Looks like one group is ignoring the new California water restrictions

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**Jihadin**

BlaxicanX wrote:
California provides iirc over 50% of America's produce.

So you will give us that water, you damn traitors!

Hell no. Keep within your borders and Sanctuary cities!!!!

**Ensis Ferrae**

KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Arizona's been working on a wall for awhile now

Wrong part of the state though

I think that, outside of Sriracha, maybe rice, and avocados I can't think of anything else that isn't grown locally in Washington (where I live) at a level to sustain our own state and maybe parts of Oregon/Idaho.... and that's not even counting our supplying the country with apples.

So really... avocados, big deal not useful for much

the Sriracha may be a problem for some folks though.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
And really, I think this just goes to show that a city built in the middle of a fething desert that can't support more than a few 10s or 100s of thousands of people shouldnt be supporting millions of people.

The amount of water being forced to divert there should give people a clue that they shouldn't be living there, and until California manages its own resources (such as stopping Nestle, and probably fracking) in such a manner to sustain themselves, we shouldn't be even discussing the potential "sacrifice" of resources from elsewhere. All we'd be doing is further feed the problems in play there

**feeder**

California residents count for about 10% of the state's water usage. Until they go after major users like Veneco (fracking) and Nestle, it's like trying to control your household debt by cutting your kid's allowance.

Edit: Ensis is like, I don't know, some kind of super stealthy warrior type. Unseen, unheard. The name escapes me.

**Relapse**

BlaxicanX wrote:
California provides iirc over 50% of America's produce.

So you will give us that water, you damn traitors!

I was surprised by this amount of produce from California:

http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/2182/what-percent-of-food-comes-from-california

"Today a friend sent me a very scary account of someone who drove through California and saw field after field laying fallow and totally unattended. Without water, they could not grow. To see the impact this will have on our country, I looked up how much of our food comes from California. Over half of our nation's fruit and nuts come from California, as do a quarter of our veggies. The percent of veggies would be higher if we excluded our favorite vegetable, potatoes, from the calculation. That said, which specific crops would we no longer grow if California stopped farming?
Crop: Percent Grown in California in 2007*
Pomegranates: 100%
Artichokes: 99%
Kiwi: 97%
Olives: 96%
Figs: 96%
Pluots: 95%
Plums and Prunes: 94%
Brussel Sprouts: 93%
Avocados: 90%
Nectarines: 89%
Garlic: 85%
Celery: 83%
Grapes: 83%
Dates: 82%
Apricots: 82%
Cauliflower: 82%
Broccoli: 81%
Lemons: 79%
Persimmons: 77%
Honeydew: 77%
Tomatoes: 76%
Lettuce: 73%
Nuts: 65%
Carrots: 62%
Strawberries: 59%
Spinach: 59%
Tangerines: 58%
Chinese Cabbage: 49%
Asparagus: 47%
Cantaloupes: 46%
Peaches: 44%
Limes: 42%
Non-Valencia Oranges: 37%

About the orange, valencias are one of two major Florida varieties used for orange juice. Navel oranges, which are the preferred variety to eat as oranges (and not as juice), primarily grow in California, not Florida. While Florida out-grows California for oranges, Florida's oranges go into juice. It's the Cali oranges that you eat as oranges if you like to eat navels.

*All of this data comes from the 2007 Census of Agriculture"

My family that farms in Maine will be making bank if this drought hits California hard.

**DarkLink**

feeder wrote:
California residents count for about 10% of the state's water usage. Until they go after major users like Veneco (fracking) and Nestle, it's like trying to control your household debt by cutting your kid's allowance.

Edit: Ensis is like, I don't know, some kind of super stealthy warrior type. Unseen, unheard. The name escapes me.

And about half of that 10% is used for watering lawns.

**mitch_rifle**

We've been on water restriction's for a long time, rarely do you ever see people watering garden or lawn or washing car

**Jehan-reznor**

I am surprised they haven't blamed the illegal aliens or Obama yet

**sebster**

feeder wrote:
California residents count for about 10% of the state's water usage. Until they go after major users like Veneco (fracking) and Nestle, it's like trying to control your household debt by cutting your kid's allowance.

