All of Calif. in severe drought for 1st time this century

[villager]

Source: USA Today

Today, for the first time this century, the entire state of California is in a severe (or worse) drought.

This is according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal website that tracks drought across the country. It first began in 2000.

The level of drought in California is "unprecedented," at least during the 14-year-history of the monitor, according to climatologist Mark Svoboda of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb.

The three worst levels of drought are severe, extreme and exceptional: 100% of the state is now in one of those three categories: (23.31% is severe, 51.92.% is extreme and 24.77% is exceptional.) The other, least intense category, is called "moderate."

Exceptional drought encompasses central parts of the state, including the entire Bay Area. San Diego and Los Angeles -- where wildfires have scorched a 14-square mile area of Southern California. this week -- are both under "extreme" drought conditions

<snip>


Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/05/15/california-drought/9124415/

[pinto]

1. State wide map -

[former9thward]

2. Most of southern CA is a desert.

So you put about 20 million people there and then wonder why there are problems.

[former9thward]

12. Have you been to Egypt or modern Iraq lately?

I have been to both. It did not work out too well. It is not sustainable. Where do you think that irrigation water is coming from?

[former9thward]

18. Fail.

Both countries import their food. Without imports they would starve.

[former9thward]

23. LOL

Wow, brilliant! I wonder why they didn't think of that?! Keep digging but you are pretty deep down already.

[laundry_queen]

45. LOL you for real? nt

[Spider Jerusalem]

46. Probably not, irrigation fails, eventually.

The Fertile Crescent is a desert now, mostly. Know why? Irrigation. Diversion of water from rivers increases the buildup of salts in the soil and eventually makes irrigated cropland sterile.

[greyl]

35. "once was the lush paradise and cradle of civilization"

In 2001 CE the National Geographic News reported that the Fertile Crescent was rapidly becoming so only in name as, due to extensive damming of the rivers as well as a massive draining works program initiated in southern Iraq from the 1970’s on, the fertile marshlands which once covered 15,000 – 20,000 square kilometers (5,800 – 7,700 square miles) had shrunk to a mere 1,500 – 2,000 square kilometers (580 – 770 square miles). As pleas from environmental groups and regional farmers to stop damming and drainage projects were ignored by the governments of Iraq, Syria and Turkey, the situation worsened so that, presently, the region which once was the lush paradise and cradle of civilization largely consists of dry, cracked plains of sun-baked clay.

http://www.ancient.eu.com/Fertile_Crescent/

[CreekDog]

54. No, the Los Angeles and San Diego areas are not deserts

and that's where most of the 20 million live.

please stop posting so confidently about things you are wrong about.

especially when you can look them up and quickly post the right answer instead.

[former9thward]

59. Apply your admonitions to yourself.

And you will do better. Phoenix is not a desert either but it is in the middle of one. Take a drive from Phoenix to LA or SD as I have done many times and you will see it is desert the whole way. If you think man made development in SoCal is sustainable then you are living in the world of the poster I was replying to and has since vanished from the thread.

[CreekDog]

62. You posted ignorant nonsense and I corrected you on it.

then you attempted to play a word game to say that Phoenix is "not" a desert (oh, but Los Angeles is?).

nobody forced you to post foolish, non scientific nonsense.

Los Angeles has a Subtropical-Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification Csb on the coast, Csa inland), and receives just enough annual precipitation to avoid either Köppen's BSh or BSk (semi-arid climate) classification

(source wiki)

[former9thward]

65. Just for your info Wiki is not a scientific source.

But if it is the best you have you go with what you have. Again you ignore the fundamental question. Man-made development of the type that has occurred in SoCal is not sustainable in that climate. Do you think it is? Do you favor "more irrigation" as our now banned poster does?

[Sunlei]

60. yes & the pressures on the land in the late 19th and in the 20th Century adds to the desert

The whole of the San Joaquin Valley used to be lakes before the cattle moved in and then huge farms.

Lands need roaming grazing wildlife (not cattle) to keep grasses seeds spreading and to keep brush wildfire tinder, from taking over.

Lands need tree cover to hold the soil, keep the soil from baking and blowing away. To keep that moist tule fog rolling in you have to have trees.

[thelordofhell]

3. 7th largest economy on Earth was built on cheap water

Last edited Thu May 15, 2014, 05:13 PM - Edit history (1)

And yet this mega-rich state only just now is seriously going for de-salination plants...........

[villager]

4. "cheap" could be the other word we use for "stolen"

And I say this as a native Californio....

[valerief]

7. Reminds me that I must see Chinatown again. nt

[villager]

20. "The future, Mr. Gitts."

Alas, that future is now here.

[villager]

24. You're new to the history of water in the West?

This could take a lot of explaining...

