5 ms·

It's time for a national water grid(https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122-national-smart-water-grid https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122-national-smart-water-grid):

It's time for a national water grid(https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122-national-smart-water-grid https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122-national-smart-water-grid): > The National Smart Water Grid{trademark} will pay for itself in a single major flood event. Weather patterns will likely change dramatically and violently. We cannot relocate our farmland fast enough. We need a system capable of absorbing extreme precipitation and reclaiming it for food. This isn't about stealing water from the Great Lakes(that's a common worry). Yes, pumping water takes energy, but it also provides an infrastructure for gravitational storage of solar energy for night time use. We need to think big, and we need to think fast.

kodah 5y ago
Instrumenting water usage I think is the more important task that would fall under a national water grid. California uses an incredible amount of water that can be blamed on maintaining habitats, scenic views, and landscapes as well as agriculture respectively [1]. When states can't get enough water from the ground, they focus on redirecting rivers [2] which destroys other habitats and extracts value out of other states. [1]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ [2]: https://disappearingwest.org/rivers.html https://disappearingwest.org/rivers.html
- 01100011 5y ago
  Is it a problem if CA uses an incredible amount of water if that water can be provided cheaply and in an environmentally sound manner? Sure, the current situation is unsustainable, but we don't have to focus on conservation and usage restrictions if we have a way to supply CA's water wants while reducing flood damage outside of CA. What do you think is more likely: - People voluntarily accepting a reduced quality of life by cutting back on water usage and forgoing water intensive produce. - Using excess water from flooding in other parts of the country to replenish CA aquifers and support historical usage patterns while helping to reduce flood damage outside CA.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    Moving a lot of water is very expensive. Perhaps not impractically so, but it’s getting there.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > People voluntarily accepting a reduced quality of life by cutting back on water usage and forgoing water intensive produce. IMO this is what people need to understand. If we need conservation, it won't be the people of California cutting back on their showers. That has very little to do with consumption. It will be everyone in the country who benefits from all the farming in California who will have to learn to do without some of their favorite water-intensive produce.
    - kodah 5y ago
      Farming is indeed a big user of water, but I was surprised to see maintaining scenic views and habitat conservation being nearly equal to farming. That's effectively drawing water from other states and destroying other habitats in the name of conservation in California.
      - demadog 5y ago
        What are some specific examples? The main I could think of would be green belts and parks in the suburbs, not watering state park forests.
        ciceryadam 5y ago
        What comes to my mind are the 11 golf courses in Indian Wells, or 89 golf courses the Coachella valley / Palm Springs area. It's an arid region, it always baffles me to see it around there.
  - jshen 5y ago
    There are very basic things CA can do to improve things before your hypothetical. For example, we can filter and re-use water rather than letting it drain into the ocean. However, everyone a politician proposes this, their opponents brand it “toilet-to-tap” and it never passes because who wants to drink toilet water.
- zamfi 5y ago
