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10b4me
Mountain climber
Retired
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If this happens, we might want a thread devoted to it, because this could be a doozy.
January, 1997 allover again.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Ken,
perfect governmental delusion...
What percentage of paved area has your board's "can be" has actually been converted to permeable surface??
if it is more than 50% then, and only then is your conversion of my statements to past tense valid.
Otherwise you should be correcting your Bureaucratic self.
I am amazed at the governmental arrogance that thinks "looking into" represents some form of completion, rather than smoke ineptly blown.
My statements were in response to your statement:
The flood management philosophy and design is evacuate, get it out to the ocean, and get it out quick.
This has NOT been the philosophy and design for a number of years. We are currently working on a master plan that I was involved in creating, and it definitely does not work under the philosophy that you state IS CURRENTLY IN EFFECT.
For example, in the last couple of weeks, the County of Los Angeles has made a couple of announcements about how much Stormwater has been captured, which I think exceeds a billion gallons.
Here is a 2015 announcement of a contract going out for bid to build out a 5 billion gallon/year facility, which will be completed next year.
http://www.tellmedwp.com/go/doc/1475/2575902/LADWP-LA-County-Open-Construction-Contract-for-27-Million-Drought-Relief-Stormwater-Capture-Project
I personally deal and meet with the top water planners in the City and surrounding areas, and they do NOT have the philosophy that you talk about.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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If you put all permeable paving in the SFV and the City of LA you'd have to declare the whole aquifer under it a superfund site in about ten years.
Not true. When built correctly, the infrastructure does an amazing job of destroying contaminants on-site.
In this unique project done at UCDavis, the swale removed up to 99% of organic contaminants, and up to 96% of heavy metal contaminants:
This was done in 2006. They are better at this, now.
https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/topics/urban_forestry/products/psw_cufr686_UCDParkingLot.pdf
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Concern for polluted runoff is legitimate. The aquifer under the San Fernando Valley is ALREADY a superfund site, due to contamination from aerospace work 60-70 years ago. This is currently in the building phase of remediation.
So this is central in the minds of the water planners.
But here is another way to think about this: The water that falls on a property is pristinely pure. It becomes contaminated, for the most part, after it leaves our property and runs down the street. The best opportunity is to capture it on-site, BEFORE it is captured. There are a number of models of doing this: cisterns, water barrels, bio-swales, french drains, etc. Even the spreading of mulch can make a big difference.
The average residential street in LA produces a million gallons of runoff in a 1" rainstorm. There are over 7,000 miles of streets in the City of LA. That is a potential of 7 billion gallons that could be harvested, on-site, throughout the city, CLEAN water, directly into the aquifers, where it could be used, just from a 1" storm. The San Fernando Valley gets about 17" a year, which is not projected to change in the next 100 years. This is a LOT of water potential.
Changing building codes and practices (which is NOT easy to do), is probably the long-term way to make this happen. Right now, city codes require a property to be able to absorb the water from a 1/2" storm on NEW buildings. EVENTUALLY, this will have a big impact, but that will take 50 years, as the building stock is replaced. Existing structures is more challenging.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Someone posted a question about how the Central Valley could be replaced as a source of tomatoes. I happened to hear this episode of Marketplace, which touched on this:
https://www.marketplace.org/2017/01/02/sustainability/canadian-greenhouse-industry-seeks-methods-reduce-pollution-lake-erie
Winter tomatoes used to come mostly from Mexico and California. But these days, many of those tomatoes are grown in Canada, in giant greenhouses that stretch for miles along Ontario's Lake Erie shoreline.
Quiring is just one of many Canadian growers here in southern Ontario near Lake Erie. All told, there are almost 3,000 acres of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers under glass. And they generate nearly a billion dollars in sales each year.
In 2014, approximately, 27.3 million CWT of fresh market tomatoes were harvested from 97,600 acres with a total value of $1.14 billion. A total of 14.6 million tons of process tomatoes were grown on 277,000 acres in 2014, with a total value of approximately $1.325 billion.
