If you live in NYC, you might want to do a spit take, too - but for different reasons: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/nyregion/inside-citys-wate....
Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
31–40 of 217 posts
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually Mexico threatened to take the US to international court during Nixon's presidency because the water coming out of the Colorado River into Mexico was so salty it was killing crops and un-drinkable. The US agreed to make one of the biggest De-salination plants in the world just before the border and now the US pays about $300/ton to clean up the Colorado River before it flows into Mexico.
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/yuma/facilities/ydp/yao_ydp.html That says the plant is not currently operating. It also says that it's only "included" in the water sent to Mexico. I don't see any indication that it's used for anything close to the full volume of the Colorado River.
The lack of diversion is pretty clear:
https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=32.727761,-114.704905&z=15&t...
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#33For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers below it could only contain poor-quality water, led regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs…
I'm reminded of this quote, attributed to the Cree Native Americans:
"Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually Mexico threatened to take the US to international court during Nixon's presidency because the water coming out of the Colorado River into Mexico was so salty it was killing crops and un-drinkable. The US agreed to make one of the biggest De-salination plants in the world just before the border and now the US pays about $300/ton to clean up the Colorado River before it flows into Mexico.
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/yuma/facilities/ydp/yao_ydp.html That says the plant is not currently operating. It also says that it's only "included" in the water sent to Mexico. I don't see any indication that it's used for anything close to the full volume of the Colorado River.
Thanks for the link! Didn't know it wasn't operating. My understanding is that the treaty says that the salt content should be less than X parts per million and when the Colorado River gets saltier than X, they can turn the plant on. This diverts some of the water out and returns it in with significantly less salt, thus reducing the total salt content of the river as a whole to a level less than X.
Basically, imagine you have a glass of chocolate milk. You take a teaspoon of chocolate milk out and put a teaspoon of regular milk back in, you will reduce the chocolate content of the glass. The glass is the river as a whole, the plant only treats the teaspoon.
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#35[deleted]
1. Much of the inland West is populated by people who culturally value high reproduction. 2. People immigrate to developed countries.
I was curious, so I looked at US fertility rates by state. Fortunately, wikipedia has a nice chart. The birth rates do appear to be higher in Western states than in the east.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territo...
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#36Funny for this to come up now. I'm reading Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner now which is all about water policy in the western US. The short answer is that we consume WAY more water than all of the precipitation on the entire region can support so we end up depleting the aquifers. Eventually (likely within my lifetime) those will dry up and they we will have to either start diverting water from Canada and Alaska, or d…
…or switch away from insanely inefficient (90% evaporation) center-pivot irrigation. Not to mention our practice of shunting rainwater off fields as fast as possible. This high-speed, high-runoff condition leads to soil erosion, failure to recharge aquifers, and really gives rise to the need for irrigation. Dynamically unstable monocultures are neither sustainable nor efficient. They're not even cost-optimal or land-…
Can you point to an interpretation of the data here:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/agriculture/farm...
that supports your 80%?
Because when I interpret the data I end up at 'most acreage is owned by families, families that may have done some sort of incorporation'.
I guess if you throw in some of the big forestry outfits you buy a lot of acres, but that perhaps indicates the need for a more precise phrasing or more interesting measure than arable (like, land used to produce food in the last 50 years, or something like that).
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pump seawater to Nevada and cover it in desalination greenhouses. http://www.seawatergreenhouse.com/
How is this better than local rainwater collection? Rainwater is desalination, you just cheated and let nature do the expensive part. Heck, lots of rainwater is already collected in gutters/roof drains, but is contaminated when it falls on the ground instead of into a tank. For irrigation all that is necessary is to soak the rainwater in as soon as possible to prevent evaporation and runoff, since potability is not a…
How is this better than local rainwater collection?
It works when there is no rain without needing a tank big enough to last a several year long drought.
The architecture of the greenhouse acts as a solar desalinator that in testing creates more water than is needed to irrigate the plants, so it not only grows plants, but also can provide clean water in the desert.
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pump seawater to Nevada and cover it in desalination greenhouses. http://www.seawatergreenhouse.com/
How is this better than local rainwater collection? Rainwater is desalination, you just cheated and let nature do the expensive part. Heck, lots of rainwater is already collected in gutters/roof drains, but is contaminated when it falls on the ground instead of into a tank. For irrigation all that is necessary is to soak the rainwater in as soon as possible to prevent evaporation and runoff, since potability is not a…
nowadays most people don't even know what a swale is
crusso raises his hand then goes off to google.
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#39For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers below it could only contain poor-quality water, led regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs…
The current nuclear industry has some serious downsides. The only reason established nuclear is presented as ecological is due to the discussion about climate impact. Without the CO2 blinkers on though, it is pretty fucking messy.
True, and it's somewhat disturbing to see "environmentalists" tie themselves in rhetorical knots trying to argue for nuclear with a straight face.
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, about 80% of water use (in the west) is for irrigation purposes. Ideally, making farmers pay market (and externality adjusted) rates for their water would discourage them from growing plants which need a lot of water per unit food (like alfalfa). We could get a LOT further with water-aware legislation for what farmers can grow (or if you prefer a libertarian viewpoint, have the government stop subsidizing water…
How much of that 80% of water used for irrigation is lost to evaporation and such. As the water is essentially 'free' to the farmers, they have little incentive to use it efficiently, so it would probably be cheaper to use sprinklers than more water efficient methods like drip irrigation. Also, is the problem really that the government subsidizes water. As I understand it, there is a naturally occurring aquifer that…
I guess you're right in the cases of the aquifer's. There are 2 possible solutions. 1. Tax water pumped out of aquifers so that demand levels off at the aquifer fill rate, or 2. Wait until all the the aquifers are depleted to lower levels and force people to re-drill their wells and build new more expensive pumps. Eventually the cost of pumping out the aquifers will reduce demand to the aquifer fill rate.