Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Dr. Ken Murray on LA and water

I think it depends on where you live. Here in Sacramento, my neighbor next door (also an engineer) tore out their grass and did a great job with native plants without any additional water, but we get a lot more rain than in the Mojave. One of my staff engineers, yeah another one of those bad guys Ken loves to insult, tore out his lawn and put in artificial grass. So yeah, a lot of people like yourself are doing their part and it all adds up. If some day it adds up big enough to not move water across the state, great, but let's appreciate the incredible system we have and continue our investment in it until that day comes, if it ever does.

It's a lot more likely that conservation and all these other great ideas will be just enough supplemental water to offset future population growth, not replace these engineering marvels. Many of the pumps and turbines have been upgraded to modern high efficiency models, at large expense. What we need is more green energy to run the pumps. Huge room for improvement there. That's one nice thing about the LA Aqueduct, it a gravity run system. I don't think they use any significant amount of power for pumping, and the system does produce significant green and clean hydropower.