California only has about one year’s supply of water left

[The Brain]

Mountains are made of rock.

[garbon]

Mountains are made of rock.

Rock hard?

[The Brain]

Mountains are made of rock.

Rock hard?

Some rocks are soft. BB can tell you more.

[garbon]

Mountains are made of rock.

Rock hard?

Some rocks are soft. BB can tell you more.

[jimmy olsen]

Latest Israeli desalination plant only cost $500 million, a huge reduction in cost. Previous plants have cost in the billions.

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megascale-desalination/

A billion dollar plant is opening in 2016 that will provide San Diego with 50 million gallons a day
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/drought-resilience-desalination-plant-california

[Tonitrus]

You mean trying to grow crops in the desert is a bad idea? Wow. I'm shocked.

Weird given how much agricultural produce California generates each year.

The desert regions?

Those dust bowl signs are generally in the Central Valley which is the agricultural heartland of California. Not sure I'd call it a desert region - that's more like the Palm Springs area which not surprisingly isn't a big agricultural region.

And note, both regions were on that map showing regions facing big water issues.

All the lawns/golf courses in Palm Springs should be banned, though.

[garbon]

You mean trying to grow crops in the desert is a bad idea? Wow. I'm shocked.

Weird given how much agricultural produce California generates each year.

The desert regions?

Those dust bowl signs are generally in the Central Valley which is the agricultural heartland of California. Not sure I'd call it a desert region - that's more like the Palm Springs area which not surprisingly isn't a big agricultural region.

And note, both regions were on that map showing regions facing big water issues.

All the lawns/golf courses in Palm Springs should be banned, though.

I've no problem with that but rich people would probably be pretty annoyed.

Also, I realized I was wrong. There is a decent amount of farm land around Coachella which is pretty desert-like. Originally started up because of all the natural aquifers that were there. Now apparently it relies on water siphoned from the Colorado River.

[dps]

The Colorado doesn't really have a mouth left anymore.  All its water is drawn off before it reaches the sea.

[jimmy olsen]

Get excited California! You're going to be drinking your own piss soon. 

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/06/desalination_vs_purification_why_californians_will_soon_drink_their_own.html

[11B4V]

Latest Israeli desalination plant only cost $500 million, a huge reduction in cost. Previous plants have cost in the billions.

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megascale-desalination/

A billion dollar plant is opening in 2016 that will provide San Diego with 50 million gallons a day
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/drought-resilience-desalination-plant-california

What about the fish???.? 

[Grinning_Colossus]

California only has a year of cheap water left at current usage. Right now, a lot of water-intensive agriculture is practiced in the San Joaquin Valley, rice being the most egregious example. Global warming is only going to make the state more arid, so we need to concentrate on more appropriate Mediterranean produce and let places like Louisiana start growing more of the thirsty crops.

[MadImmortalMan]

I'm sure they've been adapting for a while now. You can already see huge swathes of land with dead walnut and almond trees being removed down there. That's gotta be a time-consuming mess though. Several unproductive seasons worth.

[The Larch]

California only has a year of cheap water left at current usage. Right now, a lot of water-intensive agriculture is practiced in the San Joaquin Valley, rice being the most egregious example. Global warming is only going to make the state more arid, so we need to concentrate on more appropriate Mediterranean produce and let places like Louisiana start growing more of the thirsty crops.

Rice is grown in several Mediterranean places, most notably Valencia and the Po valley. In fact Spain has the same problem (although not as severe) on its own highly agricultural but severely dry SE,

[jimmy olsen]

California's fucked.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/03/20/california_megadrought_it_s_already_begun.html

California's Next Megadrought Has Already Begun

By Eric Holthaus
465639979-small-pool-of-water-is-surrounded-by-dried-and-cracked_2 Expect more of this. Above, the Almaden Reservoir in January 2014 in San Jose, California.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

As California limps through another nearly rain-free rainy season, the state is taking increasingly bold action to save water.

On Tuesday, the California state government imposed new mandatory restrictions on lawn watering and incentives to limit water use in hotels and restaurants as part of its latest emergency drought regulations. On Thursday, California Gov. Jerry Brown announced a $1 billion plan to support water projects statewide and speed aid to hard-hit communities already dealing with shortages. Last month federal water managers announced a "zero allocation" of agricultural water to a key state canal system for the second year in a row, essentially transforming thousands of acres of California farmland into dust.
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This week's moves come after the state has fallen behind targets to increase water efficiency in 2015 amid the state's worst drought in 1,200 years. Last year, voters passed a $7.5 billion water bond and the legislature approved its first-ever restrictions on groundwater pumping, which won't go into full effect until 2025. Stricter, more immediate limits on water use are possible as summer approaches.
FT_150320_Drought2 TheCalifornia drought has intensified during its four-year duration, with 40 percent of the state now in "exceptional drought," the highest category.

Courtesy of U.S. Drought Monitor

But it's not enough. These moves are small potatoes compared to what's needed to reign in statewide water use, of which agriculture forms the vast majority. Last week, a pair of op-eds, one in the Guardian, the other in the Los Angeles Times, spoke with urgency about the West's growing water crisis.

"California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain," wrote NASA water scientist and University of California-Irvine professor Jay Famiglietti. A better plan, he said, was for "immediate mandatory water rationing" across the state. Famiglietti's work has focused on the shocking recent declines in groundwater across the West, where excessive pumping has caused the ground to sink at rates up to a foot per year and a measurable rise in global sea levels.

Underlying the frantic, short-term search for water is an ominous underlying trend that threatens to fundamentally transform America's most important agricultural state. Climate change may have already initiated a new megadrought.

But first, a reality check: California's cities have more than enough water to withstand the current drought and then some. They simply don't use that much. Not true for agriculture, which uses 80 percent of California's water—10 percent of that just on almonds. Though it's still a national powerhouse, fed increasingly by fast-depleting groundwater supplies, the state's agriculture industry has likely begun a long-term decline due mostly to simple math. Abnormally dry conditions have dominated in 11 of the last 15 years, and the cuts have to come from somewhere. Agriculture is the elephant in the ever-shrinking room of California water.

Statewide, California's snowpack is now at a record low—just 12 percent of normal, and less than half of last year's astonishingly meager total. Normally, California's snowpack holds the equivalent of about 15 million acre-feet of water around its traditional April 1 peak, about as much as all the state's reservoirs combined. This year, it's as if half of the state's water reserves simply vanished. It's difficult to imagine the hardship the state will face this summer as the rivers of snowmelt that normally feed the state during the dry season dwindle dangerously. As I wrote last year during my drought-themed reporting trip across the West, California just wasn't built to handle a world without snow.

But it's not just California. It's been freakishly hot out West all winter. Other states are also suffering, with record low water levels expected this year in the two major reservoirs on the Colorado River—Lake Mead and Lake Powell. The warm winter has helped to dry up the land even more, and pre-emptively melt what little snow has graciously fallen.

If a megadrought has already begun— and there is increasingly strong evidence to support that it has, or will soon—there will be widespread implications, including a significant reshifting of California agriculture outside the state. The California of the past is gone, and climate change is bringing a new one faster than it seems we're ready for.

[Ideologue]

Dieback's starting.