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Big water cutbacks ordered amid Colorado River shortage
- limaho 4y agoWent kayaking in Lake Powell last year. Locals were saying the lake was down 30 feet (!!) from the past couple of years. I have no idea if that sort of fluctuation is common but that was enough to make me feel very concerned about the water situation in the southwest
- ShiftedClock 4y agoIt's a larger drop than usual. https://mead.uslakes.info/Level/ https://mead.uslakes.info/Level/
- prawn 4y agoWas it worth kayaking? I've wondered if there are interesting parts to explore.
- no_wizard 4y agoCould we feasibly just run desalination stations from the coasts and pipe the water - like oil - to fill up these reservoirs? Setting cost aside for a second, is there any reason not to do something like this?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoSetting cost aside? No. It costs a lot because it requires lots of energy which probably means lots of fossil fuels burning.
- no_wizard 4y agoThere’s other ways to mitigate that cost. Israel for instance runs many desalination plants from if I recall correctly solar power. We could do the same with solar and wind. Never the less, yes, because I believe cost can be managed and figured out over time, where as I don’t know what other mitigating factors would be the consequence of such a choice
- elliottkember 4y agoDo you have a source on the solar power Israel desalination? They use natural gas and coal.
- bushbaba 4y agoIsrael also recycles 90% of it's water. It first goes to urban use, then it's recycled for agriculture. California could do the same. https://www.waterworld.com/wastewater/article/16202781/israel-reuses-nearly-90-of-its-water https://www.waterworld.com/wastewater/article/16202781/israe...
- bombcar 4y agoIf only the cities were before the farms instead of after - reuse of city water for agriculture is a great idea.
- elliottkember 4y agoYes. Extremely high energy usage.
- Dylan16807 4y agoGenerally it would be cheaper to use more efficient farming methods.
- newaccount2021 4y agoThat would take 10-20 years to build out...what will you do next year?
- bombcar 4y agoBottled water. Very big bottles.
- ch4s3 4y agoThe real solution is to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact acknowledging that historical flow is several million acre feet less than what is allocated. Desalination and pumping is prohibitively expensive and would require as much interstate cooperation as reopening the original deal. And at the end you have hundreds of millions of gallons of brine to deal with.
- pilom 4y agoAnything is possible for enough money but I don't think you understand how much money what you're proposing would cost. In electricity alone desalination costs around 3kwh/m^3. 3.7mwh/acre foot of water. Last year we got 9.2 million acre feet of water in the Colorado River of the allocated 15 million acre feet. So if we say we want to supplement flows with just 2 million acre feet of desalination water, that's 7 Pwh of electricity. Per year. That's approximately 1000x the annual generated power of the largest nuclear plant in the world. And we haven't even pumped that water 3700 feet up from sea level to the elevation of lake Powell.
- elliottkember 4y agoThis is a great comment. Thank you for doing the math. I thought the word "just" was doing a lot of work in the original comment.
- Syonyk 4y agoHm. Your numbers and mine don't match by a few orders of magnitude. I came up with 2.5GW sustained, which is (2.5GW * 24h * 365) 21900 GWh ~= 21TWh/yr. Big, but not the same as your value. An acre foot is 1233 m^3, and at 3kWh/m^3, that's 3.7 MWh/acre foot. Math checks out so far. Times 2000000, that's 7400000 MWh / 7400 GWh / 7.4 TWh. I think you're off by a factor of 1000 somewhere in your math. You're looking at ~the output of a large nuclear plant, not 1000 of them. Or my math is wrong. That's entirely possible too.
- nostrademons 4y agoI get your numbers. I think OP skipped a prefix somewhere in the mega-giga-tera-peta hierarchy.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoTo put it in perspective, Bitcoin mining alone is more than three times that.
- InitialLastName 4y ago> That's approximately 1000x the annual generated power of the largest nuclear plant in the world. Put another way, it's almost 40x the annual generated power of the State of California.
