The only scarcity centers around the far larger amounts of water used by agricultural industry -- which are in large part not growing food needed for sustenance. Much of what we grow is exported, and could more easily be grown elsewhere. For example, Saudi Arabia has been expanding hay and alfalfa farms in California because they wish to reduce the depletion of the Saudi aquifers. California water policy simply allows this to happen, at the expense of our own aquifers.
Domestic water curtailment programs are a fraud. The only issue is industrial allocations of farm water.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-w...
What are the reasons for these "steep discounts"? The obvious explanation is "lobbying", but I remember a comment from a while ago mentioning that the farmers "own" water rights and those can't be expropriated from them without a costly legal process.
edit: comment mentioning the water rights aspect in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593372
People with prior appropriation rights to water don't need to pay for the water at all, except perhaps incidental fees and taxes. The right to use the water, contingent on availability, is a property right.
The prior appropriation doctrine threads through all water issues in the Western U.S. States also have appropriation rights as between each other. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact And then the Federal government introduces another dimension of complexity as they can pick and choose flow rates and distribution.
Theoretically, and AFAIU, there's nothing fundamentally anti-market with the prior appropriation doctrine. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem and also the above paper by Micha Gisser. And there are markets in prior appropriation rights--farmers buy and sell their prior appropriation rights. But apparently these markets aren't very extensive, presumably hindered by a century of complicating legislation and political bickering layered atop the underlying legal doctrines.
Its not the treatment process - I think a substantial portion of actual costs of water is in delivery. This source estimates 2GW needed to move water around in California on peak days: https://energy.lbl.gov/publications/water-supply-related-ele... That's about 5-10% of total electric use in the entire state.
It's strange that it is agriculture to blame when LA doesn't source its own water and instead diverts water from the central valleys away from agriculture. Agriculture doesn't "pay their fair share", yet LA is actively taking water away from agriculture and also draining 5-7 year reservoirs. When wild fires are in full swing we're going to really regret not having those reservoirs. [0]
Most farms have had their water share cut to zero already. [1]
People would rather waste water on LA lawns and swimming pools (or dump it in the Pacific, which is what happens to most of it that reaches LA [2]) rather than produce food with it. This is just baffling to me.
[0]: https://californiaglobe.com/articles/ca-reservoirs-filled-to... [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-califor... [2]: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...
There are rice paddies surrounding the capital city of Sacramento.
Why do we keep asking residents to sacrifice for even trivial pleasurers like swimming, when it makes no difference at all?
Believe it or not but the area where they grow rice in Sacramento is actually a flood plain. [1] Given your handle maybe you knew that? Surprisingly rice's water needs aren't all that high either. It's not the lowest but it's not the worst by a long shot. [2]
[1] https://www.ppic.org/blog/the-yolo-bypass-its-a-floodplain-i...
[2] https://localwiki.org/davis/Rice_Paddies
"In an arid state with growing pressures on water availability and use, it may surprise many to learn that rice is one of our most water-wise crops, requiring 25 gallons to produce each serving, like oranges, while almonds require 80 gallons per serving"
Rice paddies don't consume lots of water (flooding rice improves yield, but the rice doesn't consume most of the water, it's still available for downstream uses.)
> Why do we keep asking residents to sacrifice for even trivial pleasurers like swimming, when it makes no difference at all?
Because if you cut agricultural use, and thereby the tax base, residents will have to make sacrifices, too.
> The federal government said Wednesday that it won’t deliver water to farmers in California’s agricultural belt, which produces roughly a quarter of the nation’s food, due to the extreme water shortages that are expected to deepen if the direly dry conditions continue through March. [0]
HN is throttling me, so I'll put this here. the CVP is the largest in the country.
> In a normal year the CVP delivers about 7 million acre-feet of water for agricultural, urban, and wildlife use. [1]
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-califor... [1]: https://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/central-valley-proj...
California can probably produce enough food for itself without overseas exports of alfalfa and almonds.
> Based on USDA data for 2021, only 3.9% of all U.S. hay produced and 6.4% of all alfalfa hay entered the export market. [1]
In case that's unclear, 96.1% of hay and 93.6% of alfalfa is consumed domestically.
[0]: https://hayandforage.com/article-3825-year-end-hay-exports-s...
