How Many People Will Have To Migrate Out Of California When All The Water Disappears?

Zero Hedge ^ | 04/03/2015 | Tyler Durden

[MinorityRepublican]

The drought in California is getting a lot worse. As you read this, snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada mountains are the lowest that have ever been recorded. That means that there won’t be much water for California farmers and California cities once again this year. To make up the difference in recent years, water has been pumped out of the ground like crazy. In fact, California has been losing more than 12 million acre-feet of groundwater a year since 2011, and wells all over the state are going dry. Once the groundwater is all gone, what are people going to do?

[NY.SS-Bar9]

Thank loads, anti nuke nutters

Putting a few nuclear power plants on the California coast is probably not a great idea. Remember, Fukishima was earthquake hardened and look what happened there.

[kjam22]

Can’t we put a fence up or something?

[arthurus]

When you deconstruct the dams and protect invasive little fishes in the rivers and shut down energy production and build grandiose pyramids like high speed rail, well you run out of stuff like jobs and food and water and other inconsequential stuff like that. Just a small price for Utopia.

[BobL]

Interesting story, thanks. SO MUCH DAMAGE from one president, Nixon, unreal. The Endangered Species Act MADE NO MENTION of economic tradeoffs, yet he still signed it along with tons of other crap!

He may never be liked by liberals, but he’ll always be HATED by me.

[caww]

That would be better then drilling...which there’s a wait period of months and mega bucks to do....for farmers you’re talking thousands and thousands for a drill.

[HotHunt]

Forget the shortage of water causing a problem. I have a brother and three friends from high school, who have left Kalifornia because of nanny state rules, huge increase in taxes, onerous regulations and massive influx of illegals overrunning the state. They said they could see the state transformed right before their eyes from paradise to a hell-hole over the last 30 -40 years.

I was born in California but have refused to go back to visit or for vacation in decades. The liberals there have absolutely ruined what used to be one of the nicest places in the country to live.

Let the California migrants move to Detroit. At least it's already a leftist-destroyed wasteland. Give them a taste of their own medicine.

[FunkyZero]

this has me somewhat confused. snow equals about 1/10th it’s mass in water, or 10 inches of snow contain one inch of rainfall equivalent. So, that missing 5ft of snow equates to 6 inches of rainfall. Is this small rainfall variance really critical enough over a 12 month period to cause an all-out crisis? I’m honestly not being critical, I just don’t get how it is so damning. We have annual variances of that magnitude all the time. So, unless CA’s annual rainfall total is like 20 inches, how does this play into the panic?

[bert]

That is a great article

[Reeses]

I think an even bigger high speed rail project is the answer.

Trains, centralized planning, restrictions, taxes, forms to fill out, indoctrinating children to snitch on their parents: the leftist solution to every problem is communism.

[wiggen]

Mehico

[wiggen]

or high speed railway?

[RipSawyer]

Northern and Southern California have very distinct climates due to uneven rain distribution, but as a whole, California averages 22.2 inches of rain annually.

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/facts_7302274_average-inches-rainfall-california.html

If the whole state average is 22.2 inches annually and that average is for an exceptionally WET century then 6 inches more or less makes a HUGE difference. South Carolina is a wet state with six inches or more sometimes falling in a single storm. In July 2013 we had fifteen inches of rain at my home or two thirds of California’s statewide average for a year but six inches more or less in a year still matters. We have just recovered from a very long drought which saw areas normally covered with two or more feet of water turned into dry tinder. I lost a number of large Red Oaks measuring as large as five feet in diameter due to drought stress.

[Jumper]

Immigration in Mexico, ah ha! Refugees from drought.

[FunkyZero]

Thanks for the info, it makes more sense now. I was too lazy to go research rainfall maps for a state 800 miles long.

[anton]

100 gallons of fresh water (needing some purification) flows by my office every day for every man, woman and child in the US on its way to the Gulf of Mexico to become salinated and useless.

[glorgau]

All I could think was, “This place is a freakin’ desert!” That’s why they like it, right? The “good weather”.

My thoughts exactly. Also, all that damn sunshine just got oppressive after a while. A nice bright cloudless day is nice every now and then, but endless repetition is dreadful.

[mac_truck]

What would the situation be if all the funds that were squandered on crap projects like Solyndra had been put instead into desalination plants?

...or building and expanding water storage systems.

[IMR 4350]

“They still have an Ocean that can be desalinated. But they probably fear
the ocean would run out of Water.”

Believe it or not from what I’ve been reading some of them really do believe it will dry up the oceans.

[ought-six]

Don’t come to Illinois. Chicago itself is bad enough, but a massive influx of lefty Californians would turn Chicago into...well, California.

We have one of the largest fresh water sources at our doorstep. And we don’t want California polluting it.

[tbw2]

They wouldn’t have it so bad if they hadn’t poured so much into the ocean for the sake of salmon and smelt.
Sending fresh water into the ocean for the sake of fish causes it to be lost. At least if it was given to farmers for the past few years, some of it would have seeped back into the water table.