Why This California Commission Unanimously Rejected a New Water Desalination Plant (apnews.com) 146
Calfornia already has 12 water desalination plants — with 15 more proposed, one local news station reported last year. "These plants, which experts say weren't viable or aren't as needed as they were 20 years ago, are being looked at now in a more critical light in the struggle to adapt to less rainfall and climate change."
In 2015 Slashdot covered the launch of a desalination plant in in Carlsbad, California. "56 million gallons a day," brags its web site now. "The Pacific is now on tap." And this year the same company, Poseidon Water, had wanted to build another desalination plant 60 miles north.
But the Associated Press reports it just hit a roadblock with the state's Coastal Commission. Poseidon's long-running proposal was supported by Governor Gavin Newsom but faced ardent opposition from environmentalists who said drawing in large amounts of ocean water and releasing salty discharge back into the ocean would kill billions of tiny marine organisms that make up the base of the food chain along a large swath of the coast. "The ocean is under attack" from climate change already, Commissioner Dayna Bochco said. "I cannot say in good conscience that this amount of damage is OK."
Other critics said the water would be too expensive and wasn't urgently needed in the area where it would be built, which is less dependent on state and federal water due to an ample aquifer and water recycling program.
Commissioners cited those issues in following a staff recommendation and rejecting the proposal. They also cited the energy cost of running the plant and the fact that it would sit in an earthquake fault zone.
The vote against the plant was unanimous, CNN reports. And yet... Commission staff did acknowledge in the report that its findings do not mean that the project is "unapprovable," nor that it is completely against desalination, writing: "Staff acknowledge the need to develop new, reliable sources of water in southern California, and believe that well-planned and sited desalination facilities will likely play a role in providing these supplies."
But CNN also notes California has other options: Research by the Pacific Institute, a water-focused think tank, found California could substantially reduce its urban water use by 30 to 48% with existing and cutting-edge technologies. In its recent report, the institute argued that "water efficiency opportunities can be found across the state but are highest in the South Coast hydrologic region." It pointed to solutions that cost very little compared to desalination, including increased wastewater recycling and stormwater capture — with about two-thirds of the region's potential water savings coming from the residential sector.
"Seawater desalination is among the most expensive water supply options," Heather Cooley, Pacific Institute's director of research, told CNN. "From a cost perspective, from an environmental one, from an energy perspective, doing these other alternatives first makes the most sense for California."
Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the article!
In 2015 Slashdot covered the launch of a desalination plant in in Carlsbad, California. "56 million gallons a day," brags its web site now. "The Pacific is now on tap." And this year the same company, Poseidon Water, had wanted to build another desalination plant 60 miles north.
But the Associated Press reports it just hit a roadblock with the state's Coastal Commission. Poseidon's long-running proposal was supported by Governor Gavin Newsom but faced ardent opposition from environmentalists who said drawing in large amounts of ocean water and releasing salty discharge back into the ocean would kill billions of tiny marine organisms that make up the base of the food chain along a large swath of the coast. "The ocean is under attack" from climate change already, Commissioner Dayna Bochco said. "I cannot say in good conscience that this amount of damage is OK."
Other critics said the water would be too expensive and wasn't urgently needed in the area where it would be built, which is less dependent on state and federal water due to an ample aquifer and water recycling program.
Commissioners cited those issues in following a staff recommendation and rejecting the proposal. They also cited the energy cost of running the plant and the fact that it would sit in an earthquake fault zone.
The vote against the plant was unanimous, CNN reports. And yet... Commission staff did acknowledge in the report that its findings do not mean that the project is "unapprovable," nor that it is completely against desalination, writing: "Staff acknowledge the need to develop new, reliable sources of water in southern California, and believe that well-planned and sited desalination facilities will likely play a role in providing these supplies."
But CNN also notes California has other options: Research by the Pacific Institute, a water-focused think tank, found California could substantially reduce its urban water use by 30 to 48% with existing and cutting-edge technologies. In its recent report, the institute argued that "water efficiency opportunities can be found across the state but are highest in the South Coast hydrologic region." It pointed to solutions that cost very little compared to desalination, including increased wastewater recycling and stormwater capture — with about two-thirds of the region's potential water savings coming from the residential sector.
