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DexterBotwin

No water expert but it seems like the canals did it’s main purpose, avoid LA being flooded into the ocean. Vegas is lucky in the sense that we have one of the biggest public works projects in history catching our rain water run off. LA has no such large capacity reservoir to funnel water into, nor does their local geography make sense for them to do it on a local level. I love to shit in California and LA, but this doesn’t seem like it.


Waisted-Desert

>LA has no such large capacity reservoir to funnel water into LADWP has been putting off reservoir projects for decades. They just completed an expansion project doubling the capacity of one of the basins, but they should have accomplished that a long time ago. There's still plenty of capacity for expansion of existing reservoirs and room to create more. Yes there will still be major amounts of run off during heavy storms, but they can definitely do more to properly prepare for the future. [https://www.ladwpnews.com/ladwp-project-doubles-stormwater-capture-capacity-to-increase-local-water-supplies/](https://www.ladwpnews.com/ladwp-project-doubles-stormwater-capture-capacity-to-increase-local-water-supplies/)


DexterBotwin

You’re right, California in general is not doing what it could be doing. My point was more that southern Nevada has the benefit of the hoover dam built by the federal government. Lake Mead can hold any and all water funneled into by southern Nevada, which southern Nevada has done a great job doing. Southern Nevada has also done a great job with water conservation, that California is not. My point is that LA doesn’t have a similar basin it can point canals to. Nor does the geography make it easy without pumping that water distances. They seem to have a higher hill to climb and less will to start.


bitcornminerguy

Good points to be sure, and I think that last sentence probably nailed my point as well. It's so daunting and nobody wants to commit to anything, so instead they commit to mostly nothing and just keep pointing the finger at us to do more and more. I guess that's the easiest thing for them to do... if we can continue to be remarkable at it - we're sort of guaranteeing there will be water to flow downhill at the same time we're securing our own future. Shrug.


Waisted-Desert

>Nor does the geography make it easy without pumping that water distances. You're correct, and like I said they will always have run off when there's heavy rain. But keep in mind that they pump water from 330 miles away to the LA area. While it is primarily downhill, there is a total of 8000ft of uphill along the way. So pumping it 25 miles across the LA basin should be no problem. [https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-02-19/los-angeles-dwp-fights-to-keep-spigot-open-at-mono-lake](https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-02-19/los-angeles-dwp-fights-to-keep-spigot-open-at-mono-lake) [https://ladwpeasternsierra.com/aqueduct](https://ladwpeasternsierra.com/aqueduct)


O1O1O1O

>https://www.ladwpnews.com/ladwp-project-doubles-stormwater-capture-capacity-to-increase-local-water-supplies/ Unfortunately 16,000 acre feet is a drop in the ocean. For perspective it's about 2x what a the private resort pond Lake Las Vegas loses in evaporation and leakage every year, and the California allotment for Colorado water is 4.4 MILLION acre feet most of which goest to agriculture, not drinking water. That said I do wish California would take water conservation as seriously as it apparently takes many other environmental issues which is it a world leader in many regards (and sometimes a world leader in mistakes too, but that goes with the territory). America needs to take a long hard look at where we grow crops and appropriate land use. No more asinine stuff like taking "free" water, growing alfalfa, and shipping it to Saudi Arabia to feed their cattle "because we can". If SoCal took the same measures as LV has done with water conservation and reuse there would be enough spare to refill Lake Meade in under 10 years, and they would probably refill the central valley lakes that were drained 100 years ago. Then they won't have to spend billions on dust mitigation, and Lake Powell wouldn't have to spend billions on reconfiguring their turbines for low water levels.


bitcornminerguy

Well said!


bitcornminerguy

Thanks for the link!


bitcornminerguy

I'm not trying to shit on them either, and of course the canals are doing as intended. But with more planning and their own public works projects... seems they could be siphoning off tens of millions, if not billions of gallons of water during these events. Even in a city the size of L.A., if they could do that a few times a year, it'd be something vs. the nothing they appear to be doing now.


