8 ms·

It's clear at this point that the Southwest needs massive desalination plants on the West coast, nuclear power plants to power them, and pipelines to carry the

It's clear at this point that the Southwest needs massive desalination plants on the West coast, nuclear power plants to power them, and pipelines to carry the water inland to the communities that need them. This will cost tens of billions. So be it. Civilization is not cheap.

hotpotamus 4y ago
If I had 10's of billions, perhaps I could just unilaterally do that myself. Or that's just about the cost of Twitter, which would probably be more fun to buy.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gedy 4y ago
Honestly I don't think money is the obstacle. It's the people who fear change and or have something to gain from the status quo.
corrral 4y ago
The solution of "move", which we give to people harmed by the economy and by economic policy—something which we have quite a bit of control over!—doesn't apply in this case?
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
  The amount of people who have never moved away from their bubble and aren’t willing to even consider it might surprise you.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  You know, this was my first reaction. I'm a civil engineer. I met a big-wig from AECOM (one of the largest engineering contractors in the county) at a conference and we sat for dinner and I asked him, why not move the people? He said it would be easier to build the pipes and the pumps than it would be to rebuild the other infrastructure, homes, offices, restaurants, and social systems those people would need after you moved them. (specifically I asked about Las Vegas, and a plan to import water from other parts of Nevada). My take-away was that "sustainability" isn't a factor in these decisions. If you want to set up yourself for a sustainable future, you have to vote with your feet. Nobody will can make that decision for you. Climate change is going to have a lot of negative effects on some parts of the globe. But there will also be a lot of opportunities, and other regions will prosper as their climates become more hospitable or productive. The challenge is trying to anticipate those changes and making responsible decisions.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    The other problem with moving seems to be that you might find people in the place you want to move to aren't so welcoming. And that might happen more and more as there are less inhabitable places in the world.
    - corrral 4y ago
      There's tons of space in the US. It's just that lots of it's really humid in the Summer and really cold in the Winter (and, overall, pretty wet—go figure) and quite flat and you might have to drive an entire day or more to see mountains or a body of water that you can't see the other side of. Which, I can already guess some folks' reaction to that: "there are no mountains, huge lakes, or oceans within a 10-hour drive? I'd rather die than live like that!" And I get it. It does suck, for all those reasons. It sucks a lot. But there's water, and millions of people getting by OK—if a bit fatter, partly on account of the outdoors being so shit.
      - hotpotamus 4y ago
        It seems there are millions of people who want to immigrate to the US and I suspect would be willing to move to such places, but they are not welcomed.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Large amounts of people moving from California move to ... Arizona which doesn't really help the water issue much. But the AECOM guy wasn't wrong - the amount of "investment" even in a smaller town is insane - the LA basin is worth something like 2.3 trillion in land value alone. That kind of pricing can justify absolutely massive projects. For those looking to move from California, I would suggest considering other factors such as sustainability come into play - Texas and Arizona aren't the only possible destinations. Though I doubt we can solve California's water problems by all buying Wisconsin Cheese whilst living in Minneapolis.
pilom 4y ago
If agriculture uses like 80% of the fresh water, why not just make water a public good and make people pay equal amounts for irrigation water so we stop subsidizing water rich plants like pistachios and almonds and alfalfa. All it requires is a little political backbone. Though I guess billions of dollars might be easier to find.
- runnerup 4y ago
  While I agree, we’ll have to be careful that the incentive encourages productive transition to more sustainable domestic farming rather than outsourcing our food production to another country or continent. It would take a lot of thought and planning to manage that transition. Of course the status quo appears to be untenable.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Based on really rough estimates, the value of California's cropland is about 325 billion dollars. So the state could ... buy all the farms? The annual CA budget seems to be in the $250 billion range.
    - codenesium 4y ago
      If it's a catastrophe I don't know why the government should have to buy everyone out. The insurance companies should just stop insuring the crops and let the market sort it out.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      I don't think this is a good idea specifically, but I do think state acquisition is an under-utilized tactic. For example the SF-LA railroad would be much cheaper if the state simply acquired the Union Pacific, which would hardly cost anything compared to the total project. But according to our state law, eminent domain can only be used when the acquisition is minimal and there are no alternatives, so the state could only buy such things on the open market from willing sellers.
      - 4y ago
luma 4y ago
I still marvel at the thought process that leads a hundred million people to move to the desert and then to be surprised that there isn't enough water.
- woevdbz 4y ago