  > California uses an incredible amount of water that can be blamed on maintaining habitats Wait, am I reading this right? Are you saying California is to be "blamed" for letting water run through rivers it normally (i.e., without human intervention) would have run through, so that the natural habitats of the state continue to serve as habitats? Your second point is even about how bad destroying habitats is. I'm confused about what you're trying to say. As I understand it, about 50% of CA's water use goes to maintaining rivers, things like making sure fresh water always flows out the golden gate, rather than letting seawater flow into the Sacramento delta (which would be an ecological catastrophe). You can "instrument" (measure?) all the water you want, but in California you will always need a ton of water flowing out through the Bay unless you want to destroy huge areas of wetlands. The amount that goes towards environmental needs won't decrease just because you measure it. But overall I completely agree with you: we should measure and users should be charge appropriately for water in agriculture, as they are for any other use -- the water rights system means that water use is not allocated efficiently in the economic sense, but rather by seniority and incumbency (as is typical with other scarce resources in the state: zoning, Prop 13, rent control, etc).
  - luckylion 5y ago
    > Are you saying California is to be "blamed" for letting water run through rivers it normally Don't you think there's a valid argument to not just interfere in one particular area ("pumping up water") and then throw your hands up when it comes to others that could help offset the first interference? If you have e.g. flood events and you don't capture that water, you're essentially wasting it. Instead, draining wetlands and channeling rivers makes sure that you get rid of the water as soon as possible and dump it into the ocean instead of giving it a chance to permeate into the ground.
    - zamfi 5y ago
      I do think there’s an argument to be made for this, and it’s in fact what’s happening in California — where water reservoirs (Hetch Hetchy, etc) flooded valleys that were once habitat for spawning fish, the state has built fish tunnels, etc., and the state is careful to release water that keeps the downstream flow going to preserve wetlands, etc. All this is important, and it’s the “environmental” use that I read the OP complaining about — but maybe I misread.
CursedUrn 5y ago
How do you stop a bad actor (e.g. CA) using up the entire country's water supply?
- zeroonetwothree 5y ago
  Pricing
- gumby 5y ago
  I think CA often gets a bad rap from jealous people but your message is a case that is 100% right on. California's agricultural practices are unsustainable and exploitative.
  - syki 5y ago
    There are certainly some bad practices but overall don’t we need the agricultural capabilities of California? It’s not like all those crops can be grown elsewhere in the country more efficiently, right?
    - stevehawk 5y ago
      doesn't seem like they're being grown efficiently in California, either, though?
      - syki 5y ago
        Efficiently in that with enough water it’s the best place to grow things. The soil, weather, etc. are really good. Water needs to be better allocated but my understanding is that it’s not feasible to just say that California should have much less farmland since there isn’t elsewhere in the country that can have its output.
    - zamfi 5y ago
      California is a great place to grow what is grown there, but it is not efficient in terms of water use, in part because the incentives are screwed up. The end result of the existing water rights systems is that for some farms in very arid regions, water is basically free, so they use a ton of it growing e.g., Almonds and Pomegranates, highly water-intensive crops which should probably be grown in less-arid parts of the state. If water cost effectively reflected water scarcity within the central valley, I suspect things would be quite different. But this is hard to change, because politics (in California but also everywhere) favors incumbents who have a lot to lose, over newcomers who could have a lot to gain, or over a large population that stands to gain a little bit but not enough to vote over it. (See: occupational licensing, Prop. 13, etc.)
jcranmer 5y ago
> The National Smart Water Grid{trademark} will pay for itself in a single major flood event. That claim seemed... inflated to me. Digging into the report, the project is estimated to cost $82 billion (in 2009 dollars). That's... not a single major flood event. The worst flood in recent US history only managed ~$30 billion in ~2011 dollars, and many of the more pedestrian "major flood events" are managing to cost somewhere around $1-10 billion. (And that presumes it's not something like Hurricane Harvey, that would drench a metropolitan area downstream of any intakes to the west coast, so it wouldn't actually mitigate those events.)
