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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

#61

Post by tracerbulletx »

deelowe wrote: post #21
floatrock wrote: post #10

So basically pump seawater up from the Gulf of California across the border over a flat floodplain to the Salton Sea (south of joshua tree) and use cheap PV to run desalination plants that will restore one of our biggest environmental disasters https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sea-worth-salt back into a vacation hotspot greater than Palm Springs. Costs of the PV and desal (relatively cheap but still absurdly ex…

Isn't that the same story with Vegas? Would it exist without the hoover dam?

Yeah it wouldn't be a city but just as a fun fact Las Vegas means "The Meadows" it had a really big aquifer and artesian springs fed by the Spring Mountains. It was sustainable as a town without the dam. Vegas also is allocated a very small portion of the water from Lake Mead, Nevada only gets about 4% of what is taken from it every year, and most of that is for farming still. The city probably needs like 1% to survive.

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

#62

Post by nozzlegear »

connorgutman wrote: post #45

We 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…

> We desperately need to focus on conservation efforts instead of attempting to engineer "solutions" that only end up encouraging further consumption.

With respect, why can't we do both?

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

#63

Post by obblekk »

MostlyStable wrote: post #51

I know he inputs some numbers, but I am just supremely skeptical of them. If solar + batteries + RO plants could produce water at a price that made agriculture economically viable, then I just don't see how it wouldn't already be happening. Or at the very least be being proposed more broadly than some random guys blog. If I understand correctly, it is his plan for extracting value from the brine which represents the…

Places with the saltwater don't want to build large pipelines to send it to places without.

The places without are so dry they cannot drill, condense or truck in salt water, even though they have plenty of solar.

That's a coordination problem with public rights of way issues which is why it wouldn't happen without specific government policy.

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

#64

Post by justinator »

alexb_ wrote: post #49

Just 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.

You're right - air's also getting a little too polluted for my taste. Maybe if I could get a hold of some taxed air, I could breath easy! We could put the pollutants back into the untaxed air too!

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

#65

Post by njovin »

connorgutman wrote: post #45

We 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…

This is so dead-on it hurts. The "taming" of the rivers in the American west by the Army Corp of Engineers has been romanticized and the underlying motives have been swept under the rug: we prioritized these massive public works projects to provide cheap water to big ag businesses at the cost of sustainability and residential access.

IMO we should absolute not be exporting anything farmed with subsidized water while the survivability of just living in the US southwest is uncertain due to current water levels and climate patterns. That seems like the lowest of low-hanging fruit.

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

#67

Post by shermantanktop »

alexb_ wrote: post #49

Just 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.

US taxes are already complicated, in large part due to the effort to build incentives and disincentives in the way that you describe. And yet the process to build the existing incentives is inescapably political, and for good reason: if you impose a significant change to taxation, there are winners and losers on day 1. Nobody likes to lose, especially if they feel they are doing nothing wrong.

For your specific idea, the red/blue political map shows you who will probably lose.

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

#68

Post by MostlyStable »

shermantanktop wrote: post #59
MostlyStable wrote: post #51

I know he inputs some numbers, but I am just supremely skeptical of them. If solar + batteries + RO plants could produce water at a price that made agriculture economically viable, then I just don't see how it wouldn't already be happening. Or at the very least be being proposed more broadly than some random guys blog. If I understand correctly, it is his plan for extracting value from the brine which represents the…

Agree with the skepticism, and furthermore if this were such a killer moneymaker you'd expect multiple commercial efforts in this space already. But this is California - there may be reasons that are not economic or technical that have prevented anyone from trying to develop or pursue such an idea. The concentrated salt-brine discharge, for example, may be impossible to get environmental approval for at these volumes…

Israel is, I believe, the place in the world that has the most desal, and is actually already using it for ag. I'm not familiar with domestic/development policy in Israel, but I have trouble believing it's as restrictive as the CA. So not only has CA not already done it, but neither has Israel, who, at the very least must have different roadblocks.

The point is, it's not only California (which I agree is pretty anti-development and where this plausibly might be disallowed even if it did make economic sense) that is leaving this supposed $100 bill on the ground.

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

#69

Post by mechanical_bear »

ruined wrote: post #25
thehappypm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the intent of the project is the conversion of a saline lake to freshwater, not the creation of a saline lake.

If you give a mouse a cookie…

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

#70

Post by CharlesW »

bilsbie wrote: post #22

Ok this keeps happening. I posted this exact URL 3 days ago. Shouldn’t the same URL submitted again redirect to mine? Is there a certain cutoff when someone else can submit the same URL? (I’m not complaining, I just want to understand what the rules are)

The kindling of your post didn't catch fire, and this one did. It's not personal.

More from @dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37126175

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