  I marvel at the bounty of delicious and nutritious food that arises from ambitious irrigation projects. California produces an insanely high share of the fruits and vegetables grown in the US and it is largely because man made water transportation projects turned a desert into fertile land.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    True, but that comes at the expense of local farmers in places like, say, Ohio where it's not economical to grow strawberries because California has so much sun and can grow them better - the whole proposition rests on cheap energy and water. If California farmers paid more in costs it's likely that other regions with perfectly fine growing climates could just restart production and then we'd solve a love of problems. California growing all of these fruits and vegetables is basically "the suburbs" in a nutshell.
    - kodah 4y ago
      When people make the argument OP is making they're leaving out that they don't want agriculture to leave. If it did, the state would probably go through a very long recession due to home prices diving and the economy tanking. This story also has to do with California's centralization of economic power and influence, which is why so many water ways have been moved here.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Even if California had infinite water, there's something kind of "sad" about losing seasonality of various fruits and vegetables - it used to be that "strawberry time" was worthy of festivals (which still remain in many areas even though strawberries are available year-round at the store). And if you find a local place that does grow in season, you find that what we get at the stores aren't necessarily as good as they could be. Shipping produce across the country (and across the world) has been a net negative for taste.
threefour 4y ago
As long as the states pay for it. If some people insist on living in the desert, the rest of us shouldn't have to pay for it. Civilization happens elsewhere.
- corrral 4y ago
  Californians are always eager to remind everyone that theirs would be a top-10 global economy if they split from the US. Seems like this shouldn't be a problem for them to handle on their own.
  - skybrian 4y ago
    San Diego has good water policy. Other parts of California would likely catch up if they had to, but I think it will take more drought.
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    Shouldn’t their massive economy be able to solve their own problems they created?
  - toiletfuneral 4y ago
- Victerius 4y ago
  The problem with letting states figuring it out themselves is that water doesn't care about borders. If a state unilaterally decided to suspend all contracts, treaties, and convenants on the sharing of hydrologic resources, other states would call on the federal government to step in. If the federal government refused to intervene, you would probably see aggrieved states form a coalition to force the "aggressor" state to cease "hostilities". Worst case scenario, it becomes a free for all and states start invading one another to "open the rivers and reservoirs". You could see local right-wing militias and ordinary but armed citizens take matters into their own hands. This is how civil war happens.
nickstinemates 4y ago
So about .2 of the stupid train from nowhere to nowhere
- asdff 4y ago
  A bullet train from SF to LA and eventually across all of CA is a stupid train from nowhere to nowhere? Come on. This isn't even a high speed rail thread. This isn't even the relevant axe to grind.
starwind 4y ago
Desalination, yes. But we don't need nuclear to power it. A bunch of the energy can be pulled from the ocean through either tidal stream turbines or wave power. Renewables work well here because you don't need to store the energy you can just generate the power and immediately use it. No long-term storage. No long-distance transit. And (I assume) water use roughly tracks energy use. The new generation geothermal is also something that we should be exploring in areas that aren't earthquake prone (which is basically everything from Denver to Las Vegas)
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  Desalination plants are capital intensive, and no one who builds them wants to run them only occasionally. They want to run them nearly all the time. Thus, nuclear, hydro, and geothermal are the best suited zero-carbon energy sources to work for it. Wave and tidal energy has not been deployed at any meaningful scale, but once they're in full production at scale then sure they could be used too.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    yes, but nuclear plants are also really capital intensive. Also, according to https://www.advisian.com/en/global-perspectives/the-cost-of-desalination https://www.advisian.com/en/global-perspectives/the-cost-of-..., the thermal and electrical energy costs of desalination are greater than amortized capital cost. Running primarily off of renewables will probably reduce the uptime to 70% or so, but will dramatically reduce cost to run.
    - starwind 4y ago
      70% would be fine because you don't need to run desalination all the time. We can store water in watertowers and draw down when we need it
newaccount2021 4y ago
JohnWhigham 4y ago
What do we do with the leftover toxic brine?
- progfix 4y ago
  Or the radioactive waste?
  - moistly 4y ago
    You drill very deep holes in the Canadian Shield and drop it in. https://www.nwmo.ca/ https://www.nwmo.ca/
adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
powering desalination with nuclear is incredibly dumb. If you have massive desalination infrastructure, it makes way more sense to power it with renewables since they are 5x cheaper, and you can use desalination as a battery (run it when the sun is out/there is wind).
- akvadrako 4y ago
  This requires building more desalination plants, since they won't always be running. So it might come out more expensive than nuclear.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    renewables have a power factor of greater than 50%, and a nuclear plant is more expensive than a desalination plant.
moistly 4y ago
Instead of desalination, purify wastewater. Up where I live, our water comes from the lake and goes back into the lake. In between the input and output is a wastewater treatment plant that emits water so clean that you can drink directly from the outflow pipe.

