California water shortage

[David Michael Bigeleisen]

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

[vinny]

stop watering lawns in southern california. that should take care of it.

[Erik Larsen]

Divorce:)

[Merg Ross]

I tray soak prints over night after a printing session, dumping and replacing with fresh water a few times. Then hypo-clear, or similar, for twenty minutes, and then into the print washer for an hour. I collect the rinse water (bypass the City sewer) outside in containers for garden/plant use. In years of plentiful water supply, I do not bother collecting the water in containers. This year I will.

[Tori Nelson]

We have city water for the house and darkroom and a high producing well for everything outside. Even though we are on a well we're still fairly conservative with the well water - just because.

[Brian Sims]

Tell your wife that if darkroom water use had any meaningful effect on total water use there would be plenty of water because there are probably on 7 darkrooms left in all of California.

Of course, you could tell her that you'd be glad to re-plumb the house so the darkroom rinse water could be recycled to the bathtub.

If she happens to golf, you could just laugh hysterically at her for gross hypocrisy.

[AtlantaTerry]

If California doesn't get some badly needed snow or rain this summer is going to be a nightmare of savage fires up and down the state. Look into fire-retardant foam to use in an emergency.

[Michael Rosenberg]

I am on a well in NC, so I do not have to conserve water. None the less, I do something similar to Merg. I accumulate the prints in a large tray, and do 3 dump/refills a half hour or hour apart, and flipping prints at least once every cycle. I then soak O.N., and repeat cycle twice. Then squeegee and rack.

Mike

[Tin Can]

Exactly and stop trying to gain access to the Great Lakes. We will not drain them for California.


stop watering lawns in southern california. that should take care of it.

[Michael Kadillak]

Most of the water problems are the result of nothing more than excessive utilization of a finite resource. When you are faced with sprawling population unchecked with common sense pragmatism on important issues such as water supply the news media wants to blame it on anything but the real causation. Case in point are places like Phoenix that barely get any rain and continue to build like there is no tomorrow knowing full well that their water resources are being diluted month by month. As those that own the water rights upstream refuse to bail out those downstream the first phase of crisis will be self imposed conservation. The second phase will be strict allocation with over use penalties. The third phase will be necessary reduction of the concept of a continuous sprawling metropolis and being forced to finally face the music. This is not about politics or ideology. Communities that are doing the most whining on this issue mostly ignored it hoping that it would go away. This is a problem that can be easily solved it we leave the emotion on the sidelines and use the brain that God gave us.

[Tin Can]

I might add, the last phase is war.


Most of the water problems are the result of nothing more than excessive utilization of a finite resource. When you are faced with sprawling population unchecked with common sense pragmatism on important issues such as water supply the news media wants to blame it on anything but the real causation. Case in point are places like Phoenix that barely get any rain and continue to build like there is no tomorrow knowing full well that their water resources are being diluted month by month. As those that own the water rights upstream refuse to bail out those downstream the first phase of crisis will be self imposed conservation. The second phase will be strict allocation with over use penalties. The third phase will be necessary reduction of the concept of a continuous sprawling metropolis and being forced to finally face the music. This is not about politics or ideology. Communities that are doing the most whining on this issue mostly ignored it hoping that it would go away. This is a problem that can be easily solved it we leave the emotion on the sidelines and use the brain that God gave us.

[Oren Grad]

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?

It's possible to substitute your time/labor for water by using alternative wash sequences that are built around extended soaks in a few changes of still water with a brief final wash in running water. Given variations in water and in technique you need to run your own residual hypo tests to verify that any particular sequence will do the job for you.

[bobwysiwyg]

Most of the water problems are the result of nothing more than excessive utilization of a finite resource. When you are faced with sprawling population unchecked with common sense pragmatism on important issues such as water supply the news media wants to blame it on anything but the real causation. Case in point are places like Phoenix that barely get any rain and continue to build like there is no tomorrow knowing full well that their water resources are being diluted month by month. As those that own the water rights upstream refuse to bail out those downstream the first phase of crisis will be self imposed conservation. The second phase will be strict allocation with over use penalties. The third phase will be necessary reduction of the concept of a continuous sprawling metropolis and being forced to finally face the music. This is not about politics or ideology. Communities that are doing the most whining on this issue mostly ignored it hoping that it would go away. This is a problem that can be easily solved it we leave the emotion on the sidelines and use the brain that God gave us.

