WaterCalifornians hoping the state would innovative itself out of a water crisis

California’s water agencies have relied on innovation to cope with the worsening drought and depleting water resources. Irrigation systems have evolved overtime to help the agriculture sector maintain crop yields as temperatures rise and wells begin to dry up. Now conservation efforts are being imposed on state residents, but the state has plenty of water, according to Alex Tabarrok, just not enough to meet every possible use that people want to use the water for.

San Diego county residents use roughly 150 gallons of water a day, while people in Sydney, Australia, which has a comparable climate and standard of living, use about half that amount of water. Water conservation efforts including increasing the price of water could encourage residents to reduce their use of water at home. Still, Californians would have to face the fact that agriculture accounts for 80 percent of water consumption in the state, but only 2 percent of economic activity.

“What that means is that if agriculture used 12.5 percent less water we could increase the amount available for every residential and industrial use by 50 percent — grow those lawns, fill those swimming pools, manufacture those chips! — and the cost would be minimal even if we simply shut down 12.5 percent of all farms,” Tabarrok writes.

Governor Jerry Brown’s decision to exempt farmers from the state’s first ever restrictions on water use has faced backlash from water conservationists. “We know why they’ve been exempted,” said John Carter, manager of the Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, a conservation group based in Paris, Idaho. “They have political power, and they’ve been there a long time.”

The Sacramento Bee notes that agriculture has a large influence on state politics. The $40 billion industry employees about 420,000 people and has made the state the nation’s agricultural capital. “Agriculture has a lot of clout,” said former Assemblymember Roger Dickinson (D-Sacramento). “I think that for most members, urban or rural, they see agriculture as a very important economic component in California,” and agricultural groups “have generally been unenthusiastic, to say the least, about things that would change the status quo with respect to water.”

As Californians are beginning to adapt to the new normal of water conservation, some are hoping the state would innovate itself out of a water crisis. Former state secretary of food and agriculture, A. G. Kawamura, said there is a water district experimenting with human waste, extracting methane and hydrogen to use for fuel and injecting the water into the aquifer. He also looks forward to technologies that harvests water from the air.

Innovative solutions, however, are limited to the economic and political will of state officials, residents, and private sector partners who could help California prepare for a sustainable future.

“I do think agriculture is an industry that is very resilient and adaptive,” said Kate Gordon, the head of the Energy and Climate Program at Next Generation, which promotes the development of advanced energy. “But there is a limit to that.”