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A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

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Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#11

Post by ketchupdebugger »

hnmullany wrote: post #3

Apart from whether the economics make sense brine disposal from desalinization is a big issue. Waste with high salt concentrations can wipe out marine life - it would be nice if this piece took the issue a little more seriously. It's a continuing problem in the Canary Islands which are dependent on desalinization plants: "Rejected brine is a serious threat to marine ecosystems, causing negative effects on both flora…

The naive solution is to just dump the brine back into salton sea, its already too salty for marine life, so whats a little more salt?

>flaunt its unequaled excellence by exporting alfalfa to all corners of the globe.

really not sure if this is satir.

Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#12

Post by vondur »

I would really love to see the Los Angeles basin get its primary water needs met from desalination. This would lessen the need for the LA dept. of Water and Power taking water from the Owens Valley north of the LA area which subsequently turned the valley into a desert.

Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#13

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

The article claims that the plan described could produce 5MAF / year (the entire allocation of Colorado River water for California). There's no explanation I could find of where this water will come from. The Salton Sea itself only holds 1.5MAF.

The title also seems a bit grandiose. "The US Southwest" for most people I think extends at least as far as the I25 corridor up through NM and CO, and for some it might even reach into western TX. The plan described would really have very little impact on the overall water situation here, even if it did actually live up to its claim of effectively freeing up CA's Colorado allocation.

Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#14

Post by thehappypm »

nickparker wrote: post #6
hnmullany wrote: post #3

Apart from whether the economics make sense brine disposal from desalinization is a big issue. Waste with high salt concentrations can wipe out marine life - it would be nice if this piece took the issue a little more seriously. It's a continuing problem in the Canary Islands which are dependent on desalinization plants: "Rejected brine is a serious threat to marine ecosystems, causing negative effects on both flora…

> RO desal splits the incoming ~3% salinity stream into two halves, one fresh and one ~6% salinity. This concentrated brine is fed to adjacent brine processing facilities (ideally in both countries) that exploit the region’s abundant solar and geothermal energy to extract potentially millions of tonnes of lithium, sodium, magnesium, chloride, and other metals found in sea water. The resulting depleted brine is piped…

Basically, I think you could take the Brine and just put it somewhere else. Like, into mine shafts, or into evaporation pools for mining purposes.

Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#15

Post by [deleted] »

nickparker wrote: post #6
hnmullany wrote: post #3

Apart from whether the economics make sense brine disposal from desalinization is a big issue. Waste with high salt concentrations can wipe out marine life - it would be nice if this piece took the issue a little more seriously. It's a continuing problem in the Canary Islands which are dependent on desalinization plants: "Rejected brine is a serious threat to marine ecosystems, causing negative effects on both flora…

> RO desal splits the incoming ~3% salinity stream into two halves, one fresh and one ~6% salinity. This concentrated brine is fed to adjacent brine processing facilities (ideally in both countries) that exploit the region’s abundant solar and geothermal energy to extract potentially millions of tonnes of lithium, sodium, magnesium, chloride, and other metals found in sea water. The resulting depleted brine is piped…

[deleted]

Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#16

Post by [deleted] »

hnmullany wrote: post #3

Apart from whether the economics make sense brine disposal from desalinization is a big issue. Waste with high salt concentrations can wipe out marine life - it would be nice if this piece took the issue a little more seriously. It's a continuing problem in the Canary Islands which are dependent on desalinization plants: "Rejected brine is a serious threat to marine ecosystems, causing negative effects on both flora…

[deleted]

Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#17

Post by NegativeLatency »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #13

The article claims that the plan described could produce 5MAF / year (the entire allocation of Colorado River water for California). There's no explanation I could find of where this water will come from. The Salton Sea itself only holds 1.5MAF. The title also seems a bit grandiose. "The US Southwest" for most people I think extends at least as far as the I25 corridor up through NM and CO, and for some it might even…

Looks like it comes from the Gulf of California in one of the drawings

Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#18

Post by bradford »

NYT daily had a relevant podcast episode on this (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/podcasts/the-daily/water-...?). Discussion centered around using the water for Arizona, not California. (I'm unable to speak of the relative merits of pumping the water from one state to another).

General takeaways:

Proponents of the solution seemed to understate challenges and risks associated with:

1. The pipeline itself (i.e., where to build it) 2. The disposal of brine solution into the Gulf of California. 3. Cooperation with Mexico.

That's not to say the challenges couldn't be addressed, but discussion of such challenges is noticeably absent from the original article.

Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#19

Post by bryanlarsen »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #13

The article claims that the plan described could produce 5MAF / year (the entire allocation of Colorado River water for California). There's no explanation I could find of where this water will come from. The Salton Sea itself only holds 1.5MAF. The title also seems a bit grandiose. "The US Southwest" for most people I think extends at least as far as the I25 corridor up through NM and CO, and for some it might even…

The second hand drawn map shows the source pumping station at the Sea of Cortez.

Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest

#20

Post by tarr11 »

nickparker wrote: post #6
hnmullany wrote: post #3

Apart from whether the economics make sense brine disposal from desalinization is a big issue. Waste with high salt concentrations can wipe out marine life - it would be nice if this piece took the issue a little more seriously. It's a continuing problem in the Canary Islands which are dependent on desalinization plants: "Rejected brine is a serious threat to marine ecosystems, causing negative effects on both flora…

> RO desal splits the incoming ~3% salinity stream into two halves, one fresh and one ~6% salinity. This concentrated brine is fed to adjacent brine processing facilities (ideally in both countries) that exploit the region’s abundant solar and geothermal energy to extract potentially millions of tonnes of lithium, sodium, magnesium, chloride, and other metals found in sea water. The resulting depleted brine is piped…

From https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.8451...

“ In general, anthropogenic activities pollute the coastal marine environment, altering the environment’s physiochemical properties and resulting in changes in marine communities. Physiochemical conditions can be altered by the presence of pollutants, hypoxia, organic enrichment, decreased hydrodynamic conditions, and, more recently, brine discharge (de-la-Ossa-Carretero et al., 2016). Salinity elevation in receiving soil and water bodies and the territorial consequences of brine with high total dissolved solids on benthic marine life close to the discharge site are the most important environmental challenges associated with brine disposal (Miri and Chouikhi, 2005; Panagopoulos et al., 2019).”

Lots more detail in the article on studies of specific populations as well as discussion of mitigations and alternatives.

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