Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West? • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by bandyaboot » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

cozos wrote: post #188

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…

What is causing this? Is it mostly watering the lawn and gardening? Or do Americans just take longer showers? Are our toilets bigger?

> Are our toilets bigger?

Actually it’s the opposite.

“People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once.”

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

#262

Post by cafard » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #248

cafard wrote: post #244

Wonderful. The federal government built massive projects along the Colorado River. Arizona and Southern California got subsidized water and electricity. It took a very few years for the population of Arizona and Southern California to decide that they were sturdy pioneers and that what the US needed was less government. How many years of Mississippi/Missouri basin water before they resume quoting Ronald Reagan on "I'…

So what? I don't get your point.

I find it increasingly pointless to subsidize the impractical land use in the southwest and mountain west.

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

#263

Post by jvanderbot » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #68

jvanderbot wrote: post #22

This is the worst take that I can't avoid hearing about. How does one build a canal that moves water uphill for 1500 miles across the continental divide in these quantities? If not a canal, then how do we do it? Pipes? We're talking a million cubic feet per second in the Colorado river during high times, which has been completely drained and diverted by communities downstream. The keystone pipeline carries 50 cubic f…

How? You investigate and research! Tunnels, alternate locations,using solar and wind to generate pump power and once operational, using a dam to supplement the pump with hydroelectric power. I mean, this is one challenging area where the best and brightest should be well funded to come up with a solution instead of writing them off. Desalination is not a dream either. People are fine to talk about colonizing other pl…

Research isn't magic. The first step of research for problem solving is to establish a trade space and go with the most viable route first.

If you want research into how to divert the Mississippi River to Arizona, you've started off backwards.

The problem is lack of renewable water in socal, AZ, CO, Las Vegas, etc, and the solution might be just to reduce demand, increase reclamation, and add in some new renewable water sources like desalination. That seems insanely more viable. Let's see that study first.

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

#264

Post by bee_rider » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

kickout wrote: post #247

bee_rider wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like agriculture isn't a huge percentage of their economy, so they'd probably still be up there (unless I've misread the chart). https://www.statista.com/statistics/304869/california-real-g...

I was trying to imply once water sourcing becomes a major issues, basic needs for residents will become hard. Agriculture is small % but if water is a problem, there will be some exodus of people/corps. That’s where the big gdp hits would likely come from

> Statewide, average water use is roughly 50% environmental, 40% agricultural, and 10% urban, although the percentage of water use by sector varies dramatically across regions and between wet and dry years.

(it looks, based on their graphs, like agricultural usage is sticker, in the sense that it doesn't go down nearly as much in dry years).

https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

Since agricultural use takes up a ton of water and produces a fairly small % of the overall GDP, I'd expect them to shift usage toward whatever the high-productivity sectors want before they allow an exodus.

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

#265

Post by wmil » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

This seems like an overly ambitious project.

California hasn't built a new reservoir since 1979 when it only had 23 million people.

Build more reservoirs. Right now wet years are flowing into the ocean.

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

#266

Post by bee_rider » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

concordDance wrote: post #229

HPsquared wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose water (at least natural water from rivers) is one of the few actual zero-sum games in economics. No matter not hard you try, it won't rain more, and a given river only has so much water to give.

> No matter not hard you try, it won't rain more Cloud seeding is being studied.

That seems like it must be taking water from whoever is downwind (but maybe that's the ocean).

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

#267

Post by ewheeler » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

Fun fact: Hans Albert Einstein, son of Albert Einstein, helped with the design of the Old River Control Structure.

According to Wunderground's three-part series about the ORCS[1], there is some uncertainty as to whether it will be able to keep the Mississippi River on its current route without failure.

[1] https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Americas-Achilles-Heel-Mis...

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

#268

Post by TedShiller » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #238

TedShiller wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Don't build more in deserts. It sounds crazy that we're even talking about this.

Agreed. California is a desert.

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

#269

Post by cwt137 » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #165

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. Ju…

> the biggest challenge would be the right of way and litigation

I totally agree. I live in SoCal and there are some infrastructure projects that took forever (ie creating the I105 and finish connecting the I210), or will probably never get completed (ie. finish connecting the I710 and California High Speed Rail) all because of right of way issues and lots of law suits.

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

#270

Post by ianai » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #257

fmajid wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Residential consumption is not the issue, subsidized water for agriculture in California is. Agricultural users paid as little$70 an acre-foot for water, which is less than a thousandth the residential rate. Under the state’s ridiculously baroque system of senior water rights, just because someone was first to nail a notice to a tree by a river in the 19th Century, everybody else in the area has to cut their water co…

> is not the issue I think this is the biggest issue with every resource and climate issue right now. As soon as you point out something significant, somebody pops up with "But that's not the real issue", and points to another three. US domestic, residential resource usage (water, raw energy, fossil fuel) is so amazingly out of whack with the rest of the world that it's starting to demoralise the rest of us. This is…

How many countries successfully built highway systems by leaving the construction of them to private people? How about rail systems? Because a national water grid is closer to a power grid or highway system ie fundamental, critical, and national infrastructure than something even an hoa could pull off.

These “arguments” for “personal responsibility” are increasingly shallow. The rhetorical equivalent of grabbing someones whole arm, forcing that arm to hit themselves, and asking “why are you hitting yourself? You’re so silly!” Ie abuse.