hotpotamus 4y ago

If I had 10's of billions, perhaps I could just unilaterally do that myself. Or that's just about the cost of Twitter, which would probably be more fun to buy.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

gedy 4y ago

Honestly I don't think money is the obstacle. It's the people who fear change and or have something to gain from the status quo.

corrral 4y ago

The solution of "move", which we give to people harmed by the economy and by economic policy—something which we have quite a bit of control over!—doesn't apply in this case?

bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
The amount of people who have never moved away from their bubble and aren’t willing to even consider it might surprise you.
engineer_22 4y ago
You know, this was my first reaction. I'm a civil engineer. I met a big-wig from AECOM (one of the largest engineering contractors in the county) at a conference and we sat for dinner and I asked him, why not move the people? He said it would be easier to build the pipes and the pumps than it would be to rebuild the other infrastructure, homes, offices, restaurants, and social systems those people would need after you moved them. (specifically I asked about Las Vegas, and a plan to import water from other parts of Nevada). My take-away was that "sustainability" isn't a factor in these decisions. If you want to set up yourself for a sustainable future, you have to vote with your feet. Nobody will can make that decision for you. Climate change is going to have a lot of negative effects on some parts of the globe. But there will also be a lot of opportunities, and other regions will prosper as their climates become more hospitable or productive. The challenge is trying to anticipate those changes and making responsible decisions.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  The other problem with moving seems to be that you might find people in the place you want to move to aren't so welcoming. And that might happen more and more as there are less inhabitable places in the world.
  - corrral 4y ago
    There's tons of space in the US. It's just that lots of it's really humid in the Summer and really cold in the Winter (and, overall, pretty wet—go figure) and quite flat and you might have to drive an entire day or more to see mountains or a body of water that you can't see the other side of. Which, I can already guess some folks' reaction to that: "there are no mountains, huge lakes, or oceans within a 10-hour drive? I'd rather die than live like that!" And I get it. It does suck, for all those reasons. It sucks a lot. But there's water, and millions of people getting by OK—if a bit fatter, partly on account of the outdoors being so shit.
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      It seems there are millions of people who want to immigrate to the US and I suspect would be willing to move to such places, but they are not welcomed.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Large amounts of people moving from California move to ... Arizona which doesn't really help the water issue much. But the AECOM guy wasn't wrong - the amount of "investment" even in a smaller town is insane - the LA basin is worth something like 2.3 trillion in land value alone. That kind of pricing can justify absolutely massive projects. For those looking to move from California, I would suggest considering other factors such as sustainability come into play - Texas and Arizona aren't the only possible destinations. Though I doubt we can solve California's water problems by all buying Wisconsin Cheese whilst living in Minneapolis.

pilom 4y ago

If agriculture uses like 80% of the fresh water, why not just make water a public good and make people pay equal amounts for irrigation water so we stop subsidizing water rich plants like pistachios and almonds and alfalfa. All it requires is a little political backbone. Though I guess billions of dollars might be easier to find.

runnerup 4y ago
While I agree, we’ll have to be careful that the incentive encourages productive transition to more sustainable domestic farming rather than outsourcing our food production to another country or continent. It would take a lot of thought and planning to manage that transition. Of course the status quo appears to be untenable.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Based on really rough estimates, the value of California's cropland is about 325 billion dollars. So the state could ... buy all the farms? The annual CA budget seems to be in the $250 billion range.
  - codenesium 4y ago
    If it's a catastrophe I don't know why the government should have to buy everyone out. The insurance companies should just stop insuring the crops and let the market sort it out.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    I don't think this is a good idea specifically, but I do think state acquisition is an under-utilized tactic. For example the SF-LA railroad would be much cheaper if the state simply acquired the Union Pacific, which would hardly cost anything compared to the total project. But according to our state law, eminent domain can only be used when the acquisition is minimal and there are no alternatives, so the state could only buy such things on the open market from willing sellers.
    - 4y ago

luma 4y ago

I still marvel at the thought process that leads a hundred million people to move to the desert and then to be surprised that there isn't enough water.

