Can California Requisition Water From the Columbia River via Congress? (Carlsbad: buying, gated)

[Larry Caldwell]

They could also turn off the water for all but a few hours a day. Cities lose a good percentage of their water to leaky lines. Shut off the water except for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night and they could save a huge amount of water.

Nuclear powered naval ships can also double as desalination plants. They provided drinking water for coastal Japan after the tsunami.

[gemstone1]

This is not strictly a California problem....this should be considered national in scope. With no water, California's Agricultural sector will collapse, when that happens, the effect will be felt across the country...all consumers will feel the pain. Just google California Agriculture to see just how important California Ag products are to the state and the nation. CA has been the number 1 state in Ag production for 50 years.

While it is easy to point fingers at the apparent lack of vision by generations of Californian's and their leaders, it behooves all of us to find a long term, cost effective solution to the west coast water crisis.

Regards
Gemstone1

[Wilson502]

Originally Posted by gemstone1

This is not strictly a California problem....this should be considered national in scope. With no water, California's Agricultural sector will collapse, when that happens, the effect will be felt across the country...all consumers will feel the pain. Just google California Agriculture to see just how important California Ag products are to the state and the nation. CA has been the number 1 state in Ag production for 50 years.

While it is easy to point fingers at the apparent lack of vision by generations of Californian's and their leaders, it behooves all of us to find a long term, cost effective solution to the west coast water crisis.

Regards
Gemstone1

Concentrating a majority of agriculture in a small part of 1 state is just dumb and shows poor planning and forethought. Our national Ag policy needs to be completely reworked with more focus on localized production and more sustainable farming practices. The new mandatory restrictions in CA STILL fall far short of whats needed. Unbelievable. Well actually, its very believable.

[DriveNotCommute]

Originally Posted by gemstone1

This is not strictly a California problem....this should be considered national in scope. With no water, California's Agricultural sector will collapse, when that happens, the effect will be felt across the country...all consumers will feel the pain. Just google California Agriculture to see just how important California Ag products are to the state and the nation. CA has been the number 1 state in Ag production for 50 years.

While it is easy to point fingers at the apparent lack of vision by generations of Californian's and their leaders, it behooves all of us to find a long term, cost effective solution to the west coast water crisis.

Regards
Gemstone1

The general sentiment about finding long term solutions is absolutely right.

However, freaking out over the threat of an "agriculture collapse" is not. Farmers are more savvy than most people give them credit for and will find a way to adapt. It is my opinion that playing on the idea that farmers are dumb just so that they get to maintain the lion's share of water on the cheap does not help anything in the big picture.

If water is scarce, then its price must be raised. Agriculture in California gets 80% of the water already. They should be at the front lines WITH the cities in figuring out how to reduce its usage, except in Agriculture's case, the effect of changing even one of their standard processes would multiply across many acres and acres of produce. If it were the high-tech manufacturing industry using 80% of the water, they would actually be at the FRONT lines developing water saving tech that then spreads everywhere else.

With no disrespect intended, please do not threaten consumers with higher prices: That only smacks of a command pricing scheme, as if it were possible to keep prices low when an input commodity is scarce and needs to be priced higher. If water has really been scarce these past years yet produce did not have its price increased accordingly, that just means that consumers have already benefited from inappropriately low prices and that the time to pay the piper has arrived.

[Bluefox]

As far as agriculture goes, some industries like dairy farmers are already leaving the state. In fact about 500 dairies have left CA since 2008. This is good for the rest of the state because it frees up some water but also not great for the state's economy.

California drought: States tempt California dairy farms - We have water

[Bluefox]

^ I imagine other types of farmers will follow suit to the extent it makes economic sense. Of course there are many crops that simply cannot be grown outside of California.

[1inspector]

For all the Haters out there, you need to know that the reason desal isn't being used is because of the expense. Not because of environmentalists. For those that complaint that we haven't done more water storage projects because of environmentalists, that may be somewhat true. Keep in mind though, water storage wouldn't be very helpful in this case because there isn't any water to store. Many of the lakes and reservoirs are almost dry. And one more important fact to keep in mind is that if this continues the entire country will be affected. The economy of this state is largely built on agriculture. For instance 80% of the worlds tomatoes for canning are grown here. If our agricultural economy is affected, everybody will be affected.

[opossum1]

Something like this would be grounds for another civil war.

NOT going to happen, don't even think of ruining Columbia or other Northern rivers. Clean up the mess CA already created, get the dams out of Yosemite, get Big Ag out and stop importing illegals. Surely, they'd want to turn OR and "all the way up to Canada" into a nighmare and a pesticide dump like Central California.

[1AngryTaxPayer]

I'm wondering if they could do a large scale partial reverse-osmosis desalination operation for ag? More of a brackish water vs clean enough to drink.

[chuckmann]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

Climatologists are now saying that the Southwest may be headed into a prolonged drought period possibly decades long. Agriculture in the Central Valley of California is critical to food production for the nation (or is it?).

I read about a decade ago that California had approached Oregon to divert some of the millions of gallons of freshwater from the Columbia River that empty into the Pacific Ocean each day---water that goes completely to waste. I never heard if Oregon was favorable, but nothing ever happened so I assume the Oregon govt. was crazy about the idea of an aqueduct stretching the length of their state.

But now these are critical times and food and cattle production could be bankrupted and come to a grinding halt due to the draught. Does California have legal grounds for approaching the Federal Govt. with a demand of some sort for Congress to override Oregon's veto and enact an emergency Act of Congress to force Oregon to give some of its water to California's Central Valley?

A decades-long draught would not only hurt agriculture but could cause a real estate crash in California if there were no water to pump into the tens of millions of homes here.

I personally think we Californians should just steal Oregon's water, but the libs in CA will never allow that.

I see that CA is exploring more and more desal, but it takes so fricking long. The Carlsbad Project took 8 years of planning and six years of permitting process. A billion dollars for meeting a 7% capacity requirement.

Oi vey!