California water shortage

[Tin Can]

Thanks Michael, I will. I was describing a personal dream.

I don't want to live in an anthill. I have a small dog, he likes to run in the backyard with no leash, he is leashed when I walk him. I enjoy my small garden, a few citrus trees. You have shown us your cave, I think it's really cool, too cramped for me, but still really cool. But you have to share your digs with others, I don't. I've managed to keep my water usage down for the past thirty-seven years I have lived in this house. Enjoy your anthill.


m

[tgtaylor]

CALIFORNIA WATER SHORTAGE UPDATE:

We're expecting 5 straight days of rain beginning tonight! If everything pans out as forecasted, we will pick up 20% of our normal annual rainfall this weekend.

Thomas

Forgot to mention that we are also expecting floods.

I love this place! Where else but in California can you experience a drought and a flood simultaneously? Doesn't that make you want to move here?

Thomas

[Tin Can]

I'm packing my boat now.

Forgot to mention that we are also expecting floods.

I love this place! Where else but in California can you experience a drought and a flood simultaneously? Doesn't that make you want to move here?

Thomas

[Drew Wiley]

Tom - the irony is that the big dams at the foot of the rivers have to function as both ag water storage and flood control. So, in anticipation of summer snowmelt,
they basically drain the reservoirs to make room, but if the rains don't come the next season, there won't be enough water in storage. Of course, if it hadn't been
so convenient to chase bottomland farmers off their land and plot suburban sprawl all over riverbeds, we could have our cake and eat it too, and the water could
still flow right down the channels out to sea. I've seen developers get permits for floodplain development once they documented that their subdivision would pass
muster on anything shy of a once-in-500yr flood. So they built, suckers bought, then four "once in 500 year" floods came four winters in succession, followed by a
"once in a thousand year" flood the fifth winter. It's hard to make any long term planning make sense when the predominant variable is developer bribes. But some of the manmade mauling of the Central Valley has deservedly gotten some modern documentation. I took a lot of large format shots commuting between my former
ranch property in the Sierras and here on the coast, but some nice published work has been done by Stephen Johnson and Roman Loranc. But one has to be aware
of the potentially deadly consequences of driving around in tule fog and plan accordingly in winter.

[Vaughn]

Forgot to mention that we are also expecting floods.

I love this place! Where else but in California can you experience a drought and a flood simultaneously? Doesn't that make you want to move here?

Thomas

Try Australia! Visiting Lismore, NSW many years ago, the area just declared a drought emergency and the next day, downtown had about two meters of water.

Drought and floods often do go together. Parched soil will not allow water to seep in, so most of the rainfall runs directly off into creeks and rivers.

Yep, California has gone to hell since Morley Baer passed away...

Yep...

[Michael S]

According to an article which appeared in "The Guardian", "Of the nearly 40,000 gas and oil wells drilled since 2011, three quarters were located in areas where water is scarce, and 55% were in areas experiencing drought, the report by the Ceres investor network found. Fracking those wells required 97 billion gallons of water..." "In California, where a drought emergency was declared last month, 96% of new gas and oil wells were located in areas where there was already fierce competition for water."

Could this have something to do with the lack of water in California and the West?

[Drew Wiley]

Probably not... fracking is in its early stages here and highly controversial. It's already ruining some prime farmland, and where they really want to do it is in a very
complicated geological area riddled with unknown faults and highly susceptible to earthquakes, so preventing groundwater contamination is highly unrealistic. But
in significant parts of farmlands, the wells are already poisoned for centuries to come by pesticide abuse. The problem has always been that water gets promised to
more parties than supply can accommodate, so when there's a surplus year it is politically advantageous to say "yes" to everyone, even though it means no pennies will be left in the piggy bank for hard times. And I've already hinted at how there are conflicting usages for the same water. To generate clean hydroelectric power it must be released from dam storage downhill to turbines, then at the bottom of the system it's always a tug of war between storage for irrigation purposes and flood prevention, based on predictions of early summer snow runoff. It all very complicated, and exacerbated by sheer waste. Get a copy of Cadillac Desert. It might be slightly out of date, but is otherwise good reading and will give you a good insight into the history of our water wars. And now we've got to plan for long-term effects of global warming, which is a roll of the dice with many unknown. My own field of research long ago involved geomorphological
studies of the close of the ice age in the West, and a lot of my heretical conclusions have now gone mainstream. The ice age did not simply fade away but closed
with a tantrum. One thing state planners are actually discussing right now is the possibility of the same "bullwhip" effect, in which extreme droughts could alternate
with megafloods, potentially turning vast areas of the Central Valley into lakes again. My advice, farm on the floodplain, but don't build or live on it. There are a lot
of lesson buried in the geological record, some of it not too many centuries back.

