The drought in California has gone on so long, and is so severe, that it's beginning to change the way people are designing residential communities — in unexpected ways, and unexpected places. [...]
There will also be a system for treating and sending wastewater back into the aquifer underneath the city. [...]
Not everyone is convinced it will use less water. Phil Desatoff is with a local water district that is suing Reedley over the development's environmental review.
— npr.org
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5 Comments
Why is it in California when land should be retired to let nature take it back, they jump at putting people there? It's that thinking that's made this drought as bad as it has become. The shear amount of humanity in California, and IT'S insatiable thirst for water should be reason enough to dismiss the idea that residential development is an awful idea. Historically people have had to migrate when these things happen, where then is the logic in encouraging people to settle in a place they would have left in the past?
+++Mr_Wiggin, just remember, the word "logic" is not a synonym for the word "Californian".
Greenwashing.
The question itself is false: no one's seriously proposing converting farmland into residential development for the purpose of saving water. (That development is 40 of the 27,600,000 agricultural acres in the state, according to UC Davis research.)
I'm with Miles, here, in that "eco" anything is at least as likely to be an advertising slogan as a built outcome.
it is greenwashing, I worked in a project in a big city (7million+) where a vineyard had been engulfed by development all around it, the owners were wealthy and have their residence in this last tract of old vines, so they didn't want to move with the vineyard outside the city; their strategy was to hold until the last minute and make it seem an impossible decision, but in reality they were being pushed by water rights and the constrains of flying pesticides planes in a residential area, so they took upon themselves to develop and made billions without losing the vineyard (already established and producing some miles away). This article is a real estate mktg campaign precursor.
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