Drought

I don't post much here but do stop by fairly regularly for some learning. As many may know, California (and many other western states) are in severe drought conditions. The governor had declared it an emergency and requested voluntary 20% water reductions.

LA Times
I'm aware of a nearby community of 5,000 that has approximately 60 days of water left in its reservoirs if we don't get significant precipitation.

It is not possible, on an individual level, to store ones way out of such a predicament. I'm curious what collective wisdom suggests for drought preparation. Please discuss. Thanks.

Get rid of conventional grass lawns and other thirsty landscaping. Turn off/alter public fountains. Low flow toilets and waterless urinals. More efficient agricultural irrigation (the really big water consumer!)

And finally, drink imported beer

Be ready for wildfires and lots of dead trees. Texas is slowly coming out of a multi-year drought which killed 15-30% of our trees, depending on location. A number of our state and national forests were closed because of too many dead trees falling over or dropping limbs. Falling trees/limbs were also responsible for knocking out powerlines whenever we had a bit of wind. Along with the power outages wildfires and forest fires wiped out quite a few homes and business.

You can't do much about the lack of water but you should prepare for power outages and wildfires. Make sure you have alternatives sources of electricity and that your bug out bag and bug out binder are ready to go.
-Blast

California voters may be deciding upon the fate of a project to tunnel water tunnels beneath the Sacramento delta - to bring water to SoCal. In our last drought, serious proposals were made to tow icebergs from Alaska to Santa Barbara.

Meanwhile,we could do a lot to improve our hydraulics and reduce waste. As populations increase, measures that seem extreme to manage water will become commonplace.

CA needs to get serious about desalination. the entire state is sitting beside the Pacific Ocean. yeah its expensive - but we may as well get serious about starting now. water problems are not going to go away.

Pete

My state doesn't have a drought, but I should probably do a few dry runs just as preparation.

I assume our people in that area have water saved up already. This might be a time to double check your water storage.

no harm in that thought, Bingley :-)

I have all my bulk water stored out of state... in the ground.

Storing enough water for drinking is easy, say 2 liters a day per person for 100 days is only 200 liters, easily stored in the form of ready bottled water.

Storing enough water for basic domestic needs other than drinking is entirely doable, but takes up a fair bit of space. Say 25 liters a day at a minimum, 50 would be better.
For 100 days that is several tons, fairly easily stored in purpose made tanks, cisterns or barrels.

Storing enough water for a farm or large garden though not actualy impossible is unlikely to be viable due to the costs.
An outdoor reservoir 2 meters deep and with a plan area 10 meters by 10, would store about 200 tons, a great deal by domestic standards but not really much for a farm. Also obtaining enough water to initialy fill a 200 ton store might be problematic in areas that are continually arid.
If however water is plentiful at certain times of year, then filling a 200 ton store from a natural water source is easy with a suitable pump.
Remember that significant volumes of water can be lost to evaportation from uncovered reservoirs.

A combination of water saving, and storage should suffice.
Use a low flush toilet normally, and in times of drought consider an outdoor pit latrine that uses no water at all.

Use a low flow shower head, and try to take short showers.

Not just wildfires, but even a house fire can draw down a small water system and leave the hydrants non-functioning. So as others have said, do everything you and your neighbors can do to prevent and mitigate fires.

Santa Barbara built a desalinazation plant during our last big drought, but never operated it because of the expense. Maybe we'll try towing icebergs this time.

Rollback to Island living, everything is precious and a bit expensive including fresh water. Rain barrels will make a concerted comeback and higher volume catchments will be more commonly installed under decks and patios. These were common for gardening in homes in SoCal and central calif before water diversion programs brought copious amounts to the tap. They won't support the average person's acre+ of inedible grass but they should cover most plants, assuming that roofing material doesn't add toxics. Plumbing for recycled gray water too. I try to encourage my son to journeyman as a plumber, such skills will remain in high demand in the 21st century assuming you don't tweet and twitter and make a fortune replacing the postage stamp (along with the postal workers).

Good thoughts, all.

Desalination won't work on the scale we'd need it. The energy requirements are huge and our grid here is already quite strained in the summer (and will be even more so with the loss of hydro power).

Gray water systems are a great idea but implementation is tricky in existing houses. That said, I'm strongly considering purchasing a 2,000 gallon bladder to put in the crawlspace under the house to collect laundry water and a little pump to pressurize it for irrigation of the yard essentials. However, that's no small expense and many in this economy can't afford such notions.

