California Water Restrictions

[NW-Bound]

I think this person is focusing on the wrong liquid based on her name. [emoji38]

Amanda Starbuck, research director with Food & Water Watch

On a more serious note, do we really want to curtail ag water which results in food being grown?
That just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
Also, I love almonds and almond milk. I grew up with an almond orchard in my backyard. It is now office buildings.

Well, I like almonds too. However, almond trees take from 1 to 3 gallons to produce a single almond.

Almond growing is a recent phenomenon in California, where 80% almond of the world is produced. Prior to CA almond mass production, the nut was produced in Spain and Iraq mainly for domestic consumption and little was exported.

Almond trees now use up 10% of CA water.

 

[ncbill]

CA also has to flush a lot of freshwater directly into the ocean to meet environmental regs.

 

[aja8888]

BTW, electric bill from PG$E says I pay 34 cents a kw hour for electricity. I wonder how that compares across the rest of the USA.

That seems pretty high. Where we are in Texas (north of Houston) we pay $0.12/kwh.

 

[explanade]

I think this person is focusing on the wrong liquid based on her name. [emoji38]

Amanda Starbuck, research director with Food & Water Watch

On a more serious note, do we really want to curtail ag water which results in food being grown?
That just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
Also, I love almonds and almond milk. I grew up with an almond orchard in my backyard. It is now office buildings.

It's not necessarily curtail but it's that some of these crops are very water-intensive and these farmers have water rights going back decades which let them continue to use large volumes.

A lot of the ag water use in CA are for lucrative cash crops. It's not like they'd be depriving them water for staples like wheat and other grains.

 

[NW-Bound]

CA also has to flush a lot of freshwater directly into the ocean to meet environmental regs.

?

I search the Web, and found this article which said rainwater in LA in driest years still amounts to 30-50% of the city water usage. The problem is how to catch and store it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka...flow-straight-into-the-ocean/?sh=3f127ed1517c

By the way, yesterday I saw Newsom say that CA has a budget surplus of almost $100 billion. It's the windfall from tax revenues off the stock bull market. Maybe some of that money will get used for water and electricity projects in the state.

 

[explanade]

Well specifically a lot of tech industry workers selling stock which was part of their compensation.

It's not necessarily that CA invest more in equities.

 

[NW-Bound]

Well specifically a lot of tech industry workers selling stock which was part of their compensation.

It's not necessarily that CA invest more in equities.

Yes. I said tax revenues on equities, not return on equities.

 

[Turbo29]

BTW, electric bill from PG$E says I pay 34 cents a kw hour for electricity. I wonder how that compares across the rest of the USA.

Is that a flat rate plan. Then it is high. Here flat rate is 12.99¢/kWhr for the highest level of use in peak summer rate period.
SRP--Basic Rate Plan

Personally, I use what they call their "EZ-3" plan, which actually saves me money compared to using the basic plan.

SRP--All Residential Rate Plans

 

[NW-Bound]

Is that a flat rate plan. Then it is high. Here flat rate is 12.99¢/kWhr for the highest level of use in peak summer rate period.
SRP--Basic Rate Plan

Personally, I use what they call their "EZ-3" plan, which actually saves me money compared to using the basic plan.

SRP--All Residential Rate Plans

Also an SRP customer here. For years, I use the Time-of-Use plan, which in the summer charges 7.59c off-peak and 24.38c on peak (2PM-8PM).

My off-grid solar powers the house starting at about 9AM when the sun is high enough. The battery gets enough charge to run the whole house including the ACs until past 8PM. Thus, I avoid the peak charge.

Right now, I have enough solar power to run off-grid 24 hours. I keep only the auxiliary fridge plus some lighting circuits on the grid. My solar+battery runs everything else: two mini-split ACs, large 32 c.f. fridge, the water heater, pool pump, kitchen appliances, miscellaneous electronics, lighting.

High temp has been 105F. I do not run out of solar power for 24 hr operation until the high temp reaches 110F and beyond.

 

[Ronstar]

Glad we don't live out west. We live on a small lake in the midwest, and use about 1500 gallons of lake water a day to water the lawn. Cutting back to 3 days a week this year.

