Key Silicon Valley Reservoir To Be Completely Drained Due To Earthquake Risk (bakersfield.com) 131
schwit1 shares a report from Bakersfield Californian: In a dramatic decision that could significantly impact Silicon Valley's water supply, federal dam regulators have ordered Anderson Reservoir, the largest reservoir in Santa Clara County, to be completely drained starting Oct. 1. The 240-foot earthen dam, built in 1950 and located east of Highway 101 between Morgan Hill and San Jose, poses too great of a risk of collapse during a major earthquake, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates dams, has concluded. Anderson Reservoir is owned by the Santa Clara Valley Water District, a government agency based in San Jose. When full, it holds 89,278 acre feet of water -- more than all other nine dams operated by the Santa Clara Valley Water District combined. "With these new requirements, we expect to see an impact to groundwater basins that are replenished with water released from Anderson Reservoir, including South County and southern San Jose," Norma Camacho, the water district's CEO, said. "Staff is already exploring other sources of water that will have to come from outside of the county. While residents have done an excellent job of conserving water since 2013, another drought during this time frame could require everyone to significantly decrease their water use."
Not everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That's what you get with a Democratic supermajority.
Re:Not everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what you get with a Democratic supermajority.
Are you somehow under the impression that Republicans would crack down on farm and factory water usage?
Re:Not everyone (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
No they just wouldn't be giving all the money away to freeloaders that shit all over their sidewalks and instead spend the money on maintaining public infrastructure.
But the reason they're out there is that there's no money to give to them for housing or anything of that nature. I've never understood this argument that the "poor" are getting all this vast amounts of money. I mean they're "poor" isn't part of that word's definition lacking money? And secondly, it's not a Democrat thing to "not maintain public infrastructure". I live in Tennessee, and I can without hesitation tell you, that we're the furthest thing from a Democrat ran state. Still waiting on the rock
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You're confusing things. Not giving hand-outs to the freeloaders that shit all over the sidewalks would in and of itself improve public infrastructure. You have business that are packing up and leaving due to homeless people coming by and literally pissing on their front door, then leaving used needles all over the ground. It's so bad, that California has instituted a full-time "poop patrol". I read an article about one guy whose front door was literally rusted shut from the freeloaders pissing on it every
Re: (Score:2)
I'm just saying you don't see that problem in Republican states.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Pretty soon we'll get to the point where each company will be required to pay a BIT (Basic Income Tax) of an amount equal to the Basic Income coverage required for a robot/AI of that many humanpower.
There aren't any other solutions that don't end in blood.
Re: (Score:2)
That way a company that innovates down costs can still benefit, but money is still available.
Once could also do a wealth tax, but I question the wisdom of that.
Re: (Score:2)
Making productivity innovations static (by taxing them to replace the lost labor) means that effectively we are locked into where we are with the amount goods available.
I want productivity increases, because I want there to be more for everybody.
If instead we use revenue neutral taxes on carbon and VAT to establish UBI, we make things better for everyone that's below average in their consumption, which is a large majority of the people because the average is higher than the
Re: Not everyone (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
That's not where the offence is, it's where the democrats, left and environmentalists would rather drain reservoirs when water levels are low, or refuse to build new reservoirs prior to droughts. In other words, when rain is plentiful it's being wasted by being dumped into the sea.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd think the real fix is that everybody pays the same amount for water in an open auction type system. The cities, the farmers, the bottled water companies, they all pay the same.
Save the water for the grapes and almonds (high margin, can't really grow in other places), and get rid of the cattle (this isn't an anti-cattle rant, just an anti-cattle in CA rant).
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't the point of a reserve of water to use it when levels are low?
Theoretically, yes. But the standard approach has been to flush the reservoirs even more to keep the river flows up "near normal", and so make the issue even worse.
Re: Not everyone (Score:1)
Lay off the crack, bro.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Not everyone (Score:2)
So it happens that sola
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And backups are not an issue for desalinization. You only need to desalinate when there is power
Re: (Score:2)
Let's not kid ourselves that fossil fuel exploration and production doesn't also have tremendous tax credits and subsidies,
They don't. No more than other businesses also get. Can you list a petroleum-industry-only subsidy?
and that nuclear did not also have this when the plants were being constructed.
They actually didn't. And nuclear plants must PRE-PAY all decommissioning and storage fees - right up-front. Unlike other generation sources (like wind, with blades just stacking up because they are too expensive to shred and dispose of).
