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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Feb 20, 2014 - 07:17pm PT
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Everyone knows water conservation efforts never work. Just another one of Jerry's pipe dreams. Can one of you smart anti-science types explain this graph to me... it has numbers and lines and stuff on it, so it is very confusing...
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Feb 20, 2014 - 07:24pm PT
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Good illustration of a lose-lose scenario there, Weschrist.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Feb 20, 2014 - 07:28pm PT
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The orange groves were here before the suburbs. Why should the latecomers usurp the rights of those that were here first? Just because you outnumber the farmers?
If Chaz is MWD< that's actually incorrect, at least partly-- much of the westwisde SJ went in later. Most of the almonds have been last 20 years.
So far as rights go, sure-- you want us to maintain the rights structure we have now w/o modification. That's fine, so long as we quit subsidizing water exporting and speculation.
Charge all rights holders the same per acre foot. Not a free market, but a lot closer than what we have now. Charge the Resnicks and Paramount the same as we're charging MWD and Chaz.
Then step back and watch the drought melt.
Even an egalitarian cost structure would still include a huge urban/residential subsidy for farming. I'm not against subsidizing certain kinds of farming. It's just that our current method is insane.
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Feb 20, 2014 - 07:29pm PT
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+1 million people accompanied by a REDUCTION in water use is not a lose lose... unless you are a fuking idiot.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Feb 20, 2014 - 07:49pm PT
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Everyone knows water conservation efforts never work. Just another one of Jerry's pipe dreams. Can one of you smart anti-science types explain this graph to me... it has numbers and lines and stuff on it, so it is very confusing...
well, i'm not an anti-science type, but i'll take a wild stab.
that's a bit of agit-prop.
most of the reductions with pop growth come from conversion of ag land to urban/residential. as pop grows, so deos demand for real estate. residential property is vastly more valuable than ag property, with occasional exceptions. urban/residential also uses way less water. so pops rise, ag land goes out of producetion, and total water use remains stagnant or declines.
urban/residential conservation can make a huge difference in individual districts. since most urban areas spend about 50% of their water on landscaping, there are significant savings to be had within urban districts. but those efforts represent a statistically insignificant chunk of statewide water use.
put another way, that chart is almost entirely useless.
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Feb 20, 2014 - 08:03pm PT
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Makes sense. Still a net reduction in water use. All farm land should be converted to suburbia... resistance is futile.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Feb 20, 2014 - 08:35pm PT
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All farm land should be converted to suburbia... resistance is futile.
yeah, never thought i'd say this, but we need more chaz.
and less mega-dairy and corporate almonds.
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Feb 20, 2014 - 08:46pm PT
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If those are the options, I'm voting to send Lake Tahoe to SoCal.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Feb 20, 2014 - 09:27pm PT
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Someone in government needs to have the balls to stand up to K.B. Homes and the rest, and say "the god damn boat is full here, go build somewhere else". And it should have been done forty years ago. Until then, I'll follow their lead, and keep planting avocados ( 40 new trees in 2013! More than that are planned for 2014 ).
And there you have it: agriculture is the problem. You conserved water, but you planted trees that have required more water than your home will in 100 years.
How about someone stands up to YOU, and tells you to stop planting?
Oh, because it is your God-Given Right to plant whatever you want, and use as much water as you want, whenever you want. Because it is YOUR land.
In the meantime, the land owned by KB Homes, building a development that will use LESS water than you currently use on your land, should for some reason be told that they should not be able to do what they want with their land?
I say get rid of you and your avocados first.
