California’s Water Crisis – Get Out While You Can

Groundwater records should not be kept confidential in drought-stricken California

“Imagine having two bank accounts with money for your everyday needs, only one of them – the one you draw from when the primary account runs low – is a virtual black box. You really have no idea what the balance is, and there is no record of deposits and withdrawals.

This is how water is managed in California, with 38mn people and the world’s eighth largest economy. In years of “normal” precipitation, the semi-arid state gets most of its water supply from winter rain and spring snowmelt. However, when this “primary account” of surface water supply dwindles during droughts, farms and communities rely heavily on a mystery account called groundwater, which truly is out of sight and, unfortunately, out of mind.

Few people have information about the underground stores that provide up to 60% of the state’s water supply during droughts, including water to about 600,000 relatively shallow domestic wells, located mostly in rural areas.

State records that provide information needed to characterize groundwater aquifers are kept confidential under a 64-year-old law that considers them proprietary to well drillers. Known as well logs, the records contain data that is public in every other western state – details such as where wells are located, their depth, potential pumping rates, diameter and descriptions of the groundwater-bearing sediments and rocks they are bored through…”

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Get out of California while you still can! It will be America’s first “failed State” very, very soon. I am talking to all my CollapseNet friends, family and subscribers here, and I mean every word. Thirty-nine million people surrounded by hundreds of miles of mostly uninhabitable desert…think on that for a while, but not too long. Get your plans in place and put them in action, because this is very real and it is happening right now, albeit in what appears to be slow-motion. That will change faster every week that goes past.

If you live in California, especially in SoCal, you need to pack your shit and move while there are still enough idiots left to buy your property!

I love California, but its fate cannot be more clear. The entire continent and world economy WILL be impacted hard by California’s drawdown (or die-off, if you prefer), but if you live there right now, this is a matter of imminent survival within the coming months.

California will be the world’s most massive demonstration of climate refugees, occurring in the wealthiest and most industrialized nation, but one that STILL HAS NO MEANS to absorb even a significant fraction of the people who are and will be displaced by Liebig’s Law of the Minimum (here, water) from California in the immediate future.

Mother Nature always bats last, hits hardest, and wins.

Anybody have a better plan than to GTFO? Your government doesn’t have one, that’s for certain… – Wes

See also:

California has about one year of water stored. Will you ration now?

The amount of water it takes to grow almonds in California is BANANAS 

“Water use in California is a hot topic of debate as the state continues its fourth year of drought.

And there’s some question as to whether California is misallocating the water that it does have.

Here’s a tidbit, from Mother Jones via Marginal Revolution’s Alex Tabarrok:

…agriculture uses 80% of the water in California but accounts for less than 2% of the economy. So how much water does almond production alone use? More water is used in almond production than is used by all the residents and businesses of San Francisco and Los Angeles combined.

It’s important to note that California produces a huge chunk of the produce consumed in the United States. Presumably having food on the table is vastly more important to society than it would seem if you just look at it from a percentage-of-the-economy perspective.

But what about the almonds in particular? It takes a disproportionate amount of water to grow them versus other crops…”

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Fuck. Just as we are getting ready to say “goodbye” to the fish, here goes another staple for us folks with food allergies.

Not to mention the gigantic freaking canary that is dead on our living room floor, staring at us with rotting eyes… –

-Wes, CollapseNet