Real Estate Crash thread

[Danno]

Nevada owns a very small amount of the Colorado River flow. Vegas is not sucking the Colorado dry.

[Benny Profane]

Nevada owns a very small amount of the Colorado River flow. Vegas is not sucking the Colorado dry.

So, where is all that water coming from? Ain't the sky.

[Mokomahonah]

The're mining the aquifer. Taking out more than is going in, the definition of a limited resources. If I remember right, there is something like 400 years of water at the current rate, but that could be hogwash.
Quick Google search results:LV gets 90% from Colorado River and 10% from groundwater.
https://www.lvvwd.com/water-system/w...rom/index.html

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[Benny Profane]

Well, that tells me 90% from the Colorado, 10% from under the ground, but, God damn, how much water can be underground that stinking desert?

[Danno]

The're mining the aquifer. Taking out more than is going in, the definition of a limited resources. If I remember right, there is something like 400 years of water at the current rate, but that could be hogwash.
Quick Google search results:LV gets 90% from Colorado River and 10% from groundwater.
https://www.lvvwd.com/water-system/w...rom/index.html

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Yep. And while that 90% sounds big, the reality is that Southern Nevada has very small population overall, so nobody but LV needs it. But still, their share of the Colorado is small, relatively speaking, something like 400k acre-feet out of 15M acre-feet that are allocated.

And yes, they are mining the aquifer. Pretty much everyone does it, they pick a mining "period" that seems like a long time, but in reality isn't. In Colorado, that mining condition is presumed over 100 years. And when they chose that 100 year period, they thought that was a long time. Except now we're over halfway through that 100 year period.

[Dantheman]

This is how water use breaks down in Utah, but it's generally true in all western states and I imagine in Nevada as well:




There isn't a water supply shortage, it's a management problem rife with perverse incentives and markets distorted by subsidies (those farmers pay pennies on the dollar compared to municipal customers). You might say, "But, we need food!" and that's true. But, outside of the CA Central Valley most of that "agricultural" water isn't used to grow food. In UT it's mostly used to grow alfalfa hay, and much of the hay is sold to China to feed dairy cows--effectively exporting Utah's water to China, likely at a net-negative ROI when subsidies are factored in. This holds true across most of the West--highly subsidized water funds economically questionable agricultural uses that account for 80-90% of total water consumption.

Does Vegas waste large volumes of water? Absolutely. Is Vegas, and municipal water consumers in general, creating the western water "crisis?" No.

[Danno]

^^^^
truth

[skaredshtles]

This is how water use breaks down in Utah, but it's generally true in all western states and I imagine in Nevada as well:

Yep - Colorado info from 2010:

[Conundrum]

That’s exactly what I though of Boise. Midwestern town.

Midwestern town close to a lot of cool stuff really close by people didn't know about until social media. Yeah, if you swing through, the town itself wasn't/isn't great in the grand scheme. If you look around in a three hour radius, it's pretty impressive. People didn't until it starting hitting the webs.

And now all the cool people are outdoorsy folk.

[altasnob]

Las Vegas has natural ground aquifers, as does other nearby states like Arizona (Vegas translates to Meadows). Arizona "banks" their unused allotment of the Colorado River underground. And as pointed out above, it's growing shit that uses the most water (so agriculture, golf courses, and lawns). But just cooking, taking showers, swimming pools, and fountains using recycled water do not use much in the grand scheme of things. The Mormons, who made the desert bloom in SLC, built Vegas.

[skiballs]

I’m thinking artificial turf yards are going to be a good bis.


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[goldenboy]

Water laws in the West are generally "use it or lose it". Which is crazy...

[Skistack]

Yep - Colorado info from 2010:

I’m all for water conservation, but you’re going to have to pry my Palisade peaches from my cold dead hands.


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[old_newguy]

Water laws in the West are generally "use it or lose it". Which is crazy...

Would it be better if someone could acquire a large amount of water rights they weren’t using and hold them speculatively instead of using a finite, scarce resource for a beneficial use?

[Mazderati]

The point is the use is not always needed or beneficial.

[dan_pdx]

Water laws in the West are generally "use it or lose it". Which is crazy...

I did some work years ago with an Oregon non profit focused on water, and one of their tools was giving people the ability to donate or park their water rights, which means they don't lose them even if they don't pump. Not sure how widespread this strategy is, but at least people are working on it.

