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California needs 3x more reservoir capacity and 10,000x more desalination capacity including enough to export to neighboring states. I left CA for TX after 30 y

California needs 3x more reservoir capacity and 10,000x more desalination capacity including enough to export to neighboring states. I left CA for TX after 30 years for many reasons: 1. Wildfires and related homeowners insurance raises 2. Deteriorating prevailing attitudes and outlook 3. Earthquake risk (grossly underestimated in some areas) 4. Long-term water scarcity 5. Worsening income inequality as evidenced by people living on the sides of the roads and highways. It's not normal and it's a lack of government action to secure affordable housing Average estimated risk for an area of the US: https://hazards.fema.gov/nri/map https://hazards.fema.gov/nri/map

vladgur 4y ago
Why would you move to Texas if you worried about water scarcity?
- philsnow 4y ago
  East Texas is lush. > Wildfires and related homeowners insurance raises this is the bit I would have expected not to be better in Texas, between floods and energy instability.
  - sacnoradhq 4y ago
    You'd swear you were in Louisiana over there. The amount of cleaning of bug zappers and fencing-in of porches, you might as well live as a hermit with all that flies and bites.
- burlesona 4y ago
  The more populated parts of Texas get plenty of rain. For example, Austin averages 35 inches of rain per year and Houston gets 50 inches (compare to Seattle at 38 inches). If it came to it, Texas also is on the coast and unlike California they actually build things in Texas, so desalination is available.
  - tzs 4y ago
    > For example, Austin averages 35 inches of rain per year and Houston gets 50 inches (compare to Seattle at 38 inches). For anyone wondering why Seattle has a reputation as a rainy city when quite a few other well known US cities get comparable or more rain and no one ever thinks of them as particularly rainy, there are two main reasons. 1. Seattle rains on more days (where a day is considered as with rain if there is 0.01 mm or more of rain). Seattle's 38 inches is spread over 156 days. Austin's 35 inches comes over 86 days. Houston's 50 inches is over 107 days. There are cities with more total rain and more rain days, such as Buffalo (41 inches, 166 days), which brings us to reason #2. 2. Buffalo gets around 92 inches of snow a year which takes place over around 72 days. No one is bothered by a little rain on a day when you've got all that freaking snow to deal with. Similar for most other cities that have more rain and more rain days then Seattle. They also tend to have one or more other things that are more annoying than the rain. Seattle on the other hand mostly just has the rain. It's funny. I actually used my umbrella a lot less in the "rainy" Seattle area than when I lived in Los Angeles or Cupertino. I think that is because with so many rain days if you don't carry the umbrella with you all the time (except maybe summer) you are eventually going to get caught in rain--but it is almost always mild rain and you figure out you don't actually get wet enough to be annoying (with one major exception, covered below) unless you stay out in it for quite a while. You learn that if you are just doing indoor stuff where you will only be outside while walking between parking lots and buildings it is not really a problem. When it does rain heavily it is usually for a short enough period that you can just wait it out. It will usually only take a few minutes to get light enough that a short walk won't be a problem. The one exception is if you wear glasses. That's pretty easy to fix without resorting to an umbrella by getting a hat. The rain is usually not accompanied by much wind, so you only need a small brim to keep the rain away from your glasses.
    - sacnoradhq 4y ago
      In 1977, it snowed in the Bahamas.. now figure the chill of 75 mph winds in Buffalo that year. IIRC, that was only the second year in recent history that snow accumulated on the ground in the SF Bay Area. It happened again in the 90's. Austin, it rains for what seems like maybe a month, if that. The new normal is 50/50 snow angels late Jan or early Feb. Austin doesn't have the humidity of HTX, San Anton, or Corpus. You can breathe in the summer without it feeling like lava in your lungs in NYC, DC, New Orleans, or the gulf coast in S. America. The perception of amount rain in Austin is much less than in the Bay Area. In the Bay Area, there are many annoying dribbles of almost rain like the clouds have an enlarged prostate. The southwest has charm but it's no place to live because it's right in the middle of a forecasted climate shift to endless desert. If people don't have water, they'll either a. spend stupid money competing to attain it or b. move like climate-displaced farmers from S. America, the Middle East, Asia, and Iberian and Mediterranean Europe. It's not rocket science, it's climate science. It was 87 F today in Austin. It was glorious. Of course the flying and crawling things were all out like they just discovered air and sun. I have a ladybug wandering around my apartment that won't leave. Maybe a $3k rent bill (their share) will scare them off?
- sacnoradhq 4y ago
  That's for me to know and you to find out in about 20-50 years, give or take.
beembeem 4y ago
Did you know there are 5 desal plants currently operating in California, with more in the permitting pipeline? 10,000x more capacity is not feasible and more importantly not going to solve this problem. Catalina Island now uses desalination which is the clearest and most obvious win for desalination. The unsolved problems: energy, money, and brine discharge. Desalination is energy intensive. And with the highest energy costs in the nation, SoCal is in a really tough spot to use large amounts of energy on water. The subsidized water from the Colorado river is too cheap not to use. Reservoirs: similar problem of money. The state has already dammed up all the cheapest and most obvious terrain in California. It gets more expensive to dam up new areas. Did you know there is another large reservoir in NorCal being planned that's almost a decade into funding/planning (Sites)? It's not directly on a river so will require active pumping. 2 more (Pacheco & Los Vaqueros) are being expanded in the near future from the same pile of money paying for the new reservoir. [1] What California needs is rethinking existing potable water use and combine with smart rain capture. San Diego Airport in recent years has installed large capture cisterns for a parking lot that will offset its largest water use - HVAC for the airport. They've even piloted the capture of condensate from the land-based AC that is brought out to planes on the ground during turnaround. [2] [1] https://cwc.ca.gov/Water-Storage https://cwc.ca.gov/Water-Storage [2] https://municipalwaterleader.com/storm-water-capture-and-reuse-at-san-diego-international-airport/ https://municipalwaterleader.com/storm-water-capture-and-reu...