"Seawater desalination is among the most expensive water supply options," Heather Cooley, Pacific Institute's director of research, told CNN. "From a cost perspective, from an environmental one, from an energy perspective, doing these other alternatives first makes the most sense for California."
Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the article!
We should use solar desalination (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We should use solar desalination (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the organisms could have easily been filtered out at the intake, and the salty return would not have been a drop in an ocean (see what I did there?). More fresh water dilutes the ocean in your everyday storm at sea than this plant would desalinate in its lifetime.
They aren't claiming the organisms are being killed in the intake, it's the localised concentration of salt on the coastline. No one is saying that desalination plants make an impact on the salinity of the ocean as a whole, that would be absurd, but it will have a local impact in the coastal areas where the salt is released.
It's also particularly pertinent that, "most marine life is found in coastal habitats, even though the shelf area occupies only seven percent of the total ocean area". [citation] [wikipedia.org]
Re:We should use solar desalination (Score:5, Interesting)
Water in California is a political problem, and desalination is an astoundingly stupid solution to the problem.
The real solution is obvious: Stop growing subsidized rice in the desert. California grows five million tonnes of rice annually [calrice.org]. Also, plenty of other thirsty plants, such as cotton and alfalfa.
The farmers receive water at $70 per acre-foot, or $0.0002 per gallon, which is less than it costs the government to deliver.
If water was priced at cost and everyone paid the same, the water "shortage" would disappear.
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The real solution is obvious: Stop growing subsidized rice in the desert.
They don't grow rice in the desert. California has desert, but the rice is not grown in the desert areas.
Rice is also a reasonable crop because when there is drought, you can just not grow it. When there is water surplus, you can grow it.
Finally, getting rid of rice in California wouldn't solve the water problem. You need to look at numbers.
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Also, desalination is the only sure way to get fresh water without hoping and praying for monsoon rains consistently enough to never have a problem of watering the lawns of
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Fluorine nanostructures [interestin...eering.com] or a more passive [thebrighterside.news] approach.
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Cool, but "A long way to commercialization"
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Rice is also a reasonable crop because when there is drought, you can just not grow it. When there is water surplus, you can grow it.
Yeah, that's the problem. It's currently being grown.
Finally, getting rid of rice in California wouldn't solve the water problem. You need to look at numbers.
Gotta love the "if it wont solve the problem 100% it wont solve the problem at all" crowd. Rice takes a lot of water of which California seems to no longer have. It's stupid to keep growing it there. We should be growing it in the South, an environment that not only has a similiar environment to the plant's native climate but also has the low wage numb
Re:We should use solar desalination (Score:4, Insightful)
One problem is that some of these farmers have valuable water rights and taking them away would require compensation as it would be every bit as much of a "taking" as if the government decided to turn the house you own outright into a park or school.
Perhaps it would be worth the government claiming some of these rights through eminent domain and paying the required compensation.
Of course, residential and non-agricultural users will still pay quite a bit more for water per CCF because of the requirement for residential water et al to be treated, tested, and distributed through relatively expensive infrastructure which requires constant repair and upgrades. But, ideally, buying out farmer's rights could result in the water companies and farmers paying much the same for water (of course, the infrastructure to get water to a specific farmer or a specific treatment plant from which it is distributed will vary widely so the costs of water delivered to the farm/facility may vary significantly as well).
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The vast majority of a farmer's water usage is, of course, going to go towards agriculture rather that residential use.
In some areas, farmers draw irrigation water for their fields from shared aqueducts and/or pipelines etc. that transport water from other sources (dams, rivers, etc) than groundwater. It was that infrastructure I was referring to with respect to why water might cost different farmers different amounts (when delivered "to the curb").
