this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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I live in the southwest US, water saving measures for households are basically as good as they can get without asking people to stop bathing every day. And really it’s not household use (even wasteful household use) here that threatens aquifers, it’s relentless pumping of ground water and overuse of river water for agriculture. In California in particular this is tied up with water rights that allow farmers to use excessive amounts of water with minimal or no cost associated with it. Not all of what’s grown is even a food product either, ex alfalfa.
Obviously we need farms and food, but we have to modernize how plants are watered to minimize water loss. Drip irrigation is much more effective, but since it costs more money than just flooding a ditch many farmers don’t bother.
Isn’t CA craziest water user the almond industry? Other than data center bullshit.
Supposedly the almond farming industry uses somewhere between several times more to dozens of times more water than data centers
Household use is 5 million acre feet/ year in CA. Almond use is 6.8 million acre feet. Alfalfa and other crops to feed cattle is about 8 million acre feet.
An acre foot is 325,851 gallons, or how much water it takes to cover an acre in a foot of water.
As long as animal agriculture exists in the state that’ll pretty much always be a bigger water user. But they’re not low water plants for sure.