New mandatory water restrictions in place in California

To lower the state-wide usage of water by 25%.

(Update 4/3: more on California's drought. And the draining of our ancient and irreplaceable aquifers.)

It's about time.  Because our state is beginning to look like this:




I wrote this post in 2008 but it still applies now:

Turn off your taps!



Finally!  The California Gropenator has declared a drought.  You know... not enough snow pack, no rain, no water:

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.)—Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a statewide drought after two years of below-average rainfall, low snowmelt runoff and a court-ordered restriction on water transfers.

Schwarzenegger warned that residents and water managers must immediately cut their water use or face the possibility of rationing next year if there is another dry winter.
"We must recognize the severity of the crisis that we face," the Republican governor said Wednesday at a news conference.
He signed an executive order directing the state's response to unusually dry conditions that are damaging crops, harming water quality and causing extreme fire danger across California. Many communities already require water conservation or rationing.
The statewide drought declaration is the first since 1991, when Gov. Pete Wilson acted in the fifth year of a drought that lasted into 1992.
[snip]
Snow measurements last month found that the Sierra held just 69 percent of an average winter. Runoff into California rivers was at 55 percent of a normal year. The state's major reservoirs are at 50 percent to 63 percent of their capacity at a time when they ideally would be full.
Conditions could be even worse next year if there is another dry winter, Water Resources Director Lester Snow said.
"We need at least above normal in terms of our snowpack, and then we're still going to be tight," Snow said. "The idea is to put programs in place now to soften the impact in 2008 and to prepare for a potential third year of drought in 2009."
California's population has mushroomed since the last drought, while the water supply has dwindled, he said.
An eight-year drought in the Southwest means California can't depend on Colorado River water to help supply Southern California. And a federal judge's order last year requires that more Northern California water be left in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to aid declining fish populations.
"We're suffering the perfect storm, if you will," said Timothy Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. "The purpose of the governor's declaration is to send a wake-up call."
California has never resorted to statewide rationing during droughts, Quinn said.
Worst-hit so far is the San Joaquin Valley, which could soon merit an emergency declaration because of crop damage, Snow said.
What people can do immediately:

# For indoor conservation High-Efficiency Toilets: EBMUD customers can receive rebates for purchasing qualifying WaterSmart High-Efficiency Toilets, which use less water and remove waste effectively. For toilets using 3.5 gallons per flush or more, devices such as displacement bags, toilet dams, or adjustable flappers save water and are a less expensive alternative to replacing your toilet.

# Shower head: Install a water-efficient shower head that uses no more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute. A standard shower head uses 5 to 10 gallons per minute.

# Energy Efficient Washing Machines: A high-efficiency machine uses 30 percent less water and 40 percent to 70 percent less energy. EBMUD customers can get rebates for purchasing and installing approved high-efficiency washing machines from a list of qualifying washers.

# Install Aerators: Low-flow aerators can limit flow rates of 2.2 gallons per minute for kitchen faucets and 1.5 gallons per minute for bathroom faucets. EBMUD provides its customers with free devices.

# Replace worn washers on faucets and look for hidden leaks. Check the reading on your water meter. Don't use any water for 30 minutes, then read the meter. If it shows water used, then you have a hidden leak that needs repair.

For outdoor conservation

# Water yards less frequently but more deeply. Watering to the root depth of your plants creates a healthier and more efficient garden. This means applying a half-inch of water to moisten the soil to a depth of 6 inches.

# Routinely check your irrigation system for leaks. Drip irrigation systems apply water more accurately and at a much lower rate than overhead spray. EBMUD offers rebates to customers who install drip irrigation systems.

# Adjust your irrigation controller according to the seasons. Add days to your watering schedule for the summer season and reduce the number of days as fall approaches.

