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Comment by kbrackbill | Hacker News Reader

I recently read "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner which I highly recommend if you're interested in the history of water issues in the west and California in particular.

A great portion of the book is devoted to dams. The gist of it is that many dams of questionable utility were constructed throughout the 20th century due to pork barrel politics and the unstoppable bureaucratic engines of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corp of Engineers. Like much infrastructure built in the US, not much concern was given to ongoing maintenance and so the book predicts that this will be a larger concern as time goes on.

Hopefully close calls like Oroville will bring more attention to this issue before a larger disaster happens.

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The spillway reconstruction was expensive and time-consuming, but at least it didn't fail that time. The issue was a lack of investment in remediation repairs and improvements, and a lack of planning for extreme event flows.

In the long term, California is unprepared and fucked in terms of dwindling water supply and damaging storms and forest fires from climate change. That's why I left.

There's only going to be more and more climate refugees like you. Where'd you move from that you believe is more insulated from the same problems though? We're all on the same planet.

California is probably the most prepared state in the US, by far, for the climate issues coming.

The problem is it’s also the most currently affected. Mostly due to historic forestry mismanagement (which they’ve corrected but it takes time to make an impact) and the maliciously incompetent behavior of PG&E.

Most of the East Coast is going to be a mess. Same with states near the Gulf. Texas can’t even function now in climate fluctuations without having its grid collapse.

California has its issues, but they’re largely caused over water rights being improperly managed due to unrestrained agricultural usage. Fix that and they have much a ton fewer issues.

> forestry mismanagement (which they’ve corrected but it takes time to make an impact)

no, this is trivializing badly. A more accurate statement is work, and there are varying opinions. The progress might be that some selection of smart, concerned and able public members now know about this topic, and discuss it at all without falling into fundemental disagreements.

At this time, one estimate shows fifteen percent of a total of thirteen million+ homes, are in extreme fire danger in 2023. But wait, that means that eighty five percent of homes are not.. and California is geographically diverse. So there are lots of real places with homes where this dire language does not apply. You cannot plaster over the reality of that with a parenthetic one-liner, however.

I don’t know what you think you’re saying but you don’t appear to be responding to anything I said & it reads like a bad copy & paste of a ChatGPT response.

But to your point: Millions of homes being in danger is a big problem but hardly the only one. Huge forest fires—homes in their path or not—are an ecological disaster. They are more likely with the bad forestry management I mentioned that it will likely take a decade to undo.

None of what you said is at all relevant to that.

"forest mismanagement has been corrected" you stand by that ?

I wish I were as optimistic as you on the fire prognosis. I think a lot of people like the forestry management angle because it's a simple, single root cause, and therefore should be easily fixed.

But the reality is much more complex. When Europeans arrived on the West coast, we fundamentally altered the environment. We clearcut the foothills, dried out vast wetlands in the valley, decimated native animal populations, dammed up the rivers, and are now depleting the groundwater. Not to mention climate change.

Is forest management a piece of the puzzle? Sure. But how do we even know what the proper approach is? The current situation is not the same as it was 300 years ago, and the same methods aren't necessarily feasible or effective. Forest thinning and well managed control burns are a good start, but I don't believe they're going to solve the wildfire issue on their own, even over a period of several decades.

Pbs made a great series based on the book too.

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