We've already retrofitted to low flow appliances and haven't watered what little lawn we have in several years. Our per person usage is between 50 and 60 gallons per day depending on the time of year, so pretty low as much of the state is in the 120 gallons per person per day range.

We already store ~28 gallons (10 days worth) of water since we're in earthquake country, but I suppose adding a few 55 gallon drums would be a good idea and get us further down the road should it be needed.

We're in a residential area so the threat of wildfire is somewhat reduced but still a concern. Good points on keeping the important documents etc., ready to go. I've got to work on that.

desolation... are you familiar with the 275 gallon IBC totes... there are a lot of used food grade units that have transported soft drink syrup etc available on the used market...they take up less floor space than 55 gallon drums per gallon contained.... vid is just for introduction and not an endorsement of this retailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK2t0CLKAIg

My current plan is to get my stock up to 110 gallons of drinking water. I plan to use the 16 ounce bottled water cases from Costco. If that's a dumb idea, somebody let me know, thanks. I can get my stock up to 330 gallons of drinking water if I get motivated.

My plants can go to hell if rationing is necessary. It'll be a good segue for the desert landscaping I always wanted.

I have Darwinian landscaping - I water nothing. it's strictly survival of the fittest on my lot.

Another good thing about you guys' approach is then you don't have to mow it!

I don't think it's a dumb idea but it's an expensive way to store water. On the plus side I suppose it will keep a long time but it would be a lot cheaper to get barrels or other large containers. Of course, then you need to rotate and/or treat the water, too.

By no means dumb, but perhaps not the best use of money ?
110, or 330 gallons is an awful lot of DRINKING water, unless you have a large family.
Might be better to keep a bit less, and spend some of the money saved on cheap bulk storage of non drinking water.
IBCs or water tanks, drums or barrels are a one time expense. Once purchased they can be refilled at almost zero cost from your normal water supply.
Bottled drinking water is an ongoing expense as it will go out of date and therefore require regular replacement.

Bottled drinking water is a huge scam, if you ask me - at least in developed countries with good water systems. Like he says, put your money into the containers and fill from the tap.

By catchment I meant cistern, its the same thing. Everyone has been harvesting rain for thousands of years for household use, it may be time to revisit US water rights law and think them through again. We haven't always had thousands of gallons flowing out of our taps. If average rain fall is a half or a quarter of what it was when the law was developed to protect the watershed then hydrologists and engineers - and politicians - have to rethink priorities. People are shocked when they don't have legal rights to harvest rainwater coming from their own roof, but it goes back to gravity and elevation and principles like the farmer downstream or downhill needs water too. If your cistern is collecting what will otherwise turn into storm water, you have to consider downstream effects. In the PNW with 38 inches of rain per year mostly that's endangered salmon runs, for now. If we hit 22 per year avg rivers and lakes subside and we have salinization issues too - and no more fish. It can be a big deal for someone to lift out thousands of gallons a year, much less a city of 70,000 doing the same thing. Better learn from our agricultural areas and mete out water in newly arid areas before it becomes a bigger thing.

Without getting into the whole Billionaire Monetization and Agenda 21 control politics of their attempts to control the worlds water resources, whereby you are not allowed to collect rain water on your own property without being subject to heavy punitive fines, what would be the legal situation of owning a Skywater 14

http://www.islandsky.com/products/home-and-office-water-making-machine

You will need a 3-4 kW solar PV installation though, to power it. As with everything, money can solve a lot of problems when it comes to personal survival and preparation to be equipped to survive.

I had seen these in Hawaii but did not know what they were called. Very interesting. I could see setting up a sump pump and basin under the house to receive and pump laundry water to two of these and then use them for watering.

John Wesley Powell had it figured out almost 150 years ago, but nobody wanted to hear it from him. (A good read is "Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West" by Wallace Stegner.)

In the future the western US simply does not have enough water to support our current lifestyle with projected population increases. I find it very difficult to believe that desalinization (or towing icebergs) will be practical on the scale required. Our lifestyle will change, whether we like it or not. I'd like to think we could be proactive and manage that change in a positive way, but I'm a bit cynical about the chances of that. People resist any change from the status quo. But status quo is not sustainable in the long run.

+1 to Stegner's work. It is a most thoughtful and thorough study of a very important figure in western US history..

