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>What if we were to build a bunch of desalination plants and just start pumping water into aquifers or something of the sort? If you're talking about conventio

>What if we were to build a bunch of desalination plants and just start pumping water into aquifers or something of the sort? If you're talking about conventional fossil fuel desalination, I invite you to do the energy audit on that activity. If you're talking about solar desalination in industrially-manufactured greenhouses, I invite you to do the energy audit on that activity. Don't forget to account for the energy-opportunity cost of land use. I know there's a lot of hype surrounding desalination here, but a centralized energy-sucking plant (owned by the ultra rich naturally) is a counterproductive business-as-usual non-solution. We can get a net-positive energy audit by redesigning our agricultural and storm water management. Right now they're designed with exactly the wrong goal in mind — shunt rainwater to the ocean in big straight hardware as fast as possible. This maximizes runoff instead of infiltration, so we're simultaneously preventing aquifer recharge and necessitating aquifer pumping by drying out the soil. "Keyline" design—a method of cheaply altering landform to soak water—is probably a good start for these new infiltration maximizing strategies, but this is by no means a solved problem. In California, like any desert, the name of the game is minimizing evaporation. This means all of the above, plus shading (e.g. date palms), sunken beds, buried drip irrigation, and dew/rain harvesting strategies like land imprinting. Proper rainwater management is the lazy hacker's desalination. :D

