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I'm not in the business to know feasibility...but I've lived all over. Out west, depending on area, it seems there's -too- much sun and everyone has solar pan
by silisili 5y ago
I'm not in the business to know feasibility...but I've lived all over. Out west, depending on area, it seems there's -too- much sun and everyone has solar panels. Back east(and potentially PNW, but I've never lived there) it rains so much people tire of it.
Is there no way states can like...organize a trade? Clean power for clean water? Or is piping that much water around not realistic? I know it's a naive take, just felt weird seeing and living on both sides.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoThe agriculture shouldn't be there in the first place. This would just reinforce bad public policy. The places with an abundance of water also have a lot of underutilized land.
- throwaway892238 5y agoSo you pass a law that says no farming in NM? That doesn't fix the rest of the water access policy once the water keeps dwindling. States will keep arguing among themselves and the federal government won't get involved until after a few years of FEMA handouts. Policy isn't going to be able to fix this because people won't want to sacrifice. Even if people in AZ and NM welcome regulation, the other states that aren't hurt as bad won't be willing to compromise any of their water or farming rights. Unless there is a quid pro quo, people in southwestern states are just fucked.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoI live in NM, and while I may be in a minority here for now, I'd happily support a bill that at the very least banned agriculture that used flood irrigation in NM. A bill that outright banned commercial agriculture might be too much, but I wouldn't rule it out of order if the current drought were to last for say, another 50 years.
- pstuart 5y agoJust make the price of water match the cost of it, and flood irrigation no longer becomes cost effective. Of course wrangling that through the entrenched interests is another story.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoWhen you pump the water out of a well on your own property, how do you establish what the cost of the water really is?
- hedora 5y agoWater flows horizontally through aquifers, so water from your well isn't really "yours". California is starting to mandate meters on wells in some counties (as they should).
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoI am not 100% sure about the law in CA, but here in NM all the meters could do is check that you do not exceed the water rights associated with the property. Every piece of land has some amount of water rights (possibly zero), and you cannot be prevented from obtaining that much water from the land via wells. In most of the US west, the water you pull from groundwater reserves very much is yours as long as you do not exceed your alloted water rights. None of which helps with establishing the actual cost of the water. Granted, the situation with the CA and AZ irrigation projects is somewhat different, since the water arrives on your land thanks to a massive federal government project. In this case, while it might not be accurate, determining and defining some sort of price is feasible.
- hedora 5y agoI was referring to physics, not laws. The water allotments you describe are clearly unsustainable, unless they vary from year to year based on the local aquifer (if so, it's similar to what the CA meters check). I know the compacts with other states have trigger points that invalidate them during shortages. I wonder if the NM allotments work that way too. (If not, and they're fixed for all time, then NM is probably headed to a situation where there simply isn't any water.) The well water in CA mostly arrives due to snow pack melting and sinking into the aquifer. There are state projects to allow faster spring melts (thanks, climate change!) to reach the aquifer. They basically slow the flood water and cut ruts that let it drain into the aquifer instead of the ocean. Your "massive federal project" is probably referring to the California aquaducts and reservoirs, which are a separate water delivery network.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoThe reason for the agricultural presence is the sunlight and mild-ish temperatures that enable a year-round growing season. The UP of Michigan indeed has land and lots of water, but you're not going to be growing a lot there in January.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoCanada does fine with their greenhouses.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoAn excellent point. Except for one thing: > In 2019, there were a total of 838 commercial greenhouse vegetable operations with 17.6 million square metres of production area which produced nearly 664,450 metric tons of vegetables. https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/canadas-agriculture-sectors/horticulture/horticulture-sector-reports/statistical-overview-canadian-greenhouse-vegetable-industry-2019 https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/canadas-agriculture-sectors... By contrast, just California alone produced 173500 metric tonnes of just bell peppers. California alone produced almost 1000000 metric tonnes of sugarbeets. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=CALIFORNIA https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverv... So while there's no doubt that agricultural production, even in winter, even in the great white north, is viable, the scale doesn't really come close to what is happening in the US southwest.
- throw0101a 5y ago> By contrast, just California alone produced 173500 metric tonnes of just bell peppers. California alone produced almost 1000000 metric tonnes of sugarbeets. California exports a lot of stuff. Canada may simply be trying to feed itself, so the 'extra' volume may not be considered a major consideration. > […] the scale doesn't really come close to what is happening in the US southwest. How useful is scale if it can't be sustained?