- gravypod 5y ago
  > That's... not a single major flood event. The worst flood in recent US history only managed ~$30 billion in ~2011 dollars, and many of the more pedestrian "major flood events" are managing to cost somewhere around $1-10 billion. This is only half of the equation. There are large areas of the US with water shortages. If you could, hypothetically, completely remove the effects of the flooding you would "save" $30 billion in damages and then sell that water for profit to areas with droughts. For example, from 2010 to 2017 water bills for some families jumped 71% [0]. A quote from the same article: "Bills increased from $86.31 to $195.86 a month for a household of four using 150 gallons per person a day" So ~0.10 $/gallons. I'm not going to attempt to calculate the amount of water that recent floods have had but statements like "peak flow of 213,000 [ft^3/s]" are used I think we could see how it would be possible to make this math balance out. I'm not saying it does but the napink math leads me to believe that it could be possible if construction and maintenance was cheap enough. It would also improve economic prosperity in the regions (Vegas, etc). [0] - https://www.kqed.org/science/1920428/californians-are-struggling-to-pay-for-rising-water-rates https://www.kqed.org/science/1920428/californians-are-strugg... [1] - https://www.weather.gov/lix/ms_flood_history https://www.weather.gov/lix/ms_flood_history
dghughes 5y ago
> This isn't about stealing water from the Great Lakes(that's a common worry) Yes and the people who worry we Canadians because we border four of five lakes with the USA. It's often been said if the USA ever attacks us it will be for water not oil or land. Or at the very least force us via some obscure trade agreement clause to sell or allow the sale of water to the USA.
- analog31 5y ago
  Not just Canadians. The US states that border the great lakes are also very strong supporters of the treaty with Canada.
- 01100011 5y ago
  Why would the US have to attack Canada for water? Why wouldn't you sell it to us? We sell you the produce we grow with water. Why can't it be a simple economic exchange?
  - dghughes 5y ago
    Because the assumption is as most often is the situation the US won't ask it will just do as it pleases. It may be due to pressure from states, citizens, lack of water seen as a destabilizing threat, no time to debate or negotiate or the US would be impatient, or just arrogance. Because once water is sold as a commodity it can't be stopped. That's why trade agreements go out of their way to not even dare mention or very precisely say how sales of water isn't on the table. Lots of countries sell us food and we sells lots too. Take tomatoes for example Canada produces a crazy amount of them. Same for wheat millions of tons exported. See reason #2.
RobertRoberts 5y ago
That is insane, but the "why" is subtle. What is to stop this system from stealing water off to California when there is a drought everywhere? Let California use the water it has. And when it's wrecked it's resources, then industry has to face reality. California's water resources has been managed badly and industry has run rampant there.
- jshen 5y ago
  Look up “California water rights”, it’s a fascinating history.
bell-cot 5y ago
At least from skimming the Abstract, the "National Water Grid" on that OSTI.gov page would be nothing resembling a "national grid". It could only move water from the Mississippi R. to the upper Colorado R. Ignoring the pumps...just the aqueduct that you'd need to build - ~1,400 miles long, with the capacity of a major river - would have zero political chance of being approved & funded. And for a water grid that could absorb extreme events - upgrade the sizes of all the aqueducts and pumps by an order of magnitude or two. And then you've got to extend it to every spot you want to protect from extreme weather...
- jcranmer 5y ago
  > just the aqueduct that you'd need to build - ~1,400 miles long, with the capacity of a major river The heart of the proposal is 4 x 8' diameter pipes from the Ohio/Mississippi River junction to Lake Powell, and having worked in a water treatment plant, that amount of flow might quench the thirst of a few million people, but it won't divert even a river the size of the Potomac River, let alone the Missouri, Upper Mississippi, or Ohio Rivers.