Yup. I suggest reading "The Ripple Affect."

[John Kasaian]

My washer is out on the porch and the flow eventually irrigates shrubbery, so instead of watering for 20 minutes six times a month the shrubbery gets watered for thirty minutes maybe three times a month at most.

[Daniel Stone]

Most of the water problems are the result of nothing more than excessive utilization of a finite resource. When you are faced with sprawling population unchecked with common sense pragmatism on important issues such as water supply the news media wants to blame it on anything but the real causation. Case in point are places like Phoenix that barely get any rain and continue to build like there is no tomorrow knowing full well that their water resources are being diluted month by month. As those that own the water rights upstream refuse to bail out those downstream the first phase of crisis will be self imposed conservation. The second phase will be strict allocation with over use penalties. The third phase will be necessary reduction of the concept of a continuous sprawling metropolis and being forced to finally face the music. This is not about politics or ideology. Communities that are doing the most whining on this issue mostly ignored it hoping that it would go away. This is a problem that can be easily solved it we leave the emotion on the sidelines and use the brain that God gave us.

Well stated Michael!
I've wondered for a long time why people continue to grow lawns, and not food...

[Michael Kadillak]

Well stated Michael!
I've wondered for a long time why people continue to grow lawns, and not food...

Sam Walton commented once that one cannot expect to solve a problem until they own it. We have rapidly become a society of pass the buck until there is nobody to pass the buck to or the check from those that promised to take care of us either does not show up or bounces.

[Jody_S]

Weren't many of the earliest photographs washed in streams or any old source of water that was at hand (clean or not)? I don't know where or when we started washing darkroom prints for ridiculous amounts of time, but I've read a couple of times that we could greatly reduce wash times with no ill effect, even on fibre-based papers. RC-based papers can have the wash almost completely eliminated, as with mechanical processors.

I was rather haphazard with my washing, as a teenager. I most certainly wasn't allowed to take over the kitchen sink as I do now; I simply left them all in a tray with dirty water during the printing session, and swapped out that water once or twice before a photo-flo bath and hanging to dry, or placing on my paper dryer. None of my prints from that time show any signs of deterioration in 30-40 years, including my double-weight fiber-base that I was lucky enough to pick up in a store closing.

[joselsgil]

David,

So far, the drought has not affected the end use consumer. Not yet anyways. If we do not get any snow in the Sierra Navada and local mountains, then most likely a tier pricing will go into effect. Once your water bill affects your pocket book, people's watering habits will change.

David, why not use any of the newer print washer? They do not use much water and any water that they use can be stored in a clean trash barrel and used for watering plants later.

On a side note. The average single dwelling household in California, 75% of it's water consumption is used on watering the landscaping and not human consumption. As Vinny pointed out, "Stop watering lawns". Most lawn grasses have a very short root system, that requires them to be watered often, due to water evaporation.

When I wash my film or prints, all my waste water goes to my shrubs or trees. What little contaminants is found in the water, will not affect my trees or shrubs.

Jose

[Tin Can]

Phoenix watered the golf courses into a climate change. Swamp coolers no longer work there, haven't for decades. Coming over the ridge and looking into the basin 30 years ago was enough to make me turn around and not enter the dirty damp air.

I had the same problem with LA in the 70's coming from the desert, when I got by Riverside, I would look at the air pollution and simply turn around and go back to better air and less people.

[onnect17]

I think limiting the use of water in the lawn is one of the steps with most significant impact in water preservation. Even here in New England, where the hot summer is not an issue, I use almost 80% of the water bill in the lawn/garden.
I remember when (a couple of years back) Florida, Alabama and Georgia faced a severe drought and the state officials asked the population to reduce water consumption. So the people responded and started using less water, even a year after. Of course, as a result, the water management department saw a decrease also in the revenues so they added higher fees to balance the budget. Nice payback for people's effort. Good luck next time asking to preserve water!

And many small towns are now charging fees for having your own water well. Unbelievable!

The point is, overdevelopment is only one of the causes. Policy is also having an impact.

[Jim Noel]

During the last major water shortage two things happened: we got rid of our grass lawn and Ilford published their low water method of washing prints.
You can read the whole thing on their web site, but basically it consists of filling a tray with water and leafing through the prints for five minutes, then replace the water and repeat. Do this through five changes of water and the prints are clean. I use this method for both paper and film. Film only requires 3 changes of water.