Oh, and get rid of your ancient inefficient model of toilet for the newer, much better designed ones. The water company will pay you to do it. Or even better, connect to the sewer instead of contaminating the land. Or even better, get a composting toilet.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Feb 20, 2014 - 09:52pm PT
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ken, commercial agriculture uses all the water.
it's true that the kind of land use chaz says he practices uses more water than, say, a hi-rise apartment with no landscaping. but at the moment, the water conservation jerry brown and others are demanding is going to subsidize corporate ag in the lower san joaquin.
there are good historic and environmental reasons for supporting a mix of large lots with productive landscape-- prolly even including avos as well as veggie gardens -- in metropolitan landscapes. without those chunks of open (and probably irrigated) ground in the urban/metro mix, you have even worse problems.
concrete doesn't absorb water, so you get less water absorption (and aquifer replenishment), worse runoff, and flood problems. without those larger plots of open productive ground and plants, you have no support for the bugs and birds that we need to have other stuff, including productive agriculture. since most urban/residential areas in cali have displaced what used to be seasonal wetlands, bigger lots with veg are the best actionable substitute.
and historically speaking, that kind of landscape use was predominant in the late 19th to late middle 20th century. the kind of landscape that mixes ag/urban/residential use, is something we should encourage in stead of the hard urban/industrial farm nexus we're currently subsidizing.
it's also racially neutral, chaz's inclinations aside. compton used to be (early 1940s) like fontana, lots of small homes with chicken coop ands gardens and maybe a milk cow. many of the new immigrants to cali come from rural areas--- that's the great demographic transition of the last century, country folks forced to move to the metropole. lots of them would like to have decent family gardens and a couple of animals if zoning and the economy allowed.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Feb 20, 2014 - 09:55pm PT
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Everyone knows water conservation efforts never work. Just another one of Jerry's pipe dreams. Can one of you smart anti-science types explain this graph to me... it has numbers and lines and stuff on it, so it is very confusing...
A number of people have misinterpreted the graph.
It is NOT a graph of the state, it is a graph of LOS ANGELES.
when we look at LA, or more largely, the South Coast Region, the situation is very different than it is for the State as a whole:
California Department of Water Resources California Water Plan Update 2005, December 2005. http://www.waterplan.water.ca.gov
Note that for this urban region, which includes LA, OC, San Diego, that agriculture only makes up 16% of the usage! 54% of the total is by residential users! (in the slide, "MF" refers to multifamily housing, "SF" to single family housing)
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Gene
climber
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Feb 20, 2014 - 09:56pm PT
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What is "commercial" and "corporate" agriculture?
Not trolling.
Thanks,
Gene
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Feb 20, 2014 - 10:01pm PT
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Anybody that actually makes a living, or
Gasp!
a profit at it.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Feb 20, 2014 - 10:08pm PT
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klk, taking my tongue out of my cheek for a moment, I understand your points, and generally agree.
What I was responding to more, was Chaz's position that he can use all the water that he wants on his land, but someone who owns other land should be held to another standard. We're all in this together.
The one way that I agree with that position is that I think that new construction should incorporate all the engineering advances possible, particularly when they involve little/no cost, or can even save the homeowner many many dollars over the life of ownership. For example, I'd require all new construction to incorporate level I and II graywater capture. I'd require all new homes to incorporate infiltration of 100% of rainwater from a 1" storm.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Feb 20, 2014 - 10:11pm PT
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ken, no, i didn't misinterpret the graph. it begins in 1970, which was close to a tipping point for urban growth in the inland empire and sd. the stagnation or per capita decline in the graph is mostly a function of ag land getting converted to urban/residential. that growth was partly driven by the completion of stage 1 of the swp.
the graph is a time plot-- what you posted is a recent asynchronous slice-- i don't know the year or source.
and i'm not saying no one should conserve water. in certain distrcits, especially in the sierra and sac valley foothils, there are urban/residential districts in deep, deep trouble that will pull through only with drastic conservations. but in most of those cases, that's because the local water is getting bogarted by older or richer ag users who they and we are subsidizing.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Feb 20, 2014 - 10:15pm PT
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Just one more thing to throw into the mix:
Reduced water usage in homes also translates into reduced sewer runoff.
The effect of this conservation can be considerable. In LA, for example, there had been planning for increasing sewer treatment capacity in line with population growth. But something happened.
Conservation.
As a result, that extra capacity did not have to be built, and will not be for the foreseeable future. It has saved having to spend approximately 1 BILLION dollars by the City of LA. True, in the big picture of spending in the state, that is not a lot, but it is a lot for the 4 million ratepayers in LA.
