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Comment by beatpanda | Hacker News Reader

This is what California always does. We forget about what happens in a drought as soon as the rain comes, and as soon as the rain comes, we realize we forgot about what happened the last time it flooded. After the catastrophe is already upon us, recriminations fly, trillions of pixels are wasted on heavy-handed think pieces, and we forget again, only to wonder why an entirely preventable tragedy managed to find us the next time one comes.

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Outrage and complaining is much easier than action.

During the drought, the best thing we got for legislation to 'fix' it, was preventing people from getting water without explicitly asking at restaurants. As idiotic at this was (this accounts for approximately 0.0% of water use in California), activists rejoiced over how they were fixing the problem by having everyone 'chip in'. Meanwhile farmers continued on not even paying for the water they use (farming is >50% of water usage).

One almond requires over a gallon of water, and you can buy a pound of raw almonds for $8 or so at my grocery store. But that 1/16 gallon glass of water is gonna save the day.

Meanwhile, our state capital is -- wait for it! -- building out water meters so they can tell how much each house is using. They're trying to get 80% of households by 2025.

Indeed, and in Australia too, but even sillier in floodplains you see a few very old houses built on stilts seemimgly floating above flood waters and next to them suburbs of roof tops of submerged modern houses built for miles around.

It's a human thing. In the east-south of Spain have floods from storms almost every few years , but instead of have things prepared for those, they get the money from insurance and let everything as it was, they don't fix the drain/sewage systems they keep building in same natural water ways. So every few years happens the same and they cry every time.

While true, there has also been a tremendous amount of work done on flood control, levees and so on in the Sacramento/delta areas that flooded in 1997. Time hasn't been entirely wasted.

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