The governor of California recently signed a law ushering in an era of the most serious restrictions on water use ever in that state. He says that the law will cut water use in California by 25 percent. The problem is that isn’t exactly true.
The water restrictions apply only to urban uses: showering, watering the lawn, washing dishes, cars, and laundry, etc., activities that account for a whopping 4 percent of California’s total water use footprint. Twenty-five percent of four percent equals 1 percent, not 25 percent.
California’s water use footprint is as follows, 4 percent used by urbanites, 47 percent for factory meat farms, 7 percent industrial, 42 percent other agricultural (fruit and vegetable). The water restrictions only applies to the urban uses (4 percent of water use).
It is great that government wants to do something about the drought, but lying about the effect a law will have and exempting corporate big ag from the water restrictions will only result in a dust bowl.
Of course a quick glance of comment threads on the Internet about this story show that California urbanites are just as delusional about the reality of the situation as their governor, they seem to think that some techno fix is going to fill their pools. Desalination plants are hugely expensive to build and run, and require tons of natural gas, it’s not exactly rain.
Unless corporations are forced into restriction compliance (after all, thanks to Citizens United corporations are people too) along with the rest of California’s citizens it will be like no restrictions at all.
Nels Werner
Cortez