Re:We should use solar desalination (Score:4, Informative)
California doesn't "grow rice" in the Central Valley. It's grown near Sacramento where the Sacramento River flows. They have to flood fields to grow rice. The Central Valley grows mostly citrus, grapes and nuts. Oh... Bakersfield grows a LOT of carrots.
The water for these fields comes from well water as well as the California Aqueduct. The source of the aqueduct is the Sacramento River Delta.
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The real solution is obvious: Stop growing subsidized rice in the desert.
When I read about rice growing in California, I did wonder about the sanity if this particular kind of agriculture. I assume that there are regions of the USA that are much better suited to growing rice, on account of being naturally wet. Would that be the southeastern states? I don't think there is any justification in subsidising unsuitable agriculture on national food security grounds, if there is already practical production available, that would be worth supporting.
I believe there is other agriculture
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It does seem like you should be able to deal with both the intake situation and the output by finding ways to spread it out more. Take in the water through large inlets in multiple places so there is a very little suction and filter the water. To release the water, mix it with intake water to dilute it first before releasing it. It will cost a bit more construction on maintenance, but it should be possible to mitigate the potential problems.
Re: We should use solar desalination (Score:2)
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Well, if you get alot of brine, can't you make table salt for consumption?
Don't have to import salt from elsewhere when you can make you own locally.
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>This is a stupid argument to make.
Why?
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It's a blanket response to a location-specific situation.
It's a specific response to a specific situation. You're outright wrong.
If there was an ancient river valley underwater near the plant you could dump the brine into it would have a much different impact and be a totally different discussion, for example.
Yes, then you would be dumping salt into an aquifer and that would be even more spectacularly fucking stupid.
Now, if you had a salt flat to dump your brine on, that might be a good solution. It's already salty. But then the high speed record setters would be bummed out.
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Oh would you look at that, AmiMojo has got his own personal stalker. Are you rsilvergun's stalker too?
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It's like being on Oprah. You get a stalker! And you get stalker!
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...drawing in large amounts of ocean water and releasing salty discharge back into the ocean would kill billions of tiny marine organisms that make up the base of the food chain along a large swath of the coast...
I'm wondering exactly how many billions we're talking about here and in what timeframe. We could be talking about a teaspoon full per year. Or we could be talking about a dumpster full every second. Even then the relative damage has to be weighed. Is it better, or worse than taking even more fresh water from one of the rivers?
So basically, "use less water". (Score:2)
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Tell that to the HOAs and golf courses that they can't have green lawns in California anymore.
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Especially in conservative areas that just insist they should get all the water first before the cities. I suggested to my mom to not cut the grass as short as it would use less water that way, and she was aghast at the idea...
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Some folks in Arizona are getting smart and realizing they probably shouldn't have a green, water-hungry lawn in the desert, opting instead for native decor, making an attractive rock, cactus, and shrub garden. Californians should think about doing the same.
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California is way ahead of you there. Sure, we've still got the big Hollywood homes with huge lawns but lawns for the common folk have been declining in popularity for the last two decades in favor of local and much more water efficient plant life.
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Or one realizes one can't blame all of California's water woes (or most of the west for that matter) on almonds.
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Or one realizes one can't blame all of California's water woes (or most of the west for that matter) on almonds.
There is nothing inherently wrong with almonds. Almonds are a high-value crop and almond milk requires less water than an equivalent amount of dairy milk (and California has plenty of dairy cows).
But the government should not be "picking winners" and giving them more-or-less free water while choking other industries employing hundreds of times as many people.
Just price water fairly. The "shortage" will disappear and supply-and-demand will direct the water where it is most economically useful. If that mean
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Tell that to the HOAs and golf courses that they can't have green lawns in California anymore.
Obvious solution: Raise the price of water.
Yeah... uh...
Look, you don't want people dying of dehydration or unable to take a shower. The solution would be to raise the price of water in tiers of the amount of water you're using, so it's cheap up to a point, and then gets increasingly more expensive.
Florida pretends to do this, with the distinctly problematic note that there is a base water fee that you always have to pay, regardless of your consumption. What this means, in practice, is that I could use nearly four times as much water as I do... with
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Look, you don't want people dying of dehydration or unable to take a shower.
