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California labels itself as the world's 7th or 10th largest economy, I think that if they wanted to, they could have invested in desalination plants across thei

California labels itself as the world's 7th or 10th largest economy, I think that if they wanted to, they could have invested in desalination plants across their coast to have all the water they need and more. My 2c.

acdha 2y ago
This works for domestic usage - not agriculture - and might be a good use for the huge amount of excess solar capacity were likely to have soon, but it’s expensive and NIMBYs are not going to want salt and other waste building up in their neighborhoods. It seems inevitable that they’ll have some capacity but I doubt it’ll ever reach the level where conservation measures relative to 20th century usage levels won’t be necessary.
- trollbridge 2y ago
  The salt goes back out into the ocean, which is rather large. Desalination is practical when paired with nuclear power (there is a possibility for even things like directly using the heat from nuclear to desalinate without converting to electricity and then back to heat first). But California seems dead-set on shuttering any nuclear plants and using imported power made with fossil fuels in other states instead. My in laws have to deal with rolling blackouts during very hot days at dusk. Perhaps after telling town residents not to flush toilets, take showers, or order tap water in restaurants, we can next just say to use no electricity at all. Might as well go back to the Stone Age.
  - acdha 2y ago
    > The salt goes back out into the ocean, which is rather large. Yes, but that’s like saying it doesn’t matter if you get shot because the volume of the room is still less than 1ppb lead. You need to plan for how to avoid massive ecological disruption in the local area, which is possible but adds to the expense and gives NIMBYs another opportunity to delay or block things. These are classic economic problems: when something else is subsidized low, it’s hard for a competitor which doesn’t share those benefits to get established even if everyone would be better off in the long-term. Nuclear is a distraction - you don’t need such expensive power for this, or even the near-free solar California’s renewable focus will produce at many times. Researchers have been developing passive solar systems which use solar power directly and are suitable for deployment in places which don’t have enormous supplies of cheap electricity.
    - trollbridge 2y ago
      It's true that environmental impact matters (although the amount of salt we're talking about is negligible - it's hard to wrap your mind around just how big the ocean is vs. the amount of water being extracted from it). Desalination plants have been run for a long time in Israel and Saudi Arabia. To give you an idea of the scale involved, one of Israel's large desalination plants produced 332 acre-feet of water per day. The Red Sea is around 1.8 * 10^11 acre feet of water, so assuming the Red Sea never got replenished, that would take... 1.5 million years to empty it out. The plant is removing about 1,300 tons of salt per day, which may sound like a lot, but consider that the ocean currently has about 5.0 * 10^16 of salt in it, it's not significant, assuming they were discharging the salt to the ocean - which they don't! The output of a desalination plant is more brine produced than freshwater produced, so it's not at a very large concentration and the impact on sea life is minimal. Nuclear isn't a distraction because nuclear was already installed, was working, and is sustainable. Researchers are working on a lot of things, but research doesn't equal something that can actually meet demand for water today. Desalination works today and people rely on it for water around the globe. This would be a great improvement over trying to empty out Lake Mead and the Colorado.
- jfoster 2y ago
  What makes it expensive if the solar capacity is in excess?
  - acdha 2y ago
    It’s a separate facility which has to be approved, built, and operated beyond the existing water supply infrastructure. It’s not unworkable but you have the problem that everyone’s water bill goes up compared to what they’re paying now, and that leads to political consequences, which is why everyone has kicked it down the proverbial road hoping that it’ll either get cheaper or the supply problems will become bad enough that nobody questions the need.
oefrha 2y ago
Large scale infrastructure project in California? Come on.
- trollbridge 2y ago
  Let’s be fair, they may be able to build a train link between the bustling metropolises of Merced and Bakersfield. Still nothing even planned for Sacramento to the Bay Area.
  - supplied_demand 2y ago
    Bakersfield has a population of 410k. That is the same size as Minneapolis and larger than Cleveland, Tampa Bay, New Orleans, Orlando, and Cincinnati.
nradov 2y ago
I'm not opposed to desalinization in some limited areas but it will never be able to supply current agriculture needs. The physics just doesn't work. Most of the state's water goes to farms.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  Then the city folk pay for desalinated water and the rest goes to agriculture. The problem is, the country does need the food produced in California.
  - bucephalos 2y ago
    Especially the tasty pistachios I buy at the supermarkt here. Which is in Germany...
  - acdha 2y ago
    Most of the problem goes away if you can get market pricing for agricultural usage. That would incentivize not focusing on high-water crops like almonds or alfalfa animal fodder but it’s politically challenging due to all of the conflicting water claims based on supply levels which are not compatible with the current values. You’d need to do something like an eminent domain claim on water rights in some cases going back to the Spanish era, and since it splits almost exactly down party lines you have to plan for extended delays or a SCOTUS decision that they don’t have the power to do so.
  - nradov 2y ago
    You're missing the point. Desal can help with municipal water supplies in coastal areas that have no other options. But due to lack of transport that won't free up any useful amount of water for agriculture. The country doesn't need the huge quantities of alfalfa produced in California. Much of that is exported. We can cut way back. A political solution will have to be found that allows charging farmers market rates for water.
h335ian 2y ago
This was originally planned in conjunction with the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which gave all of SoCal amazing power and offered the infrastructure for performing desalination in conjunction with ocean water used for cooling parts of the reactor. Sadly, some hippie in Sacramento decided to kill our power plant so now energy prices have soared and we’ve lost the potential for desalinated water in San Diego, Orange and LA counties. My buddy has been working the decommission for a decade now. Given a few beers, the rants are quite illuminating and disappointing
- chrisweekly 2y ago
  "some hippie in Sacramento" surely it's more complicated than that?!
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    I suspect the "hippie" was the governor (Sacramento is the state capital).
    - h335ian 2y ago
      ;P
    - chrisweekly 2y ago
      yes, I took that for granted -- but my point stands. it takes more than one intransigent politician.
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    Taking a decision to build a nuclear power plant on a fault line always is. Better plan would probably be to build a nuclear plant in Arizona and export the power to California. Use some of it for desalination. Then export water to Arizona. But nowadays calling people hippies or conservitards is what passes for analysis, civic discourse, and problem solving.
    - h335ian 2y ago
mdorazio 2y ago
California cannot even run a balanced budget without adding more megaprojects like large-scale desalination. The only way this would work is if it was private development encouraged by properly pricing water usage in the state (i.e. much higher than it is today).

