Water Wars - Mexico

The water wars are about to heat up between ag and cities. California ag (Imperial Valley) doesn't want to address almonds and alfalfa and cities don't want to have to pay for desal but the feds are about to cut the flow from Lake Mead with or without voluntary concessions.

'The moment of reckoning is near': Feds warn huge cuts needed to shore up Lake Mead, Colorado River (msn.com)

Tempers have flared, one senior official said, with urban districts from other states on Friday angrily demanding California, particularly its agricultural water districts, cede supply.

Colby Pelligrino, deputy general manager of resources at Southern Nevada Water Authority, shouted and yelled curses at California officials. They responded by demanding Arizona and Nevada present actual numbers showing amounts they're willing to cut. Cutting supplies is especially tough in a year in which farmers are obtaining banner prices for wheat, alfalfa and other crops, caused by widespread domestic drought, and shortages worldwide created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
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In Imperial County, farmers are on track to actually take 3% more water than they're entitled to this year, although IID's board of directors likely will pass a mid-year "equitable distribution plan" within two weeks that sets caps and could rein in the usage for this year. In the Coachella Valley, CVWD actually has increases in Colorado River supply written into its state-required groundwater sustainability management plan over the next two decades, including providing water for multiple new surf wave park developments and a Disney desert "beachfront" destination.

Three Coachella Valley districts have had the highest per capita water use in the state, though officials point to the area's high heat as an unavoidable factor. Both CVWD and IID, along with the Palo Verde Irrigation District in Blythe, hold the oldest rights to Colorado River water. IID alone holds rights to about 70% of the state's supply from the river, though it is paid to transfer substantial amounts to CVWD, greater Los Angeles and San Diego.

 

more to produce alfalfa for cows to eat

Alfalfa - UC Drought Management (ucdavis.edu)
About 1,000,000 acres of alfalfa are irrigated in California. This large acreage coupled with a long growing season make alfalfa the largest agricultural user of water, with annual water applications of 4,000,000 to 5,500,000 acre-feet.

 

Italy also facing water crisis due to lack of rain. Why hasn't Musk invented a rainmaker yet? Have drones been tried for cloud seeding?

As Po dries up, Italy's food and energy supplies are at risk (msn.com)

The drying up of the Po, which runs 652 kilometers (405 miles) from the northwestern city of Turin to Venice, is jeopardizing drinking water in Italy's densely populated and highly industrialized districts and threatening irrigation in the most intensively farmed part of the country, known as the Italian food valley.

Northern Italy hasn’t seen rainfall for more than 110 days and this year's snowfall is down by 70%. Aquifers, which hold groundwater, are depleted. Temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above season average are melting the tiny snowfields and glaciers that were left on the top of the surrounding Alps, leaving the Po basin without its summer water reservoirs.
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Berselli is frantically working on a resiliency plan to guarantee drinking and irrigation water to millions of households and to the Po valley farmers, who produce 40% of Italian food. Parmesan cheese, wheat, and high-quality tomatoes, rice and renowned grapes grow in huge quantities in the area.
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“We believe that there will be a drop in this wheat productivity by at least 20% or more due to the lack of rain and irrigation,” she said. The Italian farmers confederation estimates that wheat yields could drop by 20% to 40% this year. Wheat is a particular concern for farmers as it’s completely reliant on rain and does not get irrigated.

 

eliminate the almond and alfalfa production. start there. we can live with out almonds and cows can eat other feed.

water shortages are going to lead to food shortages which is going to lead to famine and migration unless there is a major shift in rainfall patterns in the next 2 - 3 years, if not sooner.

 

much of the alfalfa is shipped to northern Cali to feed cows. only around 50% is exported. nationwide around 10 - 12% of the total alfalfa production is exported.
the US also consumes a lot of water to produce food for other countries.

Exporting the Colorado River to Asia, Through Hay (nationalgeographic.com)

Virtual Water Exports
When Robert Glennon, a water policy expert at the University of Arizona and author of the book Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What to Do About It, first learned that the U.S. was exporting alfalfa crops that had been grown with the very limited western irrigation water, his reaction was "utter disbelief."

Glennon crunched some numbers and figured that in 2012, roughly 50 billion gallons of western water—enough to supply the annual household needs of half a million families—were exported to China. Not literally bottled up and shipped, but embedded in alfalfa crops grown with irrigation water. And that's just to China, which still trails Japan and the United Arab Emirates as a top destination for American alfalfa.
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According to a UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education report published in 2011, the United States exports more than twice as much virtual water, about 82 trillion gallons, as any other country. That's largely because American farms feed the whole world.

 

As Great Salt Lake dries up Utah will face toxic dust clouds (msn.com)

 

We shouldn't be tapping more underground. Pay for desal is my opinion. Are those going to be muni or private wells?