Residential customers pay ten times as much for water as agricultural corporations.
Fairly priced water will mean cheaper water for thirsty people. It is the rice farmers who will pay more.
We will likely need desal regardless (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not enough to figure out where to get more water from for our use. We also have to figure out where to get water to replenish our aquifers. If pumped dry and left long they can literally collapse and cease to exist, creating subsidence including sinkholes in the process.
Re:We will likely need desal regardless (Score:5, Informative)
It is even worse than you think. California is taking more and more water from the Colorado than some of the surrounding states thing is fair. With the current water rights to the Colorado where drawn up almost a century ago, they where done very poorly to the point of being unworkable.
Those rights are coming up for review soon. With the current political climate and the droughts that are in the states surrounding the Colorado upstream, California might lose access to this water.
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California is taking more and more water from the Colorado
I am currently reading a long article in the Washington Post online, about the Colorado effectively drying up. Climate change might be part of this, but I think the main point is wasteful water use.
It may well be that farms in California are benefiting unfairly from subsidies of their water use, but you have to consider what these farmers are going to do instead, when their present product is no longer financially viable. it could take years to rebuild a farm.
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Can you provide a link to that article, I would like to read it. The Curiosity Stream has a great video on the issue called "The Colorado Problem." If you have that service I would recommend watching it too if you are interested on issues with the river.
I was thinking of these farms and the effects they will have if they lose water from the Colorado. I think it would be short sighted of California continue to depend on water from the Colorado. Instead California should be bringing as many desal plan
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I think this link should work for the WaPo article about the Colorado River.
https://wapo.st/3lfCG1l [wapo.st]
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Thank you. Look forward to reading it.
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Already happening.
https://ca.water.usgs.gov/land... [usgs.gov]
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Yes, I’m being sarcastic. When the aquifers run dry, most people will blame, aliens, liberals, Obama, George Soros, or all of the above. At our core, we are a species of animal. We will consume the resource unthinkingly until its gone. And most people will never unders
Dayna Bochco: Wanted poster for flaming hypocrisy (Score:2)
Re: Dayna Bochco: Wanted poster for flaming hypocr (Score:2)
No surprise. Same crowd protects birds from windmills in wind rich Wyoming. In that case oil money, in this case big water:
https://www.facing-finance.org... [facing-finance.org]
Which is poised to rival oil industry through this century if privatized water becomes a thing.
salty discharge (Score:3)
ardent opposition from environmentalists who said drawing in large amounts of ocean water and releasing salty discharge back into the ocean would kill billions of tiny marine organisms
I can't imagine that there isn't a way to release the salt in a diffuse way that doesn't affect marine organisms.
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I can't imagine that there isn't a way to release the salt in a diffuse way that doesn't affect marine organisms.
Sure there is, but we can't let that eat into profits.
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Yeah, let's redirect the discussion to evil profits and away from a frank hashing out of whether it's good statecraft to prioritize the wellbeing of marine microorganisms over the human economy.
Congrats on fulfilling your nickname once again. It's called a food chain. You might want to read up on it as it's kind of important.
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Making long diffuser pipes doesn't actually work to cause diffusion. We figured that out in the 1970s. You might not know about it since the pollution cheerleaders try to hide the fact every time it comes up. I've been downmodded for pointing it out before and expect it to happen again now. Currents alone prevent it from working, which is enough to cause problems with saltier water; for other compounds there are also other effects which come into play like bioconcentration, but they are not relevant here. I
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Making long diffuser pipes doesn't actually work to cause diffusion. We figured that out in the 1970s.
Do you have a link that talks about this? It sounds interesting.
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Do you have a link that talks about this? It sounds interesting.
Not about that specifically but I did find a nice math-forward description of the overall mechanics [ucdavis.edu] which ought to appeal to the Slashdot crowd, much of which is much better at math than I am :) (I got a shit mathematics education and have some sort of learning disability to boot, which was never diagnosed because they were too busy telling me I was gifted. That and $4.15 will get me a shitty burnt coffee latte at starfucks...)