acdha 2y ago

This works for domestic usage - not agriculture - and might be a good use for the huge amount of excess solar capacity were likely to have soon, but it’s expensive and NIMBYs are not going to want salt and other waste building up in their neighborhoods. It seems inevitable that they’ll have some capacity but I doubt it’ll ever reach the level where conservation measures relative to 20th century usage levels won’t be necessary.

trollbridge 2y ago
The salt goes back out into the ocean, which is rather large. Desalination is practical when paired with nuclear power (there is a possibility for even things like directly using the heat from nuclear to desalinate without converting to electricity and then back to heat first). But California seems dead-set on shuttering any nuclear plants and using imported power made with fossil fuels in other states instead. My in laws have to deal with rolling blackouts during very hot days at dusk. Perhaps after telling town residents not to flush toilets, take showers, or order tap water in restaurants, we can next just say to use no electricity at all. Might as well go back to the Stone Age.
- acdha 2y ago
  > The salt goes back out into the ocean, which is rather large. Yes, but that’s like saying it doesn’t matter if you get shot because the volume of the room is still less than 1ppb lead. You need to plan for how to avoid massive ecological disruption in the local area, which is possible but adds to the expense and gives NIMBYs another opportunity to delay or block things. These are classic economic problems: when something else is subsidized low, it’s hard for a competitor which doesn’t share those benefits to get established even if everyone would be better off in the long-term. Nuclear is a distraction - you don’t need such expensive power for this, or even the near-free solar California’s renewable focus will produce at many times. Researchers have been developing passive solar systems which use solar power directly and are suitable for deployment in places which don’t have enormous supplies of cheap electricity.
  - trollbridge 2y ago
    It's true that environmental impact matters (although the amount of salt we're talking about is negligible - it's hard to wrap your mind around just how big the ocean is vs. the amount of water being extracted from it). Desalination plants have been run for a long time in Israel and Saudi Arabia. To give you an idea of the scale involved, one of Israel's large desalination plants produced 332 acre-feet of water per day. The Red Sea is around 1.8 * 10^11 acre feet of water, so assuming the Red Sea never got replenished, that would take... 1.5 million years to empty it out. The plant is removing about 1,300 tons of salt per day, which may sound like a lot, but consider that the ocean currently has about 5.0 * 10^16 of salt in it, it's not significant, assuming they were discharging the salt to the ocean - which they don't! The output of a desalination plant is more brine produced than freshwater produced, so it's not at a very large concentration and the impact on sea life is minimal. Nuclear isn't a distraction because nuclear was already installed, was working, and is sustainable. Researchers are working on a lot of things, but research doesn't equal something that can actually meet demand for water today. Desalination works today and people rely on it for water around the globe. This would be a great improvement over trying to empty out Lake Mead and the Colorado.
jfoster 2y ago
What makes it expensive if the solar capacity is in excess?
- acdha 2y ago
  It’s a separate facility which has to be approved, built, and operated beyond the existing water supply infrastructure. It’s not unworkable but you have the problem that everyone’s water bill goes up compared to what they’re paying now, and that leads to political consequences, which is why everyone has kicked it down the proverbial road hoping that it’ll either get cheaper or the supply problems will become bad enough that nobody questions the need.

