Could California be facing a water collapse?

[naednek]

We (Sacramento) had almost 2 inches of rain yesterday. It was crazy last night driving home.

[Pyperkub]

California Drought one year ago:



California drought today:



Let's hear it for Northern CA! (before Lo-Cal steals our water...).

[Biyobi]

Gimme your waters!

[Scuzz]

Most the state can get all the rain it wants and it doesn't mean anything without a lot of snow up in the Sierra Nevada's. Yesterday's rain was a warm one, and the snow levels were 7,500ft or higher.

We passed a bond measure for storage last year.....still no plans to actually add any.

There was money and some legal water changes for California in a congressional bill that should reach Obama's desk soon. Sen. Boxer actually went off on Sen. Feinstein over her support and co-authoring of the measure. It was tacked on to some other stuff. Maybe it will add storage.

You can't keep adding people, and California is still growing in population, and reduce the water supply. Which is what is happening even in a good year because of legal and environmental changes.

[Scuzz]

We also need a cold winter in the mountains to kill off the bark beetles that are destroying the forests.

[naednek]

Most the state can get all the rain it wants and it doesn't mean anything without a lot of snow up in the Sierra Nevada's. Yesterday's rain was a warm one, and the snow levels were 7,500ft or higher.

We passed a bond measure for storage last year.....still no plans to actually add any.

There was money and some legal water changes for California in a congressional bill that should reach Obama's desk soon. Sen. Boxer actually went off on Sen. Feinstein over her support and co-authoring of the measure. It was tacked on to some other stuff. Maybe it will add storage.

You can't keep adding people, and California is still growing in population, and reduce the water supply. Which is what is happening even in a good year because of legal and environmental changes.

Obama just signed it...
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-gov ... 09458.html But I'm sure Trump will repeal it.

[Scuzz]

Trump actually ran on restoring water to California. He raised lots of money here in the Central Valley from farmers and the ag industry. Also, the bill contains many things the environmentalists dislike, so Trump should love it. It's why Feinstein and Boxer fought over it.

[Pyperkub]

Thread Necro for the state of Tulare Lake...

A famous 1977 photo taken just outside the town of Mendota, 65 miles northwest of Corcoran, shows Joseph Poland, a USGS scientist wearing a trilby hat and brown pants, standing next to a utility pole with signs reading 1925, 1955 and 1977. The 1925 sign is 30 feet above the ground — the amount the land had sunk over 50 years.

The move sets the stage for a confrontation, at long last, between state regulators and the powerful land barons who have long controlled water use in the heavily farmed Tulare Lake Basin. If the State Water Resources Control Board deems an area “probationary,” it has the power to require the big landowners to install meters on the wells they draw from for irrigation, start reporting how much they are pumping and begin paying fees based on the water they draw.

The state's crackdown — or at least threat of a crackdown — follows years of foot-dragging by the legacy farming families and agribusiness conglomerates that run massive operations in the Tulare Lake Basin to fall in line with state regulations that call for major reductions in groundwater pumping.

Under a 2014 state law, the five water agencies that make up the Tulare Lake subbasin were supposed to be working as a team to craft a plan for reducing pumping to levels that would stabilize groundwater levels and ease the subsidence as of 2040.

But those water agencies — some of which are run by representatives of the biggest landowners — have made virtually no progress toward that goal.

[Alefroth]

And I thought the bump was going to be because the crisis has abated.

[Jaymann]

And I thought the bump was going to be because the crisis has abated.

And I thought it was bumped because the collapse happened.

[Pyperkub]

And I thought the bump was going to be because the crisis has abated.

And I thought it was bumped because the collapse happened.

The 30 ft collapse...

[Pyperkub]

Meanwhile, it's not just California with drained aquifers causing sinkage.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/25/climate/ ... imate-intl

Mexico City is sinking almost 2ft per year and getting worse as climate change intensifies and exposes the fact that their infrastructure and usage isn't up to the task.

Around 60% of Mexico City’s water comes from its underground aquifer, but this has been so over-extracted that the city is sinking at a frightening rate — around 20 inches a year, according to recent research. And the aquifer is not being replenished anywhere near fast enough. The rainwater rolls off the city’s hard, impermeable surfaces, rather than sinking into the ground.

