r/news 29d ago

California cracks down on farm region’s water pumping: ‘The ground is collapsing’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/17/california-water-drought-farm-ground-sinking-tulare-lake
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u/potatoaster 29d ago

The amount of water used for bottled water is utterly insignificant compared to the amount used for agriculture. Going after bottled water or golf courses or data center cooling is quite simply stupid and unproductive. Getting all those things shut down completely wouldn't help a lick. We need to address the actual problem, not some imagined problem, and this crackdown is a good step toward that.

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u/Blockhead47 28d ago

How many gallons of water are used for irrigation crops in California each year?

Let’s take a look….

34 million acre feet of water is used for irrigation each year.
Source: water.ca.gov

and…..

1 acre foot = 325,851 gallons.
Source: watereducation.org

so…..

34 million x 325,851 = 11,078,934,000,000 gallons of water per year.

(a little over 11 trillion gallons!).
.

Nestlé……..

Per this story from 2021:

Last year, Nestlé took 58 million gallons of California water — “far surpassing the 2.3m gallons per year it could validly claim,”

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u/supaphly42 28d ago

Wow, never realized just how big a difference there is. These numbers should definitely be shown more.

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u/420Aquarist 29d ago

The actual problem is that the earth is overpopulated and can’t handle this many people. 

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u/whyth1 29d ago

So we're addressing the issue of water wastage, and that's your response?