Source: East Bay Municipal Utility District
Recalling the last time we went through a drought, I can add some simple suggestions:

# Don't automatically serve water at restaurants, make the customers ask for a glass.

# Turn off your faucet while you brush your teeth.

# Shorter showers or use the Navy Shower technique:

A navy shower (or "sea shower") is a method of showering that allows for significant conservation of water and energy. The steps in a basic navy shower are:

turn on the water

immediately wet the body

turn off the water

soap up and scrub

turn the water back on and rinse off the soap

The total time for the water being on is typically under two minutes.
[snip]
A ten-minute shower takes as much as 230 L (60 U.S. gallons) of water, while a navy shower usually takes as little as 11 L (3 U.S. gallons); one person can save 56,000 L (15,000 U.S. gallons) per year.^[1]
# Do only full laundry loads, full dishwasher loads.

# Skip washing your car, and when you must, invest in a spray control for your hose or use buckets. Park your car on your lawn and use biodegradable soap.

# In more severe droughts, fine people for running water down gutters or late night extravagant watering.   Let your lawn die.  Better yet, pull up the grass and put in drought resistant plants.   Start taking rinse water out to your garden.   Make new housing complexes have some sort of gray water reuse system and restrict the building of pools.

This is the new reality, guys, not Bush's reality.  We can do it, we just need to be wise.  There's lots of ideas out there that will help us cut back our usage.

Because water wars are coming and we should be ready.

crossposted at American Street.

Gun Nuts, Car Crashes, and Radiation--Fun For Everyone!

Personal stories of women who have had abortions.  Healthy sweaty women.  And why some women will vote Republican is beyond me.  The next generation of intelligent women.

The negatives of Governor Chris Christie.

A meeting of Mothers Against Gun Violence brings out a group of gun nuts.

What letting loose a virus into the internets can do... think space station..

A shower design that reuses water and saves money.  Do you think we'll ever see it produced in the US?

The Earth is old... older than 6,000 years.  Life on Earth is really old.  Apparently older than we ever imagined.  And here is a panorama of Mars.  (scroll down and ignore the annoying whirling gif.)

Russian car crashes from dash cams.

Fukushima residents may never go home, say Japanese officials  I thought that was a given.  They have lost that area of Japan forever.

Headlines

Sometimes earlier technology is better:

Rare Austin which stood in garage for 50 years discovered... and starts first time!

Try not to piss off your crazy armed-to-the-teeth base!:

In the Wake of Arrests in Three States, Right-Wingers Rush to Defend Terror Suspects, Criticize FBI

In one word: No. In three: PLEASE GOD, NO!:

Is America ‘Yearning For Fascism?'

Frank Rich tries to explain the fever pitch of hysteria:

The Rage Is Not About Health Care

In one word: Yes. In elventy: WTF, just do it! We're drying up and blowing away here!:

Can Wastewater Save California's Parched Farmland?

The destruction of the ocean habitats continues:

Mysterious whale die-off is largest on record

When in doubt... take off clothes:

Man cites boredom after arrest on streaking charge

Don't waste water!

Besides knocking off waterboarding, here are some ideas:

...there are plenty of behavioral changes that can be made to reduce your family's water footprint.

* Turn off the water when you're washing dishes by hand, brushing your teeth or shaving.
* Only run the clothes washer or the dishwasher when you've got a full load.
* Avoid baths and take shorter showers.
* Plant drought-resistant lawns, shrubs and plants in your yard, and put down mulch wherever you can to help water from evaporating too quickly.
* If you must water your lawn, be sure to place your sprinklers in such a way that no water will fall on sidewalks or driveways, and only water in the early morning or evening, when the weather is cooler.
* Use a broom, and not a hose to clean your driveway and sidewalks.
* Avoid flushing the toilet unnecessarily. Dispose of tissues, insects and other such waste in the trash rather than the toilet.
* Use the garbage disposal less and the garbage more (or better yet compost!) and you could save 50 to 150 gallons a month.

And yes, just because we've had some glorious rain in California does NOT mean we're out of the drought season. In fact, I doubt in the foreseeable future we will ever return to extravagant water usage. Drought mentality is here to stay.