Yep. We've been going through water restrictions for years over here, and almost all the focus is on savings by households. But its just token gestures because that's not where the water is used.

Here's the graph for California. You could ban watering gardens, showers, and stop people from drinking water in the whole of Los Angeles, and it wouldn't mean a thing compared to almond crop.

**Frazzled**

Iron_Captain wrote:
Solution is simple: water wasters are bourgeois parasites and enemies of the people. Send them for educational holiday to coal mines of Vorkuta (or whatever really cold, really remote places the US has).
US needs to learn more lessons from I.V. Stalin.

This is wisdom Komrade. Send them to...Fresno!

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Relapse wrote:
juraigamer wrote:
The public uses so little water compared to the farmers in the state, until their usage is lowered you won't see a difference.

How could water be cut back on an industry that needs it to raise crops and livestock?

Grow less crops.

**Skinnereal**

How come Cali is the only place a lot of those crops can be grown?
What proportion of the US's farmland is there?
And, what happened to plans to pipe in water from other states?

**Frazzled**

Skinnereal wrote:
How come Cali is the only place a lot of those crops can be grown?

Its not. Cali's a freaking desert.

What proportion of the US's farmland is there?

are you including desert or not desert?

And, what happened to plans to pipe in water from other states?

The other states (except Alaska) will tell them to quit stealing their water.

**Crazy_Carnifex**

The reason Californias growing all that stuff is because its climate is really good for growing stuff if you get past the whole desert thing. But that's the problem here.

**DarkLink**

It's kind of hard to pump water from other states over the sierra nevadas to get it to the central valley. Not quite as bad as if it were, say, the sheer height of the Alps, but not much better. It would probably take a decade ir two at least to build the infrastructure, and it would probably be obscenely expensive.

Jehan-reznor wrote:
I am surprised they haven't blamed the illegal aliens or Obama yet

It's because the political elite and media in california are hardcore democrats. Which, with how poorly California's government is run, is one of the reasons I'm not.

**cincydooley**

What's the reasoning behind the refusal to build more desalination plants? Is it purely cost?

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DarkLink wrote:

It's because the political elite and media in california are hardcore democrats. Which, with how poorly California's government is run, is one of the reasons I'm not.

I heard on NPR that some of that lefty environmental fundamentalism is at least partially to fault for there not being any immediate solutions for the drought?

Ahh, here it is. They were talking about these comments from Carly Fiorina:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/06/carly-fiorina-california-drought_n_7014468.html

WASHINGTON -- Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina on Monday blamed environmentalists for what she called a "man-made" drought in California, which has led to the state's first water restrictions.

“With different policies over the last 20 years, all of this could be avoided,” Fiorina, a likely 2016 Republican presidential contender, said in an interview with radio host Glenn Beck. “Despite the fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California’s population has doubled.”

Fiorina, California's 2010 GOP nominee for U.S. Senate, said it was a "classic case of liberals being willing to sacrifice other people’s lives and livelihoods at the altar of their ideology. It is a tragedy.”

The drought, now officially in its fourth year, prompted Gov. Jerry Brown (D) last week to order a 25 percent reduction in water consumption. The order does not apply to the agriculture industry, which consumes nearly 80 percent of the state's water.

Lawmakers in Congress and in the state legislature have proposed bills authorizing construction of new dams and reservoirs, citing the need to capture water that ends up in the ocean. They have been opposed by environmental groups, which argue the projects would endanger the state's habitat and endangered species. Last year, House Republicans proposed pumping additional water to Southern California, but the bill failed under a veto threat from President Barack Obama.

There is significant debate about whether the state has enough water left, at this point, to justify the cost of building new dams and reservoirs. According to The Sacramento Bee, some new reservoirs, wouldn't supply significant new water.

"There's nothing magical in and of themselves to build a (reservoir) facility," Lester Snow, the executive director of the California Water Foundation, told the Bee last year. "If we had two more surface storage facilities that we built 10 years ago -- pick any of the two that people are talking about -- they would both be very low right now. There's a tendency to pull down our surface storage when we get mildly short of water."

NextGen Climate, the climate-focused political group run by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, on Monday evening called Fiorina's comments "irrational."