[Greg Blank]

Quite a few years back, I had a darkroom in my parent's house, we always had a well that produced enough water to bath and drink but we were conservative. At my first home it was under 15 gallons per minute (I think seven) . Anytime there were hot dry periods my Father made it clear we were to limit water consumption. We later got city water, then moved back onto a well at a new home. One of my early B&W photo instructors showed us the technique of using Hypo clear and washing the final prints just seven extra minutes. An hour really seems excessive but it depends on the size and amount of prints. The more you have to handle if tray washing (leaving through the stack.)

On another note consider, that no print or other use than drinking water is really an enviromentally friendly thing, no print anyone in this world can make will conquer thirst when it needs to be conquered. Clean drinking water is a human right, driving cars-and especially salting wintertime roads, watering lawns or shrubs are not rights, on a planet that is mostly water the way humans use water and withhold water from other humans is a crime that perhaps future generations perhaps will resolve.
But I think humans will continue to be selfish, so maybe not anytime soon without a lot more suffering.

How are California photographers dealing with the water shortage? In particular, I have customarily given my completed prints a five minute hypoclear bath and then placed them in the print washer for an hour. My wife complains that this uses too much water, and she wants me to stop printing.

What thoughts do others have?

David Michael Bigeleisen

[Tin Can]

How much water is used to make camera phones and all that is digital? Sure, software seems inert, but it runs on dirty business. I am pretty sure this late in the game, analog photography is very far off our list of problems. Including total water usage and 'dangerous' chems returned to the source, which is Earth.

Yes, many areas need extreme conservation, and attempts looks great, but we have industry and nuke plants reversing those good deeds faster than most imagine.

We are doomed to disaster, long before we wise up. All living things follow a population bell curve including humans. The kill off will happen. It will be drastic.

I decided at 16 never to make another human, we definitely have enough. I never needed a mini-me.

I think I'll have another drink of lake water.

ymmv

Quite a few years back, I had a darkroom in my parent's house, we always had a well that produced enough water to bath and drink but we were conservative. At my first home it was under 15 gallons per minute (I think seven) . Anytime there were hot dry periods my Father made it clear we were to limit water consumption. We later got city water, then moved back onto a well at a new home. One of my early B&W photo instructors showed us the technique of using Hypo clear and washing the final prints just seven extra minutes. An hour really seems excessive but it depends on the size and amount of prints. The more you have to handle if tray washing (leaving through the stack.)

On another note consider, that no print or other use than drinking water is really an enviromentally friendly thing, no print anyone in this world can make will conquer thirst when it needs to be conquered. Clean drinking water is a human right, driving cars-and especially salting wintertime roads, watering lawns or shrubs are not rights, on a planet that is mostly water the way humans use water and withhold water from other humans is a crime that perhaps future generations perhaps will resolve.
But I think humans will continue to be selfish, so maybe not anytime soon without a lot more suffering.

[Drew Wiley]

The digital and electronics industry is anything but "green". In fact, there creating a new category of stubborn hazmat groundwater and soil conditions which rival
those of the military presence around here previously, or even hard industry. And Silicon Valley and its satellite bedroom communities have caused some of the most
valuable and productive farmland in the country to be paved over... in just about the worst way imaginable. And the same folks who contribute to "save the rainforest" themes don't hesitate to thin out alarming quantities of limited species when it comes to building their own houses and yachts. But even all this is just
a missing drop in the bucket to the whole water issue thing. Our relatively few nuke plants here use seawater for cooling, not fresh water. But those same giant
agribusiness concerns which unfairly got free water for decades also gave everyone their summer melons inexpensively, and now a lot of oil too... Yeah, the
really big users of water have long been major oil companies growing federally-subsidized cotton and crops on their massive landholdings! But that started to
change over a decade ago, and their water is no longer totally free, though in poetic-justice form, they steal most of the water which LA stole form someone else
to begin with! I can't comment on immediate tug-of-wars, because they're right smack in the middle of immediate political hanky-panky themes, so off limits here.
The rest is well recognized history at this point. I don't know what to expect of the upcoming season. I know most outdoor photographers drive down that way
on bumper wildflower years, but I seem to be getting my best shots when nobody else is around. And the only thing which divides one of the most chaotic oilfields
in the country from one its most quiet and pristine wildlife refuges is an anticline called Elkhorn Ridge.