California's flawed water system can't track usage

[unhappycamper]

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/national/west/2014/05/californias_flawed_water_system_cant_track_usage

California's flawed water system can't track usage
Associated Press
Tuesday, May 27, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO — In the midst of a prolonged drought, some California water users are far more equal than others.

An Associated Press review finds nearly 4,000 California companies, farms and others are allowed to use free water with little oversight even as deliveries to nearly everyone else have been severely slashed.

Their special status dates back to claims made more than a century ago when water was plentiful. These "senior rights holders" dominated by corporations and agricultural concerns are not obliged to conserve water.

Together, they hold more than half the rights to rivers and streams in California.


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Here's a thought.

Melbourne built a desalinization plant in 2012 for $2.5 billion dollars ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonthaggi_desalination_plant ).

Let's not build one Zumwalt-class destroyer and we can build two desalinization plants.

Or we could cancel a Ford-class aircraft carrier at least five and maybe as much as 10+ plants.

[DetlefK]

1. Simple solution: Eminent domain for water-sources.

[defacto7]

2. That sure beats corporate water control. n/t

[FBaggins]

3. Desalination takes power

And they're short on power as well as water.

California has a bunch of desalination capacity (info)... but it's a huge undertaking to replace mother nature with desalinated sea water.

As a comparison. That desalination plant has a capacity of 550 megaliters/day. That's about 450 acre-feet... or a bit more than 150k acre-feet/year. IIRC, that's enough water for a million people for a year. Sounds like a bunch... but California's water supply also feeds tens of millions of acres of crops... so it really wouldn't be much of a dent for a "mere" 2.5 Billion.

It'll take a lot more than that.