West Coasters: What's the general situation with water supply (or lack thereof) in your parts?

I got interested in the topic of west coast water supply politics/shenanigans after watching the film "Chinatown". Is Los Angeles really a "desert community"? Were Californian farmers (and, I guess, Nevadan farmers, too) really starved of their water by ruthless businessmen in the 1930's, in an elaborate plot by the latter to bankrupt the farmers, take their land, and "bring L.A. to the water"? What's the situation with sharing the water among the various states and communities today? I gather water remains a big political hot topic on the west coast to this day.

And, finally, where does the water come from?

but it seems that it's very close to the truth, if not the actual truth.

As far as where the water comes from: two primary areas -- Colorado River and Northern California (Google Mono Lake, LA Aqueduct, California Aqueduct -- I bet you get some worthy hits)

edit to add some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Aqueduct

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_Lake

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Aqueduct

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea

In fact, this year, we are in big trouble, more than normally...

We get our water from three different places, and all are over-subscribed right now.

The Sierra Nevada had much less the the normal snowfall...

The Colorado River has much less water than it should...

And everyone who has water rights to it is getting theirs...

I don't remember where the third source is, actually...

The farmers uses water like it's going out of style. And they pay much less than we do for it.

So they have no incentive to conserve, and this is hurting the city folk big time.

The book "Cadillac Desert" really tells the story.

Hopefully someone else will come in and fill in the details that I'm not aware of...

Where I live, drinking water comes from here:

Water in the western states really is a huge issue, and it goes a lot deeper than most folks realize.

The whole desert southwest has been dependent on that one river for a century and more and the population has grown to the point that there just isn't enough to go around.

The farmers have rights to the water that predate the residential demands, that's why it's cheaper for them.

Here's the other half of the story, in WA state we use our water supply for drinking, AG irrigation AND power generation, lots of power generation. My electrical power is 98% hydro.

When CA can't meet its energy needs in the summertime the powerplants deliver as much power as they possibly can to them at higher rates, pretty much the entire peak (vs off peak) load in SoCal comes from the pacific northwest. At first it was an emergency measure but now it's become structural.

As a result, we don't have enough water for irrigation, and we have to truck in Hay and grain from the midwest, which is expensive and energy intensive.

Fortunately I've got my own well that pumps the cleanest freshest water imaginable for essentially nothing, it's well over 100 gallons for a penny.

About this time of year, though, we're drawing from the well fields out near the airport. The Water Bureau can only draw down the lake so far, and they've reached that limit a bit early this year.

The draw down limit probably has more to do with turbidity levels than actual water in the lake/reservoir system. The bureau is one of only a handful of large systems in the country that doesn't have to filter the water. So the turbidity of the water limits its usage.

The water system that I live in buys water from the bureau. If the bureau's water system goes offline for any reason, we can switch our intake over to another city, but that water comes from a place I'd rather not drink out of!

It was essentially a referendum about using the filthy Willamette river as a secondary source.

For the most part, the opponents won (the libertarian on the district board would have lost as well had his election pamphlet entry been written honestly). Eventually though, something will have to be done- which is why some of the forward looking people are seeing greywater and other water "harvesting" projects as something we should encourage people to do.

Yep, Bull Run's no panecea- and turbidity is an issue in the spring and fall. I didn't realize that we're currently drawing from wells right now though. Seems we've have a fairly normal water year.

So if you happened to be watching the newscast that night at that moment, you'd know it. I haven't noticed an article about it in the O yet. The newscast comment was so brief that I couldn't determine whether or not the switch was due to turbidity, but that is the only thing I can come up with. I haven't heard of any big pipe projects that would affect the transmission lines from Bull Run into town, so it pretty much only leaves turbidity.

I've been able to go up there, all the way to the lake (because of my previous job). It is absolutely serene. Sitting there on the porch of one of those old cabins by the lake, eating lunch and just listening to silence.

On one trip up there, we looked at one area next to the lake where water just... disappears... They don't know exactly where it goes.

TVWD has a fair bit of population growth- I'd think they'd *have* to do something at some point. It is nice to know they're thinking about other possiblilies. Goodness knows I'd not want to take a single drink of water from the Willamette, even though I've been all through a treatment plant that takes it from that to drinking water. Nope. No way. Ick.