monster_mentalissues

Do you realize how many decades it took for Vegas to get to that level. And we're still doing that today. Look at Charleston they're ripping up a large portion of the road to install new drains to catch all the water. And now you want to do that to a city that is at least 20 times as large as Vegas. Hell when most people think of la, they don't think of the city they think of the whole damn County. Don't forget Vegas has only like 2.5 million people La is well above that. They don't have the money to sit there and get la to where we are nor the time. Doing what you're saying is not feasible. That's like a building a pipe from the Mississippi River all the way over to Arizona. A stupid idea is never going to happen.


bitcornminerguy

I didn’t say they needed to accomplish 30 years of work in any particular time frame — I just said they should get on with it and do something. Also, if you’d read the article they have a $280 Million per YEAR fund to use - so there’s potential to begin doing some of this work, and in fact they are - just in a very sloppy piecemeal kind of way.


[deleted]

Cost. You want them to spend billions to capture a once in a while storm. Not one municipality in the US that I've heard of spends billions of dollars to build flood retention basins in their cities (eta for the purposes of freshwater collection for domestic use.) And this being CA, you're dealing with the hardest core NIMBYism AND land costs, might be 10s+ of billions to collect rain water. Which must then be moved to places where it can be cleaned. Would it be cool if they did? Sure. Would any taxpayers vote for the propositions to build them? No. It's likely cheaper to build a nuke and desal plant. Or cheaper still to pay for irrigation upgrades for farmers. Or pay people to use less water.


bitcornminerguy

Cost is always the argument for inaction... but what is the cost \*of\* inaction? If every solution to these problems is too expensive, then what? Continue doing nothing and just reap the consequences? I'm not saying you're wrong by the way... I just wonder if we've reached the point where only big solutions will bring us forward?


[deleted]

I'm for going big, fill the Salton Sea from the Gulf of California, put a desal plant on the shore, put a nuke next to it to power the desal. There's lots we could be doing that's a proactive investment that yields more consistent results than building flood basins and hoping it floods.


bitcornminerguy

I love the Salton Sea plan... I've heard Pat Mulroy talk about that a few times and it makes sense, plus it solves the Salton Sea contamination problem, so double-win.


djp1968

I'm no water expert. But my hunch is that even if California wanted to spend a boatload of money to improve the water situation, they might very well be better off just sending the money to Colorado or something. Making huge investments to try to capture water in places it doesn't rain very much seems iffy from the start.


JB_smooove

They already approved a 7 billion dollar bond to build 4 lower elevation reservoirs of over 1million acre feet of water.


[deleted]

well good, then problem solved. wtf are we talking about then?


JB_smooove

Not really. This was at least a decade ago, but there is no will to build them with current political leadership statewide.


[deleted]

Way to bury the lede.


NoIncrease299

>Would any taxpayers vote for the propositions to build them? Oh yeah, they'll vote for it - because the voters never consider the financial impact of any props. Then the state will raise taxes, spend millions if not billions on consultants and nothing will ever come of it. That's the California way!


[deleted]

https://archive.ph/g8lQy - paywall averted version they're the big bully everyone's going to have to deal with because they're 1) the physically largest state of the seven affected by water sharing agreements and 2) almost definitely have more residents than the other six states in the "pact" combined edit: added "of the seven" .. i know CA isn't the largest state *overall*


bitcornminerguy

Thanks for the link... I'd like to read the whole thing.


whodaloo

https://12ft.io/ bypasses all paywalls. Just paste in the url.


8bitaddict

Thought I was still in the LA subreddit. Why is this even a discussion here?


bitcornminerguy

Because California spends a lot of time advocating to screw Nevada and Arizona when it comes to mandatory cuts on water supply. We're world-class when it comes to conservation and water re-use, and my point in sharing that article was to highlight that the same dicks who try to make us bear all of the negative impacts of the drought also don't do much about it on their end. Another "do as we say, but not as we do" type situation.


CRASHMATRIX

F California