Hacker News Reader

California’s water system manages over 40,000,000 acre feet (49 km3) of water per year. (Wikipedia)

The fish need 12,000 acre feet so 0.03% of that. Or a 245m cube.

It's like flushing your toilet 3,125,000,000 times.

Or leaving your shower running for 4,756 years.

4 billion gallons of water to save 6 actual fish.

Is 4 billion a lot? that's like 1/2 a day's flow of the Mississippi.

edit:

Ah, it looks like water there is around $1000, per acre foot. 12,000 acre feet, so 1.2 million. 200k per fish sounds pretty steep, but it looks like there are other benefits.

edit 2:

looks like Nestle pays about 30 bucks per acre foot. So that's only 60k per fish.

I hate when they throw numbers around without scale. I'd have the same reaction if the question was 400M gallons, or 40M. It sounds like a lot, I guess.

But if it's only $60K per fish and this is some particularly great way of preserving them or rekindling an ecosystem, maybe that's a great deal. Or maybe it's off by an order is magnitude, in either direction.