[Journeyman]

41. A good place to start is Marc Reisner's "Cadillac Desert" . . .

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (1986) gives a well-researched, highly-entertaining history of the West and its struggle for water, especially the City of Los Angeles and the State of California and their, at times, "highly irregular" methods for ensuring an adequate supply. Between the outright forgeries and strong arm tactics used by Los Angeles to acquire control of the Owens River, to the blatantly inaccurate accounting used to secure California the lion's share of the lower Colorado River, the story of water in the West is an entertaining, at times baffling, and always amazing tale. There's chicanery on all sides, as there always is when water is at stake ("Whiskey is for drinking," Mark Twain famously observed, "water is for fighting&quot , and who's in the right is never entirely clear, but it does make for a fascinating tale.

[thelordofhell]

38. Edited

thanks

[upaloopa]

34. wrong - rule of thumb CA is usually ahead of the curve

Last edited Thu May 15, 2014, 05:11 PM - Edit history (2)

We have one in Santa Barbara and probably other cities.

Santa Barbara’s Desalination Plant Is No Quick Fix for Drought Conditions


Plans for a restart would cost as much as $20 million and take two years, but officials want to be prepared if circumstances require it



Every day it doesn’t rain, the City of Santa Barbara moves forward with plans to restart its desalination facility.

It’s not as easy as flipping a switch; officials say it would cost $20 million and take two years to replace the reverse-osmosis membranes and upgrade the outdated equipment. The operations control room has computers from the plant’s test run in the early 1990s.







“It’s a time capsule,” Joshua Haggmark, the city’s interim water resources manager, told Noozhawk.

A temporary facility was proposed to deal with the crippling 1986-1991 drought. Santa Barbara went forward with the Goleta and Montecito water districts to fund the $34-million plant built by Ionics Inc.

In 1991, “Miracle March” rains that filled up local reservoirs resulted in the desalination plant being tested, but not used as a water supply. It was placed on standby and then “long-term storage mode.”

Under Santa Barbara’s long-range water plan, the sixth year of a drought would trigger consideration of bringing the plant back online. Just four months into the third dry year, however, that decision is years away.

City leaders are doing everything they can to delay — or avoid — reactivating the desalination plant, like pushing conservation and finding other water sources through private vendors or the State Water Project.




Santa Barbara’s desalination plant near the Funk Zone utilizes a reverse-osmosis design, with seawater pumped through a series of filters and semi-permeable membranes. (Giana Magnoli / Noozhawk photo)


Desalination is a good fallback option, Haggmark said, but once the plant is running, it would dispense the most expensive treated water in Santa Barbara.

“I want to make sure the city knows what it’s getting into,” he said.

While water from Lake Cachuma or Gibraltar Reservoir costs about $100 per acre-foot, the desalinated water would cost about $1,500 per acre-foot — and that’s not including any of the start-up capital costs. Once those expenses are added, it’s more like $3,000 per acre-foot.

An acre-foot represents 326,000 gallons, the amount of water it would take to cover an acre, 12 inches deep. To put that in perspective, Haggmark said, three average single-family homes together use an acre-foot of water in a year.

The Charles Meyer Desalination Plant at 525 E. Yanonali St. utilizes a reverse-osmosis design, which pumps seawater through filters to catch the solid matter first, after which pure saltwater is pumped at high pressure through semi-permeable membranes to separate out the drinking water.

More

http://www.noozhawk.com/article/santa_barbara_desalination_plant_water_drought_20140131

[thelordofhell]

37. Wrong

The state is in a SEVERE DROUGHT!! Has been for years. That plant should have been running for the last 5 years.....at least. Instead, they ran it for 2 weeks in the 90's and sold off parts to Saudi Arabia. They should have been running that plant and storing their water......or recharging the groundwater depletion......

Once again, they are only now seriously looking at de-salination.......They should have been in the forefront of this for the last two decades......Instead, they're only just talking about starting up mothballed plants.......and are bitching about the costs. I guarantee you that if you get some good rains during the summer, they will never start those plants up.

[upaloopa]

39. Wrong

Some DUers will try anything to cover what they don't know
You first said we don't have desalination.
Read the article I posted especially about the cost per acre ft of water.

[thelordofhell]

42. Read my post again

I said that they are just now SERIOUSLY going for desalination.......I know that there are a couple of plants.......The cost would have been much lower if they bothered to go through with desalination as a regular thing.......Instead, they sat on their resource, complaining about the price and now when things are really desperate, they find themselves behind the ball and having to pour a huge lump sum of money into projects that should have been running smoothly by now and costing much less because of accumulated use.

