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Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

latimes.com

121–130 of 154 posts

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#121
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not humans that are consuming the vast majority of potable water, but companies and industry that are depleting what's available for the rest of us. companies only make what they can sell. The sell what consumers want. So it is humans. Humans want meat. If they stop wanting meat companies will stop making meat.

> If they stop wanting meat companies will stop making meat. If companies start paying the total costs (water, carbon)—including externalities—of their raw materials, and pass those costs onto consumers, perhaps things will rebalance.

[deleted]

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#122

Federal lawmakers need to get over the history of water rights here. The system was built on assumptions that just don't hold (more water was apportioned than ever flows). You can give each state an amount and let them figure it out, or take all existing rights and re allocate them federally. But it needs to happen, and urgently. "But people will lose their income!" - Thats a symptom of requiring these people to work…

Also, UBI is often the cheapest and most efficient way to prop people out of poverty and (surprised?) to support their ambitions in education, starting business etc.

We have any proof it works?!

Besides, I see two serious problems:

1) There's always the political incentive to raise it. More people benefit than are harmed, thus it will bring votes even as it crushes the economy.

2) It's a trap. You'll end up with the lower segment of the population not having useful job skills. If for whatever reason you have to scale back/eliminate UBI you have a bunch of people who are effectively non-workers.

I used to support it but I've come to realize it's not a solution.

There's also the approach of a negative income tax, but to be at a useful level this would push a form of graft--fake jobs with kickbacks. (I'll hire you to sit in the office for $5/hr. You pay me $8/hr under the table from the tax rebate you're getting.)

I also dislike approaches like universal health care--from looking at the nations that have implemented it it has a major fox-guarding-the-henhouse problem: the same people decide what the standards are and spend the money to meet the standards. Oops, the route to getting votes is to lower the standards as that gets you more votes from low taxes than loses from people lacking treatment, especially if their doctors never tell them of the problem. (You're not likely to miss option X if your doctor doesn't tell you about it in the first place.)

Something I would like to see is to modify the ACA towards lower copays and a much lower *monthly* out of pocket max (perhaps tied to last year's AGI), then give everyone a subsidy equal to the cheapest plan they qualify for with a forced-placement system to that plan if you don't pick one. And I would like to put a time limit on the wait for service--for a routine matter they have say 30 days to provide service (first available appointment with the proper type of doctor) or they have to cover out of network as if it was in network--and once that's been triggered you can keep that doc regardless. The clock starts on the day the referral is made, or the service requested if referrals are not required.

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#123
post #74
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge reason companies use so much water is that it's artificially cheap. Companies typically pay 10% or less of the cost per gallon a resident does in their home.

Usually because the grade and location of the water is not suitable for residential use.

Farmers don't need drinking-safe water but that doesn't justify the price difference.

There should be three grades of water:

1) Untreated.

2) Salty (desalinated, but not to full freshwater standards), used for toilets, showers and the like.

3) Potable.

What you're doing with the water should have no bearing on the price and the price difference should only reflect the additional cost of going from #1 or #2 to #3.

You also pay a separate charge for delivering water to your place, this is omitted if you're getting it from a well and don't need delivery.

The base rates are standardized across a watershed (in this case, every place served by the Colorado river), the delivery charge is based on the cost to provide it to you. (Thus the cabins on the other side of the mountain here that lost their water in a wildfire--when the trees burned it not only damaged the pipe but caused land slippage that destroyed said pipe--pay a whopping delivery charge, but otherwise the same price per cubic foot we do.)

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#124
post #58
post #36

I wonder if it is possible to take two or more high water using industries and combine them in a way that would all the combination to work on substantially less water than they were using individually? For example we've all read that it takes a little over a gallon to grow an almond. And it takes about 10 gallons to make one integrated circuit. But that almond does not contain a gallon of water. The almond only cont…

I associate Lester Brown with the observation: It is too expensive to ship water, but when you ship wheat, you are in effect shipping water.

Shipping wheat is shipping *condensed* water.

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#125
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not a good look, especially since California is the only state that is adjacent to the ocean. Not only that, renewables like solar are perfect for desalination as you don't really need one of these systems to be running around the clock.

The big showstopper is what to do with the hypersalinated byproduct. You'd kill anything that was near where it's let out. It's also very corrosive and I imagine the would be a problem moving it far from the plant.

It's not actually that big a deal, it's just they don't want to deal with it. You discharge pipe has to be a lot longer, spreading it over enough water for it not to matter. (Spread it enough and it's no more of an issue than evaporation at the surface increasing salinity.) You can also pump ordinary seawater into the discharge system to lower it's salinity before release.

If you have the real estate you can also go with evaporation ponds. Probably not too viable in California but it could be done in Texas.

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So far, four California water districts have proposed to reduce water use by up to 400,000 acre-feet per year. That would amount to about 9% of the state’s total water allotment from the river through 2026. Even a 10% reduction in use due to Saudi exports would be higher than the current goal. It is considered a national security risk to export encryption to foreign countries, but it isn't a national security risk t…

At a gut emotional level this would be true but trade is what has kept the world wars a bay. Start down the path of protectionism and what we see in Russia/UKR will seem like a nice day at the park a Middle East-China-Russia vs US-EU-UK-AU-CAN would be the likely outcome, and not good for economic stability or national security

Not sucking a river dry isn't protectionism. Or now protectionism means protecting a river, which it should.

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#127

Wow, this has gotten bad fast. I did some reading on the water shortage in the Southwest the last time I saw a story about it on the FP, and came away with the idea that this is a classic coordination trap, and the only solutions are a) everyone involved spontaneously decides to conserve water in unison, and b) the Feds enact quick, decisive regulations that almost no one (the states involved, counties and cities, de…

Just to be crystal clear this has not gotten bad fast. This has been a loud, obvious, well known issue at least since I was born in Arizona almost 30 years ago. I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard sentiments to the effect of, “well you know there’s no water, so that’s why we’re building on a lot further up the basin and we’ll just have to drill the well deeper than the other folks.”

Even older. "Cadillac Desert" was published in 1986 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert .

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#128
post #14

This is the downside of a more decentralized country. In many nations with more centralized control, the federal government would simply come up with a plan and each smaller jurisdiction would have to do what they were told. But the USA requires a meeting of "officials from seven states, water agencies, tribes and the federal government" to negotiate, and continually fail to come to any agreement. Each will blame the…

Counter-example: The Aral Sea didn't do so well under more centralized Soviet control.

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#129
post #47

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Very irrelevant as water rights use on the Colorado isn't a commons, and has been governed under the Colorado River Compact for the last century.

Note also the paper's historical inaccuracy of attributing commons failure to users of the commons, rather than owners enclosing and appropriating land from common use.

Re: Fears of ‘dead pool’ on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

#130
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close. If anyone tried to use it to do that, everyone would regret it.

Welp guess we’ll have to let several mega cities just dry up and turn to dust then! Glad we had such a low regret option available all along

Nah, that won’t happen. It might make desalination economically viable though.
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