[Danno]

Water laws in the West are generally "use it or lose it". Which is crazy...

The point is the use is not always needed or beneficial.

Use it or lose it has a logical basis, and the west would look dramatically different if not for that doctrine (we likely wouldn't be here, it would never have developed at all). And by definition, the use is beneficial. "Use it" means on a beneficial use as that term is defined. Yes, society has changed, the economics and environment have changed, and no doubt we will have to tweak things to make the quantity of water available be a long term sustainable supply. But if we ditched "use it or lose it" and ditched "beneficial use" as core concepts, the shit storm that would ensue would be shittastic.

[Percy Rideout]

Would it be better if someone could acquire a large amount of water rights they weren’t using and hold them speculatively instead of using a finite, scarce resource for a beneficial use?

https://www.watereducationcolorado.o...-grand-valley/

Funny you say that....

[Danno]

https://www.watereducationcolorado.o...-grand-valley/

Funny you say that....

That's a different kind of speculation; that water still needs to be used or it will be lost. The law does not, however, permit speculation where you acquire water rights for some undetermined future use and don't have a current beneficial use.

[Toadman]

Use it or lose it has a logical basis, and the west would look dramatically different if not for that doctrine (we likely wouldn't be here, it would never have developed at all). And by definition, the use is beneficial. "Use it" means on a beneficial use as that term is defined. Yes, society has changed, the economics and environment have changed, and no doubt we will have to tweak things to make the quantity of water available be a long term sustainable supply. But if we ditched "use it or lose it" and ditched "beneficial use" as core concepts, the shit storm that would ensue would be shittastic.

At the same time, there are a lot of farmers who would like to tweak the definition of beneficial use. Which, I think could be a good thing. Lots of 10 acre, 20 acre hobby farms around here with water rights that really don't need to use all their water. But that use it our lose it thing gets in the way of conservation.

[Danno]

At the same time, there are a lot of farmers who would like to tweak the definition of beneficial use. Which, I think could be a good thing. Lots of 10 acre, 20 acre hobby farms around here with water rights that really don't need to use the water. But that use it our lose it thing gets in the way of conservation.

No argument there, the doctrine does need some tweaking, as I stated. But we can't just toss it out.

[Mazderati]

Use it or lose it has a logical basis, and the west would look dramatically different if not for that doctrine (we likely wouldn't be here, it would never have developed at all). And by definition, the use is beneficial. "Use it" means on a beneficial use as that term is defined. Yes, society has changed, the economics and environment have changed, and no doubt we will have to tweak things to make the quantity of water available be a long term sustainable supply. But if we ditched "use it or lose it" and ditched "beneficial use" as core concepts, the shit storm that would ensue would be shittastic.

'Beneficial' is open to some interpretation isn't it? And, recreation is a beneficial use. I'm envisioning someone who needs less water this year hosting weekly slip 'n slide parties for fear of needing more water next year. I know fuck all about water in the west and I'm sure it's complicated but "because that's the way it's always been" is a lazy position.

[Mazderati]

I don't know. Use it or lose it seems super shortsighted to me. Don't penalize me for trying to do the right thing.

[Danno]

'Beneficial' is open to some interpretation isn't it? And, recreation is a beneficial use. I'm envisioning someone who needs less water this year hosting weekly slip 'n slide parties for fear of needing more water next year. I know fuck all about water in the west and I'm sure it's complicated but "because that's the way it's always been" is a lazy position.

Beneficial is open to some interpretation, just like any other constitutional or statutory term. But it's pretty well defined, you can't just make shit up. And "that's the way it's always been", sure that's the argument in some sense. But it's not nonsensical; would you object to someone's defense of capitalism with a "that's the way it's always been" type argument? Because that's what it is, it is a system of property rights with massive amounts of settled capitalist expectations. So to waltz in to that system of property rights without proper consideration of those rights? Let's just say that might cause some problems, and rightfully so.