And backups are not an issue for desalinization. You only need to desalinate when there is power
But for things like hospitals, businesses, street lights - you need dispatchable power. And lots of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously, we need storage for conventional power uses. But desalination that runs on sporadic power? That would be fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Consider renewables. They get $11 billion a year [wikipedia.org] at the Federal level, the lion's share of any spending/subsidies on power - and account for a fraction of the power generated. T
Re: (Score:2)
When our overlords
I can haz municipal water district? I can haz political boundary?
Cheeseburger cat is going to punish your ignorance in your dreams, be ready to defend yourself.
Re: Not everyone (Score:2)
Plague, climate, earthquakes, buy/sell control... (Score:2)
Once the reservoir is drained (Score:4, Insightful)
Couldn't they engineer an earthquake resistant replacement?
Re: Once the reservoir is drained (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Right! And, as soon as VSG GEOTUS President Trump says "farmers can use that water", [[[they]]] suddenly have a need to dump said water!
No fuckery going on here, no...
And kill a million people (Score:2)
Look up Banqiao dam to see why "resistant" isn't good enough
When the dam eventually fails, it'll send flash flood all over Silicon Valley, probably killing several hundred thousand people and causing billions of dollars of damage. Think Hurricane Katrina X 10 because the population is ten times as much and there would be no time to evacuate.
Dam failures are the worst catastrophes that can happen other than possibly tsunamis.
When the Banqiao dam failed, it kill over a thousand times aa many people as every n
Re: (Score:2)
Look up Banqiao dam to see why "resistant" isn't good enough
When the dam eventually fails, it'll send flash flood all over Silicon Valley, probably killing several hundred thousand people and causing billions of dollars of damage. Think Hurricane Katrina X 10 because the population is ten times as much and there would be no time to evacuate.
Dam failures are the worst catastrophes that can happen other than possibly tsunamis.
When the Banqiao dam failed, it kill over a thousand times aa many people as every nuclear accident in history combined.
OK, it looks like the Banqiao damn was a combination of bad engineering and failures in communications:
"Engineering Disasters: Banqiao Dam Failure
By William Tyrell on 20th July 2016
In response to severe flooding and to ensure electrical power generation in 1949 and 1950, China built the Banqiao Dam in the Huai river basin of the Henan province. It was completed in 1952. However, they never imagined the dangers that would follow.
Banqiao Dam - aftermath of failure
Understanding the Banqiao Dam Failure
Due to co
Re: (Score:2)
> And the historic high bar for rain for the area (1918) was 4.32 inches. I guess you could plan around that, maybe even double it in planning
That's the highest it's already been in the last 100 years.
You can plan for that if you don't mind destroying San Jose and surrounding areas sometime in the next 100 years - and you can perfectly predict how earthquakes will affect the dam.
Because you can't perfectly predict how earthquakes will affect the dam, it's probably not a good idea to basically put a nucle
CA doesn't need thirsty industry and big agra. (Score:4, Insightful)
Water is too valuable to waste irrigating places which should no longer be farmed. Industry can relocate to areas with lower overhead and become more competitive.
Excess concentration is a mistake. The US is enormous but the thoughtless choice to overcrowd coastal states is absurd. Keep the tech industry which needs dense urban areas. Displace the rest which are portable. Manufacturing can be done anywhere. Farming can be done where the water use doesn't burden a severely limited water supply.
Of course no one wants their ox gored so none of the above will happen so the problem isn't worth attempting to address.
Re: (Score:2)
Water is too valuable to waste irrigating places which should no longer be farmed. Industry can relocate to areas with lower overhead and become more competitive.
Excess concentration is a mistake. The US is enormous but the thoughtless choice to overcrowd coastal states is absurd. Keep the tech industry which needs dense urban areas. Displace the rest which are portable. Manufacturing can be done anywhere. Farming can be done where the water use doesn't burden a severely limited water supply.
Of course no one wants their ox gored so none of the above will happen so the problem isn't worth attempting to address.
If you believe in Climate Change, and Global Warming, this problem will take care of itself.
Re:CA doesn't need thirsty industry and big agra. (Score:5, Insightful)
I spent many years working in environmental organizations, and I didn't endear myself by pointing out that "non-sustainability" is an inherently self-correcting problem.