[ROL]

I save recycle used pyro developer, fix and selenium into cocktail mixers for posters not from California.

[Tin Can]

+1


I save recycle used pyro developer, fix and selenium into cocktail mixers for posters not from California.

[Tin Can]

Actually we do have a right to comment. California affects the entire nation. Many laws are instigated by California. California and China have tried to gain access to Great lakes water and we responded with a Great Lakes coalition with all adjoining states and Canada. Heck somebody was trying to tap Lake Michigan with a sideways drill at least 50 miles out, to suck water to California. Sneaky, like a drug tunnel.

I have been to the source of the Colorado river and to it's end in a dribble in Mexico. I have seen Imperial Valley water flowing like magic in the Mojave from said river. I was on Lake Powell before it filled and wondered at the ruined desert we could see underwater.

Here is how we see it. http://www.wbez.org/frontandcenter/2011-06-21/great-lakes-face-increasing-pressure-water-world-own-backyard-88159


California is not a alone, but could be if it doesn't wake up.

[evan clarke]

It's not a water shortage, it's a population surplus...

[Michael Cienfuegos]

I save recycle used pyro developer, fix and selenium into cocktail mixers for posters not from California.

Doe it kill the taste of the cheap liquor?

[gleaf]

Ilford and Kodak have data on sequential rinse for archival wash. If depth of black is not critical then RC takes total wash down to 2 minutes.
I'd run some tests to see what it takes to get archival wash results with your local water quality. My spectrographic chemist friend thinks not using
sequential baths of distilled water for plate washing is less than a quality effort. I have not gone that far yet, but have priced a small batch
table top still. My issue here is protecting septic system bacterial so have to pay for chemical hauler to pump my residue.

[Drew Wiley]

I was lovin' the drought for the rare combination of dry autumn golds and greiges and crisp winter light. But it rained enough a few days ago to clear the air up at
least, and it was nice to see the Sierras all covered with white again. I'm wondering how all the coyote pups will do without a good rodent crop like in past years.
We happen to get our city directly from reservoirs in the Sierra, so the water quality will remain good, but quantity is another issue, and it makes me wonder how
much black and white printing I'll be able to do. Color printing takes much less rinse water. We'll have coastal fog to keep our gardens green, but inland, and for
farms in particular, things look bleak. They have to keep a distinct trickle of river water flowing thru the Delta into SF Bay or saltwater intrusion will back up and
potentially become a vastly bigger problem than the drought itself. That's a simple fact of hyrodological engineering. And anyone using river or well water this year
will have a higher risk of mineral content or worse.

[joselsgil]

It's not a water shortage, it's a population surplus...

Actually, it is a drought. 2013 was the driest year in California since rainfall records have been kept. California received less than 5 inches of rainfall for the season. So far this year, it looks like we may receive less rainfall than 2013. Sierra Nevada snow pack is currently at 12% where it should be.

California has no plans on taping into the Great Lakes water. The cost of sending that water to California would be so expensive, it would be cost prohibited. It would be cheaper to build desalination plants in a large scale. I believe one desalination plant is being built Carlsbad, in Southern Orange County with plans of going online in 2016. The desalination plant is designed to produce 50 million gallons per day.

[Tin Can]

Nature saved by science.


Actually, it is a drought. 2013 was the driest year in California since rainfall records have been kept. California received less than 5 inches of rainfall for the season. So far this year, it looks like we may receive less rainfall than 2013. Sierra Nevada snow pack is currently at 12% where it should be.

California has no plans on taping into the Great Lakes water. The cost of sending that water to California would be so expensive, it would be cost prohibited. It would be cheaper to build desalination plants in a large scale. I believe one desalination plant is being built Carlsbad, in Southern Orange County with plans of going online in 2016. The desalination plant is designed to produce 50 million gallons per day.

[Kodachrome25]

It's snowing right now, adding to the dump of over 3 feet that occurred over a 48 hour period a few days ago. There are piles of snow in town that are nearly two stories high....all of these resources that take care of us are why I live where I do. Behind my home is a creek in which I can put my hands in and take a drink, maybe filter it in the Summer...but it is there to drink, to nourish, to flow as a critical resource, not one of convenience or for watering a lawn in Palmdale. Our valley has thousands of square miles of high country above 10,000 feet that end up being one of the largest feeders of snowmelt to the Colorado River. Even in a severe drought year, we, personally, have clean water to drink....

