Water security

[pinhodecarlos]

Originally Posted by xilman

You are in a rapidly decreasing minority. Politicians of all kinds have been talking about making meters compulsory but there are never-ending arguments about who is to pay for them and how people who can not, or will not, pay their bills should be treated. I believe, but may be wrong, that newly built houses must have meters fitted from the start.

I've had a water meter for many years now. It's partly because I have to pay for every litre used that I collect rain water for the garden. It seems senseless pouring relatively expensive and highly treated water on to plants when free rainwater is perfectly good for them. The capital cost of the containers and the hose fitting was paid off within 2-5 years. The collection system holds about a tonne (a cubic metre) of water, which is almost always enough to keep the garden green during the dry spells.

Just figured out what is going on in here on the building. There is only one water meter so the bill is divided by the number of tenants and it is a fixed value.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

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Breaking news: Landmark Groundwater Reform Headed to Governor’s Desk

A big part of the problem is shown in the photo at the top of the article: flood irrigation with open ditches. While it certainly costs more to install and maintain drip systems, wasting water will cost far more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_irrigation

"You Don't Miss Your Water (Till the Well Runs Dry)"

[Nick]

In a system where corporate power reigns supreme, a nation can be legally challenged for attempting to ensure its population’s right to clean water.

Open democracy article:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ed-atk...of-el-salvador

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Nick

Open democracy article:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ed-atk...of-el-salvador

Disgusting:

In the case of El Salvador, the human right to clean water, and the state’s responsibility to provide it, is being questioned and overruled by the deemed importance of projected profits. Greed continues to be good.

[Nick]

The taps have run dry and the lights have gone out across swathes of Brazil this week as the worst drought in history spreads from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro and beyond.
More than four million people have been affected by rationing and rolling power cuts as this tropical nation discovers it can no longer rely on once abundant water supplies in a period of rising temperatures and diminishing rainfall.
The political and economic fallout for the world’s seventh biggest economy is increasingly apparent.

Press article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...rought-history

[Nick]

The American south-west and central plains could be on course for super-droughts the like of which they have not witnessed in over a 1,000 years.
Places like California are already facing very dry conditions, but these are quite gentle compared with some periods in the 12th and 13th Centuries.
Scientists have now compared these earlier droughts with climate simulations for the coming decades.
The study suggests events unprecedented in the last millennium may lie ahead.
"These mega-droughts during the 1100s and 1200s persisted for 20, 30, 40, 50 years at a time, and they were droughts that no-one in the history of the United States has ever experienced," said Ben Cook from Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
"The droughts that people do know about like the 1930s 'dustbowl' or the 1950s drought or even the ongoing drought in California and the Southwest today - these are all naturally occurring droughts that are expected to last only a few years or perhaps a decade. Imagine instead the current California drought going on for another 20 years."
Dr Cook's new study is published in the journal Science Advances, and it has been discussed also at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Press article: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31434030

[only_human]

Originally Posted by Nick

Full press article:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/...california-dry

Californian farmers, estimated to grow around 80% of the world's almonds, have been accused of siphoning off groundwater at the expense of the state's future water reserves.
As rivers and lakes have dried up, with more than 80% of the state in the grip of "extreme" or "exceptional" drought, the state's farmers have resorted to pumping groundwater – underground reserves – to nourish almond trees, vineyards and orchards. David Zetland, economics professor at Leiden University College in the Netherlands, says farmers are pumping water at a rate four to five times greater than can be replenished: "The people of the state of California are more or less destroying themselves in order to give cheap almonds to the world."

Another odd thing about these almond farmers is that seasonally they use most of the country's commercial bees:
Commercial bees, the unsung heroes of the nut business

Lewis, who runs Bill’s Bees, is taking about 700 of his hives on a road trip to the California’s Central Valley, where he’ll unload them across acres of almond orchards, working until 1 or 2 a.m. under the light of full moon.

All across the country, more than a million-and-a-half colonies are making a similar journey – traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles to pollinate California’s almonds. Farmers rent hives for few weeks because in order for almond trees to produce nuts, bees need to move pollen from one tree to another.

No bees, no almonds.

“This pollination season there will be [some] 800,000 acres of almonds that need to be pollinated,” says Eric Mussen, a honey bee specialist at the University of California Davis. He says more than 100 different kinds of crops need these rent-a-bees, but almonds are significant for the number of acres that require pollination all at the same time. About 85 percent of the commercial bees in United States – which Mussen calls “bees on wheels” – travel to California for almonds.

The state supplies roughly 80 percent of the world’s almonds, worth $6.4 billion during the 2013-2014 season, according to the Almond Board of California.

[only_human]

Los Angeles Times opinion / op-ed by Jay Famiglietti

Jay Famiglietti is the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and a professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine.

California has about one year of water left. Will you ration now?

Statewide, we've been dropping more than 12 million acre-feet of total water yearly since 2011. Roughly two-thirds of these losses are attributable to groundwater pumping for agricultural irrigation in the Central Valley. Farmers have little choice but to pump more groundwater during droughts, especially when their surface water allocations have been slashed 80% to 100%. But these pumping rates are excessive and unsustainable. Wells are running dry. In some areas of the Central Valley, the land is sinking by one foot or more per year.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by only_human

Los Angeles Times opinion / op-ed by Jay Famiglietti

California has about one year of water left. Will you ration now?

"Farmers have little choice but to pump more groundwater during droughts..."

Horse puckey - Especially the fruit & nut growers could consider leaving (or better, restoring) some natural-mulch groundcover in between all those thirsty trees to help trap moisture in the soil, but nooooooooooo - that might slightly increase their harvesting expenses, since bare packed dessicated dirt lends itself to fast tree harvesting. Heck, they'd be better off paving in between the trees with some low-budget asphalt or tarmacadam, since then the harvesting machines could drag-race around the place and despite getting melting-hot during the day the pavement would actually trap moisture very well. Maybe we need a multibillion-dollar federal "CA central valley parking-lot-ification" infrastructure initiative.

Everyone wants to live off the fruit of the land, but so very few folks actually want to do so in a sustainable manner. Humanity's plight writ large.

[ewmayer]

p.s.: Scorching yesterday in CA, and I don't just mean SoCal and the desert oases like Palm Springs - in my neck of the SF Bay Area, San Jose hit 89F (32C), demolishing the old record-for-that-date, 81F. Madness. Today is thankfully cooling off markedly (meaning it only hit 80ish F), but I fear what the coming months - the 7 or 8 which are normally rain-free here - will bring.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

p.s.: Scorching yesterday in CA, and I don't just mean SoCal and the desert oases like Palm Springs - in my neck of the SF Bay Area, San Jose hit 89F (32C), demolishing the old record-for-that-date, 81F. Madness. Today is thankfully cooling off markedly (meaning it only hit 80ish F), but I fear what the coming months - the 7 or 8 which are normally rain-free here - will bring.

Get out while you still can ...