Headlines

So when we all boil, we boil together?

• The climate denial industry is out to dupe the public. And it's working

I always knew vegetables were out to kill me!

• Killer Petunias and Murderous Potatoes Revealed


• Massive TSA Security Breach As Agency Gives Away Its Secrets


• Copenhagen: Your Quick And Dirty Guide

Being from Southern California and in a relentless drought, this headline struck me as painfully obvious:

• Water meters 'help cut usage'

• America Without a Middle Class

The problem is...

I do all these things already...

More Water Conservation Tips for Your Home

WAYS TO SAVE INDOORS AND OUTDOORS

• Check your toilet for leaks. Put a few drops of food coloring in your toilet tank. If the coloring begins to appear in the toilet bowl without flushing, you have a wasteful leak that should be repaired at once. Even a small leak can waste thousands of gallons of water each month. When replacing the toilet flapper valve, make sure to select a model designed for your toilet.

• Replace all non-water saving toilets with new ultra-low-flush toilets.

• Turn off the water while brushing your teeth and save up to 3 gallons each time.

• Turn off the water while you're shaving. Just fill the sink with a little water and rinse your razor. You can save up to 3 gallons.

• Check faucets and pipes for leaks. Even a small drip can waste hundreds of gallons per month.

• Use your dishwasher for full loads only. Every load uses about 15 gallons.

• Use your clothes washer for full loads only. It uses up to 60 gallons per load.

• Don't let the faucet run while you clean vegetables. Instead rinse them in a sinkful of clean water.

• Keep a bottle of drinking water in the refrigerator, so you won't have to run the tap to cool it.

• If you wash dishes by hand, don't leave the water running for rinsing.

• Water your lawn deeply and less frequently. Avoid over watering and runoff. Adjust sprinklers to water the lawn, not the pavement.

• Water early in the morning or late in the evening.

• Change watering schedule seasonally.

• Repair leaks immediately.

• Use a broom instead of the hose.

• Do not allow the hose to run as you wash your car. Use a self-closing hose nozzle, or turn off the water, between rinses.

I should dig up my lawn and plant cacti and native plants....

Yeah.... just why DO we have lawns in California?

Especially when front yards themselves are usually for show, rarely used, and high maintenance. OrangeClouds at Calitics, a really good site for California politics:

Over at Change.org Natasha Chart asks if a recovery is even possible on a planet headed for environmental collapse? That's an answer I wish I knew. Natasha's been covering the water story regularly with a post about Colorado's fights between Big Oil and Big Water, a post about agribusiness and water use, and a post I highly recommend reading (even though it scares the shit out of me) called "We don't have to choose a dustbowl"

My own environmentalist hippie foodie answers to the water problem begin as follows:

1. Why is it still legal to have lawns in California? Seriously. Somebody should outlaw watering your lawn. If we weren't in such a budget crisis I'd add that the city should provide native drought resistant plants to residents who want to make their yard beautiful and able to survive without water.
2. California growers need to go organic ASAP. It's not a fix that will help them this year, and it will reduce their productivity in the next few years but in the long run, it will make all of their crops more drought resistant because the soil will store more water.
3. We've gotta do something about animal agriculture. It uses a TON of water. If factory farms are something we have to have, then they shouldn't be located in California. Period.
4. We need to expand fruit, nut, and vegetable (so-called "specialty crop") production in the other 49 states to plan for decreased production in California and to reduce energy needs for shipping food across the country. Right now there are actually laws preventing farmers who grow commodities to switching over to grow specialty crops instead. You can't even buy land from a farmer who used to grow commodities there and grow specialty crops on that land! The USDA is dabbling in changing that policy but only in a very small pilot program.

These things are expensive - either for the farmers or for the state that mandates it and compensates the farmers (or offers financial incentives to make it happen without mandating it). But we bailed out the banks even after they screwed up and got us into this mess. Why can't we bail out our farmers? After all, we need to eat.