*ahem* Back on topic, in short you don't get meaningful diffusion when motion is
Re: salty discharge (Score:2)
A long enough pipe wouldn't need to rely on diffusion, with a long enough pipe the California current spreads the salt without diffusion.
Re:salty discharge (Score:5, Funny)
Re:salty discharge (Score:5, Interesting)
Pipes that split into smaller pipes and terminate in areas of comparatively stronger current. or even just terminate the main pipe in a very strong current. The faster mixing will virtually eliminate any negative effect.
Processing salt⦠(Score:2)
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I wonder if that is still true in today's economy. I understand that most lithium originates from ancient brine reserves. If you are manufacturing brine as a by-product of making fresh water, does the brine become a valuable resource, because of current increased demand driven by battery manufacturing?
Don't get too upset. (Score:2)
Calm down, don't worry yourself, the rich in California will still get their water. So please put your mind at ease, because they'll be just fine. No affluent person will get thirsty in their mansion. It'll of course be a struggle, but their lawns will still have water. Although, if you're really worried you can still contribute to any billionaire's gofundme.
Greens vs humans, over and over and over again (Score:2)
If all fifteen million people of greater Los Angeles could make their own water, the city would no longer have to pull water from as far inland as Wyoming. Inland sates could then use California's treaty share of Colorado River water, trading for it the newly generated energy that California would need to desalinate that much water.
But no - just like all the other times, Greens like to point out environmental problems and than automatically kill off any technlogies taht can fix them. Desalination is a tempo
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If all fifteen million people of greater Los Angeles could make their own water, the city would no longer have to pull water from as far inland as Wyoming.
Greater Los Angeles gets more than 95% of the water it needs falling on it in the form of rainfall. But because they have covered over the land with pavement, 99% of it runs off into the ocean, creating brackish conditions which (like excess salination) harm marine life.
All we need to do is arrange the brine return to spread out the temporarily saltier water away from sensitive marine organisms.
Yes, but that would make it cost even more, and wouldn't have approved it anyway because there are cheaper alternatives which they say should be explored first.
Re:Greens vs humans, over and over and over again (Score:5, Informative)
Greater Los Angeles gets more than 95% of the water it needs falling on it in the form of rainfall. But because they have covered over the land with pavement, 99% of it runs off into the ocean, creating brackish conditions which (like excess salination) harm marine life.
Having grown up there, unlike you I know what the hell I'm talking about.
All of the water LA uses comes from rainfall, but the local supply became inadequate to serve the city's growth over a century ago. William Mulholland built the first large reservoirs in the city, some of which did not survive the highly faulted terrain, but by 1913 Mulholland already had to start siphoning water from the eastern slope of the Sierra by draining the Owens Valley with a 233-mile aqueduct. The city subsequently tapped the Colorado river basin, which is shared by five other states. By the Eighties that supply had been outstripped and the state had to build a new 444-mile aqueduct reaching all the way to Oroville on the Feather River, on the west side of the Sierra. It was hydrated paradise for a while, but now even the mighty Feather is being sucked dry.
The city has not only run out of California water, but is now running out of water it can drain from the entire West. Desalination is inevitable.
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I think this water supply situation for big cities is pretty common, even in fairly wet climates. I live in Birmingham UK, but most of the water for the city comes from a reservoir in Wales. That country is known for being particularly damp, even more than England.
On a more serious note, one thing that is important about this Welsh water is its purity. I ran an amateur brewery with a friend for a few years, and one consideration is the mineral content of the water. Birmingham tap water is particularly low i
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Greater Los Angeles gets more than 95% of the water it needs falling on it in the form of rainfall. But because they have covered over the land with pavement, 99% of it runs off into the ocean, creating brackish conditions which (like excess salination) harm marine life.
Having grown up there, unlike you I know what the hell I'm talking about.