So needless to say, I used to live in So Cal, I saw the waste, the pools, the lawns, the packed population density in an area that was pretty much arid right to the coast...on a good year. So when I look at these beautiful banks of frozen water and think of how precious it is, it really pisses me off to think of some idiot in their Escalade that has two days of *slight* dust on it wasting OUR water on washing it...as they sit on the 405 with the AC on yapping on their phone with not a care in the world.

I don't care what the law says, if it comes down to it and things get real bad, California can not have our water....the law of nature shall rule over all else. The world's water supply is one of the most underrated ecological hot points of our time, but like any other thing to do with the climate, people want the easy way out, don't want to change their habits.

So it will get worse....

[Drew Wiley]

Santa Barbara built a huge desalination plant long ago but never used it. I think folks just got used to drinking Clorox straight from the bottle. And desalination is energy intensive. Low stream runoff years affect not only water availability in general, but cause diminished supplies of hydroelectric power, and now it seem, even
the wind turbines haven't been turning as much due to less wind than normal, and the specious hope of fracking in Calif is also not going to help because, among other things, it is water intensive. So there's just no free ride. But even though this is a real drought, it is reckless development that is the manmade aspect of water shortage. I'll avoid current political implications. But for those of us for whom this is a legit photographic topic per se, the effect of the water wars in the Owens Valley and San Joaquin Valley have been recurrent photographic themes for decades. I was really surprised to see about 10 sec of old black and white film footage in a recent PBS documentary about water wars in the San Joaquin Valley with my dad in it, inspecting a canal, the year before I was born. He never told me he was filmed. Maybe I'm the odd duck of outdoor photographers, but I am really looking forward to getting more drought shots. But we are now getting enough
rain to green up the hills at least temporarily. But still it will be a "different" year, and even drought years lead to different kinds of flowers popping out, and all kinds of other interesting things. Sometimes there are wonderful patterns of color and shape exposed in drying reservoirs. And shorter grasses are often a boon
to getting foregrounds in focus with an 8x10. Blah blah. But it's really too soon to know how early the high country will be open. We've all been fooled before. Two more storms are headed our way right now.

[gleaf]

Two types of stories on earth according to Navy lore... Fairy tales (once upon a time..) and Sea Stories (Now this is No S**t). Sea Story. 25 years ago the fellow at the next desk said when they ran the early tests on Infa-red satellite images they discovered healthy forests and sick forests. Back tracking pointed to the industrial soot of the west coast generating particulate matter in sufficient quantity to move the precipitation patterns. Cleaning up the environment was likely moving things back toward pre-industrial precipitation distributions.... And of course add natural climate variation and anything else appropriate to the data mix. Welcome to unintended consequences.

[Drew Wiley]

... that is certainly some inaccurate science, cause we do have pollution here, but rarely burn coal. And we don't have much heavy industry similar to that which
once characterized the Great Lakes area, though some noxious oil refineries are present in City of Idustry down in LA, in the stinky Bakersfield area, and in "Cancer Alley" along the river Delta up here. Central Valley smog reaches up to about 6000 ft and does affect trees. On the east side of the mtns the wind stirs up dust on the empty old Owens Lakebed and stirs up alkaline dust, which can get up fairly high too in that area. And in localized areas just too many campsites and campfires can affect the health of adjacent forest. The healthiness or sickness of our forest is more related to how that specific jurisdiction has been managed, which is the
case all over the West. And anywhere where there has been a significant encroachment of roads and suburbanization, there are going to be a lot more fires. The
drought simply increases the risk, somewhat dramatically, by extending the duration of the risk season.

[Vaughn]

...I believe one desalination plant is being built Carlsbad, in Southern Orange County with plans of going online in 2016. The desalination plant is designed to produce 50 million gallons per day.

I hope they were not counting on cheap power from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station next door, as it is closing down.

[Drew Wiley]

... Don't worry, Kodachrome... LA hasn't been stealing much of your water for awhile. Las Vegas has. So you can rest assured that ninety golf courses right in the
middle of 115 degree heat, along with hundreds of acres of artificial lakes and fountains, and thousand of hotel room flushing things down, are putting that water to its best use.

[Tin Can]

I put this here, instead of the poorly designed film/print wash water poll page.

