calif drought

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

Wow! I haven't seen anyone water their lawns for at least 10-15 years. Everyone installed new-fandangled watering systems in the 90s; now they're buried under soil. I'm a renter, and am routinely uncovering bits of old systems with my lawnmower. For a while we were able to water lawns for x amount of time every second day. I'm not sure what the restrictions are now, but no one bothers. Saves money, saves water.

It would be hard to get people around here to give up lawns, drought or no drought.

 

[SnowCal]

It would be hard to get people around here to give up lawns, drought or no drought.

The house I grew up in up in the PNW had a lawn that was mostly clover and a bit of grass. They never really had to water it. Midsummer when all the neighbor's lawns were croaking it stayed nice and green with almost no attention.

 

[Bongolation]

More dams won't help if we're not getting the rain to fill them up.

Yeah, they will. They're a buffer system, that's the whole point. As long as you had storage from a year or two back, you're jake.

Does anyone remember the record snow pack and rainfall from about three years ago? Several wet years?

If they'd built the dams they've been trying to for so long, there'd be no problem now.

 

[punkjazzben]

Yeah, they will. They're a buffer system, that's the whole point. As long as you had storage from a year or two back, you're jake.



Does anyone remember the record snow pack and rainfall from about three years ago? Several wet years?



If they'd built the dams they've been trying to for so long, there'd be no problem now.

All the environmental, financial, and social impacts of dams notwithstanding, you still need to factor in allocations for both human consumption and environmental flows.

What we're seeing in Australia with the Murray-Darling basin (a system of numerous interconnected rivers that covers most of south-eastern Oz) is that over-allocation for human activities has seriously degraded the river system to the point that its flows are only a tiny fraction of what they used to be, creating droughts and meaning that communities are quite literally drying up. If you're going to build more dams, they need to be built not with human consumption in mind, but with managing environmental flows. We get what's left, and we need to get more out of less. No rivers, no water - rainfall or not.