Hydro dams are struggling to handle the world’s intensifying weather

Climate change is robbing some hydro dams of water while oversupplying others.

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[Deleted member 591341]

Urban use is about 1/4th of what agriculture uses, and it's plateaued in recent years due to conservation measures.

A lot of our water basically gets shipped out of state in the form of almonds, alfalfa, and salad greens. A lot is also wasted to evaporation due to inefficient irrigation practices. But agriculture is mostly off the table when it comes to water conservation because their water rights are senior to the cities'.

California water is a legal and political problem, not an issue of too many people. And I say this as someone who thinks most of our problems globally are due to too many people.

I was told that California lettuce is how California exports water from the desert for profit.

 

[Veritas super omens]

I was told that California lettuce is how California exports water from the desert for profit.

And some of it comes with bonus e coli!

 

[fivemack]

You don't need me to Google that for you, so feel free. But as uses of water go, municipal water supply is dwarfed by industry and agriculture. It's a relatively small amount and it largely ends up being treated and returned to the watershed. A another 125 million or so people do not come close to taxing the water supply, even in places like Las Vegas and Southern California.

To be fair, twice as many people need twice as much agriculture and are likely to engage in at least twice as much industry.

Drinking water is utterly essential but pretty minimal - a town of a hundred thousand drinks about one Olympic-sized swimming pool a week - but consumption of products whose production requires water is something between thirty and fifty times the amount of water drunk.

 

[numerobis]

I was told that California lettuce is how California exports water from the desert for profit.

The way California largely exports water is by irrigating almonds and rice, then exporting them dry. Any of that irrigation water that gets pulled out of aquifers is water that was, effectively, "exported" in that the buyer doesn't need to find their own water to water their own almonds and rice.

The amount of water actually in the wine, carrots, and lettuce is comparatively minimal.

 

[TonyJ588]

If California is going to get soaked with water in the new pattern how about getting pipelines built so they can pump some overflow where it is needed? Maybe help make the Colorado reach the ocean again. Not sure of the cost but I am sure Arizona and the others would pay for a lot of the cost. Make sense?

 

[noodz]

Using weather forecasts to support decisions on hydropower is not exactly new, the company I work on has been doing exactly that for at least 15 years. Numerical weather prediction models to estimate precip volumes / temperatures, conceptual hydrology models to track the water budget, and a series of operation rules to determine proper operation given an acceptable risk profile.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

To be fair, twice as many people need twice as much agriculture and are likely to engage in at least twice as much industry.

Drinking water is utterly essential but pretty minimal - a town of a hundred thousand drinks about one Olympic-sized swimming pool a week - but consumption of products whose production requires water is something between thirty and fifty times the amount of water drunk.

What you point to is less of a "population" problem and more a "consumerist" problem though. Even so on the whole water conservation measures means that the average consumption of water didn't increase all that much in 2015 as compared to in 1970.

https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics...ence/trends-water-use-united-states-1950-2015
Sure, golf courses in the middle of the desert, almond and avocado plantations in drought-stricken areas, swimming pools to go with the sweltering summers of Arizona...water use per capita is irresponsibly high in some select regions which can ill afford that increased use.

That said it still wouldn't have posed that much of an issue if it weren't for the fact that climate change is already seeing the refill of aquifers and rivers gone or critically diminished.

 

[real mikeb_60]

Using weather forecasts to support decisions on hydropower is not exactly new, the company I work on has been doing exactly that for at least 15 years. Numerical weather prediction models to estimate precip volumes / temperatures, conceptual hydrology models to track the water budget, and a series of operation rules to determine proper operation given an acceptable risk profile.

California has always been a boom-bust place for climate and water. The climate changes are boosting that, and shifting the locations around a bit. The state as a whole is drying, though, so both the water systems and the user practices need to change. It's not clear that forecasting is completely on board with the changes yet, though what the article is talking about is short-term enough that it's probably good enough to work with.

Of course, to work with it, other changes are needed. BuRec just finished rebuilding a lot of Folsom Dam and adding a new spillway, for instance, so they can react more quickly to inflows and maintain a higher average lake elevation. It was (ahem) Not Cheap, and Central Valley Project and local water users will pay for it, over time - a long time at low rates, for the agricultural users.

 

[real mikeb_60]

I was told that California lettuce is how California exports water from the desert for profit.

And rice.