Cheap water and cheap labor have been the backbone of California's farming industry.......It's now gonna bite them in the ass (and the whole nation also) because of the lack of foresight of water supply. Better pray that El Nino is huge this year.......but then the stories will be about endless mudslides and flooding in CA (like it was around a month or so ago).......can't win for losin' in that state

[upaloopa]

44. I am not going to play games with you

You said CA is just now considering desalination and I showed you that we have a plant in Santa Barbara.
There is nothing else to say
It is black and white that you were wrong to say that.
I work for Santa Barbara County
Where do you think the money would come from to pay for desalination when there are other sources of water available?
NOWHERE!

[thelordofhell]

47. The state should have helped subsidize the running of the plant

And it should have created ways to store the extra water........maybe create a new reservoir. The plant was there, but it was never used in any SERIOUS way. California has an abundance of capital and resources, yet they ignored this particular problem until it swam up and bit it in the ass. Once again, I said they are only now going seriously with desalination plants.......I never said they didn't have any. What I'm talking about is that they should have had them in use for years and years already, they haven't.........that is all........sorry for the misunderstanding

[CreekDog]

55. we were not in a drought 5 years ago

[valerief]

6. You mean the state where we get most of our fruits and vegetables? Lovely. nt

[Louisiana1976]

26. I shudder to think of what that will do to food prices.

[shanti]

64. unfortunately, it's already happening

i shopped at costco last weekend, and the packages of meat that i usually buy were each at least $5 more than the last time i bought them (the month before). also, the produce at the 99 cent store is going up too, from 99 cents a package to 99 cents a pound.

and those are just two examples; there are lots more. i'm in north central california, sacramento. the nut farmers, almonds, walnuts, etc. have been cutting down many of their trees due to the lack of rain.

[knightmaar]

8. I can't tell from reading that article ...

... If it's worse to have severe, extreme or exceptional drought.

Exceptional doesn't sound as bad as the other two, but the phrase "severe or worse" makes it sound like severe is the least severe and exceptional is more severe than severe.

I mean, geez, nice use of synonyms.

[Hestia]

9. I know this sounds like it is off topic, but it really isn't

Did anyone watch Nature last night - "Leave it to Beavers"

Naturists are putting beavers back on land in the western U.S. because of the wetlands they create. It is amazing what they create within 2 days of work. One series of beaver dams (I think the show said Nevada) can be seen by satellite and is around 147 miles long. The abundance of wildlife is beyond what the naturists were expecting.

Where the western states have eradicated the beaver, cattle moves in and there is severe drought conditions because of the amount of water cattle need to thrive; put beavers back in that same landscape, there is water everywhere.

California ought to seriously look into reclaiming land with beavers. It's their job in nature and what they create is wondrous. It is another tale of getting rid of one creature to keeps nature in balance and man destroying their habitat with another creature who doesn't belong in that habitat.

Yes, they can create havoc with flooding but in one area, a guy stated that he is a beaver plumber - when the water gets too high, he'll put a small hole in the dam to let water out so it will not flood downstream; the beavers had the hole repaired by the next morning. This is his daily job

It is a great show and really gives a lot of food for thought. Free streaming - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/leave-it-to-beavers/leave-it-to-beavers/8836/

[Louisiana1976]

27. Good idea.

[Auggie]

10. We need more reservoirs

I hate them as much as anybody. But to think conservation alone is the answer is naive, especially as we enter unexperienced and unprecedented climate disaster.

[Auggie]

36. They displace wildlife and people for one

[hatrack]

52. Where? All the best sites are occupied, and not many even marginal locations remain.

More to the point, if the rain and snow don't come (as they haven't of late, and which they increasingly won't, other than potential El Nino years), why bother?

If there's no water to capture, you may as well build dams across Safeway parking lots.

[Auggie]

53. Like I said, they displace people and wildlife

I'm sure sites with lesser amount of impact are identified, but displacement and environment are still issues.

When El Nino rains come we'll be prepared to store more.

[CreekDog]

56. "conservation is naive"? are you lost?

[Auggie]

61. Water conservation alone isn't enough

People can help stretch out thinning supplies, but only to a degree.

[PasadenaTrudy]

11. It's bad here...really bad n/t

[seveneyes]

13. Still have 85 years to beat this century record

Let's hope it doesn't.

[Politicalboi]

14. I don't watch local TV but

I have not seen any commercials about conserving water. No place cards at restaurants about asking for water. Nothing like they've done other years here in Ca. We need desalinization big time already. No water only leads to more no water. Ca hardly ever gets fog anymore.

[Le Taz Hot]

30. There are billboards all over Central California (inland)

about limiting showers to 5 minutes. The San Joaquin Valley has been under water conservation for years. We have 3 days a week we can water our lawns and more and more people have been taking out their lawns or just not watering them (us included). There are thousands of acres that are going fallow this year because farmers were notified they would only get a fraction of the water they usually get. That means unemployment for areas that are already 25% - 50% unemployment (Firebaugh, Mendota, etc.) could increase to 60% - 80% unemployment. And these are poor families to begin with.

