Will California run out of water?

[mgforshort]

From Wikipedia:
The Sites Reservoir was proposed in the 1980s. California had serious droughts in 2006–2010 and 2011–2017, raising concern about water insecurity.[4] The project is intended to improve reliability of supply during drought conditions.[5]

Preliminary studies were conducted at a cost of $50 million during 1996–2014.[6] The reservoir would be reduced in size if funding were cut back, but backers believe the project would still be built. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2024 and be completed in 2030.[7][8]"

So this project was planned/proposed in the eighties and 40 years later not a thing has been done yet. We could use a dozen more similar reservoirs but the way we do things it is nothing more than a pipe dream. China would have completed it ( and a few more) in 3 years, and I'm not even a fanboy of that country.

[Thekdog]

There's a better chance that Arizona builds desalination in Mexico than California builds it in California

[shelato]

Originally Posted by Thekdog

There's a better chance that Arizona builds desalination in Mexico than California builds it in California

Power sales from Lake Oroville are currently used to offset the cost of pumping water over the Grapevine into Southern California. It is incredibly expensive/energy intensive to pump large quantities of water uphill. One alternative is to not pump water over the grapevine, but instead use the power sales from Lake Oroville to subsidize for the cost of desalinizing water for Southern California. Next to LAX, there is space along the coast, next to the Hyperion Water Treatment Plant to build a huge desalinazation plant. On a per capita basis Isreal is much poorer than California but it can afford to get a huge chunk of its water supply from desalinazation. Coastal California is the wealthiest part of in California. The transportation costs of shipping desalinized water to the rest of Southern California aren't high compared to shipping it over the grapevine or Mono Lake or from the Colorado moreover the cost of desalination keeps dropping. I am not saying desalinized water is cheap, but offsetting the cost with the money saved from not paying to ship water over the grapevine could cover a lot of this cost. If the feds agreed to subsidize the cost of desalinzing water in California, that could free up additional water from the Colorado River to be used by Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico so there might be political support at the federal level to subsidize desalination for Southern California as well.

The other advantage of not shipping so much water over the grapevine is that frees up additional water in the central valley. Global warming probably is going to get worse over the rest of my life time no matter what California does, but one way of mitigating some of the worst aspects of environmental consequences of global warming in terms of protecting wild life probably involves tuning how we utilize water in reservoirs to preserve the cold water behind the dams longer because a lot of the fish and wildlife likely need higher water levels if we don't want various fish and wildlife populations to collapse further.

I acknowledge that some agricultural uses in California likely do need to be curtailed. Almonds use too much water and we should shift more ag to crops that we don't need to plant/water during droughts. But some agricultural uses serve dual purposes. If we banned rice growing in the central valley, that might not save much water because the rice fields function as wetlands for the Pacific flyway and if we get rid of the rice fields, we then would need to offset the lost rice fields with new wetlands which on net isn't creating much new water supply, but just destroying someone's livelyhood. We probably should also invest in means for recharging groundwater aquifers when we do get these atomospheric river events.

Lastly Southern Califonia is not Northern California. I agree it is tough to get anything approved and done in Northern California, but Southern California seems to be able to get projects approved if they are deemed important. After the Northridge Earthquake, lots of freeway interchanges collapsed, but everyone in LA knew the freeways needed to work in LA and so they were rebuilt in months. When capacity issues came up at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, again Southern California got the Alameda Corridor built which functioned as an expansion of these ports because the powers that be in Southern California knew logicistics was a key industry in Southern California and so they got it done.

[vincenze]

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California plans to raise rates and property taxes over the next two years.

The additional revenue will be used to “make up for declines in revenue due to widespread conservation efforts”.

[saibot]

Originally Posted by vincenze

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California plans to raise rates and property taxes over the next two years.

The additional revenue will be used to “make up for declines in revenue due to widespread conservation efforts”.

Yep. Paying more for less water. <<sigh>>

At least the premise of this thread, that California would run out of water by 2025, isn't going to happen.

[considerforamoment]

No matter how hard or long it rains, it NEVER has any impact on "The Drought." I'm sick of hearing about it. Capture the water and be done with it. It's not that hard.

[MKTwet]

CA will get their water from Mexico if it runs out of water. That's when all the Mexicans flee their poor lands that were robbed of water.

[colobound65]

Originally Posted by vincenze

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California plans to raise rates and property taxes over the next two years.

The additional revenue will be used to “make up for declines in revenue due to widespread conservation efforts”.

Haha that’s so California. LADWP did the same thing. They said you could only water your gardens on certain days then raised all the rates.

[saibot]

Originally Posted by colobound65

Haha that’s so California. LADWP did the same thing. They said you could only water your gardens on certain days then raised all the rates.

"You will get less water and we will still get the same amount of money."

[colobound65]

Originally Posted by saibot

"You will get less water and we will still get the same amount of money."

They gotta pay those pensions somehow.