Water is the issue all over the USA. The Ogallala Aquifer is being sucked dry and I am seriously concerned about a dust bowl return. anybody watch Ken Burns' 'The Dust Bowl'? http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/

Even my beloved Midwest was a big mess then and it can happen again. Most likely will, but when?

Too many people.

[Drew Wiley]

Yes Randy, I have watched that excellent documentary several times. Of course, we have quite a museum collection here of classic dust bowl images and of the Oakie emigrees. It's going to happen again. Tree rows are being knocked out for monoculture crops, you name it. I just mentioned Valley Fever on an adjacent thread. It's nasty stuff, and it is starting to spread with the dust for hundred of miles around, and of current inland drought will no doubt be cause of epidemic levels of it. It's a fungal infection mimicking tuberculosis, and just as hard to cure, due to spores in the soil. I think in the midwest it's termed coccidiomycosis - closely related. I'm getting some color negs dev right now that have some modern ghost town elements - somebody's resort dream or trailer park retirement, empty with dead trees, encroaching sand, and mtns and snow in the background. The Darwin award. Not everything goes extinct by getting eaten by something
bigger or faster. Some creatures just die of thirst. Gosh I hope I have time to do some color printing soon. I haven't driven thru the Midwest, but have flown over
northern parts of it, and have seen huge sand blowout craters in loess soils, just like those that were harbingers of the 30's dust bowl.

[Tin Can]

As a kid in Northern Minnesota, we golfed on short bare grass and sand. The Tee and Greens were raked sand.

I had a dose of Valley Fever in AZ in the early 80's, so I left.

I see a dust bowl coming soon, but nobody listens.

I hate golf.


Yes Randy, I have watched that excellent documentary several times. Of course, we have quite a museum collection here of classic dust bowl images and of the Oakie emigrees. It's going to happen again. Tree rows are being knocked out for monoculture crops, you name it. I just mentioned Valley Fever on an adjacent thread. It's nasty stuff, and it is starting to spread with the dust for hundred of miles around, and of current inland drought will no doubt be cause of epidemic levels of it. It's a fungal infection mimicking tuberculosis, and just as hard to cure, due to spores in the soil. I think in the midwest it's termed coccidiomycosis - closely related. I'm getting some color negs dev right now that have some modern ghost town elements - somebody's resort dream or trailer park retirement, empty with dead trees, encroaching sand, and mtns and snow in the background. The Darwin award. Not everything goes extinct by getting eaten by something
bigger or faster. Some creatures just die of thirst. Gosh I hope I have time to do some color printing soon. I haven't driven thru the Midwest, but have flown over
northern parts of it, and have seen huge sand blowout craters in loess soils, just like those that were harbingers of the 30's dust bowl.

[Jim Jones]

During the last major water shortage two things happened: we got rid of our grass lawn and Ilford published their low water method of washing prints.
You can read the whole thing on their web site, but basically it consists of filling a tray with water and leafing through the prints for five minutes, then replace the water and repeat. Do this through five changes of water and the prints are clean. I use this method for both paper and film. Film only requires 3 changes of water.


Yes, indeed! Running water is a convenience, not a necessity. Half of the six darkrooms I've set up over several decades have had no running water. Tray processing of prints and LF film was the most practical way. With agitation, it is quite effective. With a helper, I could produce 200 8x10 RC prints in an evening. Doing without print washers adds little to the burden of printing for oneself, and doing it on a larger scale can add a cachet for conservation conscious customers.

[Drew Wiley]

We don't need any landscaping water here on the coast at all, since the fog keeps things growing too fast anyway, so our own household water consumption is extremely small. But still there are a few measures we can personally take to cut back our share. Common sense darkroom procedure will help, but once warm weather nears I generally shift from black and white to color printing anyway; and my processing drums don't use much water. I am in the middle of three generations of serious background in hydrology. My nephew recently finished a five year contract tracing groundwater contamination in the Sacto Valley. Ironically, back in the energy scam days of the 90's, Enron's big play wasn't even natural gas, but how to obtain a chokehold on California's dams and water, to drive pricing insane. They almost got away with it. But in order to pull off a shell game and create any artificial shortage, they had to figure where to hide vast amounts of water underground, and they sure did their homework. Only a few of us actually knew about the significant beds of sponge-like Piocene sandstone underlying the east side of the valley. Local farmers got very suspicious of the huge attempted land grab by out-of-state types and their cover was blown. But the positive outcome was, now our state hydrologists know about this and have an option to store water safe from evaporation, which is just one serious shortcoming of more obscenely expensive and ecologically disruptive dams. Nothing to store this year, but this could be a significant ace in the hole in the future. My dad knew about
all this from back in his dam and canal supervising days, and I in turn from an interest in the fossils and general geological standpoint. It was sure fun driving around
with him in his 90's to various locations, while I still had the chance. He was also involved in the big water projects in the Northwest.