 

[REWahoo]

That seems pretty high. Where we are in Texas (north of Houston) we pay $0.12/kwh.

Our co-op just published our new time-based usage rates that will go into effect on June 1. In addition to a flat fee of $25/mo* we will pay $0.07/kWh except between 2 pm and 6 pm, when the rates more than double to $0.14 kWh.

*Based on our average usage over the past few years, the $25/mo fee works out be an additional $0.015 kWh.

 

[NW-Bound]

Glad we don't live out west. We live on a small lake in the midwest, and use about 1500 gallons of lake water a day to water the lawn. Cutting back to 3 days a week this year.

In other places, people cannot just pump water whenever they feel like it.

In WA, I read about homeowners not allowed to catch the rainwater from their roof in some places. No [-]windfall[/-] rainfall profits allowed!

As it turns out, most counties allow this, as long as you do not build structures specifically to catch rain water, and the water is used on site and not for drinking.

 

[Ronstar]

In other places, people cannot just pump water whenever they feel like it.

In WA, I read about homeowners not allowed to catch the rainwater from their roof in some places. No [-]windfall[/-] rainfall profits allowed!

As it turns out, most counties allow this, as long as you do not build structures specifically to catch rain water, and the water is used on site and not for drinking.

I'm surprised our HOA still allows pumping from the lake.

But I can't see anything wrong with collecting water that has fallen on your own roof. They generally water their outdoor plants with the water that they catch. So water eventually ends up in the ground whether they catch it or not. I fail to see WA's position on not allowing this.

 

[NW-Bound]

I'm surprised our HOA still allows pumping from the lake.

But I can't see anything wrong with collecting water that has fallen on your own roof. They generally water their outdoor plants with the water that they catch. So water eventually ends up in the ground whether they catch it or not. I fail to see WA's position on not allowing this.

I agree.

I think some counties have preemptive laws to prevent commercial operators from building large rain collectors to get rainwater that would normally replenish the aquifer or flow out to creeks and streams.

 

[Ronstar]

I agree.

I think some counties have preemptive laws to prevent commercial operators from building large rain collectors to get rainwater that would normally replenish the aquifer or flow out to creeks and streams.

And here in Illinois, developments are required to build storm water detention ponds or underground storage to prevent flooding. I'm sure that the powers that be here would not care if people were keeping rain water. Flooding is by far more of a problem here than lack of water.

 

[NW-Bound]

And here in Illinois, developments are required to build storm water detention ponds or underground storage to prevent flooding. I'm sure that the powers that be here would not care if people were keeping rain water. Flooding is by far more of a problem here than lack of water.

That's what I keep sayin'.

People with water level higher than their nose need to share with almond growers out West.

 

[aja8888]

Our co-op just published our new time-based usage rates that will go into effect on June 1. In addition to a flat fee of $25/mo* we will pay $0.07/kWh except between 2 pm and 6 pm, when the rates more than double to $0.14 kWh.

*Based on our average usage over the past few years, the $25/mo fee works out be an additional $0.015 kWh.

That's real good. We are in that strange area in the greater Houston spread where we have no "choices" even though Harris County and most everywhere else in Texas is deregulated. We are stuck with Entergy Texas, which is just fine. I had to call them to find out or cost rate as it's not published on our bill. That was a couple of years ago so I am guessing it's close to the same.

If I take our last bill and just figure the rough cost from the usage and the cost, it gives me a little over $.12 and there are no tiers shown on the bill.

My daughter lives a few miles away in Spring and she has Reliant which offers several plans that are tiered and seem to average about $0.14/kwh.

 

[Dash man]

That seems pretty high. Where we are in Texas (north of Houston) we pay $0.12/kwh.

Here in SE PA we pay about $0.064/kwh for electricity supply and another $0.074 for delivery charges. So about $0.138/kwh total. The supply cost is supposed to increase a penny or so next month.

 

[ncbill]

?

I search the Web, and found this article which said rainwater in LA in driest years still amounts to 30-50% of the city water usage. The problem is how to catch and store it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka...flow-straight-into-the-ocean/?sh=3f127ed1517c

By the way, yesterday I saw Newsom say that CA has a budget surplus of almost $100 billion. It's the windfall from tax revenues off the stock bull market. Maybe some of that money will get used for water and electricity projects in the state.