The real problem is that the people who benefit from non-sustainable actions aren't the ones who pay for the consequences. It's like a gold mine; nobody worries about it because it's a *gold mine*; the produce gold, and good paying jobs. Then the mine runs out, the company folds and leaves a toxic pond full of arsenic, cadmium and other goodies to be maintained at public expense forever. The people who decided to do this knew that would happen and knew they would never be held responsible.
That's what oil companies are doing on a global scale. They're trashing the planet in the expectation that the public will pay for the consequences and that they'll never be held accountable.
Re: (Score:2)
I spent many years working in environmental organizations, and I didn't endear myself by pointing out that "non-sustainability" is an inherently self-correcting problem.
Reverting to the equilibrium only happens without external influences, which in the case of water allocation include weird government laws (e.g., senior water rights, rules and regulations), financial engineering of the economy (e.g., subsidies, tax deductions, etc.), and human preferences (e.g., temperate climates, being close to nature, large homes). Humans have become very adept at surviving in non-natural environments. Inherent non-sustainability is often mitigated by huge governmental and financial e
Re: (Score:2)
Adaptation == spending money. Whose money?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The tech industry goons can go.
They need the least space, least people, and have the least support infrastructure in place.
Plus they can all work remotely.
Re: CA doesn't need thirsty industry and big agra. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
The Communists of CA will be all for it.
Re: CA doesn't need thirsty industry and big agra (Score:1)
Re: CA doesn't need thirsty industry and big agra. (Score:1)
Re: CA doesn't need thirsty industry and big agra (Score:1)
Funny... I thought it was a) the rapid diminishment of the dollar's domestic purchasing power, and b) the thicket of local building regulations that mandate all housing be low density suburban crap-shacks, that were responsible for the unaffordable price of housing.
Re:CA doesn't need thirsty industry and big agra. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm no supporter of those welfare queen farmers that plaster signs all along the highways in the San Joaquin Valley, complaining about not getting enough free handouts from the government, but California is America's breadbasket for a reason; that's where the soil & climate are the best.
Trying to farm in areas that have the most rainfall is often the worst choice, as the soil becomes leached of nutrients, something I learned in 8th grade geography class a half century ago and you should have also.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:CA doesn't need thirsty industry and big agra. (Score:4, Informative)
And California has about 12+% of the U.S. population.
Also note that #2 Iowa manages to produce that with rather less than 10% of CA's population.
No, CA is not especially impressive as an agricultural State....
Re: (Score:3)
And agriculture is less than 2% of CA's GDP and about 15% of IA's, what's your point?
Re: (Score:3)
California isn't the breadbasket, they produce near to zero grain crops(hence bread basket). They are a fruit basket however. A lot of those things you listed however can be farmed elsewhere in the US, some of them even in Canada. Peaches, olives, grapes(raisins), rice, plums, walnuts for example. The benefit to farming all of those in California however is that they get a double-length growing season in most years. No snow, lack of extended cold periods.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
" Almonds, figs, olives, peaches, artichokes, kiwifruit, dates, pomegranates, raisins, sweet rice, pistachios, plums, and walnuts" are not vital to national survival. They're not in any way "necessities", just high markup "fun foods" for the middle and upper classes. That's fine where they're sustainable but I don't confuse them with being "America's breadbasket".
I did NOT suggest "trying to farm in areas that have the most rainfall".
Re: (Score:2)
California doesn't produce all these items just because of superior soil and climate. They are also able to produce these items because they do the most water redirection. All of those products you list are heavily dependent on a lot of water. This is part of the reason that California always seems to be in a drought condition.
As far as the nutrient leaching argument goes, I think there is just as much (or more) nutrient removal farming those items than heavy rainfall would account for (through leaking). It
Re: (Score:2)
Georgia produces 3-5% of the U.S. peach production, South Carolina somewhat more.
Re: (Score:2)
"Farming can be done where the water use doesn't burden a severely limited water supply."
It happens here because we have the best weather. Other states are okay for corn or potatoes, or for soy, or even for citrus. But for pretty much everything else, California is the best.
Re: (Score:2)
You can grow all the mushy apples you want down there.
Re: (Score:2)
Up here in the northern part of the state it gets plenty cold. It's supposed to get really warm this weekend... 60!
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, so... mushy apples.
Re: (Score:1)
Water is too valuable to waste irrigating places which should no longer be farmed.
