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In California, a Race to Capture the Water Before It Escapes
- soamv 4y agohttps://archive.is/uuBhc https://archive.is/uuBhc
- rus20376 4y agoBetter capturing of storm runoff seems like a good idea to me, but if nothing else it would still be dependent on weather events. I understand there is a lot of political pressure against desalinization plants in California but I never understood why? These are used effectively in other countries including the border country Mexico. The source is the essentially infinite and steady supply of ocean water, which would seem to be a clear win, right? The arguments against desalinization in California have only been hyperbolic and devoid of facts. i.e. "environmental disaster!", "unsustainable stop gap!" What are the environmental concerns at play that seem to be hyper specific to the California coast and no other coastal country employing these processes?
- vondur 4y agoAt this point it feels like California is a failed state.
- encoderer 4y agoYes it’s terrible definitely don’t come here.
- convolvatron 4y agodesalination probably isn't cost effective enough to grow almonds
- jboy55 4y agoI think you state the point perfectly. Desalination presumes that the "need" is for drinking water. 80% of the water that humans use in California is for agriculture, only 20% is urban use.
- sbaiddn 4y agoDrink it or eat it, it still goes down the pie hole!
- kurthr 4y agoYep, agriculture still 80% of water usage, because it's free. Same up river from California on the Colorado (Utah, New Mexico, Arizona) as well so it's not like changing industrial or residential consumption by even 50% makes a dent. Limiting or taxing export of water intensive agriculture (alfalfa, rice) would though!
- blululu 4y agoOr just cutting the government subsidies on beef and cotton production on lands that use discounted reclamation water.
- ryeights 4y agoBut what will the Saudi princes do without their steady supply of US-subsidized alfalfa?
- emodendroket 4y agoIt’s easy to pick on the handful of obviously profligate uses of water but California’s wildly productive farmland does produce a lot of important crops and just saying “no agriculture here anymore” isn’t much of a solution unless we don’t intend to keep eating.
- emodendroket 4y agoThey're not specific to California. Desalinization is highly energy-intensive and you end up with a bunch of brine you need to do something one. One popular solution to these concerns is ignoring them.
- renewiltord 4y agoWith no knowledge of this stuff but just a child's level of thought, you must admit that it is at least amusing that we both have salt fields and that we don't want brine.
- ryeights 4y agoSerious question… there are lots of salt plants in SLC turning the briny water of the lake into table salt and other useful minerals. Why can’t the same be done with desalination plants?
- Animats 4y agoSalt evaporators need huge areas of cheap flat land, like those in the San Francisco bay near Newark.
- emodendroket 4y agoI’m not an expert but I have to imagine the contaminants used in pretreatment they discuss here are an issue. https://www.wired.com/story/desalination-is-booming-but-what-about-all-that-toxic-brine/ https://www.wired.com/story/desalination-is-booming-but-what...
- darth_avocado 4y agoDesalination is not an hyperbole, it is an environmental disaster. What do you think happens when hundreds of millions of gallons of water is separated from the salt? Where does the salt go? Back in the sea is where it goes. And what happens to the sea life when you suddenly increase the salinity of the water by a lot? Edit: Too many people are responding to this comment with the argument ocean is big, a little bit of salt water doesn’t change anything. That is not what the ecological damage is about. Think of this as a dropping ice cubes in a bathtub scenario. The overall the bathtub water isn’t going to cool down a lot, but the water around the ice will be very cold. And that is the problem. Oceans are sensitive and hyper local problems can have devastating effects across the globe. If there was a technology to uniformly distribute the brine across the ocean, then we would be fine, but until then, “the ocean is big” is not a great argument.
- gotoeleven 4y agoEven if all the water california used came from the ocean, that is 0.00000004 of the total ocean volume per year. Will this really increase salinity?
- glitcher 4y agoI suppose if you were able to dissolve these tons of excess salt equally across the total ocean volume this wouldn't be an issue. But it has to be dumped back in somewhere, and the local salinity increase in that area even if only temporary should still be considered.
- agar 4y agoPut the salt in tanker ships and dump it out at sea across a wide area. Cargo ships are massive, and desal plants would likely be in bays (i.e., not on "wild coasts") where there are ample loading docks in nearby harbors. Again, seems like a solvable problem with minimal incremental infrastructure (particularly given the overall cost of desalination plants with adequate urban capacity).
- 4y ago
- chrisbrandow 4y agoI am likewise baffled by this. I completely understand the concern about the salinity of the return liquid but that seems an obviously solvable problem. And it is a problem that so obviously needs to be solved that it’s the first objection that is always raised when discussing desalination, so it hardly goes overlooked. Capturing “every drop” of run off is likewise environmentally damaging to all kinds of watershed ecosystems if done in a blunt thoughtless manner. I just don’t get it.
- emodendroket 4y agoIf the solution is obvious it eludes me.
- blululu 4y agoDesalination is energy intensive and expensive. It would make sense in urban contexts and not for agriculture. This sets up a political fight since the majority of the state’s water usage derives from people who already rely on government handouts for water. Obviously people do not want to pay higher utility rates to further benefit people they are already subsidizing.