Your problem is that you failed at reading comprehension, so you don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Your comment makes literally zero sense in the context of my comment. Of course the water they use is rainfall. But it comes from all over the state. What I actually said is that they get enough rain LOCALLY to serve most their water needs, and then it all runs directly into the ocean. This is a known fact. Where you grew up is irrelevant, except that maybe the air pollution caused you some sort of d
The Commission Ignores Everything I Know About CA (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Environmentalists would rather save the Delta Smelt than have farmers produce food.
2. Toilet to tap is distasteful, literally, so it's not used. (yet! It could be, but nah)
3. The state hasn't built a major water storage project, well, almost in my entire lifetime, 1979.
4. Water desal is expensive mostly because of electricity. I guess you could keep a nuke plant open or something, probably a good place for a co-generated desal plant, but what do I know, Morro Bay mothbolled their desal plant.
5. You'll need that water anyway to prevent saltwater intrusion into existing aquifers.
6. It only takes 1 big earthquake to take out a major pipeline.
7. Climate change, whether you believe it exists or not, is resulting in unpredictable precipitation. You don't know whether your draught is going to be 2 years or 2 decades.
In short, you better build it now because you will need it, regardless of whether it adds minimal salinity to your oceans. CA needs to be building 15 desal plants and 15 Gen4 nuke reactors to power them. The least of their problems will be the extra salt in already polluted waterways. I fully expect them to crash their transmission line network if electric cars become mandatory. Nobody wants a power plant in their back yard, so its piped in on overburdened transmission lines.. Just try to put a new major powerline in CA.
Re:The Commission Ignores Everything I Know About (Score:4, Insightful)
Environmentalists would rather save the Delta Smelt than have farmers produce food.
We'd rather save a critical element of the food chain than produce primarily export crops which aren't even profitable for the state (like almonds) or which are only barely profitable but have sizable environmental impact (like rice.) We'd rather promote dry farming where possible than waste water at any cost. We'd rather that farmers didn't have to use their full water allotment every year, wasting it if necessary, in order to keep that allotment.
Re:The Commission Ignores Everything I Know About (Score:4, Insightful)
I love my almonds, but not so much that I'm willing to depopulate an entire region of the U.S. in order to get them marginally cheaper than otherwise.
As for rice, until/unless normal international trade resumes, we can produce enough in the appropriate regions of the Southeast. Again, probably not as cheaply, but I'm OK with paying what it truly costs rather than asking everyone in the Southwest to subsidize it.
Water usage patterns in the Southwest have to adapt to reality, and it isn't a choice. If the remaining water is not managed, it will soon disappear, creating economic chaos and hardship unlike anything we've seen in the U.S. in 80+ years. I have no great love for the culture or politics of California, which are IMO a huge part of the problem, but I'm not willing to see 30+ million people, there and in neighboring states, suffer that kind of hardship if there is anything I can do to help prevent it.
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1. Environmentalists would rather save the Delta Smelt than have farmers produce food.
Wow. If that is the number 1 think you "know" about California then I'm exited to read the rest of your list. Hint: Environmentalists aren't saying farmers should stop producing food. They are saying farmers should stop growing the most thirstiest inefficient "food" in the desert. And I use the term "food" in quotes since the world can do without almonds and rice just fine, to say nothing of cotton, ... the three of which are the target from these environmentalists.
Actually I'm disappointed. I was gearing u
cutting-edge technologies (Score:2)
"Research by the Pacific Institute, a water-focused think tank, found California could substantially reduce its urban water use by 30 to 48% with existing and cutting-edge technologies."
Paying by the gallon is what works in the rest of the world, albeit in metric.
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And that would reduce California's overall water usage by how much? Perhaps 2%?
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An important 2%, though. If cities can can adequately supplied by reducing their water usage, then it should be done. This effects the most number of people, plus there are economies of scale when it comes to recycling water. You can argue about agriculture use all you want but there'll eventually be no good reason why cities shouldn't be recycling nearly *all* their waste water. It's the easiest to do it here, and the most effective. It should almost be a point of pride how efficient a city can be. A
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Our water is metered here in the PNW where it is relatively plentiful. I doubt it is un-metered in California, or hardly any other place in the U.S. The problem is how much to charge per unit, and how to avoid class warfare when the cost is raised enough, for enough households, to cause a reduction in usage.
