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Comment by pbreit | Hacker News Reader

I have trouble getting behind desalination for California. Surely we have not exhausted all our options in collection and storage?

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California could also copy the very low water waste, and the greywater recycling for agriculture.

I had the same reaction. Water access for Israel is a question of security, while a drought in California is just the ugly underbelly of needless excess and unsustainable policy rearing its head.

This biggest issue in California is getting agricultural uses down and splitting off consumer use.

Desalinization works pretty well in California for getting water to people. Not so much for agriculture.

We need to start letting the agricultural water price rise to where it needs to be in order to get the agribusinesses to start growing less water intensive crops.

Note that one of the things that Israel did was digging up water-using orchards.

You exhausted those a decade ago. Now other states are shipping water to Cali, and those states are starting to have their own issues.

Reasonable options haven't been exhausted until California stops producing crops like rice.[1]

   Our ideal climate, ample water supply and
   innovative farming techniques result in some
   of the highest rice yields in the world,
   while at the same time providing rice of the
   highest quality.

That was written a few years ago. Growing rice in a desert is hardly an "ideal climate", and the recent drought has certainly changed the perception of an "ample water supply".

Same thing with other water intensive crops like almonds. TV was recently reiterating the trope that a single almond takes 1 gallon of water. That seems way high, but I haven't searched further.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20060210141916/http://calrice.org...

Well, my understanding is that more fresh water runs into the ocean than what we entirely consume already.

It will likely take efforts on many fronts to resolve SoCal's water issues. Charging for agricultural water use, enforcing drip-irrigation, improving reclamation/recycling, etc.

What are your objections to desalination?

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