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L
climber
California dreamin' on the farside of the world..
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Apr 20, 2015 - 06:24am PT
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I just read this from a newsletter I receive...and found it totally insane:
According to NASA's new report, California only has enough water to get it through the next year. People are under strict water-saving measures; farmers are struggling to keep their crops alive.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/03/california-only-has-one-years-worth-of-water-left-nasa-scientist-warns/
Yet, Nestlé is bottling water from at least ten natural springs throughout California, including from some of the most drought-stricken areas of the state, and selling it for profit. In places like Sacramento, it's paying less than $0.14 per gallon. This is bananas.
We can stop this. Nestlé's already feeling pressure in Canada -- last month, we hit front page news for our campaign to stop the giant corporation from withdrawing Canadians' groundwater at dirt cheap rates, and political parties in Canada are debating the policy. If we're to stop Nestlé from sucking California dry, we have to keep up the pressure.
Tell Nestlé to stop depleting California's precious water resources.
As California's water supplies dry up, Nestlé continues to make millions selling bottled water. Nestlé's Sacramento water plant is sucking water at a rate of 50 million gallons of water each year from the city's water reserves, and that's just one of the billion dollar company's five bottling plants in California. And Nestlé isn't even following the rules -- a new investigation shows that Nestlé Water's permit to transport water across the San Bernardino National Forest for bottling expired 27 years ago.
The biggest victims of this unprecedented drought are California's food crops and the minimum-wage workers who grow them. More than 80% of the world's almonds and nearly half of the USA's fruits and vegetables come from California. As crops sit withering on the vine and tens of thousands of farm workers lose their livelihoods, it's a travesty that precious water is being bottled and sold for profit instead of feeding our crops.
SumOfUs members have stood up to Nestlé exploiting our natural resources for profits, and the company has heard us loud and clear. After hundreds of thousands of us called on Nestlé to stop exploiting Pakistan's water supply, we took the message straight to the company's annual meeting. And now we are making front pages in Canada. We can stop Nestlé's water-guzzling ways in California, but we need to speak out before the state completely runs out of water.
Sign the petition below to Nestlé: stop taking water from drought-stricken areas.
http://action.sumofus.org/a/nestle-california-drought/?akid=10284.7651672.kyTVQt&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=2
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Dave
Mountain climber
the ANTI-fresno
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Apr 20, 2015 - 06:42am PT
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Look, Nestle @ 50 million gallons per year is small potatoes. I read a whiney article about fracking in California consuming 70 million gallons per year.
It takes 1.1 gallons to grow ONE almond. 1.07 TRILLION gallons in California last year.
It takes 4.5 gallons to grow one walnut.
And most of those nuts are exported - California is exporting its water in different form...
Inefficient agricultural water use like that NEEDS TO STOP.
Price water for agriculture at the same rate residents and consumers pay, and a few things might change...
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Apr 20, 2015 - 08:29am PT
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Walnuts are native to California, btw.
Even the English Walnut? Interesting.
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10b4me
Social climber
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Apr 20, 2015 - 08:36am PT
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Laura, I will sign the petition.
However, that story about one year left of California's' water supply is not true.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Apr 20, 2015 - 09:32am PT
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A gallon of water for an almond? That's not bad, when compared with what we're getting from some of the other water in California.
How many gallons of water does take to produce one Delta Smelt?
Easy formula: Total up the number of gallons of water flowing into the San Francisco Bay, and divide by 1.
"State officials found one delta smelt during a survey earlier this month of 40 sites in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta...state Department of Fish and Wildlife typically turns up dozens of smelt, and found 143 three years ago."
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/California-Delta-smelt-survey-turns-up-1-fish-6209856.php
We know how many gallons of water it takes to produce one Steelhead Trout; 814,627,500 gallons. ( 15,000 acre-feet divided by 6 )
"Bureau of Reclamation wants to flush as much as 15,000 acre feet of water down the Stanislaus River in order to “save” six fish."
http://www.mantecabulletin.com/section/1/article/122681/
Kind of makes almonds and walnuts look like wise water use.