The thing about California is that there's moderate temps and no frost in the central valley. That's the thing most people don't even think about; no frost. Water? Shit, you can pipe that in from hundreds of miles away. And that's exactly what they do. Farming's great. What needs to be addressed is the places that should no longer be inhabited.
You can help by planting a garden. Do you even have a yard?
Re: (Score:2)
You can help by planting a garden. Do you even have a yard?
As long as you populate it with local plants that don't need excessive water, yea, otherwise you're not helping but making the issue worse.
Re: (Score:1)
As long as you populate it with local plants that don't need excessive water, yea, otherwise you're not helping but making the issue worse.
Very little of California's agricultural water is used to grow "local plants". It is used to grow food that sells in cities elsewhere, and with that comes a great deal of waste in transportation, processing, and misjudgements in retail demand. Spray irrigation in 12% humidity and row flooding is not water efficient. In my city I could get in the Sunday supplement by having a yard that looks like the Garden of Eden no matter how much water it takes. But if I put in vegetables in my front yard the city will
Re: (Score:1)
Not sure what to do about "excess concentration". People tend to go where the jobs are, and these days, that's the cities. The world is urbanizing. If it weren't, we couldn't afford the transportation costs (direct and indirect) to get goods to people. Want to see $5+ for a bottle of pop at your local grocery store? Go to Northern Canada. Or are you prepared to live with just what you can produce locally?
Anyone know how well Novosibirsk worked you for the former Soviet Union? That was intended to create a
Related news (Score:1)
Santa Clara county will need to find a new home for the approximately 3000 cars at the bottom of the reservoir.
Re: (Score:2)
The bottom of the valley which happens to occupy approximately the same position in the spatial dimensions?
They're too cheap to build affordable housing, so I bet they call this a trailer park.
Re: (Score:2)
The trees are already gone, why not just fill the volume that used to be a reservoir with a housing block, wall to wall. And then plant a green roof with a park, so they have a place to see daylight and take "utopia" pictures for social media.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was just wondering how many cold cases this is going to resolve...
Original Article (Score:5, Informative)
For the record, Agriculture uses 80% of California's developed water supply:
https://water.ca.gov/Programs/... [ca.gov]
However, agriculture isn't really an issue here; the local water district
http://www.valleywater.org/ [valleywater.org]
is mostly concerned with 1) supplying drinking water to various water retailers, who in turn distribute it throughout the Silicon Valley, and 2) flood control.
Re: Original Article (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The Mercury News version is paywalled, the Bakersfield.com doesn't seem to be?
Re: Original Article (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I reached my monthly article limit on Mercury News and I am not a subscriber, that is why it did not display for me.
Re: Original Article (Score:1)
Additionally "bakersfield" link is a privacy risk (Score:2)
Link in the story leads to a website that does not respect privacy. To avoid lawsuits they blocked connections from where privacy is enforced (via GDPR), so if you are USA citizen/resident you might still want to avoid the site.
451: Unavailable due to legal reasons
We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time.
Re: Additionally "bakersfield" link is a privacy r (Score:1)
Acre-feet? (Score:1)
Acre-feet? Who in the world uses acre-feet? Do they measure the exit velocity in furlongs per fortnight as well?
Cubic metres, man! Or even cubic fathoms, if you insist on the Imperial system!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cubic fathoms have edges which are entirely too sharp. I prefer the smoother, more aesthetically pleasing curves of an everted rhombicosidodecahedron.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Acre-feet? (Score:1)
Re: Acre-feet? (Score:3)
Traditional units are chosen for suitability to task. If you draw five hundred acre feet from a thousand acre reservoir, the level obviously drops by six inches. Now we can type "617 million liters / 405 hectare" into Google and get the answer "15 cm" comes right up, but choosing your units to make your most important calculation easy was how they did it back in the day when you did your calculation with a quill and a scrap of paper.
Re: Acre-feet? (Score:4)
It's not exactly complicated in metric, either. 1 megalitre = 1 hectare-decimetre, so drawing 500 million litres from a 1000 hectare reservoir drops the level by 5 cm. I could of course calculate "405 acre feet / 2471 acres" and get 0.1639 feet or 2 inches, but either case is trivial when your numbers are round.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Off the top of your head, can you tell me how deep a cubic meter of water will cover a hectare? No no, don't reach for a calculator or type it into Google. Off the top of your head. No? See, that's what happens when you use non-intuitive units.
