6 ms·

Better 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 o

by rus20376 4y ago

Better 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 ago
At this point it feels like California is a failed state.
- encoderer 4y ago
  Yes it’s terrible definitely don’t come here.
convolvatron 4y ago
desalination probably isn't cost effective enough to grow almonds
- jboy55 4y ago
  I 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 ago
    Drink it or eat it, it still goes down the pie hole!
- kurthr 4y ago
  Yep, 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 ago
    Or just cutting the government subsidies on beef and cotton production on lands that use discounted reclamation water.
  - ryeights 4y ago
    But what will the Saudi princes do without their steady supply of US-subsidized alfalfa?
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      It’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 ago
They'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 ago
  With 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 ago
  Serious 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 ago
    Salt evaporators need huge areas of cheap flat land, like those in the San Francisco bay near Newark.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I’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 ago
Desalination 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 ago
  Even 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      Put 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 ago
I 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 ago
  If the solution is obvious it eludes me.
blululu 4y ago
Desalination 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 ago
  OK? 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 ago
    There 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 ago
      It'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 ago
They're is nothing special about desalination plants. California is passionately against building anything!

vondur 4y ago

At this point it feels like California is a failed state.

encoderer 4y ago
Yes it’s terrible definitely don’t come here.

convolvatron 4y ago

desalination probably isn't cost effective enough to grow almonds

jboy55 4y ago
I 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 ago
  Drink it or eat it, it still goes down the pie hole!
kurthr 4y ago
Yep, 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 ago
  Or just cutting the government subsidies on beef and cotton production on lands that use discounted reclamation water.
- ryeights 4y ago
  But what will the Saudi princes do without their steady supply of US-subsidized alfalfa?
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    It’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 ago

They'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 ago
With 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 ago
Serious 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 ago
  Salt evaporators need huge areas of cheap flat land, like those in the San Francisco bay near Newark.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I’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 ago

Desalination 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 ago
Even 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Put 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 ago

I 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 ago
If the solution is obvious it eludes me.

blululu 4y ago

Desalination 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 ago
OK? 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 ago
  There 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 ago
    It'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 ago

They're is nothing special about desalination plants. California is passionately against building anything!