I've noticed several houseowners in our tract ripping out their grass and planting native groundcover through a heavy mulch. I've even noticed a few houses in town that have very realistic-looking fake grass. You need to get right up on top of it to see it's plastic. But as water becomes more important, and the wars between farmer and suburbia, state and state, nation and nation become more pronounced and anxious, could we please address the feckless and heedless building of the Southern California sprawl right up into the mountains?


Click to get a larger view.

Where the hell are we going to get the water for these new homes? The gasoline to run food to the stores and to support the lengthy commutes these bedroom communities assume? Where will the garbage go? We are literally running out of space in the 'valley' and are flowing up and over the mountains into the deserts where the need for air conditioning becomes a life or death issue and the commutes for everything and everyone is hours longer. Meanwhile the death rot of neglect in the inner cities leaves empty warehouses and hard used apartment buildings and no services. Why can't we rebuild in these areas?

And lastly, when, not if, gasoline goes to 5, 8, 10 dollars a gallon, Southern California sprawl is going to die unless we get the HSR (high speed rail) in place.

Robert in Monterey at Calitics:

One of my lingering concerns about the Obama Administration has been that they might be tempted to claim victory with the $8 billion in HSR funding added to the stimulus and not follow up on that money, which as we know merely pays for some initial costs. But Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood made clear last week that in fact, the $8 billion in HSR stimulus really is intended as a signal to America that Obama is truly serious about building HSR:

LaHood said that for Obama building high-speed rail networks is, "if not his No. 1 priority, certainly at the top of his list. What the president is saying with the $8 billion is this is the start to help begin high-speed rail projects." He added that the administration "is committed to finding the dollars to not only get them started but to finishing them in at least five parts of the country," although he declined to elaborate on where these projects might ultimately be built.

And don't worry about the right-wing freakout over the Vegas HSR project - California is in better position than any other HSR project in America to use that stimulus funding. We can begin construction in late 2010 or early 2011; no other project is anywhere close to that point.

Plant those gardens and turn your fricking hose off!

Until we find out the plastic chips cause cancer or something..

This sounds wonderful:

LONDON (Reuters) - A washing machine using as little as a cup of water for each washing cycle could go on sale to environmentally conscious Britons next year.

Xeros, which has been spun out of the University of Leeds to commercialise the technology, said on Monday the new machines would use less than 2 percent of the water and energy of a conventional washing machine.

Plastic chips are used to remove dirt and stains from clothes, leaving them dry and reducing energy consumption as there is no need to use a dryer after the washing cycle, Xeros said in a statement.

[snip]

Washing machine usage has risen by 23 percent in the past 15 years. The average household uses almost 21 litres of water daily on clothes washing, 13 percent of daily household water consumption, according to Waterwise, a non-government organisation focused on decreasing water wastage.

A typical washing machine uses about 35 kilograms of water for every kilogram of clothes, in addition to the power needed to heat the water and dry the clothes.

Turn off your taps!

Finally! The California Gropenator has declared a drought. You know... not enough snow pack, no rain, no water:

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.)—Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a statewide drought after two years of below-average rainfall, low snowmelt runoff and a court-ordered restriction on water transfers.

Schwarzenegger warned that residents and water managers must immediately cut their water use or face the possibility of rationing next year if there is another dry winter.

"We must recognize the severity of the crisis that we face," the Republican governor said Wednesday at a news conference.

He signed an executive order directing the state's response to unusually dry conditions that are damaging crops, harming water quality and causing extreme fire danger across California. Many communities already require water conservation or rationing.

The statewide drought declaration is the first since 1991, when Gov. Pete Wilson acted in the fifth year of a drought that lasted into 1992.

[snip]

Snow measurements last month found that the Sierra held just 69 percent of an average winter. Runoff into California rivers was at 55 percent of a normal year. The state's major reservoirs are at 50 percent to 63 percent of their capacity at a time when they ideally would be full.