kodah 5y ago

Instrumenting water usage I think is the more important task that would fall under a national water grid. California uses an incredible amount of water that can be blamed on maintaining habitats, scenic views, and landscapes as well as agriculture respectively [1]. When states can't get enough water from the ground, they focus on redirecting rivers [2] which destroys other habitats and extracts value out of other states. [1]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/ [2]: https://disappearingwest.org/rivers.html https://disappearingwest.org/rivers.html

01100011 5y ago
Is it a problem if CA uses an incredible amount of water if that water can be provided cheaply and in an environmentally sound manner? Sure, the current situation is unsustainable, but we don't have to focus on conservation and usage restrictions if we have a way to supply CA's water wants while reducing flood damage outside of CA. What do you think is more likely: - People voluntarily accepting a reduced quality of life by cutting back on water usage and forgoing water intensive produce. - Using excess water from flooding in other parts of the country to replenish CA aquifers and support historical usage patterns while helping to reduce flood damage outside CA.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Moving a lot of water is very expensive. Perhaps not impractically so, but it’s getting there.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > People voluntarily accepting a reduced quality of life by cutting back on water usage and forgoing water intensive produce. IMO this is what people need to understand. If we need conservation, it won't be the people of California cutting back on their showers. That has very little to do with consumption. It will be everyone in the country who benefits from all the farming in California who will have to learn to do without some of their favorite water-intensive produce.
  - kodah 5y ago
    Farming is indeed a big user of water, but I was surprised to see maintaining scenic views and habitat conservation being nearly equal to farming. That's effectively drawing water from other states and destroying other habitats in the name of conservation in California.
    - demadog 5y ago
      What are some specific examples? The main I could think of would be green belts and parks in the suburbs, not watering state park forests.
      - ciceryadam 5y ago
        What comes to my mind are the 11 golf courses in Indian Wells, or 89 golf courses the Coachella valley / Palm Springs area. It's an arid region, it always baffles me to see it around there.
- jshen 5y ago
  There are very basic things CA can do to improve things before your hypothetical. For example, we can filter and re-use water rather than letting it drain into the ocean. However, everyone a politician proposes this, their opponents brand it “toilet-to-tap” and it never passes because who wants to drink toilet water.
zamfi 5y ago
> California uses an incredible amount of water that can be blamed on maintaining habitats Wait, am I reading this right? Are you saying California is to be "blamed" for letting water run through rivers it normally (i.e., without human intervention) would have run through, so that the natural habitats of the state continue to serve as habitats? Your second point is even about how bad destroying habitats is. I'm confused about what you're trying to say. As I understand it, about 50% of CA's water use goes to maintaining rivers, things like making sure fresh water always flows out the golden gate, rather than letting seawater flow into the Sacramento delta (which would be an ecological catastrophe). You can "instrument" (measure?) all the water you want, but in California you will always need a ton of water flowing out through the Bay unless you want to destroy huge areas of wetlands. The amount that goes towards environmental needs won't decrease just because you measure it. But overall I completely agree with you: we should measure and users should be charge appropriately for water in agriculture, as they are for any other use -- the water rights system means that water use is not allocated efficiently in the economic sense, but rather by seniority and incumbency (as is typical with other scarce resources in the state: zoning, Prop 13, rent control, etc).
- luckylion 5y ago
  > Are you saying California is to be "blamed" for letting water run through rivers it normally Don't you think there's a valid argument to not just interfere in one particular area ("pumping up water") and then throw your hands up when it comes to others that could help offset the first interference? If you have e.g. flood events and you don't capture that water, you're essentially wasting it. Instead, draining wetlands and channeling rivers makes sure that you get rid of the water as soon as possible and dump it into the ocean instead of giving it a chance to permeate into the ground.
  - zamfi 5y ago
    I do think there’s an argument to be made for this, and it’s in fact what’s happening in California — where water reservoirs (Hetch Hetchy, etc) flooded valleys that were once habitat for spawning fish, the state has built fish tunnels, etc., and the state is careful to release water that keeps the downstream flow going to preserve wetlands, etc. All this is important, and it’s the “environmental” use that I read the OP complaining about — but maybe I misread.

CursedUrn 5y ago

How do you stop a bad actor (e.g. CA) using up the entire country's water supply?

zeroonetwothree 5y ago
Pricing
gumby 5y ago
I think CA often gets a bad rap from jealous people but your message is a case that is 100% right on. California's agricultural practices are unsustainable and exploitative.
- syki 5y ago
  There are certainly some bad practices but overall don’t we need the agricultural capabilities of California? It’s not like all those crops can be grown elsewhere in the country more efficiently, right?
  - stevehawk 5y ago
    doesn't seem like they're being grown efficiently in California, either, though?
    - syki 5y ago
      Efficiently in that with enough water it’s the best place to grow things. The soil, weather, etc. are really good. Water needs to be better allocated but my understanding is that it’s not feasible to just say that California should have much less farmland since there isn’t elsewhere in the country that can have its output.
  - zamfi 5y ago
    California is a great place to grow what is grown there, but it is not efficient in terms of water use, in part because the incentives are screwed up. The end result of the existing water rights systems is that for some farms in very arid regions, water is basically free, so they use a ton of it growing e.g., Almonds and Pomegranates, highly water-intensive crops which should probably be grown in less-arid parts of the state. If water cost effectively reflected water scarcity within the central valley, I suspect things would be quite different. But this is hard to change, because politics (in California but also everywhere) favors incumbents who have a lot to lose, over newcomers who could have a lot to gain, or over a large population that stands to gain a little bit but not enough to vote over it. (See: occupational licensing, Prop. 13, etc.)