The metric system is great as a standardized measurement system. But that doesn't mean it's superior in every situation. It tends to fall apart on things
Re: (Score:1)
Off the top of your head, can you tell me how deep a cubic meter of water will cover a hectare?
One hectare is 10,000 m^2. So one cubic meter of water spread over 10,000 square meters is 1/10000 meters high. 0.1 mm or 100 um, depending on your preference.
No Google required.
1 atmosphere is perfectly intuitive. 101 kPa is not.
100 kPa is. Sure, that's a 1% error, but good enough. 1kPa is 1% of 1 ATM. That's quite intuitive.
As for your submarine, what's more intuitive, 500 ATM, or 16.5 km depth?
You remind me of the guy that insisted imperial was more intuitive because when he goes 60 mph, he knows one mile is one minute. It's true, but it's arbitr
Re:Acre-feet? (Score:4)
Off the top of your head, can you tell me how deep a cubic meter of water will cover a hectare? No no, don't reach for a calculator or type it into Google. Off the top of your head. No?
Easy. It's 1/(100*100) meters (or 0.1 millimeter). It's just powers of ten.
Re: (Score:2)
Off the top of your head, can you tell me how deep a cubic meter of water will cover a hectare?
Are you silly? 1 hectar is 100 ars, can't be so hard to grasp. An Ar is 10x10 meters, so a hectar is a 100x100 square.
Probably you wanted to ask about 100 cubic meters? Because your question is only complicated because you asked for a silly amount.
1 cubic m of water = 1 x 10^9 mm^3
1 hectar = 1 x 10^12 mm^2
9 - 12 = -3
water hight 1 x 10^-3 mm aka a single drop every 10cm stupid question.
One acre-foot of water is eno
Re: (Score:2)
a hectar is a 100x100 square ...
1 hectar = 1 x 10^12 mm^2
Umm...
Well, hectare is not an SI unit anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes it is.
An Ar is 10x10m, m is meter, the SI unit.
Hect means 100 ... so you have 100 Ar ...
Simple.
Re: (Score:2)
1m3/(100m x 100m) = 100um
That why metric rocks!
Can you tell many gallons are in one acre foot?
Re: (Score:2)
To answer your question, it's a tenth of a millimetre. And no, I didn't need a calculator, or google (why would anyone google something they can do the arithmetic for in their head? It would take longer to pick up the laptop than to
Re: (Score:2)
If that is true how do you explain the fact that Russia have been to the moon and uses the metric system? China has been to the moon also and since it was recently I would assume they also used the metric system in the process.
Re: (Score:2)
The post didn't say anything about footprints on the moon.
There's two types of countries:
Those that use the metric system, and those who have been to the moon.
Show me where exactly it says footprints.
The hard part is getting to the moon. At that point landing is basically just a matter of how much fuel you are willing to carry.
Re: (Score:2)
Barn-megaparsecs.
Re:Acre-feet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Engineers use acre-feet. They measure the exit flow rate in cubic feet per second. The Imperial system doesn't have a reasonable unit of measure for reservoir sized quantities. Cubic miles are too large, cubic yards too small. And metric aficionados like yourself hate it when engineers make up new units like kilopounds.
Acre-feet are easy to understand even for a layman and are a very reasonable sized unit for a lake whose size is measured in acres and depth measured in feet.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone would have every right to bitch about inventing a kilopound when there's already the (short) ton at 2000 pounds, meaning "kilopound" is just a dihydrogen monoxidated version version of "half ton".
Re: (Score:2)
Most laymen wouldn't have any good idea of how much area an acre is.
Re: (Score:2)
Other than the fact that they most likely bought a house on a fraction of an acre, and can count the houses around them on similar sized lots.
Suburbs are often parceled up in 1/8 to 1/2 acre lots. If I'm on a 1/3 of an acre lot, I can look at the neighbors on either side of me and have a very good idea about how big an acre is.
Sounds like you've spent most of your life in condos and apartments.
Re: (Score:2)
The only place I've heard of it is when American reservoir engineers have been trying to express the reserves of an oilfield we're assessing. Otherwise, [crickets] not used anywhere.
It is an entertaining, if slow, thing to see the American then trying to work out how to express that in the units that their clients have been told to report it, which is cubic metres. You'd think that, by now, they'd have memorised the conversion factor along with the hundreds of oth
Makes sense (Score:2)
After all, many of us saw the documentary ”A View to a Kill”.