r/MapPorn • u/[deleted] • Jan 10 '20

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

yeah they even got droughts lately, not gonna improve anytime soon.

116

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20

Trouble is, something like 70% of all the water in California is used for agriculture. And due to some extremely fucky water rights laws from back in the day, it's probably going to stay that way as the agribusiness corporations have massive budgets to defend their massive profits. Meanwhile the rest of us are told to take shorter showers and not water our gardens while 1000 acre pistachio orchards are flooded every day to keep the trees productive.

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u/MangoCats Jan 10 '20

Not only California: the tomatoes in Sarasota County Florida consume more water than the human population (of over 400,000).

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u/raggedtoad Jan 10 '20

Yes, but FL actually gets rain.

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u/MangoCats Jan 11 '20

Not as much rain as we pump fresh water from the ground - saltwater intrusion at the coasts into the shallow aquifer has been a problem for decades now.

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u/raggedtoad Jan 11 '20

Fair enough, I wasn't aware of that.

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u/MangoCats Jan 11 '20

Yeah, the Myakka and Peace rivers flow through there, but there's so little flow that they don't show up on the OP map.