jaekwon 12y ago
Yeah I was wondering if our storm-water sewage system is sucking the water out of our lands. But how much does this really matter? There would have to be some analysis of these systems vs land with no such system vs where they are to rain sources etc.
- schiffern 12y ago
  http://www.usgs.gov/water/ http://www.usgs.gov/water/ The storm system drains all the "hardware" in an urban or suburban area — roofs, roads, parking lots, and sometimes even constantly mowed grass (which can form subterranean hardpan). Higher runoff rates lead to flow bottlenecks, flooding, and untreated sewage discharge. Still, agricultural land has more catchment.
- mason240 12y ago
  The city live in (Maplewood MN) recently built rain gardens in our neighborhood for catching rainwater. They are basically deep pits filled in with gravel with slightly sunken garden on top. The water runoff from the street is diverted into them where most of it is absorbed into the ground. http://www.bwsr.state.mn.us/images/ww-box.jpg http://www.bwsr.state.mn.us/images/ww-box.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-31kb5tVYmJU/Ub9T22Hgy_I/AAAAAAAAAvI/_TMboIzREK0/s1600/merge1.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-31kb5tVYmJU/Ub9T22Hgy_I/AAAAAAAAAv... http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VLZpvg9e-H8/UbY86YdLjzI/AAAAAAAAAn0/gUv7kV1HjCA/s1600/2466+East+7th+St..jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VLZpvg9e-H8/UbY86YdLjzI/AAAAAAAAAn...
badsock 12y ago
What do you think of Western Australia's desalination efforts? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Seawater_Desalination_Plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Seawater_Desalination_Pla...
- gilgoomesh 12y ago
  Desalination can handle drinking water but 90% of water usage is usually for irrigation. It is not cost effective to do that with desalination. As for Australia's 6 or 7 built/planned desalination plants: they are for backup and supplemental purposes only. They can't supply more than about 10% of the largest Australian cities' typical water usage. They would provide emergency water in a catastrophic drought and in low rainfall years can lessen the burden but they are not a replacement for good water catchment management.
rtpg 12y ago
If this can work and we can get the gov't behind this sort of solution, this seems good. Wouldn't this create a bit of water shortages downhill though? Like when you build a dam? Or is the quantity captured not on the same scale. I guess the desalination plant is something that a single rich person can do, whereas going around drilling holes all over California is a bit more complicated. Sometimes we come up with solutions that work well in Sim City, but reality proves a bit more complicated.
- schiffern 12y ago
  >Wouldn't this create a bit of water shortages downhill though? Like when you build a dam? Great question! Dams themselves don't causes water shortages. It's the pumping of water from the dam to a separate watershed, or into highly evaporative irrigation systems (e.g. the Aral Sea and cotton). Keyline design actually proposes building dams, but on a smaller scale than is typically seen and with no pumping between watersheds. Picture multiple redundant dams for every farm, each a few megalitre in size and a few thousand dollars to construct. Many small dams wet up the entire landscape by slowing water down. Maybe this sounds obvious, but if water takes 10 times as long to reach the ocean then you have 10 times as much water to work with in the landscape. Infiltration does the same. Subterranean water continues to flow downhill, but thousands of times more slowly. You can even recharge old spring lines in this way, benefiting the downhill hydrology directly. >Sometimes we come up with solutions that work well in Sim City, but reality proves a bit more complicated. On a wildly off-topic tangent, I just saw a fascinating talk in which Naomi Klein refers to this as "astronaut-eye environmentalism". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdaxehd0cF0#t=6m29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdaxehd0cF0#t=6m29s
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    They are looking into something similar in the UK to manage floodwaters, so that instead of funneling water fast and out, which massively increases erosion and sometimes overwhelms bridges down stream, you work out where you can let the water hang around in times of flood and make agreements with farmers to have flash flood basins.
ElectronCharge 12y ago
The way to go is nuclear desalination. The nuclear industry needs to be incentivized, and is badly in need of a SpaceX type company.
- glomph 12y ago
  That will not happen because current nuclear power just isn't economical without government guarrantees.
  - ElectronCharge 12y ago
    The reason it's less economical than it could be is because of excessive regulation. We've come a long way with automation and safety engineering. Next-gen nuclear plants could produce energy far less expensively than coal if handled properly - with zero air pollution. Then there's the promise of thorium power: http://energyfromthorium.com http://energyfromthorium.com
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      No, unless by "excessive regulation" you mean the fact that the industry is exposed to the same liability for unconsented harms done to third parties that every other industry is; because exemption from that liability is what the industry keeps lobbying for as the thing necessary to make it worthwhile to invest in new plants. But usually, this kind of liability is wHat libertarians promote in place of regulation, not something anyone calls excessi regulation.
      - guscost 12y ago
        The argument that US nuclear power projects face the same regulatory challenges as "every other industry" is completely untenable. There is an entire regulatory body (the NRC) charged with managing regulations for that one particular method of power generation. This fact alone is enough to refute it. There is also an argument that the "regulatory ratcheting" from the NRC is due to political pressure rather than engineering principles[0]. Finally it is hard to read former chairman Gregory Jaczko's recent comments about Fukushima and not conclude that the NRC was, and quite possibly still is, actively opposing the nuclear industry with an ultimate goal of shutting it down[1]. [0] http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html [1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-ex-nuclear-chief-fukushima-lesson-phase-out http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-ex-nuclear-chief-fukushima...

jaekwon 12y ago

Yeah I was wondering if our storm-water sewage system is sucking the water out of our lands. But how much does this really matter? There would have to be some analysis of these systems vs land with no such system vs where they are to rain sources etc.

schiffern 12y ago
http://www.usgs.gov/water/ http://www.usgs.gov/water/ The storm system drains all the "hardware" in an urban or suburban area — roofs, roads, parking lots, and sometimes even constantly mowed grass (which can form subterranean hardpan). Higher runoff rates lead to flow bottlenecks, flooding, and untreated sewage discharge. Still, agricultural land has more catchment.
mason240 12y ago
The city live in (Maplewood MN) recently built rain gardens in our neighborhood for catching rainwater. They are basically deep pits filled in with gravel with slightly sunken garden on top. The water runoff from the street is diverted into them where most of it is absorbed into the ground. http://www.bwsr.state.mn.us/images/ww-box.jpg http://www.bwsr.state.mn.us/images/ww-box.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-31kb5tVYmJU/Ub9T22Hgy_I/AAAAAAAAAvI/_TMboIzREK0/s1600/merge1.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-31kb5tVYmJU/Ub9T22Hgy_I/AAAAAAAAAv... http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VLZpvg9e-H8/UbY86YdLjzI/AAAAAAAAAn0/gUv7kV1HjCA/s1600/2466+East+7th+St..jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VLZpvg9e-H8/UbY86YdLjzI/AAAAAAAAAn...

