One of my happy new discoveries among people writing about water in this time of drought is a guy named Dan Macon, who raises grass-fed lambs in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. Mason’s one of those people who depend on water from the sky rather than irrigation water from a canal or groundwater pump, …
Nathanael Johnson at Grist continues his excellent work digging past the noise to try to help us understand what’s really going on with California’s drought. Today it’s a deep dive into water markets, which includes this great explanation of why they’re so hard in practice: It’s tricky to show that the water you’re selling is …
Continue reading ‘Why water markets are hard – what economists call “transaction costs”’ »
Tina Shields, the Colorado River Resources Manager for California’s big Imperial Irrigation District, joked Friday about the newfound celebrity of the California almond. Used to be, alfalfa was the alleged water waster that got all the attention. “The best thing for alfalfa growers is almonds,” Shields quipped at one point during a Las Vegas Colorado …
Continue reading ‘Almond growers – the alfalfa farmer’s new best friend’ »
Nathanael Johnson, in an excellent recent Grist piece, argues that the impact on California’s agricultural economy from the drought is likely to be less than some of the dire rhetoric might suggest because of the way farmers adapt: Philip Bowles, whose family farms near Los Banos, Calif., said they are changing and adapting every day. …
This comes up every drought, and people in the Pacific Northwest are worried again that we’re gonna steal their water: It may sound like a loopy idea, but there have been a lot loopier ideas that came true. And this is the American West, where we make a living taking water and moving it someplace …
Continue reading ‘That giant pipeline from a wet place? Not gonna happen….’ »
People I talked to on my recent trip to Yuma repeatedly ticked off the three components of the regional economy: ag federal (mostly military) tourism If you count me as “3” on a Gila main canal ditch bank as a squadron of military helicopters flew over, this picture captures them all. I think it’s fair …
The Desert Sun has been doing a great series on California’s drought, but this is surely the most important of the stories. While the rest of California worries about a dwindling supply, some poor residents of the palmy, leafy, lawny Coachella Valley, playground of Southern California wealth, don’t have a safe drinking supply at all, …
Continue reading ‘In Coachella Valley, poor people who are always in drought’ »
A friend notes that I may have cut the best part from the “Cadillac Desert” quotation in this week’s California court decision on tiered municipal water rates. We hope there are future scientists, engineers, and legislators with the wisdom to envision and enact water plans to keep our beloved Cadillac Desert habitable. But that is …
Continue reading ‘One more money quote from the California court decision on tiered water pricing’ »
Almonds get all the attention, but hay, that most pedestrian of crops, still covers more acres of California farmland. But less than it used to. In the drought of 2015, California farmers are planning to plant and maintain past plantings of 1.23 million acres of hay, according to new USDA data published last week. That’s …
Some interesting stats from Charles Fishman (whose book The Big Thirst is a timely read): Looking at California water stats for Bloomberg TV appearance. A stunner: Calif farms use less water today (23.1 bgd) than in 1970 (33 bgd) — Charles Fishman (@cfishman) April 13, 2015 2/ In 45 years, California farmers have cut water …