California is doomed

This is crazy stuff. To explain, I recently listened to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Planet Money from NPR and this one is about the drought in California and what's happening in places like Porterville, which is south of Fresno in the Central valley. People there got their water from wells, but the wells are drying up. People who used to get their water from wells literally cannot get water out or their taps. And meanwhile you have these pistachio farmers who are digging deeper and deeper wells, and what's more they're planting more pistachio trees in the middle of an epic drought. Because that's what's most profitable. It's all going to end in disaster but they are hurtling toward that disaster with the accelerator pedal floored. All for the almighty dollar they are going to turn it into a Mad Max wasteland.

Maybe you think I'm being hyperbolic, but they say that the aquifer there is dropping by 10 feet a week right now. Where wells used to be 100 feet deep they are now drilling them 1000s of feet. It's a race to see who can dig deepest to get the last bit of water out of the aquifer so they can make more money selling pistachio nuts.

Anyway, you can listen to it or read the transcript.

If you want to listen to it then don't read any further until you are finished. It's a good listen.

Quote:

ROBERT SMITH, HOST: The drought in California has made life inconvenient for a lot of people there in a lot of ways. You hear about people not being able to wash their cars and the brown lawns, people taking slightly shorter showers, sure. But there are places where people's taps, where they get their water, are actually running dry, where you go to the faucet, turn it on and nothing comes out. STACEY VANEK SMITH, HOST: And that is happening in a city called Porterville, Calif. It's about an hour south of Fresno. They used to get their water from wells, wells that supplied their homes. And the wells aren't deep enough to reach the water anymore, and their taps actually went dry. They have no water in their house. SMITH: So what do they do? How do they get water just to live their daily lives? VANEK SMITH: The city has set up these kind of temporary facilities - portable showers and sinks. I went and visited one. It was in the parking lot of a church. And they kind of look like an airplane bathroom. They had little benches and showerheads and a curtain. And out in the blazing hot afternoon sun were rows of sinks with mirrors. And people come there in the morning and shave before work. It was really grim. And while I was walking around, a car pulled up and Karen Hendrickson rolled her window down. So what were you hoping to get today? KAREN HENDRICKSON: Water, today, for our house - the drinking water - 'cause our well is dry, so we come here for support on drinking water. VANEK SMITH: How long ago did your well go dry? HENDRICKSON: It's been a year already.

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Quote:

SMITH: The thing that's heartbreaking about all of this is that there is actually water still left in the valley. There is water literally below Karen's home. There's a giant aquifer, and Karen used to tap into it with her well. But the level is getting lower and lower and lower, so she and her neighbors can't reach it anymore. It's like this race to get the water. Karen and the people here lost out on the race. VANEK SMITH: But there are people still getting this water, people who are still in this race. Not that far away from Karen's house, you see it - acres and acres of lush farmland, corn, cotton, tomatoes, pistachio trees, walnuts, almonds. This is where Karen's water went. Hello, and welcome to PLANET MONEY. I'm Stacey Vanek Smith. SMITH: And I'm Robert Smith. Today on the show - the screwed-up economics of drought, why the most lucrative thing you can do right now in California is to use more and more and more of the scarce resource, water. VANEK SMITH: Grow more almonds, grow more pistachios and beat out your competitors to the sweet, sweet water at the bottom of the well.

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Quote:

VANEK SMITH: Mark Watte farms 3,000 acres in California's Central Valley. And Mark is a very energetic guy, super organized. He likes to tape lists to the steering wheel of his truck. So is that a to-do list on your steering wheel? MARK WATTE: It is. It is. Yeah, it certainly is. VANEK SMITH: We're in Mark's truck, and we're driving across his farm. His fields stretch as far as the eye can see, these beautiful black-eyed peas and corn and pistachio trees, and it's incredibly lush and green. And the reason for this is that Mark's farm sits on top of that aquifer, the same aquifer that Karen's house well used to tap. SMITH: Except he's better at getting to the water. VANEK SMITH: He is better at getting to the water. But it's getting harder and harder, even for Mark. The level of the aquifer has been dropping really fast. It's been dropping 10 feet a week. SMITH: Which is amazing - 10 feet a week. VANEK SMITH: Ten feet a week. In fact, half of the wells on his 3,000 acres have dried up. He shows me one.

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Quote:

VANEK SMITH: Mark is deepening wells as fast as he can, and he's also putting in new wells. He's put in eight at a cost of around $2 million. And the reason for this is all around us - pistachio trees. There are little baby ones he's just planted. They're, like, up to your hip, tied to these little stakes. And there are bigger ones in the next field with big clusters of pistachios almost ready to pick. These are the pistachios? WATTE: Yep. Yeah, they are. There you can see it's about half developed. VANEK SMITH: It's so green. These little pistachios are very thirsty. It takes almost a gallon of water to grow one pistachio and a gallon of water to grow an almond. Nut trees are some of the thirstiest crops around. And yet, here we are in the middle of a drought and Mark is planting pistachio trees as fast as he can. Why are you planting so many new trees right now? WATTE: We just think it's - financially, it's the right decision to make. Once they get up into production, we hope to make good money. VANEK SMITH: So they're - are they pretty profitable, pistachios? WATTE: Extremely profitable today. I mean, wildly profitable. VANEK SMITH: Really? WATTE: Yes. VANEK SMITH: Actually, 10 times more profitable than most other crops. For pistachios, Mark can make $10,000 an acre, for most other crops, $1,000 an acre. SMITH: The reason for this is both supply and demand. The demand part is that people are eating more nuts. People in China and India are discovering them, and so there's a much bigger market for nuts. But the supply side is also important. The reason why they can make so much money off of these crops is because of the drought. The drought has made pistachios and almonds harder to grow - rarer. And as a result, the price has naturally shot up. VANEK SMITH: So everyone is planting them. And when you drive through California's Central Valley, it's striking. All of the fields are these new trees. Farmers are ripping out their old crops and putting in nut trees. SMITH: And they've become so profitable, you hear these stories about hedge funds and big banks buying California farmland and planting almond and pistachio trees because hedge funds and banks have plenty of cash upfront to drill these really deep wells, tap the aquifer, get the water first. And the payoff for them could be huge.

So the nuts are very profitable to grow, but the trees are very thirsty. So profitable that farmers are planting more trees even though they are fast running out of water. And spending millions to dig deeper and deeper wells. It just seems nuts to me (no pun intended). How could it not end in disaster? Classic case of the tragedy of the commons.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1gWIrhe