jcranmer 5y ago

> The National Smart Water Grid{trademark} will pay for itself in a single major flood event. That claim seemed... inflated to me. Digging into the report, the project is estimated to cost $82 billion (in 2009 dollars). That's... not a single major flood event. The worst flood in recent US history only managed ~$30 billion in ~2011 dollars, and many of the more pedestrian "major flood events" are managing to cost somewhere around $1-10 billion. (And that presumes it's not something like Hurricane Harvey, that would drench a metropolitan area downstream of any intakes to the west coast, so it wouldn't actually mitigate those events.)

gravypod 5y ago
> That's... not a single major flood event. The worst flood in recent US history only managed ~$30 billion in ~2011 dollars, and many of the more pedestrian "major flood events" are managing to cost somewhere around $1-10 billion. This is only half of the equation. There are large areas of the US with water shortages. If you could, hypothetically, completely remove the effects of the flooding you would "save" $30 billion in damages and then sell that water for profit to areas with droughts. For example, from 2010 to 2017 water bills for some families jumped 71% [0]. A quote from the same article: "Bills increased from $86.31 to $195.86 a month for a household of four using 150 gallons per person a day" So ~0.10 $/gallons. I'm not going to attempt to calculate the amount of water that recent floods have had but statements like "peak flow of 213,000 [ft^3/s]" are used I think we could see how it would be possible to make this math balance out. I'm not saying it does but the napink math leads me to believe that it could be possible if construction and maintenance was cheap enough. It would also improve economic prosperity in the regions (Vegas, etc). [0] - https://www.kqed.org/science/1920428/californians-are-struggling-to-pay-for-rising-water-rates https://www.kqed.org/science/1920428/californians-are-strugg... [1] - https://www.weather.gov/lix/ms_flood_history https://www.weather.gov/lix/ms_flood_history

dghughes 5y ago

> This isn't about stealing water from the Great Lakes(that's a common worry) Yes and the people who worry we Canadians because we border four of five lakes with the USA. It's often been said if the USA ever attacks us it will be for water not oil or land. Or at the very least force us via some obscure trade agreement clause to sell or allow the sale of water to the USA.

analog31 5y ago
Not just Canadians. The US states that border the great lakes are also very strong supporters of the treaty with Canada.
01100011 5y ago
Why would the US have to attack Canada for water? Why wouldn't you sell it to us? We sell you the produce we grow with water. Why can't it be a simple economic exchange?
- dghughes 5y ago
  Because the assumption is as most often is the situation the US won't ask it will just do as it pleases. It may be due to pressure from states, citizens, lack of water seen as a destabilizing threat, no time to debate or negotiate or the US would be impatient, or just arrogance. Because once water is sold as a commodity it can't be stopped. That's why trade agreements go out of their way to not even dare mention or very precisely say how sales of water isn't on the table. Lots of countries sell us food and we sells lots too. Take tomatoes for example Canada produces a crazy amount of them. Same for wheat millions of tons exported. See reason #2.

RobertRoberts 5y ago

That is insane, but the "why" is subtle. What is to stop this system from stealing water off to California when there is a drought everywhere? Let California use the water it has. And when it's wrecked it's resources, then industry has to face reality. California's water resources has been managed badly and industry has run rampant there.

jshen 5y ago
Look up “California water rights”, it’s a fascinating history.

bell-cot 5y ago

At least from skimming the Abstract, the "National Water Grid" on that OSTI.gov page would be nothing resembling a "national grid". It could only move water from the Mississippi R. to the upper Colorado R. Ignoring the pumps...just the aqueduct that you'd need to build - ~1,400 miles long, with the capacity of a major river - would have zero political chance of being approved & funded. And for a water grid that could absorb extreme events - upgrade the sizes of all the aqueducts and pumps by an order of magnitude or two. And then you've got to extend it to every spot you want to protect from extreme weather...

jcranmer 5y ago
> just the aqueduct that you'd need to build - ~1,400 miles long, with the capacity of a major river The heart of the proposal is 4 x 8' diameter pipes from the Ohio/Mississippi River junction to Lake Powell, and having worked in a water treatment plant, that amount of flow might quench the thirst of a few million people, but it won't divert even a river the size of the Potomac River, let alone the Missouri, Upper Mississippi, or Ohio Rivers.