We have basically the same problem looming everywhere for electricity, it's all metered just fine, but we'll need to jack up the peak hours rates significantly in order to get by with renewable sources
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Paying by the gallon is what works in the rest of the world, albeit in metric.
We pay by the cubic foot here, kinda. Most of us are in tiered billing agreements where we are charged by the "unit", where a unit is some number of cubic feet.
1 gallon = 231 cubic inches, if you want to know.
Of course they won't approve a new plant (Score:2)
In building the isn't you will disturb the earth. The plant will use seawater. The will also be more culinary water which means more residences and more people. All of things that California doesn't want.
Still ignoring the elephant in the room... (Score:5, Insightful)
California is saddled with a throughly byzantine and corrupt quagmire of water allocation laws dating all the way back to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The result of this broken system is that just one industry... agriculture, which comprises merely 2% of the state's economy... is allowed to hoover up 80% of the state's water supply; much of it for a pittance or even for free. What Sacramento needs to do is summon up the political will to stand up to that one industry and scrap the existed system and replace it with one such that all users have equal access to water at prices scaled by total usage and the cost to deliver it. That's not a permanent fix, of course. We need to get climate change under control. But getting the allocation laws for existing water supplies properly reformed would improve the situation immediately and immensely.
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THIS!
I even logged in to see if I had any modpoints left. Agriculture and industry take over 80% of freshwater usage worldwide. Efficiency gains in urban water usage is a drop in the ocean (pun intended).
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Not going to happen. San Francisco has senior water rights, and they don't want to give them up. Los Angeles protects their water rights violently, if necessary. There is no one (who matters) who wants to simplify the water code, because they don't want to lose what they have.
Thereâ(TM)s a much better solution (Score:2)
Instead of dumping water treated by sewage plants into the ocean, filter it and return it to the aquifer it came from
Forget it, Jake (Score:2)
Finite Natural Resources (Score:2)
The best solution to this problem is condoms, lots and lots of condoms.
Time for a remake of "Chinatown" (Score:2)
foolish. very foolish (Score:2)
the biggest mistake people make (Score:2)
Anybody have stats for desalination worldwide? (Score:2)
Quite a lot of countries are naturally arid. Do they find it worthwhile to run desalination plants? I am thinking of countries such as Israel, and Arab oil states, because they could afford to run such plants.
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Today some 585 million m3 of water per year are desalinated in the State of Israel. [www.gov.il]
In Qatar, which is the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas, domestic water comes entirely from desalination plants [azcentral.com], and water is free for citizens. Other countries, such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, also subsidize desalinated water, charging people a share of the cost.
Turn off non-agricultural irrigation (Score:2)
I now live in Florida and had a bare patch of lawn. I sprinkled some grass seed on it, set a sprinkler to run 20 minutes a day, And promptly used 40 gallons of water a day to water a patch of lawn about 20x10 ft. I didn't realize it until I got my water bill and promptl
California water supply, reversion to the norm (Score:3)
NY Time article "In California, a Wet Era May Be Ending" indicates that the last 150 years (i.e., since about California statehood) has been unusually wet, and that recent drought conditions are essentially a reversion to the norm:
"Equally as important but much easier to forget is that we consider the last 150 years or so to be normal," he added. "But you don't have to go back very far at all to find much drier decades, and much drier centuries."
That raises the possibility that California has built its water infrastructure — indeed, its entire modern society — during a wet period.
But scientists say that in the more ancient past, California and the Southwest occasionally had even worse droughts — so-called megadroughts — that lasted decades. At least in parts of California, in two cases in the last 1,200 years, these dry spells lingered for up to two centuries.
The new normal, scientists say, may in fact be an old one.