The fact is, we have transported cultures and lifestyles developed in places with plenty of water into the semiarid western US and presided over a massive population growth in the last half century. Something will have to change. Probably we will see changes in lifestyles, better hydraulic infrastructure,and a smaller population as we adjust.

Someday in the future, Hikermor III will walk into the iceberg store in Anchorage (either Bergs R' Us or Starbergs) and say:

"Hi,I'd like an iceberg to go, please." AKSAR III will respond, "Fine! They come standard with navigation lights. Would you care for a topping of slush? Helps with the melting...."

,

Indeed we have. What is even more scary is that we may have brought in these cultures and lifestyles during a period when the west was unusually wet.

Research is suggesting that the the period when the western US was settled may have been a good deal wetter than the long term average. See Hundred Years of Dry: How California’s Drought Could Get Much, Much Worse. Various lines of data suggest that over the long haul, the west was a very dry place indeed, and the 1800s and 1900s have been an unusually rainy spell. From that article:
Note that this is looking at long term past history, before the industrial age. If one considers the possible effects of anthropogenic global warming on top of these long term trends....... as one of my old professors always said.... "I will leave that as an exercise for the student."

I believe WA state just changed the law to now allow rain barrels.

Which seems okay to me, in western Washington the average holding is less than 1 acre, most suburban homes are on .25 acres, they can get by with gutter harvesting into a 55 gallon drum to sustain their home garden through a summer, which is usually dry. If we all respond by starting up 2-3 month gardens, which is the average growing season here, many will fail but at least they won't consume too much water and a number of us can supplement our veggies for what is now too costly to produce inexpensively in California. Blueberries from Peru are popular in stores at 7.99 for ~2 pints. We're used to it. A fair amount of food production has already shifted to Mexico and points south which actually have more sustainable weather patterns compared to Calif drought. Until the costs of transportation go up. There's no free lunch. People have been telling us for quite a while...

This year I'm planting hops, which is about the only crop I've succeeded in growing in 98004 in the past 20 years. Hops smell really nice in hot weather, and with my coffee roasting in the garage my neighbors say they get really thirsty all the time. I know a network of home brewers who will buy my hops, or trade them for some nice veggies. Or I could go back to my college days and homebrew.

"Note that this is looking at long term past history, before the industrial age. If one considers the possible effects of anthropogenic global warming on top of these long term trends.....".

It looks like my profession of archaeology has bright future prospects as rainfall amounts regress towards the long term mean. And we can see the effects of rainfall variation
on past human populations in the west, although many other factors come into play.

I'm still holding out for icebergs. After all, we have been importing Alaskan liquids for quite a while, and icebergs are less polluting than the Exxon Valdez. Need I say that developing the iceberg technology will be a titanic undertaking?

What's the difference between "anthropogenic global warming" and just "global warming"? Are we still warming or is the term dejeur climate change because of recent cooling?

My personal belief is that the "anthropogenic" term should be dropped from use in this forum. It's a tad divisive.

Ban words Russ? There are any of myriads effects which are indisputably anthropogenic. climate change I don't know enough about to separate anthropogenic from other factors, but mainstream science seems comfortable discussing them both. Banning words from public discussion can have chilling effects, making that discussion incomplete and less worthwhile. On other topics we seem to allow participants to allege one thing and for others to come along and refute, and we all remain good friends. Would rather that someone cross a political line before we rule speech out. But its not my forum obviously.

What's the difference? Well, if the planet is heating up because of some internal process operating to increase solar radiation, or the obscure perturbations of the planet Zogg, then there is precious little we can do to affect the process, although there are some strategies we could pursue..

If it is anthropogenic, then there is a lot we can do (at least theoretically).

It is interesting, and rather sad, that what is at heart a scientific, technical question, has rapidly become politicized, and that rational discussion is becoming rather rare (on both sides).

I say keep "anthropogenic". It is much more spiffy than "man caused." What's a college education worth if you can't use three dollar words....

It is because "anthropogenic" is at the center of the political aspect of global warming that I made that recommendation -- politics not belonging here. For me to say any more on GW goes to politics because for some reason what should be science has been taken over, it's either politics or religion now, not sure. Later.

Bovinogenic Global warming is probably a more serious problem (just about) than the hot air generated by poorly educated Politicians despite their best efforts.

I'm a little concerned by the self regulating 'Newspeak' though, which it would, seems to have gone further than even political correctness. Has it really come to this. Anthropogenic is a just a word, which has a very specific scientific meaning even though it seems to have been hijacked by the news media and now portrays it to the rather ignorant general public as being a political word.

