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- Hacker News
- This year was the first year I finally realized how things are going to be from now on and only getting worse. I’m a gardener and the plants are having such a tough time, many trees in my neighborhood are already bare from dropping their leaves from the heat. I’ve been looking into just landscaping with native plants moving forward that can handle the heat. I have drip irrigation, but that does nothing when air temps stay above 100 for days on end. The world isn’t prepared for this in any way. What happens when the breadbasket of your country gets like this?by Mistletoe
- Alfalfa farms consume 26% of the Colorado River’s water (2024 statistic).[0]
Alfalfa and hay production uses up to 68% of Utah’s water, and amounts to 0.2% of the state’s GDP (2022 statistic) [1].
These feed crops are extremely water inefficient, consuming 18-36 acre-inches (≈ 489,600-979,200 gallons) of water per acre of harvested alfalfa [2]. Utah averages 4 tons/acre in harvest [3], which by my math works out to about 510-1020 tons of water used per 1 ton of alfalfa harvest. If that seems high you, you may appreciate looking up numbers on water consumption per pound of beef accounting for feed.
The USDA reports about 46 million acres of US land are foreign owned [4](although 2024 reporting suggests not all foreign ownership of farm land is being reported [5]). While there are not accurate public numbers on the percentage of that foreign held land which is used for alfalfa farming, water use by foreign entities has been widely reported on [6], and has prompted legislation in the example state of Utah among others [7].
[0] https://www.sustainablewaters.org/why-do-we-grow-so-much-alf... [1]https://waterdesk.org/2022/12/one-crop-uses-more-than-half-o... [2] https://ecobuilderz.com/how-many-gallons-of-water-are-requir... [3] https://www.progressivepublish.com/downloads/2025/general/20...
[4] https://www.fsa.usda.gov/documents/foreign-holdings-us-agric...
[5] https://www.dailymail.com/galleries/article-12985003/Foreign...
[6] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-ar...
by CircuitSeuss - There is enough water for human consumption, but agriculture is over in the basin. There simply isn’t enough water forward looking for the water intensive crops in question.by toomuchtodo
- The west is facing a dire water crisis and likely will for decades to come. Meanwhile in places like NYC suburbs in the east everyone waters their lawns with drinkable water because high quality fresh water is in abundant supply. People are literally watering their grass with water that’s better than what probably 99% of the global population has available to drink.
The disparity is quite stark when you drill into it, but water access is going to rewrite the future of the west.
by cmiles8 - I just watched a short documentary, with cooperation from City of New York officials and their Fire Department. It documented how the city has a long-standing "culture/tradition" of opening fire hydrants for recreation during the hot summer months.
I knew that this was a custom and it seemed utterly tolerated, but it seems that nobody with the City, or LEO or first responders, is empowered to slow it down. The FD actually distributes "sprinkler caps" to anyone over 18, which can replace the plug so that the water is sprayed in a recreational pattern, and not just dumped into the street.
https://youtu.be/rNWmLNlPq1I?si=zZHGQY-_24qehqdy
There was also a segment that explains how and where NYC obtains its water. Folks were asking, "is this hydrant water safe to drink?" and the City answers that not only is it potable, it's essentially fresh mountain spring water, straight from the source.
This kind of stuff seems appalling to Phoenicians until we consider that our hot-weather desert customs include evaporative coolers and misters. Yes we have literally set up spray systems on patios, shopping malls, and other outdoor gathering spaces, where clean potable water is just sprayed into the air to make it a bit cooler for a while.
Speaking of Phoenix, a few more water crises have been uncovered beyond this headline. The mayor of Scottsdale announced calmly, "we're not running out of water; we're just running out of cheap water!"
- I recommend folks here read "The Dreamt Land" by Mark Arax. I just started it so it might be a premature recommendation, but it has been doing a great job for me as a new California resident of explaining the interaction between business/agriculture and the desert landscape.by cnity
- I do believe people in general will be fine in the soutwest for years to come. Agriculture will be cut back, natural landscapes will take over, de-sal in socal and better water treatment plants will come online.
The ecological effects of this, though, seem so disastrous. If the Colorado river dries up, what then? The whole of the Southwest just like, dies?
by Ancalagon - > The ecological effects of this, though, seem so disastrous. If the Colorado river dries up, what then? The whole of the Southwest just like, dies?
The lakes behind the Hoover dam are are the ecological catastrophe. Releasing the dam water just restores the river canyon to its natural state.