Unlike almonds and walnuts, nobody's going to eat these Steelhead or Delta Smelt, and they're not going to produce any wealth for anybody. And even if they swim all the way to China, they won't help our trade imbalance.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Apr 20, 2015 - 09:39am PT
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We got rained off at the base or El Cap yesterday. But it was a warm rain & thunderstorm. My car thermometer read 86 degrees in the lower Merced canyon. At 6 pm. This is mid-April, mind you.
Black walnuts are good. They graft English walnut trees on their stumps, because apparently their root systems are stronger. I have an English walnut tree in my backyard. The walnuts are great, but the squirrels get them before we every can. Those friggers dig up our potted plants to squirrel away their precious nuts...
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Apr 20, 2015 - 10:11am PT
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You're forgetting, Mr Milktoast, I hold a piss & sh#t exemption - thank you San Francisco for snagging that for us - so I can do whatever I want with my driveway.
And thanks to Governor Brown, I have an agriculture exemption, which means I don't have to cut back my water use any.
Besides, I don't have a hose long enough to wash the driveway - it's a long f*#king driveway.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 25, 2015 - 01:43pm PT
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The skier in the video is really good ....
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Apr 25, 2015 - 06:32pm PT
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So why are y'all still living there?
Hoping everyone else will leave so that you will have enough water for you?
Hoping the whole drought thing will just go away, and next year everything will be fine?
Hoping the government will stop "them" from doing whatever it is they are doing?
Southern California has enough water to support a few thousand -- maybe a few hundred thousand -- people. And there are twenty million of you. Arguing about whether the problem is almonds or lawns is a demonstration of cognitive dissonance gone mad.
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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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Apr 25, 2015 - 06:38pm PT
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We live here because the rest of the US sucks.
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dirtbag
climber
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Apr 26, 2015 - 02:11am PT
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Chaz--I've heard the california avocado industry is about to take a major hit. Thoughts?
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ECF
Big Wall climber
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Apr 26, 2015 - 03:54am PT
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It's bad man, really bad.
All this used to be under water.
These damn 64million year drought cycles...
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Flip Flop
climber
salad bowl, california
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Apr 26, 2015 - 08:18am PT
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Do you know what's awesome about LA?
Me neither.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Apr 26, 2015 - 08:26am PT
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Food.
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Apr 26, 2015 - 10:28am PT
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about that Vimeo no snow video posted above:
:18 Thunder Pk and Telescope Pk in the background
:33 the east face of Harwood (skiable in a big year)
:35 looking down toward Stockton Flats
the rest of it: good filming but counting on suspension of logic
in the use of downhill skiing (a high impact sport) to cause erosion on fragile scree vegetation to somehow get attention for environmental concerns.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Apr 26, 2015 - 11:01am PT
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Well there you go. Thanks for pointing out our problem. Good to know that's behind us.
I hope I didn't come across as too snarky. But it just seems to be one of those situations where everybody knows exactly what the problem is, but at the same time says "Well, since I'm not going to die of thirst today, I'll worry about it tomorrow."
I don't know what the solution is.
See if you can fix Hong Kong too, while you are there. Thanks so much!
I tried, man. I really tried. But four days without access to good beer was too much for me, and I had to leave. If only I could have stayed another couple of days, I'm sure I could have solved all of HK's problems.
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ruppell
climber
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Apr 26, 2015 - 11:37am PT
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I hope I didn't come across as too snarky. But it just seems to be one of those situations where everybody knows exactly what the problem is
Kinda like this?
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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dave729
Trad climber
Western America
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Apr 26, 2015 - 01:41pm PT
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ruppell you nailed it^^^^.
And the California walnut has one significant use as a'rootstock'.
You may still find some growing wild in the hills around L.A.
Farmers do the Dr Frankenstein thing with them. They graft English Walnut
stems onto California Walnut roots to make a hybrid creature that produces
the walnuts you've eaten.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Apr 26, 2015 - 10:11pm PT
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"Chaz--I've heard the california avocado industry is about to take a major hit. Thoughts?"