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- cellis 5y agoIf this were China...we could build a transnational canal network and federated power grid -- in 10 years. Unfortunately our (every?) democracy, moves too slow for that. So given the pace of large scale projects I'd say in 50 years ... maybe.
- kibwen 5y agoChina has been doing what the grandparent suggests for 20 years now, building networks to transfer water from the south to the north, and even at full-tilt with cheap access to labor and the political will to displace (so far) hundreds of thousands of people, it's not nearly enough to solve their looming water crisis. Regions like Arizona are just inimical to large-scale human habitation and agriculture. The good news is that Arizona is projected to get more humid thanks to climate change. The bad news is that Arizona isn't projected to get any less hot, so look forward to an increasing frequency of wet bulb events in the future.
- golergka 5y agoChina have been building irrigation systems for 2000 years, not 20.
- kibwen 5y agoNobody is disputing that. The projects of the past 20 years have been on a different scale entirely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Transfer_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Tran...
- nopenopenopeno 5y agoWe don’t have a democracy. We have a private sector that has a government that it masquerades as a democracy.
- zdragnar 5y agoArizona averages what, 4000 feet above sea level? It'd be an absurd waste of energy to pump sufficient fresh water there from anywhere, but especially the east coast.
- Retric 5y agoPiping water that distance isn’t particularly difficult, but the easier solution is to pump water from the east coast into a tributary of the Mississippi and then move Mississippi water further west. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/517843657152394153/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/517843657152394153/
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoThere isn't surplus water in the Mississippi or its tributaries. This is an illusion caused by seeing the river and not understanding the way it works and the ecosystems around it. Piping water long distances isn't particularly hard, true. But ... piping water uphill consumes extraordinary amounts of energy. Where I live in NM (between 6000 and 7000'), it seems to me exceedingly unlikely that we'd ever see water pumped from within a few hundred feet of sea level up here.
- Retric 5y ago> There isn’t surplus water in the Mississippi Thus “pump water from the east coast into a tributary of the Mississippi” The way these kind of projects work is to divert water at the border between multiple catchment basins. You might need to pump water up a minimal distance or even simply cut a channel at one end which lets you extract the same amount of water without negativity impacting anyones water rights. As to pumping water up, users downstream of the Mississippi don’t care where their water comes from as long as they can get it. Thus you can now move water upstream on the western edge of the Mississippi to Nevada because that’s been offset but adding water to the eastern edge of the Mississippi catchment basin. Of course the more water you want to move to Nevada the more complicated this gets. Also, it would be much more convenient to start from the Great Lakes than the east coast but the basic principle works.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoI can't pretend to know enough about this to really comment on such a scheme. However, I do read https://www.inkstain.com/jfleck https://www.inkstain.com/jfleck and view him as an authority on southwestern water. He appears to me to be very skeptical that long distance pipelines make sense and/or are possible given the requirements at each end.
- thelastgallon 5y agoAmerica's Pipe Dream [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAsExSNfNXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAsExSNfNXQ
- dforrestwilson 5y agoIn the PNW you would kill salmon runs. Don’t think that one will fly.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoAlso, the PNW is one of the driest parts of the country for many months of the year. They rely on enough snowpack melting slowly enough and not being reabsorbed by the ground in order to keep rivers flowing. Snowpack is on a downward trend, and drier warmer ground absorbs more of what does flow before it reaches rivers.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- blamazon 5y agoEdit: I attempted to make some calculations of pipe diameter and got it wrong and am going to bed instead of fixing it.
- treis 5y ago>In a 12 foot diameter pipe that water would be moving at about 56 miles per hour. In a 24 foot diameter pipe, 28 mp That isn't right. Doubling diameter should drop flow rate to 1/4. Area scales with the square of the diameter.
- blamazon 5y agoOops yeah you're right I typo'd in my calculations
- dehrmann 5y agoIt's way easier to move electric. There's a decent chance desalination on the west coast would be cheaper than building pipelines and canals to move water 1500 miles. Moving water from the Pacific Northwest would be easier, but that would be an Alaska Pipeline-level endeavor (likely more since you'll want more water than oil) for something that's worth cents per gallon, not dollars.
