It’s The Water Stupid!

At this point, it’s probably not news that we have a drought situation in California. But the drought doesn’t end at the California state line. The entire western United States is suffering through a drought. Snow packs, nature’s own water reservoirs, in the Sierra and Rocky mountains have been far below normal even for dry years. According to one California State web site, this is “the worst drought in memory.”

As a rule, for every problem, there is both a cause and a solution. The cause is obvious, not enough precipitation. And there is no shortage of critics ready to blame that on the “usual suspect”, Global Warming. Without getting into the politically charged debate on global warming, it would suffice to say that, yes, the earth may be warming up, and yes, weather patterns can be expected to change due to the warming. Of course, to place full blame on Global Warming would be to ignore the fact that much of the California land mass is rated as desert and that the state has undergone many periodic droughts throughout recorded history.

So, what makes this drought different? First, there is the obvious population difference. According to United States Census Bureau in the 51-month period from April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2014, California population grew at a rate of 4.16 percent while the total US population grew by 3.28 percent. The total population for California at that time was 38,802,500 people. While the California water deficit in 2014 was reported to be 11 trillion gallons. The situation is that we have a sharp increase on population concurrent with a severe shortage of water. Common sense would dictate we discourage more growth until we get the water situation in hand. Unfortunately, common sense is a sparse commodity in Sacramento.

A second difference is water diversion. From the US House Committee on Natural Resources:
In May 2007, a Federal District Court Judge ruled that increased amounts of water had to be re-allocated towards protecting the Delta smelt – a three-inch fish on the Endangered Species List.

Because of this ruling, in 2009 and 2010 more than 300 billion gallons (or 1 million acre-feet) of water were diverted away from farmers in the Central Valley and into the San Francisco Bay – eventually going out into the Pacific Ocean.

While 300 billion gallons may seem, well… like a drop in the bucket compared to an 11 trillion gallon deficit, at this point every little bit helps… or hurts.

This drought is far more serious than people’s lawns turning brown and cars not being washed. The California Central Valley is the vegetable capital of the US. We may not be running out of broccoli or beans, but you can bet it will cost a whole lot more to import from other countries. Look in your refrigerator and imagine all of those vegetables costing far more than what they cost now. The next time you are in a restaurant and look at the menu prices, you could get sticker shock due to the increase of food costs that have to be passed on by the restaurant. Even junk food will cost more, much more.

So, what is the solution? California Governor Jerry Brown thinks he can throw a few billion dollars at the problem and it will go away. Money can’t make water instantly appear where there is none. At best, any construction funded by this emergency fund will only provide additional water sometime in the future.

The other facet in Brown’s solution is conservation. No argument there. Conservation is a great idea any time; in a drought, it is paramount. We have just struggled through a long and brutal recession, and many people have already taken measures to stem the rising cost of water usage. How much further will they be able to reduce their use?

The average household uses about 100 gallons per person. The water districts set the initial tier at 60 gallons per-person, and the rate increases dramatically for every tier thereafter. Rate induced conservation can only hurt the poor and those on fixed incomes who have already cut their consumption to the quick.

Then we have desalinization. California has the longest coastline of any state in the nation. No one owns the Ocean water; no one will charge us to take what we need. All we need do is convert it to freshwater. In 2013 there were over 17,000 desalinization plants producing 21.1 billion gallons of fresh water on a daily basis to 300 million people in 150 countries. Exact numbers for the US at this date is a little hard to find, but in 2012 the IDA Journal of Desalination and Water Reuse reported there to be 324.

California either has or is in the process of building 17. The largest will be in Carlsbad, which is planned to be able to deliver some 50 million gallons of drinkable water per day. The plant took twelve years of planning and six years to get through the permitting process. It is expected to go on-line this year – if the environmentalists back off. Another plant is slated for Huntington Beach.

There are quite a number of ways to extract minerals and salt from seawater. Expense, power consumption, and environmental concerns currently dominate the anti-desalinization argument and drag out the permitting process. For every negative, though, there are many positives, the main one being drought independence.

It always seems to be the environmental Luddites throwing a monkey wrench into any technological solution to mankind’s problems with nature. I can imagine an environmentalist caveman telling the inventor of fire, “You can’t do that it will burn the world up!”