- Syonyk 4y agoI mean, if you don't care in the slightest about cost of the plants, the energy required, the land needed to run the giant tunnels... maybe? It's probably technically possible within the constraints of "I have a full country's resources available and can demand they be used to satisfy my absurd requirements and won't face huge blowback for using resources this way." But you can pencil it out. Cuts next year are 2-4 million acre feet of water. What would it take to bring that in? An acre foot is 325,851 gallons, give or take. So, four of those is ~1.3e12 gallons of water for a year. A year has 31,536,000 seconds, so you're looking at a mere 41,000 gallons per second, or about 6500 cu*ft/s. Which is a good sized river's flow. It's also 155 m^3 of water per second, or about 3.5 billion gallons a day. I'm seeing [0] a plant in San Diego running 50M gallons a day on 35MW, so you'd need ~70 of those plants (or about 2.5GW) to manage your water supply. California's purring away at 33GW right now, so the energy required, while massive, is feasible. Trying to figure out how to move 40k gallons a second a distance of 1000 miles exceeds my physics skills, but you could probably figure it out with the right calculators or CFD handwaves. But it's not going to be cheap. Seems... somewhat easier to reduce demand, though. [0]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/09/f66/73355-7.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/09/f66/73355...
- khuey 4y ago40k gallons per second is on the order of the capacity of the Edmonston Pumping Plant of the State Water Project, so it's likely doable with existing technology.
- bombcar 4y agoAnd if you're doing mega projects on that scale, you'd just pipe water over the rockies from the midwest or divert the Columbia down the California coast. Or cut into the Gulf of Mexico and flood Death Valley.
- MengerSponge 4y agoIt would require a tremendous amount of energy. Lake Powell is more than 1km above sea level, which means each liter of water would require 10kJ just in gravitational potential energy. The reclamation effort is 1 maf (million acre-feet) of water over a year, which if supplied continuously from sea level with perfectly efficient pumping and transport corresponds to ~10 GW of power. A typical nuclear power plant generates 1GW, so without any transport losses, you'd need 10 new plants running full-time just to move the water up the hill. Add in the desalination challenges and transport losses, and you're talking what, 20-40 new nuke plants?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bushbaba 4y agoWhy not pipe the water from the pacific northwest, similar to what was done with the Colorado river.
- seadan83 4y agoLots and lots of mountains. On the east sides of the Cascades are massive dry and drought stricken areas (which are also farmland too). This same question can be asked about simply piping water from one side of the cascades to the other, let alone to the central valley
- hansword 4y agoCough... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power... ...cough
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoThis is done in China: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South–North_Water_Transfer_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South–North_Water_Transfer_P...
- coryrc 4y agoWhat makes you think there's excess water there?
- fakethenews2022 4y agoCalifornia already has a version of this. It is called the California Aqueduct. It takes water in the north and sends it to the south. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct You can see a portion of it driving on I-580. The problem is that Northern California hasn't been getting enough water either. The rains have been falling further north. Think Seattle. Also the aqueduct is fed from the existing river system. The major rivers in Oregon and Washington don't go into California AFAIK. Looks like you would have to divert the Columbia River. Haha.
- swatcoder 4y agoWe call them “desalination” plants, but the salt doesn’t just disappear. The more fresh water you have them produce, the more salt (brackish water) you need to manage as well. So even while you may imagine the ocean as a limitless supply of water, there’s only so far you can scale desalination.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoTo be fair the ocean is still pretty big. Also, water doesn’t disappear from the earth…
- yes_really 4y ago> Setting cost aside for a second, is there any reason not to do something like this? The cost would be so massive that, even if the answer to that question is "no", we shouldn't do it.
- cwalv 4y agoYou wouldn't have to pump it back up to refill the reservoirs: just slow the release from the reservoirs by the same amount you replace we desalinated water.
