| ▲ | jedberg 4 hours ago |
| The norcal/socal divide caused by the river is funny to me. I grew up in LA, then moved to the Bay Area for college. In LA we never really talked about where our water comes from. But we were always 'in a drought' and always taught to conserve water. My wife grew up in the Bay Area, and was told the same. But her family is from Sacramento. Up until about 15 years ago, everyone in Sacramento paid the same for water (based on square footage of your home). There were no water meters. So they didn't conserve. They ran the sprinklers in 100 degree heat for hours, they washed sidewalks with water instead sweeping, and all the other things. But when the meters came, her Uncle blamed SoCal for "stealing his water". He complained every month when the bill came about how he has to pay more now because of SoCal. |
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| ▲ | kenhwang 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Owens valley, where LA "steals" water from, is on the eastern side of the Sierras. NorCal, including Sacramento, is on the western side of the Sierras. So unless they planned on pumping the water over/under the mountain range that surrounds it in every direction except for towards LA, that water was never available for any NorCal city to use. |
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| ▲ | mutagen 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The California Aqueduct delivers water from the western Sierras through the Central Valley and to Los Angeles. This is likely what NorCal refers to when they say SoCal is 'stealing our water'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct Would be interesting to see the relative amounts of use by LA and by agriculture in the Central Valley though. | | |
| ▲ | kenhwang 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | SoCal does, yes; about half the water going through the SWP from NorCal, or ~75% if you include Bakersfield/Kern as part of SoCal (though most would consider it Central Valley). But SoCal isn't only LA. LA itself gets a bit less than half of their water from MWP, which manages the water from the SWP and the Colorado. About the same amount it gets from the the eastern Sierras. These are supposed to drop to ~10% of LA's water supply as recapture/recycling projects complete. Or computed the other way around, LA only has rights to ~20% of the water managed by MWD. Of course water supply, distribution, and rights are all blended and traded around all the time, but generally speaking it's not "LA" using up that water from NorCal, the consumption is significantly more from the cities and farms that came after. | |
| ▲ | nostrademons 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This infographic basically explains it: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ tl;dr: Urban water use is tiny. In NorCal, the vast majority of the water flows unimpeded to the sea. In the Central Valley, most water is used for agriculture. Agricultural water use in any one of the 3 major basins in the Central Valley is more than all urban areas in California combined. Unsurprisingly, urban use is the primary one in the SF and LA areas, but the absolute totals are very small compared to total CA water supplies. |
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| ▲ | vondur 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Owens valley is basically dried up from the water that LA takes. It's interesting as you drive in the towns in the Valley and you see all the LA Department of Water and Power offices over 200 miles from Los Angeles. The courts had to force the LA DWP to quit taking too much water from the streams that feed Mono Lake as it was in danger of drying out. | | |
| ▲ | kenhwang 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yep, Owens valley is basically an environmental disaster created by LA. So in the grand scheme of things, buying water from NorCal is better than stealing from the Owens valley through antiquated water rights. But really, California (and really the entire Western US) needs a water rights governance overhaul. Right now the focus is all on urban water use, which is practically negligible compared to the agricultural water rights usage. | | |
| ▲ | paradox460 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Much easier to tell Joe homeowner he's not allowed to have a lawn than to close down the country club. Where would the rich relax then? |
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| ▲ | kjkjadksj an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It isn’t dried up, they maintain a certain water level in the various lakes. |
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| ▲ | dgaultiere 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | LA also gets water from the state water project which does come from northern california: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Ca... | |
| ▲ | jlhawn 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | they are saying that LA takes water from sources which would otherwise drain into the sacramento and san joaquin river delta. The video from this post mentions the California State Water Project which takes water from the Feather River (Oroville Dam) and distributes it along the Western edge of the central valley South to Bakersfield where it is then pumped over the mountains both towards Los Angeles and further East to San Bernardino and Riverside. It provides way more water to SoCal than the two Los Angeles-specific aqueducts from the Owens Valley on the Eastern side of the Sierras. | | | |
| ▲ | dpe82 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Old men yelling at the sky don't often seek rationality or nuance in their cries. |
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| ▲ | jsLavaGoat 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Yes, Norcal spent decades wagging fingers at SoCal about this. There were books like Cadillac Desert. Meanwhile, San Francisco drinks clean glacier water that a valley in Yosemite was destroyed to provide this and they refuse to repurpose a downstream damn that has enough capacity to do it. Physician, heal thyself. |
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| ▲ | Melatonic an hour ago | parent [-] | | Crystal Springs isnt anywhere near Yosemite if that is what you are referencing. That being said it supposedly was gorgeous and almost as amazing before being filled with water | | |
| ▲ | jsLavaGoat 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Not Crystal Springs. Hetch Hetchy, the damning of which legendarily caused John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, to die of a broken heart. | | |
| ▲ | stouset 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It’s a nitpick but the words you are looking for are “dam”, “dammed”, and “damming”. Damning is a very different thing entirely. |
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| ▲ | dontlikeyoueith an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | They are referring to Hetch Hetchy. |
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