The Governor’s orders come as California hits a real wall in the form of “no water”. Wells outside the municipal supplies have dried up. Water supplies are extremely tight, and some people just don’t have water except what they can buy. Despite some truly extraordinary efforts to save water by citizens, the lack of supply has drained catchments to record levels.
Economically, this drought is an unkind event in California’s new prosperity. The state weathered some serious economic downturns, and has revived itself, only to be hit with a major infrastructural burden. Modern water supply systems are often huge, full of anachronisms and they don’t come cheap. Modifying supply is difficult, and can be very hard work in some localities, particularly the ones with low or non-existent budgets.
Big cities and patterns of water usage are natural issues. LA uses less water, thanks to restrictions imposed in 2009, but it’s a mega city, and demand is therefore high in volume. Lifestyle, sanity, and basic water needs are also natural influences.
If you check out the California government’s news on the drought, you can see that there’s a level of real “must fix” about the situation. Arguably, one of the worst and most insidious effects of the drought on California is the effect on agriculture. California’s agricultural sector is gigantic, a Silicon Valley equivalent in dollar terms, and a local supply source. Fruit, vegetables, and other staples are water gluttons. Irrigation systems are big and expensive. The drought is a direct ongoing threat to this sector and the wider economy, to say nothing of standards of living.
Cutting water usage by 25% is “reasonably drastic”. It’s also realistic. That sort of margin allows for some conservation without actually risking a crash in economic activity or amenities. It may not be popular, but reality doesn’t often enter popularity contests.
Shades of Australia’s droughts
Coming from a drought-cursed country like Australia, it’s easy for me to sympathize. I remember times wondering what was coming out of the tap. What did come out was to put it mildly, revolting. Gunk, and it was like treacle. The countryside was basically bleached, and turned in to an all-round fire hazard, for years. You wouldn’t rub two sticks together on a bet.
Like Australia, California’s wide variety of near and far locations, separate water supplies, and irrigation has the same basic problems – Methods of using water and system issues. We “discovered” that our old systems were basically inefficient, at the same time. We knew that, but we didn’t really do very much about it, and we still have problems. Our big mains were leak factories. Old pipes, leaky taps in their millions, you name it, we had them, all using water.
We discovered a few useful things, though:
1. Cutting pressure at the mains reduced overall consumption. This is tricky, because water pressure has to be sufficient to move the water, but the real discovery was that people used water for a lot of things on a time basis, not a volume basis. The usual blast of water reduced a slower rate was OK for a range of cleaning and washing tasks.
2. Drip watering systems save enormous amounts of water for gardens and grounds. They’re also far more effective at watering, actually soaking, not just evaporating. Using these systems when the sun’s off the surface also helps.
3. Evaporation from dams is a major leach. We’ve done any number of studies on this, and the verdict, expensive as it is, is that we need covered or underground catchments to properly manage evaporation.
4. Underground water systems can be seriously and quickly deteriorated by too many wells. Our Great Artesian Basin in Queensland is a vast water reserve about the size of Texas, and we’ve been spending a lot of time shutting down wells to reduce the drain on the table. In the last drought, we almost drained the GAB. Fortunately, the big wet seasons and cyclones have dumped a lot of water on the GAB in recent times.
5. If you want to have a real fight with anyone, try talking about harvesting storm water. One of the ironies of big droughts is occasional torrential downpours, and we’ve been bitching long and hard about letting all this water just wash out to the sea. We still haven’t done anything about it, but it’s a way of collecting huge amounts of water. The runoff obviously needs filtration and sanitization, but with membrane filters, that’s relatively straightforward, and it can be brought up to drinking standard.
6. Recycling “grey water” does work. That’s a lot of used water, which can be relatively cheaply returned to systems for watering and other purposes. Turning it in to drinking water also requires the added filters.
7. Irrigation can be modified to use less water but still produce volumes. In Queensland, our irrigators managed to reduce usage by 20%. I’m not quite sure how they did it thanks to bland media coverage, but they did it themselves, without help.
I refuse to tell drought-afflicted people to happily embrace more restrictions. I know exactly how I’d react. For what it’s worth, though, and if it’s any encouragement, finding the right solutions and beating a drought is a very good feeling.