Draining the river is bad, but it's just as bad downstream of the dam. The dam by itself doesn't do anything but hurt the ecosystem it already destroyed.
by ajross - Life will be fine. Exporting alfalfa from the Imperial Valley, however, might be done for.
- they'll just start pumping groundwater again which will cause huge earthquakesby hnav
- Water rights unfortunately don't really work like "residents > business."by estearum
- Not sure if it's different over there, but farming in Australia (whether with questionable water reliance or not) is considered sacrosanct and pushback would be a political risk. Any foreign-owned alfalfa exporters would just throw lobbyists behind broader farming coalitions (small farmers, ranchers, locals, etc) to protect themselves. Residents will cop water restrictions before then, as has happened before.by prawn
- No, the last thing to survive will be alfalfa in the Imperial Valley. We'll see the elimination of Social Security before those water rights are imperiled.by zzgo
- I wonder if I'll live to see the evacuation of Phoenix and Las Vegas. (Or Abu Dhabi, for that matter.)
- If you are in your 30s, I would think you would have a good chance to see that happen.
To me, the big issue no one talks about will be people who live below say the Mason Dixon Line migrating north, probably starting maybe 50 or so years from now.
by jmclnx - The epitaph for all three (the Encyclopedia Dramatica motto):
And nothing of value was lost.
by senderista - The shrinking reservoirs are the immediate result of record-low snowpack this winter, which was erased by record heat in the spring. Melted snowpack creates most of the Colorado’s flow during the dry summer months. But as the Southwestern climate has grown hotter and drier, the river’s flow has become smaller and less reliable.
Legitimate question: I can understand that record-low snowpack would cause less water to flow into the lake, but the "erasure" of the snow pack by heat is just melting that would be captured in the lake, right? So if the record-low snowpack had been followed by record cold, would we have even less water in the lake?
by jp57 - Aside from melting at historically fast levels, the snow itself is at record low levels. Less snow -> less snowpack -> less water.
For data, check out the second visualization here:
https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/support/states/CO/produ...
There's no snowpack left, earlier in the season, because there's way less snow, and it's being consumed faster.
- Not all of the erasure is captured. For example, if the ground is dry, than most gets absorbed into soil and won’t make it to the river. Or the snow may sublimate and go straight to vapor at heat.
Record cold would lead to more water. It would melt out fast later and since the soil was already recharged it would flow to rivers.
Worth noting this is generally glacier free landscape so the snow melts fully each year.
by bix6 - university of utah has several studies on the matter. a substantial percentage of the snowpack sublimates during a heatwave, never has a chance to melt. Of the remaining snowmelt, it has to saturate the ground before any can flow to an adjacent stream to feed the water table, and the bone dry soil around here can absorb a significant amount of water.by wampwampwhat
- In the mountain west warm dry springs coincide with higher winds. The blowing warm dry air leads to dramatically increased evaporation of snow melt, drying of soil, as well as increased transpiration in plants, so the total moisture loss is much higher than what you might expect simply from modeling simple heat evaporation of open water bodies.by psidebot
- Vox did a great video on this a few years ago. [1] Bottom line, growing cow feed in the desert is wasteful and stupid. Blaming cities and industry is just a diversion.by jmward01
- Who would’ve thought that growing water intensive crops in the middle of the desert and growing cities like Phoenix with suburbs with lush green lawns at a much higher rate than rest of the country was going to be without consequences.
- Just another form of debt we’ve been living off of, since the compact was established, knowing it wasn’t sustainable long term.by toomuchtodo
- Most of that is recycled waste water allowed to recharge the aquifer. People won't drink purified waste water directly. Have to pour it on the ground first.
The Saudi's 5 crop a year alfalfa is really the major problem
- How much do the lawns in Phoenix actually contribute to this problem?by nozzlegear
- When the West was settled it was widely believed that the act of building a town attracted rain. The 'atmosphere' of human buildings in an area would naturally attract and collect rain from the heavens. Many of the original methods used to estimate water, rainfall, and other essentials for human survival were wrong.
Most of them are catalogued in the outstanding Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - an excellent book with an outstanding audiobook too.
https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing...
by flybrand - Meh, everyone knows that if you need rain you call in the Wizard: https://wizard.gen.nz/adventures/the-rain-dance-kid/
Yes, New Zealand has an official Wizard: https://wizard.gen.nz/photo-galleries/official-documents/
- 19th century Law of Attractionby hnav
- I’ve heard this idea referred to as “rain follows the plow”, which as they found out in the 19th century, does not hold true.