131–140 of 195 posts
Quick Google stats: There are 13M households in California. Average household consumes 0.5-1.0 acre-feet of water per year. It costs $419 per acre-foot for desalination. California has a discretionary budget surplus of $49B. Thus: It would cost $2.7B-$5.4B per year to provide desalination-based water to all Californians. With the current budget surplus, we could provide 100% of California's living water needs for 10-…
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And that doesn't even begin to factor in the revenue opportunities from scaling up desalination further for export to neighboring states (most of which are even more arid than California). I've said it before and I'll say it again: California food and (desalinated) water in exchange for Nevada electricity (be it solar, geothermal, or nuclear) would mutually benefit both states and produce one hell of an economic jugg…
Pumping water from the California coast to Nevada is not a good idea. You’re basically describing a hydro plant, in reverse, carrying expensive water.
I think this is the easiest solution to the water problem there. You already effectively have a massive pipeline in the form of a river. Luckily, the state with coastal access has the highest water allocation for it.
This is partially why I think the risk of homeownership is largely being understated. You may have entire communities that become uninsurable even long before an actual natural disaster occurs, and it becomes very difficult to cash out refinance or sell.
Quick Google stats: There are 13M households in California. Average household consumes 0.5-1.0 acre-feet of water per year. It costs $419 per acre-foot for desalination. California has a discretionary budget surplus of $49B. Thus: It would cost $2.7B-$5.4B per year to provide desalination-based water to all Californians. With the current budget surplus, we could provide 100% of California's living water needs for 10-…
John Oliver just had a segment on water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtxew5XUVbQ In the episode, there's literally a farmer that says that he grows a water inefficient crop deliberately in order to hold on to water rights (@ 8:38). "Use it or lose it" water rights are ass backwards to put it mildly. Make agriculture figure how to use less water or face penalties. That's the way forward.
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> Oh the typical techie solution to environmental problems. We can solve this with tech! In this case, yes, we literally can solve this with tech. We don't have to wait for the aquifers to dry up, because California has a ludicrously long coastline just begging for desalination plants up the wazoo.
You may need to check the orders of magnitude we are talking about here and then re-evaluate your statement. This is not about a few stretches of CA coastline. This is about all of the continental US. A few desal plants won't cut it.
Then we build more than "a few".
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> leave fields fallow Please no. We're facing intense inflation, and the solution has to involve supply-side improvements, not just demand-side tweaks. Subsidies for drip irrigation sounds interesting, though - as long as actual water usage reduction is part of the requirement.
It might be objectively better to pay someone to not grow alfalfa for export to the middle east then it is to waste water on growing it. In the end, this is likely cheaper than building desalination infrastructure to make up for the wasted water so you save money. Don't think this is a good long term plan though.
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Or we could tell the vineyards we need water not wine. Wine makes substantial money for the state but it doesn't make sense if nobody can live in it. Or the almond guys, or other types of unsustainable agriculture in the state.
Beef, pasture and animal feed crops are tremendous "wastes" of water. Much of it is also exported.
In good faith?
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> leave fields fallow Please no. We're facing intense inflation, and the solution has to involve supply-side improvements, not just demand-side tweaks. Subsidies for drip irrigation sounds interesting, though - as long as actual water usage reduction is part of the requirement.
It might be objectively better to pay someone to not grow alfalfa for export to the middle east then it is to waste water on growing it. In the end, this is likely cheaper than building desalination infrastructure to make up for the wasted water so you save money. Don't think this is a good long term plan though.
Fresh water is scarce and the demand for fresh water continues to grow annually (growing population, growing economy, etc). Fresh water is an appreciating asset, with fixed (or reducing) supply. Increasing the supply of fresh water is beneficial for many, many reasons globally, and increasing investment into desalination will keep reducing the cost (helping developing countries also build desalination).
Getting society to "use less fresh water" is non-competitive, and at best a medium term "stop gap". The economy is competitive, it doesn't "allow for" non-competitive players. You can try to change the inertia of the economy, but you would likely fail.
Building infrastructure to increase the amount of fresh water we have on earth (without unaccounted for externalities - e.g. it should be carbon-neutral/negative) is economically competitive and as such 1. durable; 2. improves lives; 3. changes the mental-model from "wasted water" to "wasted energy" (which is a simpler problem to solve).
> I disagree that we should build desalination, even if we can "afford" it.
Spreading this message of disagreement with increasing durable, cost-effective, and carbon-neutral infrastructure because it is not cost-optimal does a disservice to the global population and the long term sustainability of the global ecosystem. Way better off with the message "I agree with building more desalination. We should also get ... to do ...".
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Pumping water from the California coast to Nevada is not a good idea. You’re basically describing a hydro plant, in reverse, carrying expensive water.
Parts of Nevada are below sea level so the total energy expenditure to move water should be "minimal". This would be after making aqueducts. My thinking is, if the Romans could move water over mountains without pipes, so too can the Americans.
Quick Google stats: There are 13M households in California. Average household consumes 0.5-1.0 acre-feet of water per year. It costs $419 per acre-foot for desalination. California has a discretionary budget surplus of $49B. Thus: It would cost $2.7B-$5.4B per year to provide desalination-based water to all Californians. With the current budget surplus, we could provide 100% of California's living water needs for 10-…
It is not politically possible to build desalination plants (or much of anything else really) in California. In just May of this year[1], a private company that had spent $100 million trying to get approval to build a $1.4 billion de-sal plant in the L.A. basin. It would have served about 400,000 homes but the permit was denied by regulators. Private money would build these plants if allowed. [1] https://www.reuters.…
By replacing one environmental problem with another:
> The commission's staff experts said the facility would destroy marine life in about 100 billion gallons of seawater per year, and the company's ability to mitigate that damage with wildlife habitat restoration fell far short of state requirements.