[Bigmack]

48. I love driving thru there and seeing...

... the signs blaming Pelosi and Congress for creating the "Dust Bowl".

Apparently Congress causes droughts.

And nobody there accepts Global Warming/change and extreme weather events caused by it, of course.

[Le Taz Hot]

49. There are RWNG's everywhere,

including where you live. And when you say "nobody there," how would you know? You just "dive through here," remember? Goddess forbid you actually get out of your vehicle and talk to one of us. I know, I know, just grow your food and shut up about it.

(Why did I know when I posted this someone would come and piss all over it? You people are like clockwork.)

<flush>

[Bigmack]

58. Slack! I never mentioned people... only signs...

I know the difference between the few huge landowners with RW views and the actual people who live there. The people seldom put huge signs on the freeway.

Also... I don't just drive thru there. I read about what's going on. Valley Fever, for instance. Drought for instance. Fallow fields for instance.

I feel zero sympathy for the water hogs and government-blamers.

Nothing but sympathy for the people who have to live with this disaster.

[MoreGOPoop]

15. Would it be possible

to transport ice breaking off of Greenland or Antarctica and
place it in the reservoirs?

[Nihil]

50. Only until you learn something about maths, physics & geography.

[herding cats]

25. A strong El Nino is both good and bad news if it happens.

The rain will be wonderful and is much needed. Yet the fires will leave behind unstable soil and landslides will happen.

[Comrade Grumpy]

28. In Sonoma County, we've only had about 40% of our average rainfall for the season.

Which is now over. It's highly unlikely there will be significant rain before the fall, and who knows then?

And we're better off than lots of other parts of the state.

Still, water wars are heating up. Farmers vs. wineries vs. city dwellers vs. recreational river users.

[Brother Buzz]

33. Buck up and stock up on sand bags

Long range weather forcasters and computer models are suggesting we're looking at the return of el Niño.

[olddad56]

66. I have lived in North California my entire life and it seems like severe long running droughts..

are often followed very wet winters. But that doesn't mean that this drought will be over this year. I think that when this drought is over, it will be followed by a very wet year, with the threat of flooding.

[Brother Buzz]

67. Or wet winters followed by severe long running droughts

To wit: The Great Flood of 1862 was the largest flood in the recorded history of California, occurring from December 1861 to January 1862, followed by the Great Drought of 1862-65. The flood was a boom to the grain growers in the Sacramento Valley after the receding waters deposited incredibly rich silt, but the drought all but killed the cattle industry in the south. Typically, large rancheros lost most of their herds, financially ruining them. Many Californios were forced to sell their land, and Easterners (can you say carpetbaggers?) flooded in and snatched the land for a song, then and diversified the agricultural industry.


California has always has wide swings in weather. Richard Henry Dana (Two Years Before the Mast) noted this when he visited California in 1858, twenty years after his first visit. His observations may have been the first written indication of the El Niño cycle.

[olddad56]

68. the high water of 1986 followed a long drought and filled the states reservoirs in one year.

I believe it was the same case in 1997. I was alive and I remember well the flooding in North California in 1955, but was too young to remember if that was proceeded by a drought. Same with 1964.

I agree that it is cyclical, but I think with climate change, all weather patterns have gotten more extreme.

[Louisiana1976]

29. The drought is proobably being caused by global climate change.

As long as this is going on there will be more and bigger fires.

[warrior1]

40. we are do to have an El Nino this winter

[antiquie]

51. It's complicated.

Study connects man-made global warming to ongoing California drought, winter's polar vortex

Billionaires' influence felt in state's water policy
[link rying up the delta: 19th century policies underlie today's crises (LAT)|http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-delta-flows-20140323,0,4858708.story]
California drought: Legislature passes $687 million plan

In California, Drought Plays Out Unexpectedly

Southern California agencies have invested $12 billion in water-supply improvements since a 1987-91 drought triggered widespread rationing and galvanized the region into coming up with a better safety cushion, officials say. Reservoirs in the south around Los Angeles are brimming, groundwater basins remain comfortably stocked and recycling and conservation programs have freed up abundant reserves. The region's water supplies are in such good shape that, so far, most local water districts are merely asking residents to conserve.

[Sunlei]

57. shametheycan't use some of those old pipelines crisscross the USA to move fresh water in from floods

Or bring in the ocean water and get the salt out, or passively condensate (in the dry land places) fresh water from the ocean water. drip it on the dry land.

[Uncle Joe]

63. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, villager.

[rupertps8or28]

69. Yeah I hear it's getting really bad in that area.

I don't live in CA, but I have many friends and family members who live over there. Believe me, they're all really feeling the pinch these days. Last I heard, several have resorted to only taking showers every other day, instead of on a daily basis. Which in this heat, is absolute torture. Frankly though, it's tough all over in this country. Hopefully things will improve soon.