The whole system exists because humans wanted to develop the west. It started with mining, because mining requires a lot of water not immediately next to a water source. And nobody would invest the money into building water conveyance structures without protecting that investment, with "first in time, first in right" becoming part of mining custom. That custom became part of farming too, because who would want to homestead land and dig ditches if the next year someone could move in upstream and take all the water. The entire west was developed because of this system of investment in infrastructure creating a property right, with the right based (essentially) on time of investment, so it's not so easy to just say "poof, none of that matters." The doctrine exists for sound reasons. It needs tweaking to accommodate current/future challenges, but it's not a stupid system.

I don't know. Use it or lose it seems super shortsighted to me. Don't penalize me for trying to do the right thing.

Except who defines the right thing? This has to come from the legislature, subject to constitutional "takings" considerations. I do think the system should be tweaked to encourage more efficient use of water, but "maximum beneficial use" is an underlying policy basis in Colorado water law. And it generally does that. But again, there are ways it could be tweaked to help overcome the obvious future challenges.

[Benny Profane]

I still think people are sleepwalking through this water thing. What's that thing about things going downhill very slowly until they suddenly speed up into short, brutal events? I like living where it rains and its green. The bugs suck, but, whatever.

Hey, how about that awesome power grid and utility and energy pricing, though. Man, the west is best. So much more efficient and modern. Yay, capitalism.

Minnesota gasps at the financial damage it faces from the Texas freeze
By Will Englund

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...rpoint-energy/

When that big freeze hit Texas in February, the Lone Star State couldn’t help but share its pain.
With its ill-equipped natural gas systems clocked by the cold, Texas’s exports across the Rio Grande froze up and 4.7 million customers in northern Mexico went without electricity — more than in Texas itself. The spot price of gas jumped 30-fold as far west as Southern California. And all the way up by the Canadian border, gas utilities in Minnesota that turned to the daily spot market to meet demand say they had to pay about $800 million more than planned over the course of just five days as the Texas freeze-up pinched off supplies.
“The ineptness and disregard for common-sense utility regulation in Texas makes my blood boil and keeps me up at night,” Katie Sieben, chairwoman of the Minnesota Public Utility Commission, said in an interview. “It is maddening and outrageous and completely inexcusable that Texas’s lack of sound utility regulation is having this impact on the rest of the country.”

The Texas market is so large — second only to California’s — and its natural gas industry is so predominant that when things go wrong there, the impacts can be felt across the country. And in a state that eschews regulation, driving energy producers to cut costs as deeply as they can to remain competitive, things went spectacularly wrong the week of Valentine’s Day.
[The fight over who will pay for Texas blackouts gears up]
Minnesota’s biggest gas companies are putting forward plans to recoup their expenses by adding a surcharge to customers’ bills, which the state utility commission would first have to approve. Normally, such adjustments to account for winter prices go into effect in September, but Minnesota’s biggest gas utility, Houston-based CenterPoint Energy, says the financial pinch is so great it wants to start billing customers next month — and charging them nearly 9 percent interest until the extraordinary costs are paid off.

At the same time, the company’s CEO, David Lesar, has been assuring investors that the company has access to plenty of cash and its weather-related costs nationally are not a concern.
In state after state, from the Gulf Coast to the Rockies, from the Ozarks to the shores of Lake Superior, utility regulators have launched investigations into what went wrong, and gas companies have moved to pass on their exceptional costs to customers. Investigators say they are on the lookout for evidence of price-gouging and market manipulation. In Minnesota, where the temperature dropped below minus-20 degrees in February and scarcely a single customer lost gas or electricity, state officials are struggling to come up with an equitable solution to a debacle made in Texas.
Gas prices in Minnesota rose to 70 times their normal level, as deliveries to the state’s main trading hub dropped by 39 percent.
“I don’t think we even yet truly understand what happened,” said state Sen. David Senjem (R-Rochester), a former Minnesota legislature majority leader. “I hope they realize they better get their system a little more solid,” he said of Texas. “Unfortunate. You could use stronger words, but I better not. They got caught, and the rest of us did, too.”
Senjem sponsored a bill that would provide $115 million in state funds as relief for hard-pressed residents and municipally owned small utilities. It passed the Senate and is awaiting action in the House. He said he hopes federal funds from the American Rescue Plan act could also come into play.
[New Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has advice for Texas — and for the oil industry]
Of the four major commercial gas utilities doing business in Minnesota, attention has focused on CenterPoint, because it is the largest, with 800,000 residential accounts; has pushed most aggressively for relief; and is based in Texas.