vladgur 4y ago

Why would you move to Texas if you worried about water scarcity?

philsnow 4y ago
East Texas is lush. > Wildfires and related homeowners insurance raises this is the bit I would have expected not to be better in Texas, between floods and energy instability.
- sacnoradhq 4y ago
  You'd swear you were in Louisiana over there. The amount of cleaning of bug zappers and fencing-in of porches, you might as well live as a hermit with all that flies and bites.
burlesona 4y ago
The more populated parts of Texas get plenty of rain. For example, Austin averages 35 inches of rain per year and Houston gets 50 inches (compare to Seattle at 38 inches). If it came to it, Texas also is on the coast and unlike California they actually build things in Texas, so desalination is available.
- tzs 4y ago
  > For example, Austin averages 35 inches of rain per year and Houston gets 50 inches (compare to Seattle at 38 inches). For anyone wondering why Seattle has a reputation as a rainy city when quite a few other well known US cities get comparable or more rain and no one ever thinks of them as particularly rainy, there are two main reasons. 1. Seattle rains on more days (where a day is considered as with rain if there is 0.01 mm or more of rain). Seattle's 38 inches is spread over 156 days. Austin's 35 inches comes over 86 days. Houston's 50 inches is over 107 days. There are cities with more total rain and more rain days, such as Buffalo (41 inches, 166 days), which brings us to reason #2. 2. Buffalo gets around 92 inches of snow a year which takes place over around 72 days. No one is bothered by a little rain on a day when you've got all that freaking snow to deal with. Similar for most other cities that have more rain and more rain days then Seattle. They also tend to have one or more other things that are more annoying than the rain. Seattle on the other hand mostly just has the rain. It's funny. I actually used my umbrella a lot less in the "rainy" Seattle area than when I lived in Los Angeles or Cupertino. I think that is because with so many rain days if you don't carry the umbrella with you all the time (except maybe summer) you are eventually going to get caught in rain--but it is almost always mild rain and you figure out you don't actually get wet enough to be annoying (with one major exception, covered below) unless you stay out in it for quite a while. You learn that if you are just doing indoor stuff where you will only be outside while walking between parking lots and buildings it is not really a problem. When it does rain heavily it is usually for a short enough period that you can just wait it out. It will usually only take a few minutes to get light enough that a short walk won't be a problem. The one exception is if you wear glasses. That's pretty easy to fix without resorting to an umbrella by getting a hat. The rain is usually not accompanied by much wind, so you only need a small brim to keep the rain away from your glasses.
  - sacnoradhq 4y ago
    In 1977, it snowed in the Bahamas.. now figure the chill of 75 mph winds in Buffalo that year. IIRC, that was only the second year in recent history that snow accumulated on the ground in the SF Bay Area. It happened again in the 90's. Austin, it rains for what seems like maybe a month, if that. The new normal is 50/50 snow angels late Jan or early Feb. Austin doesn't have the humidity of HTX, San Anton, or Corpus. You can breathe in the summer without it feeling like lava in your lungs in NYC, DC, New Orleans, or the gulf coast in S. America. The perception of amount rain in Austin is much less than in the Bay Area. In the Bay Area, there are many annoying dribbles of almost rain like the clouds have an enlarged prostate. The southwest has charm but it's no place to live because it's right in the middle of a forecasted climate shift to endless desert. If people don't have water, they'll either a. spend stupid money competing to attain it or b. move like climate-displaced farmers from S. America, the Middle East, Asia, and Iberian and Mediterranean Europe. It's not rocket science, it's climate science. It was 87 F today in Austin. It was glorious. Of course the flying and crawling things were all out like they just discovered air and sun. I have a ladybug wandering around my apartment that won't leave. Maybe a $3k rent bill (their share) will scare them off?
sacnoradhq 4y ago
That's for me to know and you to find out in about 20-50 years, give or take.

beembeem 4y ago

Did you know there are 5 desal plants currently operating in California, with more in the permitting pipeline? 10,000x more capacity is not feasible and more importantly not going to solve this problem. Catalina Island now uses desalination which is the clearest and most obvious win for desalination. The unsolved problems: energy, money, and brine discharge. Desalination is energy intensive. And with the highest energy costs in the nation, SoCal is in a really tough spot to use large amounts of energy on water. The subsidized water from the Colorado river is too cheap not to use. Reservoirs: similar problem of money. The state has already dammed up all the cheapest and most obvious terrain in California. It gets more expensive to dam up new areas. Did you know there is another large reservoir in NorCal being planned that's almost a decade into funding/planning (Sites)? It's not directly on a river so will require active pumping. 2 more (Pacheco & Los Vaqueros) are being expanded in the near future from the same pile of money paying for the new reservoir. [1] What California needs is rethinking existing potable water use and combine with smart rain capture. San Diego Airport in recent years has installed large capture cisterns for a parking lot that will offset its largest water use - HVAC for the airport. They've even piloted the capture of condensate from the land-based AC that is brought out to planes on the ground during turnaround. [2] [1] https://cwc.ca.gov/Water-Storage https://cwc.ca.gov/Water-Storage [2] https://municipalwaterleader.com/storm-water-capture-and-reuse-at-san-diego-international-airport/ https://municipalwaterleader.com/storm-water-capture-and-reu...