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They don't care about "conserving" as much as raising more money. California is in dire financial straits...it's not just water they lack! When they tell folks to "conserve" and that happens, they take in LESS money than before...so they raise the rates, so they don't have to cut salaries.
It's too bad that for so many, many years, there was plenty of water to divert to this desert region...and desert it truly is....they should never have artificially drenched the state, and fewer would be affected and competing for what water there is.
They don't care about "conserving" as much as raising more money. California is in dire financial straits...it's not just water they lack! When they tell folks to "conserve" and that happens, they take in LESS money than before...so they raise the rates, so they don't have to cut salaries.
It's too bad that for so many, many years, there was plenty of water to divert to this desert region...and desert it truly is....they should never have artificially drenched the state, and fewer would be affected and competing for what water there is.
I'm irked that people who already lowered their water usage are dinged for doing so. While those that did not get a lower bill. Meaning, I can't decrease my consumption any lower while my water wasting neighbor can cut back and lower his bill. I live in the urban coast where consumption is low anyway. We don't have lawns and live in small spaces so it is easy to keep water consumption lower. I'm guessing I use 20 gallons a day???
The same thing has happened with gas and cigarette taxes, raise the price to discourage consumption and revenues drop. Causing a shortfall in the funding for programs funded by those specific taxes.
The solution? Enact another tax increase to offset lost revenues resulting in even lower demand and consequently revenues.
Water is different than either of the items you mentioned. In fact, it's different from everything else. No one can live without it.
California has already been in drought for over 5 years. The drought could last for as long as 100 years, as other droughts in California have lasted that long. Conserving water continuously is the only way the state will ever be able to recharge all the aquifers it has, and it's the subsurface aquifers that take the water the first and the most in times of drought.
Think of an aquifer like a sponge in the bottom of a glass; the glass will not fill until the sponge is full first, if the glass is filled only by a few drops at a time.
Why did Lake Mead go so dry so fast? Because it was the only Big Gulp all the surrounding aquifers in Arizona, Nevada and California were all drying up. Fully 30% of the water in Lake Mead, and the entire storage system of the Colorado River went straight underground. And it will continue until the drought breaks. Even then, no one knows for sure when the aquifers will fully re-charge again when the weather grows consistently wetter. Geologists never realized so much water was going down until just 3 years ago.
There aren't a lot of choices available now except extreme conservation. Desalinization on scale to provide California's agriculture, the largest in the nation, going at full scale will require nuclear energy- it's the only thing that can provide the massive amounts of heat and energy needed on such a huge scale.
Our nuclear reactor technology is now almost 40 years obsolete. That means there will be a lot of catching up to do, and even if it happens fast, new reactors are still a decade away at the soonest, as even the modern reactors take years to build. And even desalinization alone is not enough to re-fill the dry aquifers.
If anybody can come up with a viable alternate to severe water conservation, there are hundreds of thousands of smart people all ready to use any alternative that can be found, and they have been working on this for a very long time already.
The Los Angeles basin has already cut down water usage more than the fines alone were predicted to limit usage. Once people began learning how much water they really needed, most of the cuts were voluntary, but there is still a tremendous amount to be saved, just by fixing very slow leaking toilets, plumbing, leaky main lines under the streets, etc.
It will all take time. There are no quick fixes except for a decade of reliable very wet weather, and there is no sign of that happening.
The problem California has is that it's focusing on residents consuming too much water when in realty it's the manufacturing industry along with agriculture consuming too much water. I'm not stating that more regulations on water use should he implemented BUT it would help if more water saving methods would be encouraged in agriculture and manufacturing plants that consume way more water than each individual person.
It's similar to people who buy electric cars.
Cars make up a small portion of air pollution, and even if 100% of vehicles on earth are electric, this wouldn't even put a dent in preventing air pollution. You have to target the things that account for bigger percentages of the problem.
The problem California has is that it's focusing on residents consuming too much water when in realty it's the manufacturing industry along with agriculture consuming too much water. I'm not stating that more regulations on water use should he implemented BUT it would help if more water saving methods would be encouraged in agriculture and manufacturing plants that consume way more water than each individual person.
industry and agriculture dont use as much water as you might think. here in arizona for instance, when we started water conservation programs, the big complaint was that the mines used a lot of water,as did all the golf courses. it was determined though that the mines used less than 3% of all the water consumed in the state, and the golf courses used effluent rather than ground or well water.
They don't care about "conserving" as much as raising more money. California is in dire financial straits...it's not just water they lack! When they tell folks to "conserve" and that happens, they take in LESS money than before...so they raise the rates, so they don't have to cut salaries.
It's too bad that for so many, many years, there was plenty of water to divert to this desert region...and desert it truly is....they should never have artificially drenched the state, and fewer would be affected and competing for what water there is.
"They' plowed up the plains earlier and created the dust bowl. "They" cut down the forests of the northeast earlier still.
"They" sucked all the fertility out of the soil throughout the South by growing too much cotton, they killed all the Passenger Pigeons, and turned mountains into craters digging out minerals and metals.
They is us. Throughout the entire span of humanity, we have taken too much and moved on. That's how we have always been.
Our species is not used to conserving very much very often. There are only a few places on earth, all naturally poor in resources, where humans have learned to be thrifty with the habitat they live in.
I see a lot of fools in this post proclaiming the ends justify the means... California is a desert, no matter how much water you conserve, that will not change... The company is going to make X profits whether you use more or less, it has nothing to do with "supply" or "demand"... California is always going to be in a drought, ITS A FREAKING DESERT! Its not promoting conservation, that's complete rhetoric, if it didn't have very little water supply, IT WOULD NEVER BE AN ISSUE... Its one of the reasons, I didn't buy property in California... or Las Vegas... at some point in time, it all has to end... its like building homes in the Arctic and then complaining that its too cold or that the ice is melting... ITS EVENTUALLY GOING TO HAPPEN... If you live in California and think you will get your water supply back and pay less money... you must be a liberal...
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