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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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?

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