Conditions could be even worse next year if there is another dry winter, Water Resources Director Lester Snow said.

"We need at least above normal in terms of our snowpack, and then we're still going to be tight," Snow said. "The idea is to put programs in place now to soften the impact in 2008 and to prepare for a potential third year of drought in 2009."

California's population has mushroomed since the last drought, while the water supply has dwindled, he said.

An eight-year drought in the Southwest means California can't depend on Colorado River water to help supply Southern California. And a federal judge's order last year requires that more Northern California water be left in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to aid declining fish populations.

"We're suffering the perfect storm, if you will," said Timothy Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. "The purpose of the governor's declaration is to send a wake-up call."

California has never resorted to statewide rationing during droughts, Quinn said.

Worst-hit so far is the San Joaquin Valley, which could soon merit an emergency declaration because of crop damage, Snow said.

What people can do immediately:

# For indoor conservation High-Efficiency Toilets: EBMUD customers can receive rebates for purchasing qualifying WaterSmart High-Efficiency Toilets, which use less water and remove waste effectively. For toilets using 3.5 gallons per flush or more, devices such as displacement bags, toilet dams, or adjustable flappers save water and are a less expensive alternative to replacing your toilet.

# Shower head: Install a water-efficient shower head that uses no more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute. A standard shower head uses 5 to 10 gallons per minute.

# Energy Efficient Washing Machines: A high-efficiency machine uses 30 percent less water and 40 percent to 70 percent less energy. EBMUD customers can get rebates for purchasing and installing approved high-efficiency washing machines from a list of qualifying washers.

# Install Aerators: Low-flow aerators can limit flow rates of 2.2 gallons per minute for kitchen faucets and 1.5 gallons per minute for bathroom faucets. EBMUD provides its customers with free devices.

# Replace worn washers on faucets and look for hidden leaks. Check the reading on your water meter. Don't use any water for 30 minutes, then read the meter. If it shows water used, then you have a hidden leak that needs repair.

For outdoor conservation

# Water yards less frequently but more deeply. Watering to the root depth of your plants creates a healthier and more efficient garden. This means applying a half-inch of water to moisten the soil to a depth of 6 inches.

# Routinely check your irrigation system for leaks. Drip irrigation systems apply water more accurately and at a much lower rate than overhead spray. EBMUD offers rebates to customers who install drip irrigation systems.

# Adjust your irrigation controller according to the seasons. Add days to your watering schedule for the summer season and reduce the number of days as fall approaches.

Source: East Bay Municipal Utility District

Recalling the last time we went through a drought, I can add some simple suggestions:

# Don't automatically serve water at restaurants, make the customers ask for a glass.

# Turn off your faucet while you brush your teeth.

# Shorter showers or use the Navy Shower technique:

A navy shower (or "sea shower") is a method of showering that allows for significant conservation of water and energy. The steps in a basic navy shower are:

1. turn on the water
2. immediately wet the body
3. turn off the water
4. soap up and scrub
5. turn the water back on and rinse off the soap

The total time for the water being on is typically under two minutes.

[snip]

A ten-minute shower takes as much as 230 L (60 U.S. gallons) of water, while a navy shower usually takes as little as 11 L (3 U.S. gallons); one person can save 56,000 L (15,000 U.S. gallons) per year.^[1]

# Do only full laundry loads, full dishwasher loads.

# Skip washing your car, and when you must, invest in a spray control for your hose or use buckets. Park your car on your lawn and use biodegradable soap.

# In more severe droughts, fine people for running water down gutters or late night extravagant watering. Let your lawn die. Better yet, pull up the grass and put in drought resistant plants. Start taking rinse water out to your garden. Make new housing complexes have some sort of gray water reuse system and restrict the building of pools.

This is the new reality, guys, not Bush's reality. We can do it, we just need to be wise. There's lots of ideas out there that will help us cut back our usage.

Because water wars are coming and we should be ready.

crossposted at American Street.