California has about one year of water left
latimes.com
California has about one year of water left
1–10 of 405 posts
Re: California has about one year of water left
#2Maybe I skimmed the article a bit fast, but I saw no mention of desalination plants, which are the obvious solution (though expensive and as far as I'm aware not implemented yet).
Re: California has about one year of water left
#3A historical view: http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_1_california-drought.htm...
Re: California has about one year of water left
#4Maybe I skimmed the article a bit fast, but I saw no mention of desalination plants, which are the obvious solution (though expensive and as far as I'm aware not implemented yet).
It's not going to be easy to build few of them in less than a year.
Re: California has about one year of water left
#5So what happens when they run out of water? Are there water sources that are just undrinkable that can be cleaned up; similar to fracking now being cheap enough to compete with OPEC is there no water or just no drinkable water? Can they just "ship" or "pipe" the water in from neighboring states or are they too on the edge of a draught. Is this country-wide, just Western states, or just California and can other states give up water without risking throwing them into a draught?
I know that's a bunch of questions but this article seems to raise more questions than it answers, at least for me.
Re: California has about one year of water left
#6Maybe I skimmed the article a bit fast, but I saw no mention of desalination plants, which are the obvious solution (though expensive and as far as I'm aware not implemented yet).
It looks like there are proposals, but who knows how serious that is:
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-large...
Re: California has about one year of water left
#7Maybe I skimmed the article a bit fast, but I saw no mention of desalination plants, which are the obvious solution (though expensive and as far as I'm aware not implemented yet).
California's power grid is already stressed. Desalination takes a lot of power, so any new plants will probably have to install new power generation as well.
Re: California has about one year of water left
#8Maybe I skimmed the article a bit fast, but I saw no mention of desalination plants, which are the obvious solution (though expensive and as far as I'm aware not implemented yet).
It's not going to be easy to build few of them in less than a year.
It's amazing what you can do when you've run out of water... But you are right, it would/will be a massive undertaking. I wonder if desalination will become water's "fracking", something we only turn to due to high price of what we used before or unavailability of what we used before.
Re: California has about one year of water left
#9So what happens when they run out of water? Are there water sources that are just undrinkable that can be cleaned up; similar to fracking now being cheap enough to compete with OPEC is there no water or just no drinkable water? Can they just "ship" or "pipe" the water in from neighboring states or are they too on the edge of a draught. Is this country-wide, just Western states, or just California and can other states…
My understanding is that under most scenarios water for humans is fine, but agriculture will be totally dead in California.
Re: California has about one year of water left
#10So what happens when they run out of water? Are there water sources that are just undrinkable that can be cleaned up; similar to fracking now being cheap enough to compete with OPEC is there no water or just no drinkable water? Can they just "ship" or "pipe" the water in from neighboring states or are they too on the edge of a draught. Is this country-wide, just Western states, or just California and can other states…
A lot of water in California goes to farming. They'll have to close farms, which will drive up prices of produce.