badsock 12y ago

What do you think of Western Australia's desalination efforts? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Seawater_Desalination_Plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Seawater_Desalination_Pla...

gilgoomesh 12y ago
Desalination can handle drinking water but 90% of water usage is usually for irrigation. It is not cost effective to do that with desalination. As for Australia's 6 or 7 built/planned desalination plants: they are for backup and supplemental purposes only. They can't supply more than about 10% of the largest Australian cities' typical water usage. They would provide emergency water in a catastrophic drought and in low rainfall years can lessen the burden but they are not a replacement for good water catchment management.

rtpg 12y ago

If this can work and we can get the gov't behind this sort of solution, this seems good. Wouldn't this create a bit of water shortages downhill though? Like when you build a dam? Or is the quantity captured not on the same scale. I guess the desalination plant is something that a single rich person can do, whereas going around drilling holes all over California is a bit more complicated. Sometimes we come up with solutions that work well in Sim City, but reality proves a bit more complicated.

schiffern 12y ago
>Wouldn't this create a bit of water shortages downhill though? Like when you build a dam? Great question! Dams themselves don't causes water shortages. It's the pumping of water from the dam to a separate watershed, or into highly evaporative irrigation systems (e.g. the Aral Sea and cotton). Keyline design actually proposes building dams, but on a smaller scale than is typically seen and with no pumping between watersheds. Picture multiple redundant dams for every farm, each a few megalitre in size and a few thousand dollars to construct. Many small dams wet up the entire landscape by slowing water down. Maybe this sounds obvious, but if water takes 10 times as long to reach the ocean then you have 10 times as much water to work with in the landscape. Infiltration does the same. Subterranean water continues to flow downhill, but thousands of times more slowly. You can even recharge old spring lines in this way, benefiting the downhill hydrology directly. >Sometimes we come up with solutions that work well in Sim City, but reality proves a bit more complicated. On a wildly off-topic tangent, I just saw a fascinating talk in which Naomi Klein refers to this as "astronaut-eye environmentalism". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdaxehd0cF0#t=6m29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdaxehd0cF0#t=6m29s
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  They are looking into something similar in the UK to manage floodwaters, so that instead of funneling water fast and out, which massively increases erosion and sometimes overwhelms bridges down stream, you work out where you can let the water hang around in times of flood and make agreements with farmers to have flash flood basins.

ElectronCharge 12y ago

The way to go is nuclear desalination. The nuclear industry needs to be incentivized, and is badly in need of a SpaceX type company.

glomph 12y ago
That will not happen because current nuclear power just isn't economical without government guarrantees.
- ElectronCharge 12y ago
  The reason it's less economical than it could be is because of excessive regulation. We've come a long way with automation and safety engineering. Next-gen nuclear plants could produce energy far less expensively than coal if handled properly - with zero air pollution. Then there's the promise of thorium power: http://energyfromthorium.com http://energyfromthorium.com
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    No, unless by "excessive regulation" you mean the fact that the industry is exposed to the same liability for unconsented harms done to third parties that every other industry is; because exemption from that liability is what the industry keeps lobbying for as the thing necessary to make it worthwhile to invest in new plants. But usually, this kind of liability is wHat libertarians promote in place of regulation, not something anyone calls excessi regulation.
    - guscost 12y ago
      The argument that US nuclear power projects face the same regulatory challenges as "every other industry" is completely untenable. There is an entire regulatory body (the NRC) charged with managing regulations for that one particular method of power generation. This fact alone is enough to refute it. There is also an argument that the "regulatory ratcheting" from the NRC is due to political pressure rather than engineering principles[0]. Finally it is hard to read former chairman Gregory Jaczko's recent comments about Fukushima and not conclude that the NRC was, and quite possibly still is, actively opposing the nuclear industry with an ultimate goal of shutting it down[1]. [0] http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html [1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-ex-nuclear-chief-fukushima-lesson-phase-out http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-ex-nuclear-chief-fukushima...