[gvc8]

SNWA could lease water to drought-stricken California | Las Vegas Review-Journal

"The Southern Nevada Water Authority would dip into its reserves to lease water to drought-stricken California under a plan slated for a vote by the agency's board Thursday.
Under the deal, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California would pay the authority almost $44.4 million for 150,000 acre-feet of water, half of Nevada's annual share of the Colorado River."

[ScoopLV]

Just so bottled water companies can filter it and sell it back to us? So they can waste it all making almond milk? (Seriously, look up how much water the almond industry uses in California.)

How flippin' dumb can both states be?

Oh, I forgot, we're talking about Nevada and California. There's no bottom to the stupidity chasm.

[EA]

Well, the important thing is the celebrity lawns will be nice and lush.

[MediocreButArrogant]

Quick back of envelope calculation: roughly 3000 acre-ft per million dollars, or about one billion gallons for a million dollars, or a thousand gallons for a buck. Seems like they should have asked for more.

[ScoopLV]

I have no problems at all helping a neighbor in need. Especially when that need is something as basic as fresh water.

But since California [urinates] their water supply away, this is the same as giving charity to an addict -- the addict isn't going to change his life. He's going to take the money/food/etc. and use it to subsidize his addiction.

California is addicted to inefficient agriculture.

They've been letting big farms and soda companies pump all the water out of their reservoirs in order to make a quick buck. Now the water is gone and California is discovering that they cannot drink money. Giving them water isn't going to help them.

What we have is a bunch of nimrods saying, "My daddy was an almond farmer. My grand-daddy was an almond farmer. And HIS daddy was an almond farmer. And I'll be an almond farmer until I die."

Such people don't deserve Nevada's water. Lake Mead is still falling at an alarming rate. And now we're expected to sell them water at pennies on the dollar so that they can continue to waste it on almond farming.

[MediocreButArrogant]

Actually, I don't think this will benefit the almond growers in CA at all. Almonds are grown in the central valley of CA, which gets its water from northern CA through the CA Aqueduct system. Water from the CA aqueduct doesn't make it farther south than LA.

Water from the Colorado River goes to the Imperial Valley, which does not grow almonds. There isn't a way to get water from the south to the north (they can't even get water in the underground Kern Water Bank back to San Luis reservoir), or to get CA aqueduct water further south than LA. So they are really two independent agricultural areas.

Also, it's not true that almonds have always been grown in the current volumes. It's really within the last two decades that almond demand ramped up and central valley farmers figured out that they could make way more money by switching to growing almonds. Your almond farmer's father and grandfather grew other, less water-intensive crops.

California's Thirsty Almonds | East Bay Express

Dan Errotabere's family has been farming the dry soils of the western San Joaquin Valley for nearly a century. His grandfather primarily grew wheat and other grains. His father grew vegetables and other annual crops almost exclusively. But in 1999, Errotabere decided to plant his first almond tree. Today, almonds account for more than a quarter of his 3,600-acre farm.

The ones responsible for the damage aren't "nimrod" farmers. It's large corporate nut growers with powerful lobbies, like Paramount Farms.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenD...lash-water-use

[ScoopLV]

I used almonds as an example because everyone knows how wasteful they are. Well, the people who pay attention know. I don't know what percentage that represents in Las Vegas. Probably quite a small one. The ignorant herd is probably cheering that we're selling water -- thinking that will subsidize their water bill. They don't realize that we're selling it for pennies on the dollar.

If they're not wasting it on almonds, there are plenty of other ways California can waste the water. 150K acre-feet is diddly-squat for California. They'll just squander it.

Here's a dandy graph:

[MediocreButArrogant]

And alfalfa is main fed to cattle, which is why it takes nearly 2000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.

To make a burger, first you need 660 gallons of water ... - LA Times

[qingguy]

What about the water that's being wasted on the Delta Smelt? A fish that is dying off anyway? Millions of gallons of water that could have gone to farms in the Central Valley has been wasted on this fish. - "Turning off the pumps that serve the state and federal water projects wasted about 800,000 acre-feet of water in 2013 "based on the science of four buckets of minnows. That is enough water to produce crops on 200,000 acres or 10 million tons of tomatoes; 200 million boxes of lettuce; 20 million tons of grapes."

[ScoopLV]

Or we could finally do something about the 2.5-to-4 million acre-feet of Colorado River water wasted by invasive tamarisk trees. But I have my doubts that we'll ever tackle that problem.

We would need scientifically-literate people in charge. And we're fresh out of such people. Instead, our resources are managed by people who don't know how old the Earth is, don't understand the difference between climate and weather, and think that an angry sky god is going to fix this drought for us.

No wonder we're in such a dire tailspin.