Not Enough Water and Too Many People

I think that this piece by Hayley Smith at the Los Angeles Times via Yahoo News bears some consideration.

By now, it is clear that water independence is the best path forward for the 4 million residents of the city of Los Angeles, and for the county and region as a whole. Imported supplies from the State Water Project are heavily dependent on annual snowpack and rainfall in the Sierra, which are no longer a guarantee under the state’s shifting climate regime. What’s more, long-reliable federal supplies from the Colorado River are rapidly drying up, with the river’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead, nearing dangerously low levels.

In certain ways, the city is in better shape than some other major metropolitan areas because of the Los Angeles Aqueduct system, two pipelines that deliver water from the Mono Basin and Owens River hundreds of miles away. But even that supply — much of it secured by stealth and deception more than 100 years ago — is heavily reliant on Sierra snowmelt.

and

Pierce said San Fernando Valley groundwater has long been an untapped resource in Los Angeles.

“It used to be way too expensive and we had cheaper options [than remediation],” he said. “But now it’s finally here because there are no cheaper options, and because the technology has gotten there, so I think now is the time. DWP has already begun cleaning that up, and that’s going to be really useful for the city.”

He also underscored that current conservation efforts should become permanent in the face of water uncertainty. So far, Angelenos have more than risen to the challenge — achieving record-low demand in June, July and August this year, according to the DWP.

Cortez-Davis noted that the city has kept its water use at roughly 1970 levels despite growing by more than a million people since then.

I’ve been visiting Southern California fairly frequently over the last 60 years, sometimes for personal and sometimes for business reasons. I was just there again last week.

California’s population was around 10 million in 1950; by 1970 that had grown to 20 million; now it’s pushing 40 million people. The fundamental problem facing California is too many people and not enough water.

But California has multiple problems all of which need to be addressed and identifying their relative priorities is a major political problem. California’s economy is more dependent on housing than that of most state—nearly 17% of its state product according to the NAR. That’s higher than most Midwestern or Eastern states but lower than other Western states. It’s higher than Southern states other than South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. In other words not only does California need water it needs people. See the problem?

California has an advantage that Colorado or Utah don’t: it could get more water by desalinating ocean water but that takes energy and California is already importing energy. That’s the price of its “green energy” initiatives.

While I’m completely in favor of conservation (not to mention lifestyle changes), I’m skeptical that California’s way forward is through conservation. At least not without reducing its population to something more in line with the state’s ability to produce water.

Note, too, that developing solar power is in conflict with California’s need for more land on which to build houses.

So there you have it. Water, population, housing as too-large a percentage of the state’s economy, competition with other Western states for the Colorado’s water, energy production, and land use. That’s quite a basket of problems.