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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a very complete picture of what's going on with water in California.

Even as population has almost doubled, and as agricultural output increases, we have decreased our water usage:

https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

There's a lot to be said for simply not wasting lots of water.

If California stopped growing alfalfa, a low value product that is the largest agricultural use of water, we could probably house 20-30M more people with that water.

California could have built more reservoirs, but how many more? And how many more natural beauties would we have sacrificed instead of simply using less of a resource?

The stupidest thing California does is treat water rights as economic land for farmers that simply waste obscene amounts of a valuable resource. We need to tax that economic land at the full land rents, to encourage more economically efficient uses.

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You might look at the politics around building a desalination plant near Monterey. A lot of people are against building the plant because they think we can avoid it through water conservation and a water reclamation project.

Although I haven’t studied it enough to say for sure, this seems short-sighted to me. In particular, the water restrictions prevent building more housing, and existing water sources seem vulnerable.

I don't live very far away from there, and what I've learned about local politics is that: 1) it's very dirty, you encounter the worst sort of lying and meanness from people that are otherwise normal, and 2) almost nobody publicly states what they want or why they want it, and everything is argued on what will be the most effective vicious political attack rather than heartfelt beliefs.

With desalination, much of the underlying opposition is from older folks from the 70s who are worried about "population" in particular less wealthy and non-white people. Environmentalism of that sort is about a person living in a suburban home with greenery around them more than reducing overall pollution or environmental impact. There is a toooooooon of extreme wealth in the Monterey area right next to the most extreme poverty, which is really at the heart of a lot of the opposition to desalination.

Then there are people who earnestly are worried about environmental damage from water intakes and brine dumps, but I think those concerns lie with fewer people, and not with those who wield the most political power in the area.

There are some great points being made here and Im really glad to see the generational issue come up. Wondering what role people think California boomers are playing in these problems as a distinct subset from Californias population as it will exist in ~30 years when they're gone?

> opposition is from older folks from the 70s who are worried about "population"

Absolutely yes and thanks for calling it out. Water is weaponized all over coastal California. "There's not enough water here" is a very convincing argument to stop construction on new housing. Santa Cruz does the same thing as Monterrey as does Malibu.

The results are often horrible infrastructure with septic tanks leeching into creeks etc. but housing remains scarse which is a win for entrenched property owners

> "There's not enough water here" is a very convincing argument to stop construction on new housing. Santa Cruz does the same thing as Monterrey as does Malibu.

I don't know details of the others, but in Santa Cruz water sources are limited to rivers and one small reservoir (Loch Lomond) which is getting low. Concerns about water availability are very real. Without rain all of these could dry up.

https://www.cityofsantacruz.com/government/city-departments/...

But the idea that new housing is connected to increased water usage does not, as they say, hold water.

https://santacruzlocal.org/2021/02/15/does-more-housing-mean...

As Santa Cruz's population has increased, water usage goes down. Replacing old inefficient single family homes with terrible appliances and plumbing, with 4x as many people in a multifamily building with highefficiency appliances and faucets, and modern landscaping, will likely reduce water consumption.

Alfalfa is a legume that improves soil [1]. Therefore, it cannot simply be dropped; it would have to be replaced by something.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfalfa#Ecology

Most legumes add nitrogen from air to the soil. The effect can be easily replaced adding industrial urea. On the other hand, many native plants (those that will survive) dislike having too much nitrogen in soil.

Does that include groundwater usage?

It sounds like there really isn't anything to be concerned about then.

"If California stopped growing alfalfa...we could probably house 20-30M more people". I'm very happy to stop growing crops in the desert, and agree there's absurd waste there (just because something can be done does not mean it should be done). But 10s of millions more people...is that really a goal, or even a good thing?

People have to live somewhere, and if they live in California they are going to be living a lower carbon life than if they live in Texas, Boise, Phoenix or Atlanta. Those are the places that California has been exporting anybody who doesn't make lots of money. So yes, as a California resident,, I think 20-30M more in California is a fantastic idea compared to the alternatives.

Just a small point about Texas: Although it still pumps huge amounts of oil and gas, it also has more wind power resources that it could deploy. Texas could have a lower carbon future if it so chose.

Though electrical consumption is far lower in California than Texas (and bills are typically lower deposits higher $/kWh), the electrical change isn't the biggest factor.

The grid can always be greened fairly quickly. That's an easy change to make, and happening quickly in places like Texas where legacy expensive fossil fuel generators aren't protected by utilities. Now that renewables and storage are cheap, any new natural gas plant will soon be a stranded asset, and generators on ERCOT are quickly realizing that.

A much harder change is transportation. We can't build enough electric cars fast enough for the transition, and land use patterns in Texas typically require cars even more intensively than California. In contrast, biking to work in the Bay Area is pleasant newer year round, and there's not much mass transit but at least a little.

The Texas lifestyle requires a car, and people that are forced out of California typically leave in the blue low-carbon areas on this Tablueau map, but will likely move to the red high-carbon areas.

https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps

At least, that's the anecdata I have from people I know, but it's not proper data.

Not saying it is right or wrong, but traditionally we would use a market to decide that, where the new people can buy the land / water at a higher price if it is worth more to them than the alfalfa farmer. This adapts the goals of people based on their economic activity. But water right are a complicated chain and mostly not treated like a market in California.

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