- no_wizard 4y agoI just want to mention, that, upon reading the comments, I now understand why this is a terrible idea
- jmyeet 4y agoAt least this article notes that the vast majority of water usage is agriculture. This isn't something cities could or should solve by switching to (expensive) desalination to effectively subsidize agriculture. Most notably, alfalfa is mentioned here as farmers are going to have to switch to less water-intensive crops. Decreasing alfalfa production may well impact the ability to feed cattle. In the short term, that's actually fine. It may just force more beef production, which will be good for costs (again, in the short term). But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not. It's simply usage. See Figure 2 on page 10 [1]. Additionally, water projections were made at a high point of water inflows that simply haven't been realistic since. In short, we're using too much water and farming is going to have to take the hit. [1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/ColoradoRiver/CRBS_Executive_Summary_FINAL.pdf https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad...
- creatonez 4y ago> But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not. It's simply usage. See Figure 2 on page 10 [1]. > [1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/ColoradoRiver/CRBS_Executive_Summary_FINAL.pdf https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad... I don't trust that a 2012 report is up to date on our latest climate modelling, or even that this is a climate-adjusted projection at all. Actual data past the point of publishing has not followed this graph. Anything more recent that supports your claim? Your source also says: > In the long-term (2041 through 2060), the futures that consider the Downscaled GCM Projected water supply scenario [not shown], which incorporates projections of future climate, show a high inability to meet resource needs, regardless of the demand scenario and the operation of Lakes Powell and Mead.
- kortilla 4y agoIt doesn’t need anything more recent. This has been a known issue for decades regardless of climate change.
- COGlory 4y agoThat figure is simple supply and demand. It shows supply staying roughly steady, and demand increasing drastically every year. Climate has nothing to do with that calculation (although it's possible it's exacerbating it, this was going to be an issue regardless).
- ar813 4y agoThe answer to this problem lies here: “Entsminger pointed out that roughly 80% of the river’s flow is used for agriculture, and most of that for thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is mainly grown for cattle, both in the U.S. and overseas.” The simple solution would be to raise prices on water such that it disincentivizes growing water hungry crops than alfalfa for example. The west’s water crisis is less about cities than agricultural choices made during the last century, which was wetter than it will be going forward. The obvious answer is to either regulate or incentivize using less water hungry crops more strongly. It would be better if this had started slowly a while ago, allowing the market to adjust and reallocate. Alas, looks like it will have to be an abrupt shift in the near future.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pm90 4y agoThe reason this doesn’t happen is that farmers/farming lobbies have a lot of political power, especially in rural districts and no politician wants to be painted as anti-farming interests.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kolanos 4y agoUnlike cities, farmers go where the water is. I know some HNers think farmers are growing crops in deserts. But that's just laughable. They farm where there is water: rivers, lakes, flood planes, deltas, etc. It is the cities diverting the water from these places.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago> They farm where there is water: rivers, lakes, flood planes, deltas, etc. It is the cities diverting the water from these places. What do you call a place where the lakes, rivers, flood planes, and deltas are dried up? That's right. A desert. If current trends continue that's exactly what you're going to have.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sJ646U9k6c6gME9 4y ago[flagged]
- MengerSponge 4y agoHow the West was Lost: In America’s first climate war, John Wesley Powell tried to prevent the overdevelopment that led to environmental devastation. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/how-the-west-was-lost/569365/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/how-the-we...
- vwoolf 4y agoBack then they didn't have good desalination technology. Now we do, and, while Israel is a leader, they export: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the...
- MengerSponge 4y agoAccording to Google, Israel is 85 miles across at the widest point. That barely gets you to San Bernadino, CA. It certainly doesn't include any of Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico. The southern tip of Arizona looks to be within 85 miles of the Gulf of California. Desalinating water would help California's residents, but the energy requirements for desalinating and transporting water to the desert southwest (that shouldn't have been settled so extensively in the first place) continue to elude us.
- joshuaheard 4y agoToo bad the California Coastal Commission just denied the permit for a desalinization plant in Huntington Beach at the site of a decommissioned steam plant and reusing some of its infrastructure. It would have provided water to several Southern California cities. https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-coastal-commission-rejects-huntington-beach-desalination-plant-proposal/ https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-coastal-comm...
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> would have provided water to several Southern California cities It blows my mind that it's simpler to build, in one of the most water-blessed parts of our planet, a desalination plant, than it is to get farmers to quit growing literal fodder. Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture. Eighty percent.
