Comment by dclowd9901
2 years ago
Ok, but hydrologically speaking, the water goes _fucking somewhere_.
So if it isn’t our underground reservoirs, maybe it’s, I dunno, above-ground reservoirs?
2 years ago
Ok, but hydrologically speaking, the water goes _fucking somewhere_.
So if it isn’t our underground reservoirs, maybe it’s, I dunno, above-ground reservoirs?
For California, the bulk of the water is sprayed on plants and evaporates. A solid 80% of the water used by humans goes to agriculture. The plants are shipped all over the world. In a very real sense, California agriculture is about mining water and then shipping it elsewhere.
For the remaining 20%, it gets used by industry (10%) and residences (10%), where some of it goes back into the ground because it's watering the grass, but the bulk of it gets sent down the drain, in some cases to be reclaimed and reused (toilet to tap sewage systems) or sent to drain the the ocean.
For other states the ratios are different, but California in particular is egregious in agriculture's abuse of the aquifers.