[Tin Can]

Chinatown (1974) Pardon me, I am on a movie kick, where everything reminds me of a movie.

I know you wild west types hate cities and anything back east, but conditions could improve if we stopped suburban sprawl and highly encouraged most to live in actual cities, LA is not a city. Cities are efficient warehouses of excess population. And cities need to totally eliminate cars, move all transport underground and return the streets to a more pleasant environment for walking and bicycles.

Suburbia is a bigger problem and will become ghost towns sometime in our grandchildren's lives. Ticky tacky, icky.

Preserve farmland and water for sustainable farming, encourage family farmers and pay then somehow, what they are worth. Which is a much more than now.

Make wilderness, true wilderness, by not allowing private ownership, houses or superhighways to it, with once again, no private cars.

If you want to go into the wild, walk there, from the nearest public transport.

No helicopter rescue either.

This is not political, but an utopian dream.

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah.... lots of famous books, novels, movies, and recent documentaries about the water wars of the West. And sadly, the moral of the story is that, yet once more,
"We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history".

[John Koehrer]

Photo Techniques had a column written by David Vestal.
He wrote that in accidentally leaving prints in standing water overnight resulted in no detectible
fixer remaining in the paper. He confirmed his findings by also using an independent lab.

[Tin Can]

Dilution is everything.

[Bruce Barlow]

I stopped using running water even in water-rich New Hampster.

I ran water for ten minutes at the beginning, let prints sit in standing water for an hour, then ran water for ten minutes in a Zone VI 11x14 washer that takes 8 minutes to fill.

HT-2 tests showed no residual fixer.

That said, I'm still trying to figure out why prints should outlive me. No reason I can think of.

[Drew Wiley]

Well I wouldn't want anything potentially harmful left in my prints. The way I figure it, when I die some bums will be rummaging thru a dumpster and stumble onto a
pile of my archivally processed and mounted prints, and discover that they are more nutritious and taste better than the average pizza crust in this town.

[viablex1]

definitely agree and eventually war over water, whatever china is doing to the overall earth water table will eventually affect us all. It is so good to hear that people on here are about conserving water. Everything helps. Water is so precious.

[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

[Michael Cienfuegos]

Chinatown (1974) Pardon me, I am on a movie kick, where everything reminds me of a movie.

I know you wild west types hate cities and anything back east, but conditions could improve if we stopped suburban sprawl and highly encouraged most to live in actual cities, LA is not a city. Cities are efficient warehouses of excess population. And cities need to totally eliminate cars, move all transport underground and return the streets to a more pleasant environment for walking and bicycles.

Suburbia is a bigger problem and will become ghost towns sometime in our grandchildren's lives. Ticky tacky, icky.

Preserve farmland and water for sustainable farming, encourage family farmers and pay then somehow, what they are worth. Which is a much more than now.

Make wilderness, true wilderness, by not allowing private ownership, houses or superhighways to it, with once again, no private cars.

If you want to go into the wild, walk there, from the nearest public transport.

No helicopter rescue either.

This is not political, but an utopian dream.

I don't want to live in an anthill. :p 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

[Tin Can]

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


I don't want to live in an anthill. :p 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.

[Thad Gerheim]

"Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting for."

Not much has changed in the last 130 years! California tried taking Idaho's Snake River water in the late 1970's. Thank-you, Frank Church for stopping it. Maybe its time to hook your print washer up to the tailpipe of a hydrogen powered car.

[analoguey]

Wow. Most educative topic, I must say.
Does water play an important role in US domestic politics?

[Tin Can]

Cannot discuss politics.


Wow. Most educative topic, I must say.
Does water play an important role in US domestic politics?

[Vaughn]

Wow. Most educative topic, I must say.
Does water play an important role in US domestic politics?

Domestic and foreign.