That said, they need to pipe in vast amounts of water. Since the rainfall isn't nearly enough to support it.

That said, they're going through a major drought.

I think you might find this handy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mulholland

or wait for the next time PBS airs their documentary of the same name. That will give you some historical context for the L.A. area,
Some synopsis info here:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~martins/hydro/case_studies/cadillac_desert.htm

Northern Cal around the San Francisco bay area gets its water from the Sierras. The snowpack was really low this year and many areas are on voluntary conservation status. In my area, we've been asked to reduce water usage by 10%.

Left in the Dust: How Race and Politics Created a Human and Environmental Tragedy in L.A. (Hardcover)
by Karen Piper?

voluntary rationing. I believe that will be the case through most the summer. If it's another dry winter then we'll see mandatory rationing.

We count on heavy snowfalls that accumulate in the Sierra Nevada during the winter, which then gradually melt throughout the spring and early summer and are collected in reservoirs. With few exceptions most everybody in the northern part of the state receives water from reservoirs like these.

you water your yard on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sunday..or some such thing. it's voluntary at this point.

the water was symbolically turned back on in Owens Lake a few years ago, but it's a trickle. It used to be a lush farming oasis, now it's a dust bowl and the pollutants created by the dust is making people sick 2,3 counties to the south.

And read an article in a small local paper about how the rest of the state to the west of the cascades is 'stealing' Eastern Washington's water.

I find this really funny considering the east side has always been more or less desert and the west side rain forest.

The BC "Wet Coast" has a reputation (even amongst the locals) for having plenty of water, although a combination of growing demand, the fact that many areas (especially the offshore islands) depend on a limited aquifer capacity, and the (predictable) summer dry season, mean that there isn't as much water as people think. There are a lot of places along the coast that only get about as much water as NYC or Toronto do -- and in our case, it tends to be more concentrated in the winter months, with less rainfall between April and October, since we're at the edge of the California-type climate pattern. One would think that those of us who live here would have observed this, but there seems to be a widespread mental block ... in the winter, a lot of us don't remember that we can go a month and a half without rainfall in June-August, and scoff at the idea of water restrictions. (Though in the summer, we also forget that we've had as much as 4 weeks without seeing the sun .... it's common to hear people exclaiming, "I forgot that it can be so dark around here!, once January rolls around.)

So we've kind of been in denial about this. One of the civil servants in the government's water policy section expressed frustration to me recently -- it's really hard to get helpful legislation implemented when the policymakers don't think there's a problem! And as a result, we had fiascos like the town of Tofino running out of water and having to order in tanker trucks (nobody was watching the meters or the level in the reservoir!) when the fall rains were a few weeks late last year ... and the city of Vancouver having to declare a boil-water advisory when storms washed a bunch of sediment into the reservoir (they didn't even start building a water filtration plant until recently, despite repeated warnings that this could happen).


Compared to many US jurisdictions, water laws are lacking in most of BC, which is causing problems -- a lot of new development springing up, and the people putting it in don't have a clue about how restricted the supply is -- we'll be looking at some costly technical "fixes" (pipelines and dams, which are increasingly less viable due to construction/maintenance expenses and environmental conflicts). Some areas, like the Okanagan, are already seeing groundwater overpumping and low stream levels, due to the supply being maxxed out at certain times of the year.

Granted we are in a desert, but we should get a little rain
This is Coachella Valley

I answered the wrong person , me

Salton Sea is disappearing fast. Republican control of the area means uncontrolled development also.

Building and over-populating areas of the country where there is little water to begin with is starting to bite us in the ass big time. There will come a time where lack of resources is going to seriously impact life because of over population. Then you won't be seeing fighting over oil, you will see regions fighting over water and lumber.

communities and the cities (i.e., Vegas).

it begins

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3TcDor0rk98

We are supposed to be in the middle of the rainy season here, but there has been much less rain than ususal, there was almost no rain in winter and spring, and many reservoirs are low. If we don't get some good dousings in the the next couple of weeks, there will be water restrictions in the summer.

:kick:

An excellent post by babylonsister, here. (I should not be surprised that Cheney is messing around with people's water!)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1202061&mesg_id=1202061