woevdbz 4y ago
I marvel at the bounty of delicious and nutritious food that arises from ambitious irrigation projects. California produces an insanely high share of the fruits and vegetables grown in the US and it is largely because man made water transportation projects turned a desert into fertile land.
- ericmay 4y ago
  True, but that comes at the expense of local farmers in places like, say, Ohio where it's not economical to grow strawberries because California has so much sun and can grow them better - the whole proposition rests on cheap energy and water. If California farmers paid more in costs it's likely that other regions with perfectly fine growing climates could just restart production and then we'd solve a love of problems. California growing all of these fruits and vegetables is basically "the suburbs" in a nutshell.
  - kodah 4y ago
    When people make the argument OP is making they're leaving out that they don't want agriculture to leave. If it did, the state would probably go through a very long recession due to home prices diving and the economy tanking. This story also has to do with California's centralization of economic power and influence, which is why so many water ways have been moved here.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Even if California had infinite water, there's something kind of "sad" about losing seasonality of various fruits and vegetables - it used to be that "strawberry time" was worthy of festivals (which still remain in many areas even though strawberries are available year-round at the store). And if you find a local place that does grow in season, you find that what we get at the stores aren't necessarily as good as they could be. Shipping produce across the country (and across the world) has been a net negative for taste.

threefour 4y ago

As long as the states pay for it. If some people insist on living in the desert, the rest of us shouldn't have to pay for it. Civilization happens elsewhere.

corrral 4y ago
Californians are always eager to remind everyone that theirs would be a top-10 global economy if they split from the US. Seems like this shouldn't be a problem for them to handle on their own.
- skybrian 4y ago
  San Diego has good water policy. Other parts of California would likely catch up if they had to, but I think it will take more drought.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  Shouldn’t their massive economy be able to solve their own problems they created?
- toiletfuneral 4y ago
Victerius 4y ago
The problem with letting states figuring it out themselves is that water doesn't care about borders. If a state unilaterally decided to suspend all contracts, treaties, and convenants on the sharing of hydrologic resources, other states would call on the federal government to step in. If the federal government refused to intervene, you would probably see aggrieved states form a coalition to force the "aggressor" state to cease "hostilities". Worst case scenario, it becomes a free for all and states start invading one another to "open the rivers and reservoirs". You could see local right-wing militias and ordinary but armed citizens take matters into their own hands. This is how civil war happens.

nickstinemates 4y ago

So about .2 of the stupid train from nowhere to nowhere

asdff 4y ago
A bullet train from SF to LA and eventually across all of CA is a stupid train from nowhere to nowhere? Come on. This isn't even a high speed rail thread. This isn't even the relevant axe to grind.

starwind 4y ago

Desalination, yes. But we don't need nuclear to power it. A bunch of the energy can be pulled from the ocean through either tidal stream turbines or wave power. Renewables work well here because you don't need to store the energy you can just generate the power and immediately use it. No long-term storage. No long-distance transit. And (I assume) water use roughly tracks energy use. The new generation geothermal is also something that we should be exploring in areas that aren't earthquake prone (which is basically everything from Denver to Las Vegas)

acidburnNSA 4y ago
Desalination plants are capital intensive, and no one who builds them wants to run them only occasionally. They want to run them nearly all the time. Thus, nuclear, hydro, and geothermal are the best suited zero-carbon energy sources to work for it. Wave and tidal energy has not been deployed at any meaningful scale, but once they're in full production at scale then sure they could be used too.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  yes, but nuclear plants are also really capital intensive. Also, according to https://www.advisian.com/en/global-perspectives/the-cost-of-desalination https://www.advisian.com/en/global-perspectives/the-cost-of-..., the thermal and electrical energy costs of desalination are greater than amortized capital cost. Running primarily off of renewables will probably reduce the uptime to 70% or so, but will dramatically reduce cost to run.
  - starwind 4y ago
    70% would be fine because you don't need to run desalination all the time. We can store water in watertowers and draw down when we need it

newaccount2021 4y ago

JohnWhigham 4y ago

What do we do with the leftover toxic brine?

progfix 4y ago
Or the radioactive waste?
- moistly 4y ago
  You drill very deep holes in the Canadian Shield and drop it in. https://www.nwmo.ca/ https://www.nwmo.ca/

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago

powering desalination with nuclear is incredibly dumb. If you have massive desalination infrastructure, it makes way more sense to power it with renewables since they are 5x cheaper, and you can use desalination as a battery (run it when the sun is out/there is wind).

akvadrako 4y ago
This requires building more desalination plants, since they won't always be running. So it might come out more expensive than nuclear.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  renewables have a power factor of greater than 50%, and a nuclear plant is more expensive than a desalination plant.

moistly 4y ago

Instead of desalination, purify wastewater. Up where I live, our water comes from the lake and goes back into the lake. In between the input and output is a wastewater treatment plant that emits water so clean that you can drink directly from the outflow pipe.