California (Today’s UT)

[LostCat]

In today’s UT….

California has been using over 100 percent of its allocation of the Colorado River and over 100 percent of its annual renewable groundwater. Nearly 100 percent of the water used in metro San Diego and metro Los Angeles flows from hundreds of miles away.

There is a virtual 100 percent probability global warming is occurring and will intensify. Solutions will be thwarted by a near 100 percent certainty of litigation.

The Colorado River is the most critical water source for Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. In the next 30 years, the population of these two latter states will increase by 100 percent. Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico will all also be using more Colorado River water in the next decade.

Lake Mead, on the Colorado River, is the largest reservoir in North America. Relative to its designed storage capacity, Lake Mead is now 15 percent silt, 37 percent water and 48 percent empty. A California economic collapse would commence if Lake Mead loses as little as another 20 percent of its storage capacity.

Additional hydrological factors include the absence of any large lake or river that is entirely within Southern California, the urban heat island effect, the tree-ring record suggesting the 20th century was a wet century, aging water infrastructure and an absence of regulations addressing shortage conditions on the Colorado River.

Additional sociological factors include water speculators buying water rights, bureaucratic inertia, an anti-science disposition relative to present trends, unfriendly relations with other states, and the complexity of approximately a thousand water districts and water-regulating entities in California. These factors are certain to intensify water scarcity in the near future.

But global warming is probably the most significant factor. In about 150 years of measurement, the 10 warmest years have all occurred after 1989. Statistically, one would not expect this pattern in over a million samples of picking 10 random years from a box.

For metro Los Angeles, 86 percent of its water derives from aqueducts supplying water from the Colorado River or the Sierra Nevada mountains in Northern California. Global warming is likely to continue to mean less snow being created, upstream soil absorbing more water, more evaporation from all reservoirs, less water entering the over 2,000 miles of concrete canals in California and more evaporation from these canals. At the same time, due to the warming, all farms will need more water to grow the same quantity of food.

It would be difficult to quantify, but perhaps the 43 non-Colorado River states and about 200 nations in the world are now annually “using,” in terms of global warming evaporation, an amount of California water equal to the annual water usage of San Diego.

Over a few years, the contours of a collapse may feature a 50 percent increase in water bills, a 50 percent increase in power bills from electricity from Colorado River dams, and a 50 percent increase in the cost of food grown in Southern California. Such a scenario would send ripples of unemployment, crime and civil unrest throughout the Golden State.

Given these trends, what are four key solutions?

Perhaps the most immediate solution is for the federal government to promptly reduce water deliveries by 5 percent for all seven Colorado River states. This could be in effect until the water level of Lake Mead reaches, say, 75 percent of capacity.

Likewise, California should institute water-based financial rewards and penalties for all farms and cities.

As there are three theoretical techniques that may each reduce desalting costs by 75 percent, the federal government should triple funds for desalting research and development, with a focus on desalting powered by solar, wind, tidal or other sources.

To further prepare for certain lean water years, the federal government should assume a far more energetic leadership role in reducing global warming gases.

Without major water policy shifts, an economic collapse of California could start as early as 2008. Otherwise, as California has eight times as many people as Louisiana in 2004, an economic collapse could be more financially devastating than Hurricane Katrina.

[(former)FormerSanDiegan]

How much water can we save by everyone putting in those Phoenix type front yards ?

I remember about 10-12 years ago there were a lot of green-painted gravel front yards in certain parts of town. Maybe those will come back into vogue ?

[Chance the Gardener]

Offshore Nuclear Power/Desalination plants… that’s the answer. We can store the waste in the empty Lake Meade.

[Bugs]

It doesn’t matter how much we can conserve; human beings depend on water even more than the U.S. economy depends on energy. More people will mean more water consumption. Eventually our population will outstrip the capacity of our fresh water sources. No doubt we’ll get there faster as a result of the efforts our conservation friends are expending on behalf of the frogs and fairy shrimp.

When the economics of the situation justify the expense to do so I have no doubt that the technology and capactity of desalinization will expand to cover the gap. We might have to pay 5 times as much for our water but we’ll continue to have water here for as long as there is an ocean. That is, unless our conservation friends can convince us that the oceans will evaporate, too.

Who knows? Maybe water production will become for San Diego County what oil is for Saudi Arabia.

[PerryChase]

I think that climate appropriate landscaping is beautiful. It takes more design to achieve an attractive look. I’ve been trying to convince my dad for years to do something more appropriate in his yard. But he likes the tropical plants.