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John M
climber
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Feb 20, 2014 - 10:16pm PT
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Anybody that actually makes a living, or
Gasp!
a profit at it.
sometimes they make a profit because they are subsidized by others.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Feb 20, 2014 - 10:24pm PT
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What is "commercial" and "corporate" agriculture?
hi gene, that's actually a really good question. tgt's answer, anyone who makes a profit at it, isn't much help. no one in california or any state west of the 100th meridian-- and many fokls east of that-- makes a profit from farming without massive governmental subsidies. west of the 100th meridian, virtually all farming requires irrigation. irrigration requires large-scale political co-operative agreements, massive capital investments in infrastructure, and a variety of other subsidies
i used phrase like "commercial " or "corporate" ag in my posts to separate out folks like the resnicks, (who own paramount farms, in the southern sj, the world's largest almond and pistachio farm, a publicly subsidized megafarm that buys public water at below market rates, exports almonds to china at market rates, and uses the surplus to fund local republican candidates, diane feinstein's re-elections, and the resnick's own plutocrat lifestyle), from folks like chaz who are basically urbanites with a backyard that has avos and maybe veggies or some scruffy horses and chickens.
the reason i use those phrases is because cali ag was the world's first example of industrial ag, and we can't use phrase like "family farm" as easily as we once used them back in kentucky.
most of california's ag production comes from farms of 1,000 acres or more, which regardless of their organization, means publicly subsidized water irrigating luxury crops tended by imported armies of 3rd world landless serfs.
edit--
yeah, ken, both la and the greater mwd have actually been pretty good at water management. that's why chaz is right to be steamed about all the "conservation" bullshit that's about to hit the airwaves. urban/residential users-- who already massively subsidize san joaquin ag-- are being asked to quit flushing the toilet so that the resnicks can buy publicly-subsidized water below market and resell it at market for a profit. i'm not opposed to sending checks to farmers but let's just f*#kin do it.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Feb 20, 2014 - 10:54pm PT
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klk,
I'll grant you that this stuff begins to get complex.
But some of these towns actually face having to truck water in, because they have no source available much longer.
They can conserve what they have severely, or they can look forward to the prospect of paying 1000 times as much for trucked in water. (based upon the average cost of MWD water of $862 af, compared with $1 million per af for bottled water.
personally, although MWD and LADWP have done a spectacular job of planning, and have abundant supplies (for now), we don't know what is going to happen. I would prefer that we institute some significant changes in rate structures to reward people who are conserving REASONABLY (not the crazies only), and really stick it to the people who are wasting huge amounts of water. I'd settle for it being revenue neutral, but it would be even better to raise capital to accelerate programs that would protect and insulate the region from further drought. The worst that happens is that we free up a lot of water that becomes available for agriculture, which drives the economy of the state.
I think the ag situation is shameful, but it is hard to understand how exactly to fix it.
I'd require farmers to use BMP's in water usage to be eligible for a lower tier rate like they have now, and reserve that tier for farms under 1000 ac. The next tier would be for larger farms that use BMP's, and the highest tier would be for large farms that use bad practices, if any water is left over.
(for the audience BMP=best management practices. Example might be drip irrigation)
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Feb 20, 2014 - 10:58pm PT
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KLK writes:
"no one in california or any state west of the 100th meridian-- and many fokls east of that-- makes a profit from farming without massive governmental subsidies."
There are two ways the citrus and avocado farmers where I live get their water:
#1: From Bear Creek in the San Bernardino Mountains, via a 100+-year-old gravity-fed system of pipes and flumes delivering water directly to the groves. This system serves my neighborhood. This system pre-dates the government, and is privately run to this day.
#2: From a well on the grover's property.
( I guess a third way would be a combination of the two )
No one I know irrigates their grove with municipal drinking water. Even if they did, the city water comes half from the Santa Ana River / Mill Creek, and the other half from groundwater via wells. None from any further north than Big Bear.
Massive government subsidies? Where?
There's no way we can use the water from the Sierras here, or water from the Colorado River either, because water will not flow up-hill.
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