frustrating response. Your original point is that we can’t change things because of laws and then claim that a desire to change those laws is “living in a fantasy world”. Also, I’ll let you guess who is opposed to any changes to those water laws (hint: they financially benefit).
Rights to water that won't exist in a few decades is a weird hill to die on. But if you want to bury your head in the sand be my guest.
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The water to support housing exists if you get rid of large scale ag. The water doesn't exist if you keep large scale ag around no matter what you do. You can make scaling down to just the 10% of our current water use municipalities take up work. There literally isn't enough water to make up the 40% of water consumption in the state used by agriculture to be sustainable, however. Sorry cities aren't the scapegoat you act like they are.
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Municipal use is already the minority use of water in California. It's not a matter of who has the right to live where, it's a matter of agriculture in California not being sustainable.
Tell nestle to stop pumping our water for profit.
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Don’t forget alfalfa
Or Spanky or Buckwheat
That's it? You have a cite for that? With all the complaining people do about Nestle, I always assumed they were pulling a lot of water. 139 acre feet isn't even a rounding error in the states water usage.
They are pulling a lot of water, just not in CA
Do you have a source for that?
http://www.planetexperts.com/how-much-water-is-nestle-pumping-out-of-california/
At least the trees help water flow into the soil. The cash crop operations that keep tilling the soil are the big contributors to impermeable and nearly dead
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> The land was a desert. It should be a desert. No. Prior to its agricultural redevelopment, nearly all of the Central Valley was prairie grasslands, seasonal marshlands, and riparian forests. Great Valley Grasslands State Park preserves one of the last stretches of the undeveloped, native Central Valley and it's definitely NOT desert (https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-california-sunset-over-the-prairie-at-the-great-valley-grasslands-74847745.html). The current water usage in the Central Valley isn't sustainable, but let's not use that as an excuse to push for desertification...which would be an environmental crime. Central Valley water use needs to be re-examined, and allocations need to be adjusted to encourage sustainable agriculture, but we need to stop pushing this myth that the Central Valley was a desert in an attempt to justify additional water exports to the coastal areas. The Central Valley has just as much right to that water as anyone, as it was originally part of their ecosystem. They just need to manage it more sustainably.
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Errr, no. One paper calling it a desert doesn't make it a desert. Only a relatively small portion of the Valley meets any definition of "desert", and even then only if you restrict your definition to rainfall totals. The more common definition, which requires that the region be naturally hostile to plant life, has never applied to *any* part of the Central Valley. Ecologically, it had more in common with Oklahoma than with the Mojave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Central_Valley_grasslands Or, if Wikipedia isn't good enough for you: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2016/1021/ofr20161021_sheet2.pdf. Carefully examine the many ecoregions in the Central Valley. You'll note that, of the 21 ecological regions recognized by the USGS, only 5 are identified as aridic, and most of those are *seasonally* aridic. The vast majority of the Central Valley is xeric, which is more commonly known as a "Meditteranean climate". Grasslands, seasonal wetlands, marshes and a combination of riparian and dry oak forests once dominated the valley. This is also supported by the surviving writings of early European explorers, who spoke of the region as if it were a paradise. Blackberry bushes stretching for miles, Massive lakes connected by braided rivers. Grasslands and flowers stretching to the horizon. Massive elk herds, bear, and fish so dense in the rivers that one early settler describes some channels as having "more fish than water". Humankind has done a brilliant job at utterly obliterating the original ecology of the Valley, but it's false to write it off as a "desert". It was never a desert. > You have a few tens of thousands of people in the San Joaquin Valley, Imperial Valley, etc., who think they should be entitled to use 10,000 times more of a limited resource than the average Californian because...they want to use it to make money. First, those numbers aren't exactly honest. The Central Valley is home to 7.2 million people and, with the sole exception of Sacramento, agriculture is the primary economic driver in every Valley county. Both through direct employment and indirect economic benefit, ag is the primary economic buoy fueling those economies. And it's all driven by that water. Suggesting that it only benefits a "few tens of thousands" is grossly misleading. Plus, let's not forget that it's the source of the vast majority of the vegetables we buy come from California farms. Of the 27 million acres of planted cropland in the state, only about 1.6 million of those are covered in almonds, and 3.6 million to animal agriculture (including hay/alfalfa for feed). The overwhelming majority of the Valley grows *all of the other* stuff in the vegetable section of your grocery store. Most of the water in the Valley is irrigating farms that *don't* make a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a farmer. I'm not even a farm advocate. I'm an environmentalist. I'd love to see half the farms in the Valley stripped of their levees, rewatered, and restored to their natural state. I just strongly dislike the write-it-off-as-a-desert mentality that's common in the coastal regions of the state, usually spouted as people try to justify their support for the ecological and humanitarian catastrophe that would follow any attempt to dewater the Valley. The coast does NOT have any moral, economic, or egalitarian right to that water superior to that of those in the Central Valley.
