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The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

practical.engineering

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Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#171

Post by labcomputer »

ianburrell wrote: post #157
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress is made on it daily? Great. How soon can I ride it?

The initial segment in Central Valley has current date of 2032. It depends on if federal government restores funding or if California has to fund itself. Phase 1 from SF to LA is estimated for 2035-2040. They might do end-to-end service before that with existing tracks and slower speeds, especially from Palmdale to LA. The SF and LA segments require tunneling to get over the mountains.

What's notable about the initial segment is that it parallels (and thus duplicates) an existing Amtrak service between Bakersfield and Merced. So the initial operating segment gives us zero new destinations by rail.

But, hey, you'll be able to go really fast between California's 6th and 80th largest cities!

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#172

Post by kylehotchkiss »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #118

Looking at what Tehran is facing (not related to the war, water shortage), I'm wondering why california isn't investing in more desalination for SoCal, especially for LA. I see some here: https://lynceans.org/all-posts/status-of-desalination-plants... But there are only a few in SoCal and they're for smaller communities like carlsbad or santa barbara. So it is there and it is working for some, why not more? naturally…

I’m in a rare community in Southern California (part of north county San Diego) where my water is 27% from the ocean (10% for rest of San Diego county).

It’s cool. Still totally hard and makes everything fail early.

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#173

Post by Baeocystin »

stouset wrote: post #132
jsLavaGoat wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Crystal Springs. Hetch Hetchy, the damning of which legendarily caused John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, to die of a broken heart.

It’s a nitpick but the words you are looking for are “dam”, “dammed”, and “damming”. Damning is a very different thing entirely.

Not really inaccurate in this case, though. It's a huge loss.

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#174

Post by [deleted] »

mutagen wrote: post #79
kenhwang wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owens valley, where LA "steals" water from, is on the eastern side of the Sierras. NorCal, including Sacramento, is on the western side of the Sierras. So unless they planned on pumping the water over/under the mountain range that surrounds it in every direction except for towards LA, that water was never available for any NorCal city to use.

The California Aqueduct delivers water from the western Sierras through the Central Valley and to Los Angeles. This is likely what NorCal refers to when they say SoCal is 'stealing our water'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct Would be interesting to see the relative amounts of use by LA and by agriculture in the Central Valley though.

[deleted]

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#175

Post by dylan604 »

peterbecich wrote: post #121
notepad0x90 wrote: post #118

Looking at what Tehran is facing (not related to the war, water shortage), I'm wondering why california isn't investing in more desalination for SoCal, especially for LA. I see some here: https://lynceans.org/all-posts/status-of-desalination-plants... But there are only a few in SoCal and they're for smaller communities like carlsbad or santa barbara. So it is there and it is working for some, why not more? naturally…

There are environmental and financial concerns https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/05/california-desali... I don't understand the financial concern at all. How could increasing the water supply increase the price? It only makes sense to me if the price is artificially low right now. Environmental damage by a desalinization plant couldn't possibly be worse than overdrawing the acquifer -- the defacto solution.

Water is normally "free" from mother nature. Desalinated water is not free as it cost energy to get the clean water. Even if there's a pump to get water from aquifers into the water system, that still rounds to free compared to the cost of running a desalination plant.

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#178

Post by devilbunny »

markdown wrote: post #114
ceejayoz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/10-facts-you-may-not-know-abou... > New York City’s water (including drinking water) is unfiltered, making it the largest unfiltered water system in the country. Were New York to begin filtering its water, it would cost the city approximately 1 million dollars per day to operate the filtration plant. They have hundreds of sampling stations to check daily. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/…

Treatment is usually just the addition of chlorine and in some countries, fluoride. Filtration isn't common.

Settlement, however, is fairly standard in surface supply.

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#179

Post by johntarter »

schlauerfox wrote: post #76
strongpigeon wrote: post #16

Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is the result of survival bias, but given how impossibly hard it is to just build anything where I live (Seattle), I’m not so sure.

We're literally right now building a huge high speed rail project that is planned to link san diego to san francisco through LA, bakersfield and fresno. Progress is made on it daily. https://www.youtube.com/CAHighSpeedRail

Comments like these make me think, wow this place is no better than Reddit

Re: The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

#180

Post by thaumasiotes »

harrall wrote: post #160
peterbecich wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are environmental and financial concerns https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/05/california-desali... I don't understand the financial concern at all. How could increasing the water supply increase the price? It only makes sense to me if the price is artificially low right now. Environmental damage by a desalinization plant couldn't possibly be worse than overdrawing the acquifer -- the defacto solution.

As part of the contract for construction, the county or city must buy a certain amount of water every year. Because desalination is not economically feasible, the water is more expensive and this extra subsidy raises the cost of the water bill. This is how it works for the facility in San Diego County. Building a desalination facility is economically hard to justify because the break-even point seems far away. It als…

> It also assumes the state won’t eventually create a state-wide solution, which would benefit from a state-level economy of scale that a city/county effort might not.

How would a state-level solution to who deserves water more benefit from economies of scale? This is about as core of an example of where you don't want central planning as you can find.

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