So it appears that in dollars, Canada now supplies about 1/3 of the tomato production of the US, on an astonishing small amount of land, using the most advanced hydroponic approaches
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Entirely plausible, you just have to have scrupulously clean operations or you can lose whole ranges to infection.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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technologically solved at least 30 years ago.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oh that that were so...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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1.4 ounces / square inch / year would roughly work out to about 260k tons of tomatoes / 1000 acres of greenhouse ranges. Say they have 3-4k acres under glass that could account for a significant portion of the fresh tomato market in the east, but doesn't make much of a dent in total US tomato consumption. California is still the king, though they're not very happy growers at the moment.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nice to get some precip. Last night it was snowing, Big flakes!! Woke up to rain, at 6,000 feet. In Jan.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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I still call it drought here in the Santa Cruz mtns. Our total precip this season (starting in Sept) is still about the same as the past two years and 2012 - 2013.
Although far better than 2013-2014.
So only one good wet year (by early Jan) in the past 4 years.
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EdBannister
Mountain climber
13,000 feet
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Jan 4, 6 pm Merced River Pohono Bridge posts 541 CFS or about 6 times November's average flow, and going up fast.
Past ten days were around 300 CFS.
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kunlun_shan
Mountain climber
SF, CA
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1/3 of total production dollars of the US tomato market? Out of some canadian greenhouses? No way. I'd need to see the math.
DMT, I had no knowledge of this until a few minutes ago, but check these links:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/06/16/473526920/how-canada-became-a-greenhouse-superpower
"Our cold-weather neighbor sends us more tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers than we send the other way. Despite all the vegetable fields of California and Florida."
https://www.thestar.com/business/2016/03/22/frenchs-ketchup-plans-to-move-production-to-ontario.html
Apparently it started in the 1990s. The data below is from 2003:
http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-447.pdf
"Total North American greenhouse tomato production for 2003 is estimated
at 528,078 metric tons, from negligible amounts in the early 1990s. Canada
is the largest producer with an estimated 42 percent of production, followed by the United States with 30 percent, and Mexico with 28 percent. Among the three countries, Canada was the industry’s pioneer and is a market force during its March to December season. The strengths of its industry are high yields and consistent product quality. Canada’s volume of summer tomatoes is so great that it is hard for growers in the United States and Mexico to compete profitably in that season."
edit - I hope Trump doesn't hear about this.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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We can (and apparently will) quibble about the quality and suitability of this, but don't lose sight of why I posted this: a few pages back, the question was asked "where would tomatoes be grown, if not in Calif, Mexico????"
The Canadian answer was one that surprised me, as apparently it did others.
As for the taste, it doesn't matter---it only matters if the market buys the product.
The rest of you can compete sitting in those cute little stands on the side of the country road, and repel the Canadians!
You do wonder if the Canadian farmers use illegals to harvest their crops!
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Net California farm income dropped to $15.6 billion last year from $17.4 billion a year earlier. Gross revenue increased to $56.2 billion from $54.3 billion.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article33812181.html#storylink=cpy
so forming net revenue dropped by a few billion in 2014. And the State did just fine.
I don't advocate it, but you wonder what would be the impact if the net dropped another few billion, and the resulting water was diverted to towns. It would furnish all possible water needed, And the loss of another 2 billion out of a State GDP of $2.496 trillion would even be felt, state-wide?
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kunlun_shan
Mountain climber
SF, CA
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IMO California doesn't grow very good table tomatoes. Too hot and dry.
The dry farmed tomatoes at local farmers markets in SF are very tasty. Dirty Girl Produce is one of half a dozen organic farms who sell regularly - http://www.dirtygirlproduce.com/About-Us.html
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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TGT, I thought "the big one" was the winter of 1861-1862? You know, the one when the steamboats sailed directly across country between Stockton and Sacramento and the Sacramento River Valley was flooded from Martinez to 50 miles above Marysville (about 160 miles, I think) and that "lake" was in places 50 MILES wide. I read a newspaper article that quoted a Dude in California's "Venice", i.e. Sacramento, who said that the only dry land he could see from within city limits was the summits of the Coast Range. The flood forced the state legislature to adjourn "to higher ground," which provoked much hilarity, statewide.
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