I hate anything to do with city's. Much easier to live in the county and have a well. Most city's wont allow you to have a well drilled, They force you to use there water.

If the drought were to last another few years, I wouldn't be surprised if California started putting meters on wells to track your water use, and tax it.

Actually that's the plan in California, to get every last well to be metered. The well situation here is that I can drill if I like because I am not within the city limits. A lot of my neighbors are on wells. The County ordinance allows it. But it's costly, $20K. Unfortunately, I sit on top of the Santa Margarita aquifer, and that has been drained by the city of Scotts Valley down to a depth of about 400 feet. Not cheap to drill that deep.

Axel,

you mentioned you were thinking about a holding tank to hold water for all summer, would that not bring your total $input incl. all your modifications close to the 20k for a well ? Storing water for a long time brings other problems and it would have to be a very large tank.

Good question. I don't think so. The existing system I have in place is what you would need if you had a well. Now, the math amounts to equating drilling with buying a couple of very large tanks. Drilling is risky, meaning I could invest in drilling, only to not find any water and having to drill a couple more times. The drilling itself could easily run $10-$15K. Plus the need of a well pump with no guarantee of getting enough flow to support my water needs.

My water irrigation needs are around 5 units per month with a drip irrigation optimized system. To cover 5 months, I would need a total of 18,000 gallons of water. I checked on our local tank costs. A 10K tank is $6500 but requires an engineered concrete pad. A 5K tank doesn't require a foundation but costs $2650. So it would cost about $10K (adding labor costs) to setup three additional tanks to complement the two I already have.

My biggest objection to the tanks is the space they take up. 8.5 feet diameter with 12 feet height is a whopper.

Axel,

I had no idea you could irrigate your garden with less then 4000 gallons per month during the summer. That seems very low, but great if that works.

Water rationing irritates me not because I don't think people should use less (they should), but because the subject of the draconian restrictions bears no nexus to the overall problem. Water use by homes (as opposed to agriculture, government, commercial, industrial) is roughly one percent of the water use in the state. So even if you use draconian water rationing and cut home usage by half, great, you've cut overall usage by 0.5%.

Economically, this is stupid, because if people can't adequately water their lots (not counting idiots who overwater, but people who are actually trying to water the bare minimum but have a lot of things to water) end up losing lawns, losing palms, losing tropicals, etc.

I know the reaction may be "hey, you shouldn't be growing palms in the desert." Understood. But if that's the policy point that people want to make, the better thing would be to enact CC&R's that restrict lawns for government and commercial properties. Those use so much water, and there's no real reason for having a lawn in front of an office park or a city council building.

Anyway, rant over.

Even if I could fill a 5000 gallon tank, that would last only last 4 months, just watering my vegetable garden only. Not worth it.

Axel,

I had no idea you could irrigate your garden with less then 4000 gallons per month during the summer. That seems very low, but great if that works.

Even if I could fill a 5000 gallon tank, that would last only last 4 months, just watering my vegetable garden only. Not worth it.

George, Matty, I don't live in a desert, the climate here is so humid and mild that if you mulch, evaporation rates are relatively low. During the average Summer day, more than half of a 24h period is spent with humidity levels above 80% and temperatures below 60F. That's just not enough to cause a lot of evaporation. Yesterday we rose above 60F at 10AM and we were back below 60F at 8PM. We have miles and miles of rainforest, if that rainforest can survive on just the Summer midst at night, I should certainly be able to get my garden to survive on 4,000 gallons a month.

We are effectively on the rainy "windward" side of the Santa Cruz Mountains. See the map below, I am in the green to blue zone. So by Spring, my entire property is 100% saturated with water, and I don't actually turn on the irrigation until mid July. Everything is mulched so it stays wet for a long time. I dry farm my orchard. The only things that get water are a few select palms that can't live without surface water, and any plant that needs a push to get established.

I am amazed that you do not irrigate until July. That is great.

So the 4000 gallons you need to irrigate your garden are just above half of the public water that you can use without penalties.

Water rationing irritates me not because I don't think people should use less (they should), but because the subject of the draconian restrictions bears no nexus to the overall problem. Water use by homes (as opposed to agriculture, government, commercial, industrial) is roughly one percent of the water use in the state. So even if you use draconian water rationing and cut home usage by half, great, you've cut overall usage by 0.5%.

Economically, this is stupid, because if people can't adequately water their lots (not counting idiots who overwater, but people who are actually trying to water the bare minimum but have a lot of things to water) end up losing lawns, losing palms, losing tropicals, etc.

I know the reaction may be "hey, you shouldn't be growing palms in the desert." Understood. But if that's the policy point that people want to make, the better thing would be to enact CC&R's that restrict lawns for government and commercial properties. Those use so much water, and there's no real reason for having a lawn in front of an office park or a city council building.

Anyway, rant over.

If only what you said was true. I got interested and checked this out. Sadly, our water district is truly in trouble and there aren't any ill-willed politicians pulling moves. This isn't some conspiracy. Maybe at the State level, 1% comes from residents, but for the Santa Cruz Water district, 88% is used by residents. Here's the usage breakdown: http://www.co.santa-cruz.ca.us/grandjury/GJ2005_final/6%20-%202%20SpD%20SC%20Water.htm. This is a report from early 2000's, not much has changed since. This document seems to be related to an attempt at introducing a desalination plant, a measure that has encountered massive opposition. Mostly it's an attempt at slowing growth even though the blocking tactic is used is environmental issues.

• Santa Cruz Water district covers only 12 square mile.
• Usage is divided as follows:
  • Agriculture: 3 percent
  • Business: 8 percent
  • Single family residential: 77 percent
  • Multi-family residential: 11 percent
  • Not sure where the remaining 1% goes, must be fire hydrants, the water dept actually supplies all of Scotts Valley's roadside fire sprinklers as well.
• The water department depends on rainfall for 84 percent of its water supply. The department takes 93 percent of its water supply from surface water. The remaining seven percent comes from wells (groundwater). The department’s water supply comes from these sources:
  • San Lorenzo River surface diversion (48 percent)
  • Loch Lomond Reservoir (16 percent)
  • Live Oak Beltz wells (7 percent)
  • North Coast streams (Reggiardo Creek, Laguna Creek and Majors Creek) (20 percent
  • 7% is not accounted for, no idea where it comes from

Looks to be problem long known.

http://www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/157/

Wow, that's the least well-prepared water district I've ever seen.