The norcal/socal divide caused by the river is funny to me. I grew up in LA, then moved to the Bay Area for college. In LA we never really talked about where our water comes from. But we were always 'in a drought' and always taught to conserve water.
My wife grew up in the Bay Area, and was told the same.
But her family is from Sacramento. Up until about 15 years ago, everyone in Sacramento paid the same for water (based on square footage of your home). There were no water meters. So they didn't conserve. They ran the sprinklers in 100 degree heat for hours, they washed sidewalks with water instead sweeping, and all the other things.
But when the meters came, her Uncle blamed SoCal for "stealing his water". He complained every month when the bill came about how he has to pay more now because of SoCal.
Owens valley, where LA "steals" water from, is on the eastern side of the Sierras.
NorCal, including Sacramento, is on the western side of the Sierras.
So unless they planned on pumping the water over/under the mountain range that surrounds it in every direction except for towards LA, that water was never available for any NorCal city to use.
Being from LA, I am used to a water system that works without needing power. I think most of CA is like that. It was a surprise to lose the water back east when the power went out during a storm.
The only places I've heard of losing water during power outages are houses that use a private well (no power, no well pump), which would be the case anywhere. Municipal water systems may or may not use power to provide pressure, but are going to have generator power outside of the most severe outages.
I wonder if this was in an apartment building. We owned a condo in a 5 story (4+1) apartment building and because it was taller than the San Jose water system was built for, our building needed (electric) pumps to provide water pressure to the building (there were tanks on the roof). If we lost power, then we lost water.
Now that we have moved to a 2 floor detached home (also in San Jose) we do not have that issue, and everything is gravity fed.
We happened to live on the top floor, so I don't have personal experience for the lower floors, but the communication on the (non official) group chat for the building always hinted that any water outages (we had a few non-power issues with the pumps as well) applied to to the whole building. But thinking back that could be an unfounded assumption.
I know NYC doesn't treat their water at all, but LA doesn't either?
My city runs on surface water, so we have treatment and then pump to storage tanks. You would have to be out for quite a while to run the city out of water, though - the tanks are large.
LA definitely treats the water. Both the surface water before consumption (I'd be surprised if any city doesn't do this) and the wastewater, for reclamation for nonportable use like irrigation, and for recycling back into the general clean water supply.
The aqueduct water is specifically purified by the Los Angeles Aqueduct Filtration Plant. That plant is gravity fed, but it doesn't operate without power.
LA just has the advantage of having mountains in the city, so it's cheaper building more elevated water storage so the capacity lasts longer during power interruptions (which are also not as common or extended as they are in the east). They will still eventually run out if they're not replenished by powered pumps.
Where did you get that idea about NYC water being untreated? NYC treats its water. Chlorine is added if and when needed. Testing stations exist to evaluate water quality all around the boroughs, etc.
You can't have a city of millions of people and have the water be potable from the tap without testing and treatment
> New York City’s water (including drinking water) is unfiltered, making it the largest unfiltered water system in the country. Were New York to begin filtering its water, it would cost the city approximately 1 million dollars per day to operate the filtration plant.
They have hundreds of sampling stations to check daily.
He was talking about the drinking water that comes from the faucet, not the sewage.
The untreated NYC water has tiny crustaceans in it, which make it not Kosher, which is why thee bagels from a Jewish deli in NYC are so good. Go figure.
There is no water scarcity in California, only misallocation. The vast majority of our water is heavily subsidized and used for agriculture, and a substantial amount of those crops are grown for export, yet agricultural exports makes up an insignificant part of California's economy.
We could end all California water scarcity talk today, with no impact to food availability for Americans, by curtailing the international export of just two California crops: almonds and alfalfa.
Anecdotally, my friend's grandma was an almond farmer. As they drove past a river in the Central Valley, she exclaimed "Why is there water in that river?! Those could be watering my almond trees!"
Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is the result of survival bias, but given how impossibly hard it is to just build anything where I live (Seattle), I’m not so sure.
Fair. Maybe I'm too much if the weeds of this because all I can think of is how much of a fight it was to pass ST2 and ST3 and how we haven't even started on the Ballard line despite voting for it in 2016 (10 years ago!) and how it might be delayed forever.
I don't think you're wrong. Every time someone says we can't do high speed rail it makes me very sad. And as far as Seattle goes... my commute is substantially affected by the I-5 closures. It's somewhat shocking to me that we allow infrastructure to decay as much as we do.
I'd be happy about the light rail expansion if they weren't talking about delaying the Ballard line indefinitely. :(
Can't do highspeed rail because it's too impractical and expensive, while we're spending a west coast highspeed rail network worth of money on the least popular war in US history.
If you watch the OP, you'll see that the construction of this aqueduct caused billions of dollars worth of environmental devastation. Rail all you want against regulations, but when an argument boils down to "I wish we didn't have to internalize all these costs and could just push them off on someone else", I'm not especially sympathetic.