- anigbrowl 4y agoOK? Without water you'll die, so invest that energy and capital. Other places seem to manage it and the more desalination facilities that are built, the more likely it is that technological and process improvements can bring down the cost. An extremely obvious approach to the energy requirement would be to exploit tidal power, which conveniently comes from the same source as your product input.
- blululu 4y agoThere is plenty of water in California. No-one is going to die of thirst so it doesn't make sense to frame the issue in such dire terms. The cost of desalinated water in California exceeds the market rate, so nobody in the state wants to pay for more expensive water. What they do want is for someone else to pay the bill for them. This is a purely self serving goal and it sets off political fights with the people who don't want to pay for someone else's water. In places where the market rate for water is higher (Israel), or where the cost of energy is lower (Saudi Arabia), then the situation would be different but in California it is just about trying to get more benefits stuff from the government.
- anigbrowl 4y agoIt's a synecdoche, to indicate that the state as a whole is consuming more water than there is available, drawing down its water table and so on. I didn't intend it to be interpreted literally. Water shortages are already threatening communities in Arizona: https://www.hcn.org/articles/south-water-what-happens-when-an-affluent-arizona-suburbs-main-water-supply-is-cut-off https://www.hcn.org/articles/south-water-what-happens-when-a... The market price for water in CA is artificially low, in my view. Many corporate users are effectively subsidized with fixed or below-cost supply. Nestle, for example, was taking 58m gallons/year (about 25x its land allocation) from streams in the San Bernadino forest to bottle as Arrowhead water until the state intervened in 2021: https://www.ecowatch.com/california-nestle-water-public-lands-2652807771.html https://www.ecowatch.com/california-nestle-water-public-land... Your dismissive comment that 'it is just about trying to get more benefits stuff from the government' should equally be applied to incumbent market actors if you wish to be consistent. I did not argue for subsidy, but for desalination as a hedge against water shortages, and that the costs of desalination could likely be significantly reduced.
- BurningFrog 4y agoThey're is nothing special about desalination plants. California is passionately against building anything!
- woopsn 4y agoThe "race" has been on for more than a century. The fact is that it doesn't rain out here. Multi year, multi decade droughts are normal. Our ecosystems depend on the runoff that take place when the water eventually comes back. It's not going to waste. Capturing every last drop to irrigate the desert for cows and almonds is a waste.
- mistrial9 4y ago> multi decade droughts are normal and, the South is moving North.. look at all that desert area nearby.. Los Angeles looking at you
- anonuser123456 4y ago>Capturing every last drop to irrigate the desert for cows and almonds is a waste. I wouldn't call it waste, I would call it subsidy. Price water and let people make decisions on how valuable the water is instead of subsidizing private consumption.
- taftster 4y agoAlmonds 100% agreed, what a waste. Cows as a by-product of alfalfa, also gets an amen. But really it's not the cows, per se, that's the problem. We should be feeding them other product that takes less water to grow. Alfalfa is a terrible water hog. Cows don't like new food. That's one of the problems. Once a farmer starts feeding a cow alfalfa, the cows are afraid of trying other alternatives. So the farmer has to start early and break with tradition. It's a hard problem.
- blululu 4y agoOther way around. That New York Times infographic is just pernicious misinformation. Almonds are grown and sold internationally at a profit. It is an expensive crop that requires a unique climate. Cows take 10x the water per pound, sell for less, can be raised anywhere and rely on government subsidies. Alternatives to alfalfa will still take more water per pound of beef than a pound of almonds.
- 4y ago
- taftster 4y agoThis is absolutely one of the easiest things California can do to help mitigate (even so slightly) the complete disaster that is the Colorado River Compact. I 100% support California using all the water they can coming from their own mountains and runoff. The Colorado River Basin needs to stop servicing so much agriculture (in general, especially in California) and this is a fantastic way to help mitigate it. Such an easy solution, targeted directly and used locally right at the point of site of the farmer. Hopefully the underground aquifers can start filling back up too, not just the reservoirs like Tahoe. That's where a lot of the other agriculture water comes from, being pumped up out of the ground. Unfortunately, it takes years of consistent water to refill the underground stores.
- anonuser123456 4y ago>Unfortunately, it takes years of consistent water to refill the underground stores. It's worse than this. Some of California's Central Valley aquifers are porous clay. When you drain it beyond a certain point, the clay collapses and cannot be refilled.
- taftster 4y agoThat's interesting, didn't understand that, thank you. Complete anecdote, I have a relative in California whose well has ran dry. They are trying to find the money and motivation to dig a new well, but it's a dilemma, like if the next well runs dry in a few years too. The California water situation is really scary right now, even with the high levels of reservoirs mentioned in the article. Those high levels and recent storms are likely going to quell the urgency of the discussion, which is maybe the most unfortunate thing to come from all of the recent weather.
- bsder 4y ago> The California water situation is really scary right now The California Central Valley water situation is scary. It's Easter Island playing out in real time--the agribusinesses will continue sucking everything up until it finally hits the wall and collapses. Desalinization will cover the people near the coasts.