"JRStern" > wrote in message
...
> On Mon, 25 May 2015 21:53:31 +0100, "Ophelia" >
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>"JRStern" > wrote in message
. ..
>>> On Sun, 24 May 2015 11:32:35 +0100, "Ophelia" >
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>I have noticed several people here mention California. We have had a
>>>>lot
>>>>of
>>>>stuff on tv about the lack of water there. We were shown the huge
>>>>reservoirs with very little water in them. They were showing how people
>>>>with lush grass and full swimming pools were being demonised.
>>>>
>>>>Is anyone here affected? It sounds very frightening!
>>>
>>> Water has been in short supply in California since forever, and we've
>>> tended to tune out the warnings, but this time it seems to finally be
>>> getting very real.
>>>
>>> But even now it's complex. Even in this drought there is enough water
>>> to go around if the 5% of the crops that are the big water wasters
>>> were shifted to something else. Urban water usage is only about 15%
>>> of the total, depending on how you count, and landscape is about half
>>> of that.
>>>
>>> There are some farms in the delta with historic, premptive rights to
>>> water and they are slow to give it up voluntarily - just this week
>>> agreed to cut back by 25%, but it won't even be monitored, and it's
>>> also not clear that water that gets to them will be used by anyone
>>> else anyway, it's already too far downstream.
>>>
>>> Everyone has known for a century that the day would come when
>>> California would have to do SOMETHING about water, and that day has
>>> arrived. Desalination is pretty much the solution for the coastal
>>> cities, but we might need 100 plants the size of the Carlsbad plant
>>> being completed this year, and the anti-growth idiots like our
>>> Governor Moonbeam are fighting it all the way. It might triple the
>>> cost of urban water. BTW, do you know what it costs today, in Los
>>> Angeles, for a gallon of water out of the faucet?
>>>
>>> For agriculture the long-term solution is harder, they are used to
>>> getting water at 1/10 the price of urban water or less, much less.
>>> And they're not on the coast, so just pumping water there would raise
>>> the price as well. I suspect a century from now you will see 10,000
>>> square miles of California farmland covered by greenhouses.
>>>
>>> I actually got in a bit of a panic about this just about a month ago,
>>> when we got to the end of the rainy season and it punked out on us
>>> again, and I read that the last 100 years of weather in California
>>> have been unreasonably WET, the average for the 1,000 years before
>>> that is about what we've been getting recently, or worse! Ooops.
>>>
>>> It could get really bad since our politicians are such idiots. But it
>>> is mostly fixable, if people would just get off their asses.
>>
>>Thank you. I appreciatd your comments but all these points have been
>>discussed already. You seem to have come late to the party
>
> Indeed. Just wanted to endorse those that I endorsed!

<g> righteo)

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