Depends on where you are in California, I guess.
The water used to irrigate the groves in Redlands - Cherry Valley - Beaumont - Banning comes straight off of 11,502' Mt San Gorgonio. It's delivered via an old-timey system of flumes and pipes following the contours of the topography, all gravity powered.
( Avocados and citrus are a Redlands thing. Up the street, because it gets colder up in the altitude, they grow apples and cherries )
For at least the second or third straight year, there isn't a hell of a lot of snow up on San G, but changing weather patterns have kept San G from drying out.
The summer monsoon rainstorms that come up from the Gulf of California - the ones that have hit Phoenix forever - are making their way further west now, and absolutely soaking places that never used to see any summer rain at all. Hemet has been flooded multiple times over the last couple summers, when just a few years ago it was standard for Hemet to go from May to January without a single drop of rain. Last year here in Redlands, it rained way more in the summer than it did in the winter, when we never used to get one drop of rain in the summer either.
So for now, I'm OK. I'm sure I would have heard something by now, if we were running low on water here. From my house, I can see thousands of avocado trees that weren't here just a couple years ago. Some are replacing citrus. ( I can tell when a grove is transitioning. First, a fence goes up around an orange grove - nobody steals enough oranges to make a difference, so nobody bothers to fence in their oranges. Then they plant avocado trees among the orange trees. In a year or two, the orange trees end up as firewood, leaving a new avocado grove. ) But most of the new avocados are on once vacant hillsides or surrounding new mansions in the flats. Apparently, the thing to do in this neighborhood is to build one big house on ten acres, and plant a grove around it.
There's still enough citrus around here that the whole neighborhood smells like orange blossoms the entire month of march. The scent is heavy enough to make you sick, if you don't like it. Me, I love it. The entire town used to smell like oranges in '76 when I first showed up here.
Off-topic, but I think interesting, my neighbor Bob Knight is doing his best to keep citrus in Redlands. Huell Howser did an episode about Bob and his wife a few years ago.
https://blogs.chapman.edu/huell-howser-archives/2007/09/07/orange-conservancy-129-californias-green/
That's my neighborhood - and my neighbors. The gal named Aki is Bob's wife. Those field boxes she's flinging around weigh a good 50 pounds each. That small woman moves a ton of oranges - no exaggeration - in this video, without breaking a sweat! Bob's dog used to walk through my yard - digging holes under my fence in two places - to go visit my other neighbor Hans' dog, and swim in Hans' pool, before he got too old to roam and swim.
Down in San Diego County, where practically all the California avocados are grown, I hear they're having problems. I would imagine those without wells - who depend on someone else to deliver their water - are those who are having problems.
A couple years ago, I was at a shindig at the packing house in Bloomington, seated next to a couple from North County San Diego. They had cut their 60 avocado trees down to stumps, because of water concerns. That made me think, because I have almost three times that many trees, and I want to eventually triple what I have now.
San Diego County - while they get hit by the same monsoon storms the rest of us are benefiting from - they don't have an 11,000' mountain range near by to collect and store that water, and a 125-year-old system to deliver it like we do here. Their water comes from the Colorado River, and the Colorado drainage isn't exactly setting the irrigation world on fire lately.
Most avocados you see are grown in Mexico, because they have a ten-month growing season down there. Right now is the window in Mexico's season. The packing house put the word out, and last week I gave them every Hass avocado I had - about a ton, I figure.
Most of my avocado trees - like 75% - are Lamb Hass. They ripen later and are a hell of a lot heavier than regular Hass. They're like a pound apiece, but otherwise almost identical to Hass avocados. I have no idea where these avocados go once the packing house gets them. I never see 16oz avocados in the supermarket. They look too good to make into institutionalized guacamole, but who knows.
Ghost writes:
"So why are y'all still living there?"
Because winter here is like summer in Seattle - only it lasts a hell of a lot longer.
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