- GauntletWizard 4y agoAnd what percentage of those agriculturally grown calories are you going to cut out from your diet to reduce those usages? How much more do you want us all to pay for food? "Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture" is very literally saying "Eighty percent of California's water feeds people". There are cash crops that use a somewhat disproportionate amount of the water, but that is in no way reflected in your comment.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> "Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture" is very literally saying "Eighty percent of California's water feeds people" Alfalfa doesn't feed people [1]. It feeds cows that feed people. And nobody is going to starve because almonds and pistachios are pricier. Moreover, California's agriculture is notoriously water inefficient [2]. Why wouldn't it be? What other behavior would you expect from agricultural multinationals for whom we've effectively zero rated a commodity input? [1] https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-are-the-california-crops-that-use-the-most-water/ https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-... [2] https://calmatters.org/multimedia/2021/09/california-crops-drought-agriculture-chief/ https://calmatters.org/multimedia/2021/09/california-crops-d...
- flybrand 4y agoThis is as foretold in Reisner’s classic book on water in the American West - Cadillac Desert. It’s a great place to start if you’re interested in learning more.
- thepasswordis 4y agoAs long as we're still turning the Arizona desert into an alfalfa field for the Suadis, I won't believe that we're in a water crisis and certainly won't be doing anything that effects my life in any negative way to "remedy" this: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/02/453885642/saudi-hay-farm-in-arizona-tests-states-supply-of-groundwater https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/02/453885642/sa...
- labrador 4y agoIt's weird how people don't want to pay more money for water when we literally can't go for more than a few days without drinking it and can't grow the food we need without it.
- supertrope 4y agoThe average American lifestyle is very resource intensive. There are also many subsidies and social constructs supporting it. The end of abundant water is forcing hard choices. Less livestock and cheap beef. Water is an industrial input to cotton used in clothes, electricity generation, and fracking for oil & gas. Sacrificing wetlands and coastal groundwater to salt intrusion to squeeze out the last acre feet from rivers that normally flow into the sea. Water increasing in price will reduce waste and increase efficiency. But everything will become more expensive, not just luxury or wasteful water uses.
- throwaway892238 4y ago> The Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in cities from Denver to Los Angeles > “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River" > roughly 80% of the river’s flow is used for agriculture, and most of that for thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is mainly grown for cattle Somebody needs to wake the people in those cities up. If they don't start screaming at their representatives, they won't be able to use their faucets, because some cattle farmers don't want to import feed. This is ridiculous. But then again, this is America. If 25 million people need to go without water so my burgers will be cheaper, so be it, right?
- shagie 4y ago> they won't be able to use their faucets, because some cattle farmers don't want to import feed It's the cattle farmers in other countries that want to import California feed (because it's on the west coast and easier to ship?).
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> if they don't start screaming at their representatives, they won't be able to use their faucets, because some cattle farmers don't want to import feed The situation will rapidly sort itself out once faucets are turned off. Ordinarily, that would happen after irreparable environmental destruction. Fortunately, we have the Bureau of Reclamation to pull the plug on the Colorado River Compact states before that happens.
- eclipticplane 4y agoDon't forget to factor in this truly wildcard Supreme Court.
- neonate 4y agohttps://archive.ph/59JwY https://archive.ph/59JwY
- eclipticplane 4y agoI'll be curious to see if this reverses the westward migration in the United States that we've seen over the past 100+ years. Large rust belt and east coast saw stagnant, if not declining, populations as new families moved west for better weather, mountains, cheap land, access to the west coast, ... the Great Lakes, Ohio, Upper Mississippi, and New England (and the Upper Colorado) watersheds are least likely to be impacted by severe droughts. Throw the Mid Atlantic in there, too, despite the increasing risk of severe tropical events.
- mdrzn 4y agoSouth Park called it [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park:_The_Streaming_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park:_The_Streaming_Wars
- Hellion 4y agoI don’t see anyone mentioning the latest South Park “movie”, but they presented this in a very humorous, yet grim, way.