[CAwireman]

Lost Cat, you hit the nail on the head. Cali isn’t much without a gushing water supply. A few good links:

Cadillac Desert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert

Summary:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~martins/hydro/case_studies/cadillac_desert.htm

The book is a longish, but detailed read. Hats off the the late Marc Reisner for researching and writing the book.

A local individual, Jim Bell, advocates a large investment in solar. And, he also suggests a solar powered desalination plant or plants – with energy being the the most cost portion of a facility, as I’ve been lead to understand, once built. The solar source would allow it to be more affordable at an earlier time.

[no_such_reality]

Offshore Nuclear Power/Desalination plants… that’s the answer. We can store the waste in the empty Lake Meade.

That’s a lot of power.

San Diego’s water need alone will require 20,000 MW supply.

Lob on OC, LA, Riverside and San Bernardino and you basically exceed CAL-ISO grid peak-power capabilities.

Of course, that’s without considering the impacts on the environment of desalinating 6,000,000 Acre feet of ocean off our coast every year.

[Chance the Gardener]

Wow… that is a lot of power, and a lot of water. We should probably start learning how to conserve too. One way might be to stop growing rice in California. How is that a good idea. Rather than send money to Indonesia… why don’t we just let them grow all of the rice. Or, alternatively, we should grow rice where we have more water. This should be extended to any crop that demands extreme amounts of water. It just doesn’t make any sense. I know California has good dirt, but that’s only one part of the equation.

[kewp]

How about a 100% water tax? Use the revenue to fund desalination initiatives.

Might encourage more folks to install low-flow shower heads and toilets.

[waiting hawk]

“How about a 100% water tax? Use the revenue to fund desalination initiatives.

Might encourage more folks to install low-flow shower heads and toilets”

That’s a great idea

[LostCat]

So maybe this is a really good time to introduce the expanded use of the hydro car. It will help it rain if all 19 million So Cal residence start driving them.

But this topic brings up a good point. The next nice big economic push. The Enviornment. Now that stocks are gone, housing is long gone, Bio will always treat and never cure, the only thing left is to make things enviornmentally safe..

[gold_dredger_phd]

Here comes the secular religion again. Environmentalism replaces communism as the “ideology” of the left. No wonder you have so many journalists engaged in eco-boosterism. Children will be forced to convert to the “Church of the Warming Globe” as a condition of graduation.

My prediction is that global warming will result in massive famines, refugees from Mexico over-running lush golf courses and polo fields of southern California and we’ll be prohibited from using the flush toilets. Later, as the warming continues, crops will fail and those that cannot live on sand and sea water will be forced into cannabilism.

I would love it if we could just have gravel front yards. But the neighbors, especially in rich, snooty neighborhoods, would sue those who don’t have “a yard that blends well with the community.” I can’t wait for peoples’ water bills to reach $200 per month. More refugees would flee the “Golden State” for cheaper abodes.

Not everyone can live in California and this water crisis will insure that not everyone *will* live in California. Time to depopulate the state by driving up the cost of living even more.

[no_such_reality]

Children will be forced to convert to the “Church of the Warming Globe” as a condition of graduation

Is that like the mandatory volunteer community service requirement being bandied around for graduation?

[sdcellar]

How about a 100% water tax? Use the revenue to fund desalination initiatives.

Yes, taxes, very efficient mechanism. So you’re the guy who votes for these kinds of things…

[DCRogers]

(Folks, folks, let’s keep this friendly…)

If you believe, as I do, in the risks of climate change, then we are indeed on the cutting edge… we’re not going to flood, like Bangladesh, but we rely on the Sierra snowpack to store our water for summer. It’s a big deal; without it, the snow that falls (even if the amount doesn’t change) just rushes to the sea in a near-immediate snowmelt, so the current situation is worth a few hundred dams.

Lest you think I’m just another panic-spreading liberal, here’s some red meat for the other side: many of our water problems would be immediately addressed if we just made water a fully free-market, tradable, commodity. We’d allocate it efficiently to the most economically useful use. Of course, farms growing alfalfa in the desert with government subsidies don’t like that idea… (but the Bass brothers do… they’ve been buying up Imperial Valley farms, waiting for the day they can sell off the water rights and turn the land back into desert).

Desalination?? Har har har… and perhaps Chinese investors will buy those BBB- MBS bonds and propel more no-doc clients into their first $700K homes… (whoops I forgot my own advice to play nice… better go now…)

DCR

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