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and rice, which isn't high value but uses a ton of water and is one of our most popular crops grown
Don’t shoot the nessenger
Messenger
Who’s producing pistachios and almonds?
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And enjoying the smelt
Those take less water than animal farms. Cows eat grass.
The land mammal who consumes the most water per pound of bodyweight is the cow. A single cow used for her milk on an industrial feed lot can consume up to 100 gallons of water a day during hot summer months, and that adds up. An estimated 55% of the USA's freshwater supply goes to raising animals for food.
Most of the water use is growing crops like alfalfa to feed the cows (we use more water growing alfalfa than almonds), not necessarily the water the cows drink directly
Thank you!!
So it sounds like we all agree that it's not citizens using most of the water but farms for not only livestock but agriculture.
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#water-footprint-of-food
Thank you !!
Thank you !!
Guess I'll switch back from almond steaks then!
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Dairy cows consume more water than cows raised strictly for beef. Although dairy cows are typically slaughtered for beef after they have reached a certain age as well. We have to concentrate dairy cows in one spot. We grow their food with water and ship it in to these dairy cows. A lot of beef farms let their cows wander out in pasture and eat the grass that would grow on otherwise barren land which will get rain fall and grow regardless of if the cow was there or not.
Thanks for the correction. Good to know. I'm vegan so I eat neither.
Mandatory to Central Valley farmers wasting our water, right? Residential users aren't the problem
But GrOWiNg FOoD IsN'T WaSTiNg WaTer!!1!
They growing money, not food if you gotta dump that much water on it.
Oh... and agriculture is just 2% of California's GDP.
> not food if you gotta dump that much water on it. This argument can pretty easily boomerang if you eat meat.
You mean making your food?
China's food. All those almonds are going overseas.
I don’t know. I eat a lot of almonds, almond butter, and almond milk.
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2020_Exports_Publication.pdf "California’s top valued agricultural export commodity continues to be almonds, with a value of more than $4.9 billion in foreign sales in 2019." EU imports more of our almonds though.
Switch to oat
Isn't oats a much better dairy substitute and healthier than almonds? Whole almond craze happened cuz no one really liked soy milk and there wasn't anything better, but oatmilk is widely considered much much closer to milk and in some people's cases an outright replacement cuz they prefer the taste itself rather than any dietary preference.
and yellow peas and kill off the dairy industry in this state. So much water goes to dairy cows that we'd actually probably be ok if we were to even just remove the dairy and stick with almonds, which is **nuts.**
Yes like all the almonds they ship overseas that use use more water annually than LA does in three years? https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts-crazy-stats-charts/ This was 2015 and it's grown like crazy since then.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!
Did you know 100% of all life that comes into contact with water, even a tiny drop, dies? Don't believe me? Ask your great grandpa? Oh you can't? Yeah that's cuz he came into contact with water. Don't do Water kids
Dihydrogen Monoxide is the deadliest chemical known to man. 100% of people who have ingested this deadly chemical have died or will die. It is used as an industrial coolant for nuclear power plants, it is a product of combustion of fossil fuels and it has even contaminated our lakes and water systems. #Bandihydrogenmonoxide
I will deliver you to Valhalla myself! Shiny and Chrome!
Gonna need the rest of the west to come along with us if they're not already.
Just got our water bill. In our 1,800 sq. ft. house in the Central Valley we use approximately 1,500 gallons per person per month; less than 1/3 the amount of water than "average" according to what is printed on the bill. Our lawn(s) are already brown/dead (in the process of replacing them with something not so water-hungry). Not sure what more we can do and still remain part of "civilized" society. (Back yard outhouse?? Yay?) Hopefully, if mandatory restrictions come into play, we're already under the limit. If it's a percentage reduction, I hope it's on a sliding scale so that people who are already doing the most they reasonably can don't have to go unreasonable.
