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Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

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Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#161

Post by dr_dshiv »

SECProto wrote: post #116
danboarder wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: I grew up in the Midwest along the Kankakee river, and most infrastructure is built for flooding, as it can happen year round. Fresh water is not only abundant, there is often too much, and flooded fields and towns are a real problem. I am all for finding ways to move it west where people say they need it and are willing to pay a premium. Cities in the deserts of earth are more feasible than ever with i…

> I am all for finding ways to move it west where people say they need it and are willing to pay a premium. Note that the premium amount they would be willing to pay is approximately $0.0017 per litre, delivered treated to their doorstep. [1] https://www.phoenix.gov/rates# says ~$5/unit, with each unit being ~750 gallons, or ~2850 litres

Gonna be inflation on that account

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#162

Post by markvdb »

Let's compare daily average household domestic water consumption:

- where I live: 202l [0]

- US: >1135l [1]

US household consumption share of total water usage: 12% [1].

Just reducing household usage to 50% more than a random wealthy northwestern European region instead of 560%(!) more equals 10% total water usage savings. That's without even touching agriculture or other water hungry sectors.

Aligning usage to be a little less out of line with production seems like the obvious answer here.

- But you live in Europe, not the US. You couldn't possibly know how miserable life would be without watering my lawn in the middle of the desert. And what would the neighbours say?

- We only have one earth. It's _ours_ you know, not just yours. And our children's. And our children's children's..."

[0] https://www.vmm.be/data/gemiddeld-leidingwaterverbruik-gezin... (nl)

[1] https://www.epa.gov/watersense/how-we-use-water

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#163

Post by MomoXenosaga »

atoav wrote: post #136

Before looking at the water source, wouldn't doing the bare minimum to control the water sinks would be in order? I mean, we have harder regulations on water useage in the alps, and this is a water rich area where only 3% of the a available water is used. The truth is that the water a land will provide is limited. And of course you could expand this water by also taking the water from another land, but maybe pitting…

Most of the water is used by industry, I always find it amusing when we pretend 5 minute showers will have an impact.

And building all those chip foundries in Texas isn't going to help.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#164

Post by 01100011 »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #107

Sad that not reading the article before commenting has so obviously come to hacker news. So many comments on here moaning about harming the east to give to a greedy west when what something like this would almost certainly do is help the east flood less while helping the west at least partly solve a water shortage. The concerns about contamination are real but probably manageable though.

I've pretty much stopped commenting after finding better forums for discussion now. So many of the comments are from angry people with nothing constructive to offer. I have a lot to say about this subject, but it's not worth the effort to deal with all the drive-by shitposts.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#165

Post by akiselev »

walnutclosefarm wrote: post #118

In terms of where the water comes from, sourcing at Old River Control makes a lot of sense. From there the water really does pretty much run into the Gulf of Mexico, and there is no downstream irrigation, power generation, or shipping impact from a 5% diversion. But the writer makes the engineering sound trivial, when it's really not. The first thousand miles are all uphill, so you're not talking about a canal, as th…

Those sound like big numbers but unless my napkin math is very wrong it's not even an order of magnitude more than existing Californian water projects like the California Aqueduct [1]. 1 m/s flow through a 40 m diameter pipe is 1256 m^3/s which is less than four times that of the CA aqueduct at 370 m^3/s and the distance is five to six times depending on how you measure it at 2000-2400 miles compared to 440 miles. Just one of the pumping stations along the CA aqueduct pumps that water up about 2,000 feet at 2,000 PSI so the elevation change is barely a factor of two more.

The California Aqueduct was a megaproject that started over 70 years ago and the aforementioned Edmonston Pumping Station was turned on in 1973. At this point, the biggest challenge would be the right of way and litigation since the engineering has long been a solved problem. Those in California can go see the aqueduct exit the Sierra Nevada mountains at the edge of Bakersfield [2] and hiking trails around Lake Isabella intersect with open parts of the aqueduct where you can see all the water rushing by (don't fall in!). Imagine that, but like five or six times bigger.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct

[2] https://a.scpr.org/69978_86cbed2aa8b2e426383678de0f659072_or...

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#166

Post by yellowflash »

markvdb wrote: post #162

Let's compare daily average household domestic water consumption: - where I live: 202l [0] - US: >1135l [1] US household consumption share of total water usage: 12% [1]. Just reducing household usage to 50% more than a random wealthy northwestern European region instead of 560%(!) more equals 10% total water usage savings. That's without even touching agriculture or other water hungry sectors. Aligning usage to be a…

One of them is per family and other per person (family of size 1). Is it even comparable? I am not saying it is lesser, it's pretty high, probably 200% not 560% if I am right.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#167

Post by sshine »

markvdb wrote: post #162

Let's compare daily average household domestic water consumption: - where I live: 202l [0] - US: >1135l [1] US household consumption share of total water usage: 12% [1]. Just reducing household usage to 50% more than a random wealthy northwestern European region instead of 560%(!) more equals 10% total water usage savings. That's without even touching agriculture or other water hungry sectors. Aligning usage to be a…

> And our children's children's...

I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children’s children, because I don’t think children should be having sex. (Jack Handey)

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#168

Post by Gibbon1 »

thrill wrote: post #94
happyopossum wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The states in question don’t have oceans to desalinate.

A couple of nuke plants powering desalination and California could be exporting water to the east. Of course, that assumes a willingness to take their water issues seriously - it's not like they haven't seen it coming for several decades and could have all this in operation already.

Takes about 4000 kwh to desalinate an acre foot of water. Would take about 2GW of solar to desalinate a million acre feet of water.

Los Angles takes 1.2 million acre feet of water from the Colorado. Replace that with desalinization, no heep big canal needed.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#169

Post by nraynaud »

Maybe it’s time to investigate growing lettuce and strawberries in the Mississippi valley instead of a place literally called the Sonoran Desert.

Sending the Colorado water to Los Angeles was already completely stupid. This river runs completely dry in Mexico.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#170

Post by TedShiller »

oblib wrote: post #92

As someone who moved to LA in the early 70s, and left LA in the late 80s, and spent some time to visit Palm Springs, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, I can say with full confidence that anyone with a lick of sense knew there was not enough water to sustain that growth that started back then, but that didn't stop anyone from building or buying those homes. They all knew it, but didn't care. It was, and still is, plain old stup…

> The only reasonable solution is to stop building new homes right now, and look into how to reduce the number that exists because it's obvious they've already overbuilt.

Yep, reduce housing, don’t build more. Nobody wants to admit it because it doesn’t sound nice.

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