Certainly that’s part of it, but also just NIMBYism. Los Angeles were able to defeat the Owen’s Valley farmers back then, I don’t think they would be now.
It’s too complicated to corruptly make money off of a large project like that. It’s much easier to just buy a bunch of drugs and needles and give it to the methheads, or spend money on homeless while building zero homes.
I was surprised to find out it was largely uncovered, though I guess it probably makes it much cheaper to construct. I usually think of aqueducts as pipes or tunnels, like Persian qanāts. I wonder how much water is lost due to evaporation.
There's some testing to see how covering open irrigation canals with solar panels which would reduce evaporation and generate power
> Their analysis found that putting solar panels over the 4,000 miles of California’s open canals could save up to 63 billion gallons of water annually
Thanks! I forgot that article, but now I remember that I read or skimmed it when it made the rounds last year. It's actually where I first learned that the aqueducts were uncovered!
Growing up in LA, I was fascinated as a kid watching the water flow down this aqueduct. Anytime we drove by it on the way to Magic Mountain, I'd hope that it would be a water-on day.
Correct it's massively energy intensive to filter the salt out the newest best ideas still use ~2 KWh/m3 of water and that's a lab system in perdue that batches the process instead of having it run continuously which is why current RO desalination systems require so much energy.
California pays other states to take its excess solar energy. Power for a project like this isn't the issue, actually building the system is the issue.
For usage where the water mostly returns as sewage, is treated and then returned to the ocean, you can just dilute the brine with the treated discharge and then it returns at basically the original salinity.
Came here to post this. Dam good book on the shifty maneuvering that resulted in the Owens Valley Diversion and ultimately the population center that is LA.
My wife grew up in the Bay Area, and was told the same.
But her family is from Sacramento. Up until about 15 years ago, everyone in Sacramento paid the same for water (based on square footage of your home). There were no water meters. So they didn't conserve. They ran the sprinklers in 100 degree heat for hours, they washed sidewalks with water instead sweeping, and all the other things.
But when the meters came, her Uncle blamed SoCal for "stealing his water". He complained every month when the bill came about how he has to pay more now because of SoCal.
NorCal, including Sacramento, is on the western side of the Sierras.
So unless they planned on pumping the water over/under the mountain range that surrounds it in every direction except for towards LA, that water was never available for any NorCal city to use.
Now that we have moved to a 2 floor detached home (also in San Jose) we do not have that issue, and everything is gravity fed.
My city runs on surface water, so we have treatment and then pump to storage tanks. You would have to be out for quite a while to run the city out of water, though - the tanks are large.
The aqueduct water is specifically purified by the Los Angeles Aqueduct Filtration Plant. That plant is gravity fed, but it doesn't operate without power.
LA just has the advantage of having mountains in the city, so it's cheaper building more elevated water storage so the capacity lasts longer during power interruptions (which are also not as common or extended as they are in the east). They will still eventually run out if they're not replenished by powered pumps.
You can't have a city of millions of people and have the water be potable from the tap without testing and treatment
> New York City’s water (including drinking water) is unfiltered, making it the largest unfiltered water system in the country. Were New York to begin filtering its water, it would cost the city approximately 1 million dollars per day to operate the filtration plant.
They have hundreds of sampling stations to check daily.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/nyregion/nyc-tap-water-qu...
This causes some issues for observant Jews, because the water technically might not be kosher.
https://oukosher.org/blog/consumer-news/nyc-water/
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/nyregion/the-waters-fine-...
EDIT: I'm a dork an grabbed the wrong URL. Changed URL to a PDF for lack of better.
A major metro doesn’t treat its tap water? Where on earth did you get that crazy idea?
<old URL deleted>
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dep/downloads/pdf/water/drinking-...
I'll save some digging: "Even without filtration, the water is carefully treated to reduce the risk of harmful microorganisms."
Tap water is treated (UV and chloride disinfecting), but is largely not filtered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_water_supply_sys...
The untreated NYC water has tiny crustaceans in it, which make it not Kosher, which is why thee bagels from a Jewish deli in NYC are so good. Go figure.
https://newsfeed.time.com/2010/08/31/drink-up-nyc-meet-the-t...
Also I love when they refer to it as the "_First_ California Water Wars" in a grim realization of the future of water scarcity in the West
We could end all California water scarcity talk today, with no impact to food availability for Americans, by curtailing the international export of just two California crops: almonds and alfalfa.
It is an insane engineering achievement. A train literally running on tracks on a road that is floating on water!
I'd be happy about the light rail expansion if they weren't talking about delaying the Ballard line indefinitely. :(
> Their analysis found that putting solar panels over the 4,000 miles of California’s open canals could save up to 63 billion gallons of water annually
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/solar-panel-cove...
Desalination is dominated by operating costs.
The most efficient commercial desalinator for boats is 32 Watts a gallon.
Most of the video content has the correct coloring, from my experience observing the aqueduct.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8...
(Chinatown)