If for example Las Vegas has to be abandoned, should we blame it on anthropogenic or Bovinogenic global warming or on the stupidity of the property developers building a large city in the middle of a desert in the first place. It has happened previously in the archaeological record. It will happen again. As in England at the moment, building houses on flood plains hasn't been terribly successful.

Building unsafe nuclear reactor designs on known Earthquake faults hasn't been too successful either.

I'm more concerned about the ongoing atmospheric geo-engineering and it effects on the human population.

For some reason I'm reminded of a quite brief Richard Brautigan poem called Fever Monument:
"We got hot
and died"

Hikermor is right, it really doesn't matter if warming or cooling is man made or triggered or natural processes, whatever we do lets not throw out valid scientific observations for political or economic reasons. Neither should we be shills of course. Being prepared is all about scene size up and making life-saving decisions. Droughts are historically cyclic, and one likely outcome is it may cycle back to a wetter environment for a while, while the factors build that really whack us with a longer term drought - and we are talking a major population migration on our own continent (as there is now in Africa). We will have missed it. We have put our hands over our ears and discounted next best steps. That's our amygdalae talking, ignoring the far waning tide to gather flopping fish on the sand, that builds into a tsunami. If we're planning for our grand kids to be around where we live now, we need to be more intelligent than that I think.

You had better grab your bergs now, hikermor. Nearly all Alaskan glaciers are dramatically retreating, and have been for some time. By the time Hikermor III and AKSAR III are around, there quite likely will be no more tidewater glaciers available in Alaska, at any price.

For example see Glacier Retreat in Alaska. For another example from the primary science literature see Rapid Wastage of Alaska Glaciers and Their Contribution to Rising Sea Level

Unfortunately the old sales line "Get them while the're hot!" doesn't apply to glaciers.

I know that your point is perfectly valid. But I still recall those immense rivers of ice I grappled with on Denali some time ago - they were immense! Does this mean that in the future one will have to WALK up the West Buttress route to get to the summit?

Well, since at 20,237 feet (6,168 m), Denali is the highest peak in North America, it will probably never lose all of it's glacier ice. So I suspect hikermor III will probably still want an ice axe and crampons for his climb.

However even the big glaciers in the park are retreating and or thinning dramatically. For example, the NPS has a nice web display of photo pairs showing the changes over time. They also have a pdf about glacial monitoring that is quite interesting. As an archaeologist you might find this one interesting.

The lower elevation and tidewater glaciers are where the changes are most remarkable. In the recent movie "Chasing Ice", photographer James Balog placed automatic cameras at many glaciers worldwide to make time lapse movies of the changes. At Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound, he had to move his camera several times during the course of the project because the glacier was retreating so fast it went out of view! (Chasing Ice is a great film, do see it if you can.)

To those of us who have lived in Alaska even a few years, the changes are obvious and impossible to ignore. For example, Exit Glacier near Seward is one of several Alaskan glaciers which are easily road accessable. I took a group of visitors there in 2007. Even though I go to Seward several times a year (boating, fishing, kayaking), I didn't have occaision to drive the 10 mile side road to Exit Glacier again until about 2011. The changes in the terminus of Exit Glaceir just about blew my socks off! Incredible that it shrunk so far in just four years.

When I read the discussion of "anthropogenic" I keep hearing the voice of a now long dead college professor explaining the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle; and another, a wildlife management instructor who explained that all organisms change the environment in which they dwell. He was referring to sub-Saharan elephants and the expanse of desert, but we're all elephants in this way.

AKSAR, thanks for the reference! But I beg to differ with the headline writers - that's not trash, those are priceless artifacts (definitely, one man's trash is another's treasure..) Seriously, there should be all sorts of things exposed as glaciers recede (think Otzi). I know I made a few "deposits" myself.

Just speculation, but when Hidermor III returns to the lower 48 from his Alaskan vacation, how much water will he be able to bring with him? Will they search his luggage?

Regarding low volume "spare emergency water" that needs no maintenance or purification:



Consider the hot water heater- a sealed unit that allows new water in as "old" water is removed- and, of course it is heated. Remove the heating component, leaving a sealed unit (read: tank). I have a large poly tank with an input pressure regulator connected to the water supply. Output is household water. As water is removed, new water enters (just like a hot water tank)

This provides 500 gallons of constantly "refreshed" water that requires no treatment and should city water cease (or the well go dry), provides a 500 gallon reserve. Input pressure provides output pressure (sealed tank).