- recuter 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River Analysts say that the costs of the $25 billion groundwater extraction system are 10% those of desalination. It is the largest underground network of pipes (2820km / 1750 miles) and aqueducts in the world. It consists of more than 1,300 wells, most more than 500 m deep, and supplies 6,500,000 m3 of fresh water per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere. The late Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi described it as the "Eighth Wonder of the World". Of course this is from the 1980s in a completely different part of the planet with totally different circumstances and not directly comparable. But makes one wonder as to the veracity of your statement. Sadly, it is entirely plausible present day US can't perform mega projects as well as a crazed Libyan dictator from half a century ago.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoWe already do this sort of thing in effect with the great aquifers of the US midwest. The result has been the almost unimaginable depletion of the aquifers. You can't pull water out of an aquifer faster than it refills, at least not for very long. They can act as a "water bank" for a limited time, but if you're actually using more water per unit of land area than falls as rain or flows through, the "limited time" part is of critical importance.
- dehrmann 5y agoIt's fair to wonder, and it's an interesting project. I think the main difference is Libya is very flat compared to the US, so a lot of the construction is easier. The main caveat to their approach is that "the aquifer could be depleted of water in as soon as 60 to 100 years."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoPumping water horizontally for long distances: doable, if there is actually water somewhere. Pumping water vertically to the 5-7k ft elevations of a lot of the southwest, not so much.
- jrapdx3 5y agoI live in Oregon and AFAIK the idea of shipping (diverting?) water from the Columbia to California has been a recurring theme that is, so to speak, "dead in the water" before the ink dries on the planning documents. (Yeah I know, paperless, etc., but the really big plans seem to never escape printouts.) FWIW in Portland water isn't at all a cheap resource which speaks to the costs of even fairly local transport and delivery. (Portland's water source is ~60 miles east at Mt. Hood.) To me it suggests attempting to share water with very distant areas would be an extremely expensive/complex engineering feat that would dwarf construction of the new Panama canal. Even a project of such scale is by comparison merely a backyard ditch.
- i_am_proteus 5y agoFolks in Rome figured it out thousands of years ago. Still works, last I checked. Los Angeles and San Diego both get water from the Colorado River, hundreds of miles away.
- jjtheblunt 5y agobut aquaducts flow downhill, and folks are discussing sending water to Arizona and New Mexico, both at much higher elevation than where the water being discussed originates
- i_am_proteus 5y agoIt is possible to move water to a higher elevation by means of a pump. The water can then flow down hill. This is the same technology that is used to raise groundwater to the surface, and to distribute water from many reservoirs. It is in economic use today. The aqueduct I mentioned, that which brings water from the Colorado river to Southern California, uses several pumps to raise the elevation of theaqueduct along its course.
- rayiner 5y agoMy wife’s family was among the first American settlers in Oregon. She would take up arms to prevent Californians from getting any of Oregon’s water.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago> Or is piping that much water around not realistic? There is no known way around the fact that energy = force times distance = mass times acceleration times distance. You want to move a lot of mass a lot of distance? You will need a lot of energy.
- myownpetard 5y agoWashington has one of the cleanest electrical grids in the states, about 90% comes from renewables. 66% of their energy generation is from hydro. No need to import sunshine, well at least for energy purposes.
- downrightmike 5y agoArizona has 360 sunny days. Arizona isn't the real problem, because they sell a ton of water and power to california, and that has already been cut back due to severe drought. Farming may not be viable in California, if the rockies don't build up snow pack anymore. All CA will be is droughts and severe floods because the snow just melts immediately. Its second largest city is the largest city in th eworld running off of ground water and some smaller towns have a few hundred years in the aquifers.
- hedora 5y agoArizona just happens to be upstream from California. That doesn't imply Phoenix or Scottsdale are sustainable. Scottsdale's population is 268,000, and they use 63.2 million gallons per day. That's 235 gallons per day per person. Californians average 85 gallons per day. Arizonans average about 100 gallons. Anyway, the snowpack is increasingly a thing of the past, and so is the Colorado river. I'm guessing Phoenix and or Scottsdale will be mostly abandoned in the next few decades. California cities can at least desalinate. References for the water usage stats: http://scottsdaleaz.gov/Water http://scottsdaleaz.gov/Water https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/scottsdale-az-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/scottsdale-az-po... https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3611 https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3611
- Gibbon1 5y agoI tried looking up Los Angeles total water usage. Saw a historic table that had number around 500,000 to 600,000 acre feet per year. Fairly steady since 1970. That's about 180 billion gallons a year. Divide by days per year and LA's population you get 123 gallons a day. But that includes industrial. Either way guesstimating the cost of desalinization, I think it'd be about $170/per person a year. Call it $500/year per household. Water bill $40/month. Steep but not impossible.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JohnHaugeland 5y ago