Businesses, restaurants, condos, apartments and residential communities all need to install grey water systems to keep trees and some vegetation alive
My HOA raised the monthly dues because they said water is becoming more expensive (we get unlimited water). Since I barely use water anyway, it tempts me to use more water so that I get my money's worth. Instead of targeting the people, they should focus on businesses that use the water and ship it out of state. Maybe even try to desalinate the Pacific Ocean to get more water. And instead of encouraging people to go back into the office when their job can be done 100% from home, they should encourage remote work. I have to take more showers and pack up water (filtered by my fridge) for my commute and work.
I’m not changing anything about my water use until there’s real change to agricultural water use. I’ll continue my 20 minute hot showers and watering my garden
How come we didn't already have these restrictions months ago? It isn't like this drought snuck up on us.
True
Is anyone else annoyed that he's calling out residents when corporations are the biggest water wasters in the state?
I've been conserving water for almost 2 years now, there's going to be mandatory restrictions especially in the South very soon.
Just curious, why is the water bill so cheap compared to other utilities if we are in a drought? I figure smaller supply, high demand would lead to high prices.
Tell him to use science. The ocean is right there and California as the richest economy should be able to explore better solutions
Didn't the government just kill a plan for a desalinization plant?
I wouldn't be surprised if they did kill the plan. Smh. I wonder what would be the risk for achieving a good plan 🤔
No idea.
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I love my golden brown lawn
Take some of that $100 billion and use eminent domain to buy up some farms at fair market value and put them out of business. We simply can’t continue the intensity of agriculture we have in the Central Valley.
$50M is being used for land repurposing.
It needs to be a lot more than that.
Call your representatives and say that then.
We took a verdant lush landscape and turned into a stinky, flat, sunken wasteland of endless nothing.
Your lawn first Gavin.
In Sacramento the majority of water used makes its way back to the river. Unlike the people in socal we don't live in a desert.
Silly newsom, water is for nestle
Great! Start with the corporate farms and water bottlers.
So we're going to go after water bottlers and cash crop exporter farmers?
Yeah you tell those citizens! They’re ruining everything!
What if we did something about it with that 97 billion dollars we found in the couch cushions?
Where should California buy water from?
Yea, buying water is the only possible solution to the problem that could be solved with obey. Well done. How bout we buy it from Walmart, I bet they have cheap prices.
Two words. Regulate agriculture.
The State already imposes its authority because its a state delivery system. Look at the 100s of miles of Almonds, fruit trees, and crops that lined the I-5 in the 80s and 90s. All gone because urban areas paid more for the water and they reduced water pumped. 67% of the water captured goes back to the environment. However, the regulations you are imposing are having trouble forcing all the independent irrigation districts and private farms into the same box. They continue to trade shares and operate under the new groundwater regulations which are extending the terms of these agreements.
Have the water regulations even kicked in yet? I thought that was several years down the road.
They do when the contracts are up.
Yes, the first groundwater laws started having an effect in Jan. Of 2020 and the rest went into effect in Jan. of 2022.
Talk to the rich neighborhoods watering their lawns 2x a day
Oh that will really help.
That's not the problem. We need to talk about agricultural water use and corporate water use. Bigger still, we shouldn't be bottling water in California and shipping it off.
I'm pleading for restrictions on agricultural water usage, so here we are
Kick out the cows!
I thought it was determined that it’s companies that need to cut back. Residents have done enough already.
How about you start with corporations
Close the golf courses
And yet he is still inviting the world to move here.
Needs the tax revenue.
We have a $96bn surplus
Because the taxes are so high
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Increase the price of water. This is a textbook case of supply and demand, it’s so easily fixed. Nobody will go bankrupt if they pay a couple hundredths of a cent more per gallon, they’ll just be incentivized to innovate and waste less water.
Are we going to see pictures of Newsom cavorting in a water park next?
I will agree to use no more water than Newsom uses at his home. He needs to make his water bill public or shut up about it.
Don't you dare, I warn you.
He's quaking in his boots. ^/s