I thought this would be a post from Rain Maker but it is another promising project altogether. If you’re interested check out Augusts Doricko’s company looking to do cloud seeding in the same region https://www.makerain.com/
A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
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Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
#42I wonder if this would be cheaper than just paying the water rightsholders not to use the water?
If the Salton Sea doesn't have a steady input (from snowpack? not familiar with it), doesn't desal mean we're really just expanding the unsustainable use of the Colorado, maybe delaying it another few decades, but ultimately still growing more and using more water than its watershed can naturally sustain -- especially as climate change increases?
I think the fundamental problem here isn't that we need to make more freshwater out of brine, but that the California (and other) water rights are set to levels that cannot realistically be maintained. The law needs to change even if that hurts the grandfathered rightsholders; there just isn't the same amount of water anymore.
Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
#43NYT 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., w…
> 3. Cooperation with Mexico
Yeah this seems like a big challenge. Even if the Gulf of California is closer, or if it's all downhill, the requirement for international cooperation seems like it would make this a much more complex option than just using the Pacific. Plus if I were Mexico, I'd honestly be looking at the Salton Sea disaster, noticing that some new plan calls for putting salt down in my neighborhood instead of off the LA or San Diego coast.. sounds sketchy.
Meanwhile, the Arizona version of this plan is understandable.. Phoenix is thirsty, they have no coast, it's shorter to get to one in Mexico than California and anyway they might actually have better luck dealing with Mexico than California. But can anyone explain briefly why California would want or need the plan to involve Mexico?
Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
#44Wow, what a fantastic post! The author, who holds a PhD from Caltech, proposes taking advantage of the decreasing cost of solar power to enable a new age of clean water abundance in California, sustainably, with the potential for massive revenues and profits at all steps in the value chain. Even if the author's calculations are off by a factor of two, the proposal looks like it could work. At a minimum, it merits ser…
It's a very interesting idea - but practically speaking, the kind of water volumes needed for drinking and bathing water for a city like Las Vegas are dwarfed by the volumes needed for the farming of sugar beets, alfalfa for dairy, golf course grass maintenance, etc. If current trends in the American Southwest continue, extreme water conservation will have to become the norm (the other alternative being depopulation of the region).
Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
#45We desperately need to focus on conservation efforts instead of attempting to engineer "solutions" that only end up encouraging further consumption. Hot take: Maybe the American SouthWest wasn't meant to support > 1/3 of America's agricultural output. Solar desalination of the Salton traps humanity in an energy contract when we could achieve meaningful conservation efforts instantaneously by banning the production of many water-intensive luxury crops. Why is Arizona farming alfalfa for Saudi horses? Why is California producing 2.8 billion pounds of almonds a year? Why is the United States one of the highest consumers of red meat in the world when sustainable plant-based alternatives exist and use a fraction of the water? This regional water crisis (as well as our global climate crisis) cannot be solved without making bold sacrifices to our daily lives. I know this is Hacker News, but not everything can be solved with new/additional technology.
Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
#46Apart 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…
Is there a way to know how much to care? We do all sorts of things that displace species, so having some way of contextualizing and weighting the harm against the benefit would be helpful.
Seems to me it would initially be a narrowly scoped to the immediate outflow. As the brine dissipates I assume it will be normalized by the rest of the ocean as it's diluted.
However, as with all human endeavours, scaling up will scale up the problem. And we won't pay attention to that until it's a huge issue.
Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
#47Apart 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…
Perhaps the net effect is ostensibly positive, given the greening and habitation of that blighted area in CA.
Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
#48Apart 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…
Is there a way to know how much to care? We do all sorts of things that displace species, so having some way of contextualizing and weighting the harm against the benefit would be helpful.
This is necessarily a value judgment, isn't it? There are tools like lifecycle analyses and environmental impact reports and threatened species lists that can help estimate/enumerate impacts. But ultimately how much to care is a personal question, and people are going to disagree over whether some small fish or rare owl or fluffy panda is worth more or less than someone's job or a local industry or just some other charismatic species.
Species will always come and go, and they're going to die off faster than we can protect them, sadly. We only get to decide which ones to prioritize, at different personal, local, national, global levels etc.
Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
#49Just charge people for the natural resources of the country via taxes. Resource and land taxes solve basically every single problem in the current American economy yet people do not want to even think about doing it.
Re: A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a way to know how much to care? We do all sorts of things that displace species, so having some way of contextualizing and weighting the harm against the benefit would be helpful.
Seems to me it would initially be a narrowly scoped to the immediate outflow. As the brine dissipates I assume it will be normalized by the rest of the ocean as it's diluted. However, as with all human endeavours, scaling up will scale up the problem. And we won't pay attention to that until it's a huge issue.
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