More storage is needed, but:

"...environmental regulations require that about 4.4 million acre-feet of water—enough to sustain 4.4 million families and irrigate one million acres of farmland—be diverted to ecological purposes.

Even in dry years, hundreds of thousands of acre feet of runoff are flushed into San Francisco Bay to protect fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-green-drought-1428271308#

also:

"Of the water that is captured for use, farmers get 40%, cities get 10% and a full 50% goes to environmental purposes — that is, it gets flushed into the ocean.

By arbitrarily excluding the huge environmental water diversion from their calculations — as if it is somehow irrelevant to the water crisis — environmentalists deceptively double the farmers' usage from 40% to 80%."

https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/california-drought-caused-by-environmental-activists/

 

[NW-Bound]

In the high-country of AZ, some towns are having a tough time. The Pine-Strawberry unincorporated area has only 14 of its 38 wells working. The others are running dry.

What makes it worse is that they estimated a loss of 33 million gallons a year due to leakage from the 60-year-old plumbing. Divided that into the population of 2,700, that's a loss of 33 gallons of water per person per day. And they don't have the $130 million dollars to fix the plumbing. It's bleak.

There are nice homes up there owned by retirees or as a 2nd-home as a weekend getaway. Man, lack of water is going to hurt.

 

[Sunset]

That's what I keep sayin'.

People with water level higher than their nose need to share with almond growers out West.

I'd be happy to swap houses with someone out in CA

 

[Sunset]

.... BTW, electric bill from PG$E says I pay 34 cents a kw hour for electricity. I wonder how that compares across the rest of the USA.

Seems expensive, we pay 0.06449 for kWh

I tried to look up the rate at the company website, the rate schedule is 722 pages long

DW was able to show me the bill much faster than finding our rate in the schedule...

 

[Turbo29]

What makes it worse is that they estimated a loss of 33 million gallons a year due to leakage from the 60-year-old plumbing. Divided that into the population of 2,700, that's a loss of 33 gallons of water per person per day. And they don't have the $130 million dollars to fix the plumbing. It's bleak.

33 million gallons is 100 acre-feet of water. Interestingly Tempe Town Lake loses around 2000 acre-feet per year to evaporation (2/3 of its total volume). https://www.amwua.org/blog/tempe-town-lake-how-and-why-did-they-do-that


Along the same lines I have reported several leaks (one of them very sizeable) to the City of Phoenix; it usually takes them about a month to get a crew out and repair it.

 

[skipro33]

Is that a flat rate plan. Then it is high. Here flat rate is 12.99¢/kWhr for the highest level of use in peak summer rate period.
SRP--Basic Rate Plan

Personally, I use what they call their "EZ-3" plan, which actually saves me money compared to using the basic plan.

SRP--All Residential Rate Plans

Here is a link to PG$E's rate options for residential.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...EQFnoECAgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2LazPC9PdsLjiZLaFL_IrW

This is a download pdf file.
I am E1, but only because I am grandfathered in under my solar contract. Also tier 1 is so little, no one can survive on that few kw hours. Most folks max out tier 2 as well or suffer without air conditioning in 100+ degree heat.

It is much worse for electric car charging homes, over 50 cents a kw hour.
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/loca...plans/rate-plan-options/rates-ev2-a-745px.jpg

 

[NW-Bound]

Here is a link to PG$E's rate options for residential.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...EQFnoECAgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2LazPC9PdsLjiZLaFL_IrW

This is a download pdf file.
I am E1, but only because I am grandfathered in under my solar contract. Also tier 1 is so little, no one can survive on that few kw hours. Most folks max out tier 2 as well or suffer without air conditioning in 100+ degree heat.

It is much worse for electric car charging homes, over 50 cents a kw hour.
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/loca...plans/rate-plan-options/rates-ev2-a-745px.jpg

When I applied the Time-of-Use rate of California to my July 2017 electric bill (pre-solar) which was on the Time-of-Use rate of SRP here, instead of $350 I would have paid $1360.

I am now mostly off-grid with my solar+battery system, and my bill for July 2021 was $105. If the temperature stayed below 105F, I would not use much off the grid and my bill would be $40 or less.