The rest of the city’s water is pumped vast distances uphill from sources outside the city, in an incredibly inefficient process, during which around 40% of the water is lost through leaks.

[Kraken]

I was idly wondering if CA's aquifers are recharging with all the rain they've been getting. Probably not faster than they're being drawn down. I imagine most of that water is runoff.

[Jaymann]

The wettest drought on record.

[Daehawk]

When this happens you always hear its because rivers were diverted for farming. Why dont they un-divert the rivers during the off growing times like winter?

This is news from 7 months ago.



Same 7 months

[Scuzz]

I was idly wondering if CA's aquifers are recharging with all the rain they've been getting. Probably not faster than they're being drawn down. I imagine most of that water is runoff.

The aquifers will get healthier because of last years rain and what we have received so far this year. But California has always been subject to wet/dry cycles and so the over reliance on groundwater will return with the next dry cycle.

[Scuzz]

When this happens you always hear its because rivers were diverted for farming. Why dont they un-divert the rivers during the off growing times like winter?

This is news from 7 months ago.



Same 7 months

The lake is a natural feature which has been allowed to dry out by diverting water to farms. That diversion system can’t handle years as wet as last year. During the pre-farm days Tulare Lake was one of the largest lakes on the western US and was a major bird habitat.

[em2nought]

Seems like lots of people are coming up with devices to create water from air such as this guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V0CeEfK_i4

[Isgrimnur]

Floridians already have their vaporators.

[em2nought]

I keep seeing this water out of air device advertised, looks a bit crude.

https://www.aatfsurvivalguide.com/aatff

I don't have a vaporizer, but I did find a CPAP in a thrift store for $10, had to get a power block to find out that it works, and now I just need a hose and mask yet to test it out.

[Scuzz]

I saw a news story on Death Valley and a 3x5 mile strip of it is currently under 2 feet of water. I have never heard of that.

I wonder how much water is in Owens Lake?

[Pyperkub]

I was idly wondering if CA's aquifers are recharging with all the rain they've been getting. Probably not faster than they're being drawn down. I imagine most of that water is runoff.

The aquifers will get healthier because of last years rain and what we have received so far this year. But California has always been subject to wet/dry cycles and so the over reliance on groundwater will return with the next dry cycle.

CA to start reining in Central Valley aquifer abuse?

For the first time in California history, state officials are poised to crack down on overpumping of groundwater in the agricultural heartland.

The State Water Resources Control Board on Tuesday will weigh whether to put Kings County groundwater agencies on probation for failing to rein in growers’ overdrafting of the underground water supply.

Probation — which would levy state fees that could total millions of dollars — is the first step that could allow California regulators to eventually take over management of the region’s groundwater.

State officials have issued multiple warnings to Kings County growers, irrigation districts and local officials that their groundwater plan has serious deficiencies and won’t stem the region’s dried-up wells, water contamination and sinking land, all caused by overpumping.

Something to keep an eye on...

More info from the article:

For communities in Kings County, water troubles are a fact of life.

Thirty families in the basin now rely on trucked water, a blow to home values and to residents who can no longer use water for gardens or livestock, according to Self-Help Enterprises.

A total of 156 household and irrigation well outages have been reported in the county; nine were reported in the past year. And this is likely only a small portion of the dry wells as residents rarely report outages.

Residents in the small, unincorporated communities of Hardwick and Stratford have struggled in the past with well outages. In Stratford, with no water to flush toilets, the local school temporarily set up porta potties for students during an outage in 2018. Even after water was restored, Stratford residents were left with a permanent sense of unease, said Robert Isquierdo Jr., founder of the nonprofit Reestablishing Stratford.

“They went without water not in a third world country, but in Stratford, California, the United States,” he said. “There was a real, big psychological effect.”

[Scuzz]

I drive through Stratford a couple times a year on my way to the central coast. Middle of an ag area that would be desert without canal water.

It’s an area that used to grow cotton and now has solar farms and empty fields.

[dbt1949]

They gave me some extra strength pee medicine. Sounds like California ought to pay me to vacation there.

[Pyperkub]

They gave me some extra strength pee medicine. Sounds like California ought to pay me to vacation there.

The dbtp fix!