"For a science denier to opine that Democrats caused the drought in California is about as irrational as believing someone who failed at running a business in California and then failed as a candidate for office in California has any cause to be running for the highest office in the land," Bobby Whithorne, the group's spokesman, said in a statement.

The Sierra Club, a national environmental group, disputed Fiorina's assertion that more dams and reservoirs would have lessened the impact of the drought.

"For more than 100 years, environmentalists have failed to stop the damming of nearly every significant river in California. And yet all of the hundreds of dams out there have done nothing to produce rain or snow pack over the last four years. That's because you can't store what's not there," said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club's California chapter. "We simply don't have rain or snow pack and are suffering the worst California drought since water agencies and weather trackers started keeping records."

"What we are seeing is exactly what climate scientists have predicted would happen in California with the onset of human-caused climate disruption: Weather and precipitation would become less predictable and droughts would become more frequent and more severe," Phillips added.

*Note, I was unaware of Fiorina's political affiliations when I heard NPR talking about it. They just referred to her as "former HP CEO."

**Frazzled**

Building a high speed rail is way more kewl.

**cincydooley**

Frazzled wrote:
Building a high speed rail is way more kewl.

We're getting trolley cars that don't go anywhere outside the city, so I totally get it.

**Skinnereal**

Frazzled wrote:
Building a high speed rail is way more kewl.

Can't they do both? Get people riding logs along the water pipes? There's quite a drop at the mountains, so it'll be high speed after that bit.
Or ship the water by train.

I heard about the pumping-water things years ago, so if they'd done that then, there'd not be an issue now.

**cincydooley**

Skinnereal wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Building a high speed rail is way more kewl.
Can't they do both? Get people riding logs along the water pipes? There's quite a drop at the mountains, so it'll be high speed after that bit.
Or ship the water by train.

I heard about the pumping-water things years ago, so if they'd done that then, there'd not be an issue now.

It was apparently vetoed?

http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-drought-house-20141210-story.html

**Jihadin**

Well they haven't started rationing water to two bottles a water a day YET

**d-usa**

Where are they supposed to be pumping water from?

**Frazzled**

OKlahoma, because its flat there.

They need to build a giant funnel off the Phillipines

Taiphoon + Giant uber funnel = PROFIT!

**Jihadin**

They're trying to get water rights from Oregon and WA. Which I don't think they will get. Olympic area is consider a "Rain Forest" which support big giant wolves and glittery vampires.

**kronk**

The should build desalination plants to support the fracking industry.

**d-usa**

Oregon?

Washington?

**Jihadin**

Now look at a topographical map. Like half of Washington is "Plains" which is a large portion of yellow or east of Washington. That hardline of yellow is a mountain range running from northern Washington down though Oregon (West of the mountains of Oregon and Washington) is where they want to draw water from. Its where the rainforest is located. It steady mist, rain, drizzle, in/around North Western WA and we have snow melt year round from both sides of the state (Cascade and Crystal) Washington and Oregon has snow melt from Cascade.

**KalashnikovMarine**

d-usa wrote:
Where are they supposed to be pumping water from?

Interestingly, the area it's worst in, is a fething desert or arid land. Even Colorado is alpine desert.

**Jihadin**

Just throwing up a topo map

**d-usa**

Jihadin wrote:
Now look at a topographical map. Like half of Washington is "Plains" which is a large portion of yellow or east of Washington. That hardline of yellow is a mountain range running from northern Washington down though Oregon (West of the mountains of Oregon and Washington) is where they want to draw water from. Its where the rainforest is located. It steady mist, rain, drizzle, in/around North Western WA and we have snow melt year round from both sides of the state (Cascade and Crystal) Washington and Oregon has snow melt from Cascade.

Yet that steady mist, rain drizzle, in/around North Western WA and the snow melt year round from both sides of the state is still not enough to keep Washington or Oregon out of a drought.

Where is the farmland located in Washington State? Where is the farmland located in Oregon? If those states have their own farmland suffering from drought why would they want to build a giant pipeline to send their water to California?

**Jihadin**

West of the mountains for your farmland. Who said WA and OR agreed to send water down to CA

**d-usa**

Jihadin wrote:
Who said WA and OR agreed to send water down to CA

The people in CA saying "they should have just build a pipeline to get water to CA!"