oefrha 2y ago

Large scale infrastructure project in California? Come on.

trollbridge 2y ago
Let’s be fair, they may be able to build a train link between the bustling metropolises of Merced and Bakersfield. Still nothing even planned for Sacramento to the Bay Area.
- supplied_demand 2y ago
  Bakersfield has a population of 410k. That is the same size as Minneapolis and larger than Cleveland, Tampa Bay, New Orleans, Orlando, and Cincinnati.

nradov 2y ago

I'm not opposed to desalinization in some limited areas but it will never be able to supply current agriculture needs. The physics just doesn't work. Most of the state's water goes to farms.

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
Then the city folk pay for desalinated water and the rest goes to agriculture. The problem is, the country does need the food produced in California.
- bucephalos 2y ago
  Especially the tasty pistachios I buy at the supermarkt here. Which is in Germany...
- acdha 2y ago
  Most of the problem goes away if you can get market pricing for agricultural usage. That would incentivize not focusing on high-water crops like almonds or alfalfa animal fodder but it’s politically challenging due to all of the conflicting water claims based on supply levels which are not compatible with the current values. You’d need to do something like an eminent domain claim on water rights in some cases going back to the Spanish era, and since it splits almost exactly down party lines you have to plan for extended delays or a SCOTUS decision that they don’t have the power to do so.
- nradov 2y ago
  You're missing the point. Desal can help with municipal water supplies in coastal areas that have no other options. But due to lack of transport that won't free up any useful amount of water for agriculture. The country doesn't need the huge quantities of alfalfa produced in California. Much of that is exported. We can cut way back. A political solution will have to be found that allows charging farmers market rates for water.

h335ian 2y ago

This was originally planned in conjunction with the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which gave all of SoCal amazing power and offered the infrastructure for performing desalination in conjunction with ocean water used for cooling parts of the reactor. Sadly, some hippie in Sacramento decided to kill our power plant so now energy prices have soared and we’ve lost the potential for desalinated water in San Diego, Orange and LA counties. My buddy has been working the decommission for a decade now. Given a few beers, the rants are quite illuminating and disappointing

chrisweekly 2y ago
"some hippie in Sacramento" surely it's more complicated than that?!
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  I suspect the "hippie" was the governor (Sacramento is the state capital).
  - h335ian 2y ago
    ;P
  - chrisweekly 2y ago
    yes, I took that for granted -- but my point stands. it takes more than one intransigent politician.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Taking a decision to build a nuclear power plant on a fault line always is. Better plan would probably be to build a nuclear plant in Arizona and export the power to California. Use some of it for desalination. Then export water to Arizona. But nowadays calling people hippies or conservitards is what passes for analysis, civic discourse, and problem solving.
  - h335ian 2y ago

mdorazio 2y ago

California cannot even run a balanced budget without adding more megaprojects like large-scale desalination. The only way this would work is if it was private development encouraged by properly pricing water usage in the state (i.e. much higher than it is today).