As California continues to face a drought that’s entering its fourth year, pools are beginning to feel the squeeze of water-conserving measures.
Already, various cities and communities have started to restrict water usage for private, in-home pools, and some have tried to slow down construction of new residential pools, according to NBC News.
Those conservation measures haven’t yet appeared to affect public pools, which would in turn affect swim clubs, particularly in Southern California, which is the largest LSC currently in USA Swimming’s membership.
California governor Jerry Brown announced yesterday that the state as a whole would be adding additional restrictions to help conserve water. This is the first time a California governor has ordered mandatory water reductions for the entire state, according to the Washington Post.
So Cal Swimming’s Mary Jo Swalley told SwimSwam that she hasn’t heard of any restrictions on public pools as of yet, but that more restrictions are likely coming soon.
The biggest issue for California currently is a lack of snow runoff after a relatively dry winter. The state typically gets 30% of its water from snow runoff as spring hits and snow in the higher elevations melts, according to the Washington Post. But this year, the runoff amount will be significantly less.
So Cal Swimming, as mentioned above, is the largest LSC in USA Swimming currently, and is a hotbed for swimming at the age group, college and professional levels. It’s still important to point out that current conservation efforts don’t appear to be affecting public pools, and by proxy, swim programs. But with water restrictions continuing to go up in the state, California’s drought is certainly worth keeping a wary eye on for both swimmers and swimming fans.
Fragile egos from NASA, NOAA, corporations, and their owned puppet-politicians on all sides of the aisle all fiddle away while Rome burns, along with the western USA states, which are burning away and estimated to lose up to 45% of their current forests in the next 20 years. It doesn’t matter too much whether it’s natural or man-made, since any response we have control over will obviously have to be man-made.
I’ll admit that I haven’t wanted to think much about how it would all affect the sport of swimming, since it seems like it may end up being a luxury some day compared with future basic challenges like unviersal food, shelter, safe drinking water, etc. Mammoth Mountain ski… Read more »
If you want to give yourself a splitting headache, try understanding the asinine laws about water rights in the west. Most of it was written over 100 years ago, when there were 1/10th the people. Things like – farms get water based on how much they used the year before, so if you conserve you lose your water rights. There is no LEGAL allocation for ecosystem support, so people can suck a river dry until a do-gooder environmental group sues to protect a salmon ground, and then everyone spends the next 5 years in court arguing.
The worst part is, everyone agrees the laws are bass ackwards, but our government can’t reform anything to save its life.
Jerry Brown’s low speed train to nowhere is now tabbed at well over 100 BILLION dollars yet he and CA legislature wouldn’t spend one dime on new water containment facilities, reservoirs over the last decade since the last drought.
Well Bobo of it makes you feel any better Jerry Brown is not denying climate change and he is going to make all Californians poor because of their water bill!
Please stick to comments about swimming !
Coastal cities in periodical ( pre global warming ) drought zones in comparable western nations (not only rich emirates ) have built desalination plants e.g. Brisbane Sydney Melbourne Adelaide & Perth .
Inland cities in drought require decisions to be made on water usage , short of pipelines built from the coast . It IS about Swimming & for instance Australian inland cities will fill their pools in drought because it is cultural. In remote areas chlorinated swimming pools reduces indigenous ear infections markedly . This is the reverse of whites who complain they got ear infections from pools!
In answer to Aswim , San Diego , because it is a major US Navy centre is building a desalination plant… Read more »
And in the meantime your crazy dangerous brainless R Congress, bought by oil, gun and multinational companies’ lobbies, continues to deny the climate change….
I don’t know if I must 😆 or 😥 .
If this wasn’t the future of humanity at stake I would laugh, so I prefer crying.
😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥
Attacking a foreign nations political system doesn’t seem to be working out to well for you in the up/down votes 🙂
It’s not so much that people deny it, it’s the fact that the people generating the numbers and computer models around climate change got caught lying about it. The problem with the debate is there’s financial incentive on both sides so it’s very tough to get to actual facts. In the 70’s we were warned by the experts about the next ice age is coming, then it moved to global warming, and now it’s climate change. Whatever it takes to move the agenda 🙂
Most of the scientific literature from the 70s identified global warming as a threat – there were just a couple headline stories covering the opposite theory.
Sure, there are financial incentives to anything, but Big Science is not Big Oil. Climate models are usually very open about methodology, probability, margin of error – the “got caught lying” about… something er other… is pretty baseless.
In any case, most every climate model has predicted the SW states in permanent drought this century, so California can’t say no one saw this coming.
Oh, go start a revolution in your own country. How many are you all up to? Five? It’s a bit hard to keep track. You remember how to do that, right? March on the Hotel de Ville, tell the government there’s a revolution. They’ll either run or call out the National Guard. If the latter, there’s a 50-50 chance that they’ll join the revolution. Barricade a few streets. If things go well, a few months later, you’ll start guillotining your own revolutionary leaders.
🙂
To be fair, France has the highest proportion of Nuclear energy generation and usage as a part of its total generation than any other nation. The EU is also a lot further down the line than the US in terms of environmental legislation and carbon bills. So Bobo sort-of has a point to make as a French citizen on this subject.
I agree if nothing else golf courses should be curbed before anything else, for a variety of reasons.
Most importantly water shortgages are being recognized and something is trying to be done about them.
Whats the percentage does France get its electricity from nuclear?
I thought Japan has the highest, at least pre-Fukushima. I went to Fukushima last year and got all the lessons in nuclear energy from all of these experts..it was very telling
you know what they say about opinions they are like..and.everyone has one. i am glad that Mr Gigi is able to exercise his (thank you american WWII vets for that) even though i totally disagree. since this is a swimming board i will totally refrain from discussing about politics. howevet i will state that it is easy to critisize another political system or situation especially when you 9 time zones away! in many ways he has behaved like the people he is critisizing. in the past i have enjoyed his comments about swimming and perhaps he should stick to that (since this is swim swam not salon.com).
Why don’t California build desalination water system like those in the middle east?
When they can throw around billions dollars to buy unnecessary expensive ipads for school children, surely they have enough money to secure their water supply?
Mega drought is coming. Once every 10000 year drought
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/february/nasa-study-finds-carbon-emissions-could-dramatically-increase-risk-of-us/
Interesting that NASA throws global warming there but the NOAA believes the opposite. At any rate its a serious issue considering the amount of produce that comes from the state.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/12/08/california-drought-cause-noaa/20095869/