NASA says california has less than a year of water left

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Why does one of the largest economies of the world have problems with water? Water is dirt cheap and abundant, makes no sense to have water restrictions. Just make some more water plants or canals or something.

the dirty little secret, the crazy aunt in the basement that nobody wants to talk about, is that nearly 40 million Californians are sucking up too much water too quickly for the system to be sustainable for much longer. population and agriculture are the two big elephants in the room here, and BOTH need to be dealt with sooner rather than later.

They can always send tow boats to the arctic to pull flows of sea ice down to California. Park the ice bergs and ice flows in a harbor offshore while they figure out how to siphon the fresh water off them, and into the state water system. But they better hurry. Due to climate change the Polar ice cap is melting.

^^^
mebbe build a giant pipeline from the great lakes.

But I don't see why California should have a water shortage. California is one of the wealthiest regions of the world and has a low population density, surely they could pop out a few water purification plants and spend some money on water management.

the problem is that too many rich folk down there feel that only the little people should have to pay taxes, but the little people have long been tapped out and just can't pay anymore, so there is no money in the system for such. there is money there [hidden away in Hollywood and silicon valley and the financial canyons of orange county/LA county] but there has to be political will and a more generous helping of good will in general.

The city of L.A. already has tendrils extending out hundreds of miles to tap water. The Mulholland Aqueduct runs along the Sierras for 400 miles to get water from Mono Lake. And they already sucked Owen's Lake dry. They are already locked in water wars with the rest of California.

The only options are either huge desalinization of sea water, or finding sea water already naturally desalinated (ie frozen) by somehow wrangling some polar sea ice.

One of those Delaware sized pieces of ice that you hear about breaking off for the Antarctic Ice Shelf could be wrangled and coaxed into the northern hemisphere.

^^^
can't be made to happen soon enough to forestall the early stages of running outta water. there will be suffering and it will have national implications.

But is there an abundance of 'clean' water....therein lies the problem, there's watersheds or whatever that collect ground water and I think some may come from rivers, if those get too low then there's limited clean water to drink. And as is the tap water is disgusting around here, still gotta filter it to drink it more water plants or canals wouldn't solve the issue. I know there is water I mean a lot of the state flooded last year, but the trouble is limited drinking water.

Now if one could legally collect rain water...

If the local politicians mess it up I think the federal government should step in and fix it. Lack of clean water is a major health issue, there is no reason why fairly affluent places should not have decent water management. It is one of the most basic needs, I don't think regional politicians should have the "freedom" to piss it all away.

but when you have a dominant political party which is philosophically bent towards leaving public health issues to the market, "pissing it away" is what is bound to be allowed to happen. IOW what happened to AM stereo [for example] is gonna happen to our public water, in time.

How do we 'address' population just exterminate a few....so there's less there isn't really an ethical way to drastically change the population that I know of. As for agriculture well that is important as well....what should be addressed is any waste of clean water, stupid laws that interfere with survival like it being illegal to collect rain water and filter it to drink it and the potential of de-salting some of the ocean water for drinking.

the ethical thing to do by dint of our descendants, is to stop reproducing so much, so as to leave them something instead of our generation's dregs. in terms of conservation, californians could stop bathing and let all the grass turn brown and wither away, and it would still make not a dent. but since 80% of California water use is by agriculture, that is the big target to reform.

Eating meat is probably a big part of this. Meat takes a lot of water (and land) to produce compared to vegetables.
Gotta run before the store closes.

We hall know if the prediction is right on March 18, 2016. If it is all correct then all the rivers should be dry on that day.

But you can pretty much recycle water, I used to live near a water purification plant and everytime I cycled past it it smelled of eeewwwl, but that is how you keep the water clean after humans used it and made it al filthy. From what I read about this the government more or less failed to invest in their water supply, and there is no reason for that as California is not some poor place. I think making sure your citizens have access to good drinking water and sanitation is a high priority, and yeah it does cost money.