151–160 of 211 posts
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Desalination requires energy and creates waste. Perhaps we should live within our means instead.
You are advocating for famine and war.
At least this article notes that the vast majority of water usage is agriculture. This isn't something cities could or should solve by switching to (expensive) desalination to effectively subsidize agriculture. Most notably, alfalfa is mentioned here as farmers are going to have to switch to less water-intensive crops. Decreasing alfalfa production may well impact the ability to feed cattle. In the short term, that's…
Like Central and Southern California today, Israel used to issue similar dire warnings about freshwater supplies running dangerously low. These days, believe it or not, Israel now exports freshwater. Yes. tiny, little, arid Israel exports freshwater to neighboring Jordan.
Freshwater, like agricultural products, seems to be a product we can now cheaply and easily produce in abundance.
Sure, taking some water from farmers is an option too. But is it viable? I don’t know. Obviously voters living in the conurbation from Los Angeles, California to San Diego, California could vote in politicians who promise to do this. But once in office would politicians actually follow through on such a promise? I doubt it.
This seems like a very tough battle to me because many California "farmers" are extremely wealthy. Some California farmers are billionaires with a "b". If extremely successful businessmen with many thousands of millions of dollars want to keep receiving free water, they will probably very cleverly spend vast sums of money to do so.
Here are two apparently feasible options.
First, we are on the cusp of abundant, cheap renewable electricity (from solar and wind) which, of course, will lead to the potential for cheap desalination.
Like the aforementioned Israel, Carlsbad, California (near San Diego, California) already relies on desalination for much of its water needs. I think I read that residents there pay an extra $5/month to $10/month per person for desalinated water compared to what they were paying for imported fresh water.
Second, I assume the discharge water from washing machines could easily be used to water most of the landscaping in Southern California.
I've watched a few videos on YouTube. Apparently one simply needs to change the type of laundry detergent used so it would be safe for the landscaping, install discharge pipes from the washing machine to the landscaped areas, and control the system with computer to ensure the landscape isn't over-watered or under-watered.
The Los Angeles Times has become a terrible newspaper. COVID has receded from the front page, therefore they need some more bad news to sell. "We are running out of water!!!" is what they are selling these days.
In other words, this entire subject is "much ado about nothing." In other words, this is doom and gloom, "the sky is falling" nonsense.
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The question of who owns the water right is important. The doctrine for water usage is different in the western US and the eastern US. Some of this is due to geography, and some due to the history of settlement. Here are a few useful links that discuss the differences. https://nationalaglawcenter.org/overview/water-law/ https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/03/an-introduction-to-water-l... https://extension.okstate.edu/fact…
So change the laws.
This is essentially in the same class of situation as the government deciding to nationalize everyone's private home to solve some Important Problem. There isn't a realistic version of the world where that is a politically viable solution and the costs would be intractably high.
It's weird how people don't want to pay more money for water when we literally can't go for more than a few days without drinking it and can't grow the food we need without it.
Water increasing in price will reduce waste and increase efficiency. But everything will become more expensive, not just luxury or wasteful water uses.
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You are advocating for famine and war.
Or they're advocating for eating less water intensive things. If you for example grow wheat instead of grapes or almonds your likely reduce global famine a little bit.
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The question of who owns the water right is important. The doctrine for water usage is different in the western US and the eastern US. Some of this is due to geography, and some due to the history of settlement. Here are a few useful links that discuss the differences. https://nationalaglawcenter.org/overview/water-law/ https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/03/an-introduction-to-water-l... https://extension.okstate.edu/fact…
So change the laws.
Could we feasibly just run desalination stations from the coasts and pipe the water - like oil - to fill up these reservoirs? Setting cost aside for a second, is there any reason not to do something like this?
Why not pipe the water from the pacific northwest, similar to what was done with the Colorado river.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct
You can see a portion of it driving on I-580.
The problem is that Northern California hasn't been getting enough water either. The rains have been falling further north. Think Seattle.
Also the aqueduct is fed from the existing river system. The major rivers in Oregon and Washington don't go into California AFAIK.
Looks like you would have to divert the Columbia River. Haha.
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What is so complex about eminent domain? Just force the sale of water rights back to the government for a fair price. It will sting a little bit, but sting far less than pretending like only 15% of the water in the western US actually exists.
Or, just allow farmers to sell their water to the highest bidder. The Coase theorem to the rescue.
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We can start by rolling back the modern entrenchments that have only made it worse. I would be absolutely shocked if this were only a 200 year old problem and there wasn't modern legislation basically gifting free water to special interests.
I'm by no means an expert or a lawyer or someone you should listen to. But this may hint at the complexity. A lot of water rights come from Spanish land grants ~330 years ago. And those were guaranteed by treaty after the Mexican American war. So, the U.S. can do whatever it wants, but treaties are in this weird space below the constitution but above a simple bill through congress to become law. Water rights are gene…
Water law is a nightmarishly confusing hellscape, but Guadalupe -Hidalgo isn't an important reason why today.
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Anything is possible for enough money but I don't think you understand how much money what you're proposing would cost. In electricity alone desalination costs around 3kwh/m^3. 3.7mwh/acre foot of water. Last year we got 9.2 million acre feet of water in the Colorado River of the allocated 15 million acre feet. So if we say we want to supplement flows with just 2 million acre feet of desalination water, that's 7 Pwh…
Hm. Your numbers and mine don't match by a few orders of magnitude. I came up with 2.5GW sustained, which is (2.5GW * 24h * 365) 21900 GWh ~= 21TWh/yr. Big, but not the same as your value. An acre foot is 1233 m^3, and at 3kWh/m^3, that's 3.7 MWh/acre foot. Math checks out so far. Times 2000000, that's 7400000 MWh / 7400 GWh / 7.4 TWh. I think you're off by a factor of 1000 somewhere in your math. You're looking at ~…