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Those farmers are also basically destroying soil, depleting aquifers, filling the ocean off the coast full of nitrates because the soil is getting so laden down with salts due to the idiocy of turning arid terrain into farming, and in the end the whole damned thing will collapse anyways, but not after it's ravaged land and marine environments.
Re: Stop giving all the state's water to corporat (Score:2)
Yup! Shut down those greedy farmers! That will show them!
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More like almonds for export.
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Their crunchy snack nuts are no less important than your $7 coffee.
The almonds are of no importance to California's economy because they are not profitable for the state, only for the people growing them, who are getting water under cost. And some other crop would be more profitable, but it would cost to switch. Your statement is obviously false. As per usual.
Re: Stop giving all the state's water to corporati (Score:5, Interesting)
A big part of the problem in California is that the sate is in fact giving water to farmers in the form of massive subsidies. Farmers aren't paying anywhere *close* to market rates, or even the cost to provide the water. Agricultural water rates in California are mostly well under $200 per acre-foot - or $0.46 per 100 cubic feet, compared to the $6+ per 100 cubic feet non-agricultural users pay.
Make farmers pay 100x as much for water (still less than other users) and you'd see huge reductions in their water usage. With some decent improvements in efficiency (e.g. eliminating open-air sprinkler systems in favor of drip-feeds) you wouldn't even necessarily see a reduction in yields.
You do understand (Score:2)
The Gov't maintains a centralized and planned economy around our food supply and has since the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. We just don't like to talk about it, it's not considered polite.
This isn't something the Free Market can solve. If you suddenly lay bare those costs you're gonna have chaos which usually ends in dictatorship. Then you're going to have the world's most p
Re:You do understand (Score:4, Insightful)
The crops using the most water are not really profitable for the state. Rice is only slightly profitable for the state, Almonds are not at all. The only reason we still grow them is that farmers aren't charged properly for water, period. It's not that California should stop producing food — that would harm the whole nation, which gets more food from California than from any other single source. It's that California should stop producing food that is harmful to both ecology and economy, and is mostly exported.
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The US agricultural economy was largely planned (ironically) with humiliating the Soviets in mind. Might be time to rearrange some things now that they've been defeated.
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Those "farmers" are agro-corps run by equity funds growing mega tons for export/profit.
This NOT about food.
Of course, the supply chain issues have kind of kinked up the export flows. Lots of almonds stuck in the elevators waiting to be shipped out.
Let farmers sell their water (Score:2)
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Yay! We can save water by not having food! Brilliant.
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Nice strawman. Nobody's saying we should ban farming and a little price increase isn't going to make anyone starve. The majority of calories we consume is imported from other states anyways.
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You thought food was expensive now? Just wait. CA ag is built on cheap water. Arizona ag is the same way and farmers use something like 70% of all water in AZ to "irrigate farms in the desert". We need to rethink how and what we grow. Far too much corn is planted to make ethanol. More hydroponics, less water waste, less corn, and the big one - less meat. I said it, yes, you may need to cut back on steak. Livestock eat an enormous amount of feed crops.
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That's because they're pumping it out of the ground on their own land using wells they paid to construct backed by long standing water rights.
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Or you could, you know, buy food that *wasn't* grown in the desert at enormous taxpayer expense.
Lawns are local, food is exported (Score:2)
People can forego green lawns and daily showers, but not food. Charge farmers market rates ... and anything you're going to save on taxes and water rates you'll be paying right back in food prices.
Sure, food is more important than lawns, but most of CA's agricultural output is exported. As a result, Californians are subsidizing consumers of other states.
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"Corporations" aka businesses, farms, and factories, use water to make all kinds of things that people find useful.
Definitely true. However, there is the question of whether those corporations are using the water in efficient ways. Note that when I say "efficient", I don't mean purely cost efficient. If a corporation could use 1/10th the water, but it would cost 20% more for the water used, the obvious choice from their point of view will be to just use 10X the water. That is a perfectly rational choice considered in a vacuum, which are the kinds of choices that corporations make unless they're forced not to. That's the