To Solve California’s Water Crisis, We Must Change the Nation’s Food System

[marmar]

from truthdig:


To Solve California’s Water Crisis, We Must Change the Nation’s Food System

Posted on Mar 19, 2015
By Sonali Kolhatkar


The bold headline of a recent Los Angeles Times editorial by the hydrologist Jay Famiglietti starkly warned: “California has about one year of water left. Will you ration now?” The write-up quickly made the social media rounds, prompting both panic and the usual blame game: It’s because of the meat eaters or the vegan almond-milk drinkers or the bottled-water guzzlers or the Southern California lawn soakers.

California’s water loss has been terrifying. But people everywhere should be scared, not just Californians, because this story goes far beyond state lines. It is a story of global climate change and industrial agriculture. It is also a saga that began many decades ago—with the early water wars of the 1930s immortalized in the 1974 Roman Polanski film “Chinatown.”

When my family first moved to the Los Angeles area, we spent years adjusting our lifestyle to be more in line with our values. Ten years ago, we stopped watering our lawn and eventually replaced the lawn with plants that were drought-tolerant or native to California. Three years ago, we installed solar panels on our roofs. Last year, we diverted our laundry runoff to our vegetable garden and fruit trees through a graywater system. We have replaced all our toilets with dual-flush systems to take advantage of local rebates, and we practice responsible flushing. We almost never wash our cars, and we shower less often in the winter. We are investigating rainwater barrels in our latest effort to be responsible stewards of our water. Yet none of our efforts to be an example to others have done anything other than make us feel morally self-righteous enough to wag our fingers at water wasters.

.......(snip).......

The truth is that California’s Central Valley, which is where the vast majority of the state’s farming businesses are located, is a desert. That desert is irrigated with enough precious water to artificially sustain the growing of one-third of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, a $40 billion industry.

Think about it. A third of all produce in the United States is grown in a desert in a state that has almost no water left. That produce is trucked from the West Coast all over the country in fossil-fuel-consuming vehicles, thereby contributing to the very mechanism of climate change that is likely to be driving California’s historic drought. .................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/headline_to_solve_californias_water_crisis_we_must_transform_20150319

[tridim]

1. Not looking forward to $5.00 avacados.

And the Midwest is drying out as well. Scary stuff.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Correction, the Central Valley was not a desert, however parts now densely populated were.

More accurately, parts of the lower central valley were not originally able to support cotton and tomatoes and many other crops.

The two major early water projects, the California Aqueduct and Delta Mendota canal, were built to divert water away from Northern California to the south for unnatural industrial level agriculture and unsustainable housing developments.

There is no question about this fact, this history. The Delta part of the valley was originally a vast inland marsh until it was "reclaimed" by building of levees, and Lake Tulare further south was larger than Lake Tahoe.

The farmers need to get over it, the water's not coming back, but overdevelopment and growth need to take their share of the blame.

But homeowners and businesses statewide need to get used to rationing and new practices and metered water with punitive rates for overuse.

[winstars]

9. Drove south on Interstate 5 from Bay area and saw hand painted signs talking about water rights.

I am surmising these were from Central Valley agriculture folks. They had some very bad things to say about DiFi and somehow Nancy Pelosi? And how politicians created the last dust bowl and are certain to creat a new one. Not to cast aspersions but the signs at least seemed a little Tea Party ish / Libertarian ish

Big cities taking all the water type stuff.

I must have seen 2 dozen along the way to SoCal.

At home people waste half of their water use on the outside.

Thats crazy in what is essentially a desert.

[NYC_SKP]

10. I've seen the signs, and up North they tell Jerry not to build any tunnels.

The I-5 signs have been there a while, mostly bitter RW ranchers who hate big government except when it builds big taxpayer funded water projects.

Hypocrites.

Of course politicians didn't create the last dust bowl, poor agricultural practices did.

But, arguably, they did cause this one, not by reducing water but by providing water in the first place.

[winstars]

11. Yes. it was like driving past FauxNews/Newsmax advertisements for hours... Bitter, for sure...

Talk about people thinking they are entitled!!! I thank them for being farmers and feeding our entire country/world... BUT maybe you cannot farm as much in the Central Valley as before, SINCE THERE IS VERY LITTLE WATER THERE.

Many are probably 3rd or 4th generations farmers but if its all built on getting a whole lot of water from really far away, maybe that has to change a bit...

