Why? These are states that are literally deserts yet continue to waste water. Take Phoenix, something like 50% of their residential water use is watering lawns. The state also just got a brand new TSMC fab, presumably with a bunch of tax breaks and guaranteed water - given that the large fabs use around as much water each day as 3-400k homes, it’s rich to turn around and say you need federal aid to get more water.
Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
71–80 of 347 posts
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you dare to elaborate? I frequently see this sentiment, yet have never once seen any detail made as to how it’s possible. Please explain.
Certain luxury foods or at least less necessary foods take a large percentage of water that could be reallocated to more critical needs. Meat also takes 10x the water needed for many crops. There are many ways to reduce water usage.
This is true. But, some places like native grasslands have no other viable economic use other than raising cattle/beef. These grasslands are fed by rainfall so the displacement cost is zero.
Different story when there are competeing interests for the land and inefficient uses (I.e growing alfalfa in a desert) are adapted and cemented into law. It’s complicated no doubt.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
80% of water in California is used by agriculture, we’ll stop “stealing” water when you all stop “stealing” Cattle and Dairy, Almonds, Grapes, Lettuce, Strawberries, Tomatoes, and more a that we grow with water. Unless you’d rather buy that all shipped in from South America instead….
Sure, we'll just grow it in the midwest, ie, the rest of the country. Only reason we grow mostly corn is because of subsidies. That can be easily changed. If you're suggesting CA is the only viable farmland in the country, you are mistaken.
You can't grow any of the mediterranean/mid-east fruit or nut trees in the midwest as they are killed by frost. That rules out most of the stuff that California is famous for exporting - almonds, pistachios, citrus. Many of the ones that do grow won't be commercially competitive - the seasons can be short. And of course, unlike corn, you're going to have to find people to pick all this fruit.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, we'll just grow it in the midwest, ie, the rest of the country. Only reason we grow mostly corn is because of subsidies. That can be easily changed. If you're suggesting CA is the only viable farmland in the country, you are mistaken.
I don't think that's the only reason, and it is not by choice either. California weather is more temperate than the rest of the US and it is more suitable for many types of crops compared to the rest of the US.
We can engineer the crops (plant breeding) or engineer the water (current system). Eastern geographies that are rain fed could replace CA production no problem
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#75If California hasn't lived within its means so far, why do we think that would change after giving them other regions' water?
Is there any region that “lives within its means” for all resources? Why is exporting or importing water so different from electricity, or food, or clothes, or iPhones?
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Travesty or not, not-posting regional flamewar all over the thread would be a good start.
What has really surprised me about this topic is not the regional flamewar stuff in comment threads like this.
It's that newspapers have been running passive-aggressive opeds of the same tone, thinking it's worthwhile. You can guess what kind of opeds are getting run in which regions.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Desalination is great for California. Arizona, Colorado is too far from the coast.
Linked article is talking about transferring water farther though. We can pipe desal water west to east instead of fresh water east to west. Either way, AZ needs it from somewhere
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#78I'm probably just uninformed about this, but can anyone explain why there are so many comments about California here? The article seems to be about: > Lake Powell (Glen Canyon dam on the Utah/Colorado border) and then downstream to Lake Mead (Hoover Dam/Las Vegas) and on through Arizona and beyond. The article seems to use California as an example in a couple places, for example > Water conservation on the part of ev…
California takes 27% of the water from the Colorado River. That's more than Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada combined.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#79This just makes me shake my head. I'm not in the industry, but I'm guessing there's a least a bunch of things that could destroy the ecosystem out west by introducing a different ph, foreign mineral content, or lack of natural bacterial content. So instead I have a bunch of better ideas that don't result in ecological disasters: * How about people stop living the desert? Somehow, unexpectedly, there's not a lot of wa…
I must disagree, people need space and while conservatism has its place people should live along side nature not outside of it. There is no reason to keep an arid and infertile land the way it is for the sake of novelty alone.
How about we turn the deserts into habitable and fertile lands. People are suffering and climate change will only make water and food shortage worse and lack of resources always results in wars and famines.
This is what people should be doing before colonizing mars.
New fertile lands and sustainable cities built with the lessons of the past 200 years in mind. Instead of continuing to ruin and deplete existing resources, migrate to newer artificially formed areas to allow previously looted areas to recover.
Homeless camps in the desert and drying lakes is all that needs to be considered. People will keep living in these areas and other areas will become and less and less habitable.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#80As a reference, China has been doing this a similar project to interconnect the North (think Beijing etc) and South (think Shanghai) water system. Heck, they have been doing it since hundreds of year ago [2]. So I guess there is a precedent. Based on this thread, I would guess that a large amount of the problem will not be an engineering one, but political and social one. Constructing such a large mega project to div…
But [0] seems to mostly be gravity fed so doesn't need the construction of 4+ new nuclear power plant equivalent generators and as far as I can tell shorter. [1] is much shorter and proposes to move much less water