Quick disconnects allow me to sever input and output ...and did I mention the tank is mobile?

-carl

Kind of like the old saying in geology: "One man's basement is another man's overburden." Similarly, I know some USGS guys working down on the Kenai were ecstatic about how the very recent retreat of a glacier had perfectly exposed some bedrock, and because the glacier retreated so fast and so recently, all that green vegetation crap hadn't yet grown in to obsure the outcrop.

Picking up the LA Times this morning, the lead article discusses the intent of a major party to make an issue of the current drought, charging all kinds of crimes and high misdemeanors to the policies of the group currently in power. how sad! (It's not even worth posting a link...)

I must say that one of the most attractive features of ETS is its prohibition of politically tinged discussion. This gives me time to perfect the tactical embellishments I will need for the survival ice chest Californians will take to Alaska to return home with ice. I am working on the most effective camouflage pattern and the best tread pattern for the wheels. Any thoughts?

"green vegetation crap"?? - Please refine your language. We refer to that material as "biofouling."(a term I done larned in schul) Whatever you call it, it definitely hides the good stuff.

I once took a walk with one of the park biologists. We were both on point, looking for, and commenting upon, our respective sphere of interest. It was quite interesting, because, although we were walking side by side, we might as well have been on different planets. Both of us were disregarding the trivial junk to check on important things.

Alaska Airlines allows you to check a case of wine flying from Santa Rosa Calf. You need them to flight approve your ice chest idea, one per passenger ��

Actually, Alaska Airlines is quite accomodating to folks bringing frozen goods back from Alaska. Fishermen, hunters, and other tourists come up here all summer, and take back frozen fish and game. Down in Seward or Homer, there are business that will vacume seal and freeze your fresh caught salmon or halibut. You can buy a wax cardboard frozen food box and check it as baggage. I'm sure a box of plain old ice would be just fine.

I love Alaska's baggage policies, you'll need something special to get a Coleman full of water past TSA though. Wine is bottled and stands a chance of clearing security in cases - who knows what they'll make of 160 lbs of Bristol Bay's Finest Crystal spring water.

The water heater tank is a pretty good idea, but you need a way to seal it off in case of a boil water order. Maybe put in a bypass and only run water through the tank one day a week to reduce exposure. The big problems with rain collection and desalinsation is there isn't anywhere near enough rain and there's no electricity to spare here. The only viable solution is water rationing for residential, businesses, and agriculture. customers

The costs are going to be significant. It's going to drive out most of the desert agriculture, and pretty much going to kill whats left of the lawns after the last time. I have no idea what xeriscaping costs for a house, but the alternative for a typical single family home to put in artificial grass is around $8k.

Good point!

Actually in my case the water comes from a well, electric, into a 5000 gallon tank. From there, a pressure pump responds to demand and supplies the house. I added to this the (portable) 500 gallon tank and will soon add another. In addition, because my particular issue is power, I will add 2 more 5000 gallon tanks up the hill from me for gravity flow (I am rural).

Clearly a generator could power the wells but I may not want to draw attention to myself with the noise of a generator...

-carl

Carl, that's quite the set up. I assume that you're describing a set up for daily use, and not purely for storage of personal emergency water? With a 5,000 gallon tank or two uphill from your house, I'm not sure there's much need for a 50 gallon water heater-type storage inside the house.

Whenever people mention the water heater type set up, which keeps circulating water through the tank to keep it "fresh," I also try to bring up the point, like Mark, that your supply could be contaminated by the time anyone gets word out that the water supply could be contaminated. The recent West Virginia chemical spill is a recent example. Who knows how much of the chemical people had been drinking before it became noticeable or the word went out to not drink it? But since you're on a well, you're probably better insulated from that kind of event.

Thanks, but that is 500 gallons, outside and portable (In an old Jeep trailer).

My goal is simple: Daily use, optimized for potential disaster, like earthquake, fire, drought. If I can muster 15000 gallons above ground, with 10000 gallons high enough to provide gravity flow (though a lousy shower) AND 500 gallon of refreshed water that is portable, I will have made significant progress toward meeting long term "off-the-grid" water needs. This will take my family through initial and prolonged recovery efforts AND permit our escape (if necessary) to a better location.
-carl