[pscot]

3. If we just stop eating

everything will be fine.

[Trillo]

4. No mention of fracking contamination of aquifers.

Is that the real reason for the decreased ground-water supply?

[Xithras]

16. No.

Fracking is a drop in the proverbial bucket, in this case. Almonds are a far greater culprit.

[LWolf]

5. Or

We could address the global population issue. Transforming the way we use our resources is, of course, part of the equation. Scaling human population back to levels that allow life to thrive without depleting resources is another critical piece of that equation.

[The2ndWheel]

6. Easier said than done on both

To get to where we actually physically scale back the human population, we have to increase resource use. Then the larger picture is that no civilization has had to/been able to sustain itself with fewer people from one year to the next, and we don't really know how/want to do that. Our answer has been to grow the pie, not slice it up smaller.

[LWolf]

14. That's correct if "we" refers to

the majority. It certainly doesn't refer to me. I'd love to figure out how to do that, and accomplish it.

That same "we" never really wants to look at the actual sources of most problems, and at the long-term solutions.

[musiclawyer]

7. CA must quickly innovate

Conservation has limits. Less than 17% of stored surface water goes to residential. We all must face the reality that CA will no longer be a breadbasket. Which means the Central Valley economy crashes and millions leave the state. CA can't be producing meat , rice, almonds, alfalfa etc for the rest of the world. That era is ending. Managing the transition is the public policy challenge of the century...... If I owned a home or relied on job in the Central Valley I would get out if possible. Nature is taking it back ....

[Baclava]

8. Ban all residential swimming pools in S. Cal - fill them in, bury them!

Per-capita urban water use

Water wasters are not found only in Southern California. Up and down the state, per-capita water use is lower along the coast and dramatically higher inland. This is directly related to climate differences. Inland residents may see this as a justification for higher water consumption, but it should be remembered that for many people, living in warmer, drier inland zones is a deliberate choice.

Living on large properties and cultivating water-needy landscaping are yet further choices. These are based partly on culture and habit - the suburban California vision of emerald-green lawns and swimming pools epitomizing the good life that was cultivated and sold to us in the early 1900s.

It is time we stop chasing that outdated mirage. In other parts of the West, the transformation is well under way. New Mexico has reduced residential water consumption to 107 gallons per capita per day (gpcd) according to 2005 data from the U.S. Geological Survey. That achievement - in a state that receives 33% less precipitation than California - puts us to shame with our statewide average of 124 gpcd! By USGS calculations, overall 2005 U.S. average residential water consumption was 98 gpcd.

http://www.sanfranciscobay.sierraclub.org/yodeler/html/2010/05/article5.htm

[RockaFowler]

12. Get rid of Golf Courses

Unless they want to use artificial grass

[Brother Buzz]

17. Most urban golf courses in California use reclaimed water

They saw the writing on the wall years ago and made large investments installing pipes, and signed long term contracts with municipal water treatment plants. Win, win.

[Hekate]

13. KnR The whole country is in this with us.

[Xithras]

15. The Central Valley is a "man made" desert, the same way the Owens Valley is

In other words, it doesn't get a massive amount of wet rainfall, but it was originally a very wet place. Rivers and streams from the surrounding mountain ranges once ran across it, turning it into a several hundred mile long chain of lakes, meadows and marshlands. It's only a "desert" because people dammed up the rivers and redirected the water elsewhere.

And that's why I'll never be onboard with the proposals to end Central Valley farming. Fundamentally, these proposals are saying that humans should simply complete the job and strip the Valley of what water it has left. It's saying that the urban areas should have a greater claim on the water than the areas it naturally nourished. Screw that thought. Screw that thought violently, if necessary. What the Central Valley needs is not LESS WATER, but MORE WATER and LESS AGRICULTURE. We need to end the coasts reliance on Sierra water and launch a major effort to restore the riparian forests that once crossed the Valley. We need to re-flood the marshes, let the rivers flow again, and fill Lake Tulare.

While our excessive human population means that the Valley can never be fully restored to its original beauty, we CAN put some of the water back where it belongs and strike a better balance between man and nature.

As for the coasts? They can desalinate. It's more expensive, but they need to suck it up and accept that it's the price they'll pay for living along the most beautiful shorelines in America. It is unacceptable for the coastal cities to continue to destroy our inland ecosystems for their own economic benefit.

[TampaAnimusVortex]

18. Or...