Commentary: California should create more water -- much more

[Auggie]

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2021/10/california-should-create-more-water-much-more/

California currently manufactures far less drought-resilient freshwater than other similarly arid regions. Australia desalinates 10 times as much water as California despite having roughly half the population. Half of Israel’s water comes from desalinated ocean water compared with less than 1% in California. Israel also recycles 90% of its wastewater; California recycles just 10%.

Instead, California is almost entirely dependent on old-fashioned rain and snow. This strategy served us well for most of the 20th century but is today collapsing under California’s warming temperatures.

Last winter California received a decent amount of snow, but record high spring temperatures vaporized most of it. Today, 88% of California is experiencing severe drought or worse, up from just 3% this time last year. Never before has California lost so much water so quickly.

Without a strategy to create new water, California is doomed to run in place fighting over our existing, dwindling supplies. In fact, it’s already happening.

SNIP

Conservation can help, but it cannot save us. Thanks to huge strides in water efficiency, California’s urban water use has fallen to 1993 levels despite adding 9 million residents and doubling our economy. Most of the easy fat has already been cut.

The only way to avoid disaster is to begin transitioning California cities toward greater reliance on recycling and desalination, which would also bolster upstream supplies for river ecosystems and other public benefits, and provide greater reliability for farmers.

That’s why the state and federal governments should commit to creating 1.75 million acre feet – about 25% of California’s current urban water use – of new water from desalination and wastewater recycling by the end of this decade. If built today, this drought-proof buffer would cost about $18 billion and require about $3.4 billion in annual operational subsidies to regional water agencies, according to several cost estimates analyzed by the Bay Area Council.

Drought-proofing California’s economy for less than 1% of GDP is a bargain relative to running out of water and will create tens of thousands of new, good paying jobs along the way.

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Full commentary at the link.

Why this isn't a California priority is baffling.

[JohnSJ]

1. Agreed, and I have written to the governor and my legislators about this. Building water pipe

lines from areas that get too much water, to areas without adequate water need to be explored at the Federal level

[Auggie]

5. Great idea ...

where feasible, of course. Importing water can be part of the solution.

[Miguelito Loveless]

2. A question:

What is done with the waste salt after desalinization? Seems to me you can't just dump it back into the water without seriously screwing up in the water's PH.

[PoliticAverse]

10. The result is very concentrated salt water. It is typically dumped back into the ocean.

Oceans are very big.

[PoliticAverse]

3. You can't be better placed than have your whole state running along the ocean.

But California has been able to get water cheaper than desalinated water costs...

From: https://mywaterearth.com/the-cost-of-desalination/

If properly designed, desalination plants that use RO can consistently deliver high-quality water to consumers. Even more importantly, the quantity of water stored in the ocean is so vast it’s virtually inexhaustible, so desalination is a completely drought-proof source of water. So why don’t cities take advantage of Desalination for the use of drinking water? Is desalination expensive?

Yes-Besides Clean-up cost from operation-Ocean desalination runs between $2,000 & $2,500 an acre-foot-Brackish desalination ranges from $1,000-$2,000. An acre-foot-is 325,851 gals. the amount of water a family of 5 uses per/year, consuming an avg. of 10-13 kilowatt-hrs. (kwh) per 1,000 gals/processed

[Auggie]

4. You can't be better placed than to be called "The Sunshine State" either

Desalinate as much as possible with solar-produced energy

Neither the OP or me advocates sourcing all our needs from desalination. The commentary makes it pretty clear recycling is part of the story.

It's a package deal. Desalinate. Recycle. Conserve. Use water as wisely as possible.

Need to increase reservoir storage too.

How about paying farmers NOT to grow water-hogging crops like almonds?

[hunter]

13. Reservoirs are useless if there isn't enough rain or snow to fill them.

Look at Lake Mead or Lake Powell.

California already has a very large reservoir capacity and has reached the point of diminishing returns when it comes to building new reservoirs.

The Sites Project may be the last.

Building more reservoirs and praying for the rain to fill them is a kind of cargo cult mentality, similar to the belief that rain follows the plow. It doesn't. The ancestors of many Central Valley farmers believed the rain follows the plow myth which is how they ended up in California when the Dust Bowl proved them wrong. Now they are saying "build more reservoirs!"

The same can be said of California's solar and wind capacity. We are installing more with the same cult like fervor.

Early solar and wind projects displace gas power kilowatt-for-kilowatt. As the capacity of the power grid is reached, adding more solar panels and wind turbines doesn't displace any gas generated power. Additional solar panels and wind turbines are increasingly useless

If I was Emperor of California I'd save water by shutting down the factory farm dairy industry. I don't consider cheap hamburger and dairy products any kind of human right. I'm not overtly hostile to almond farming so long as groundwater extraction is carefully regulated.

As Emperor I'd also restore a lot of existing farmland to a somewhat natural state, mostly land that should never have been farmed in the first place.

[Auggie]

18. ROFL

Those aren't solutions, your Excellency

[hunter]

19. Thanks. That's how I often frame my political thought experiments.

A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences.

Johann Witt-Hansen established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the German term Gedankenexperiment (lit. thought experiment) circa 1812. Ørsted was also the first to use the equivalent term Gedankenversuch in 1820.

Much later, Ernst Mach used the term Gedankenexperiment in a different way, to denote exclusively the imaginary conduct of a real experiment that would be subsequently performed as a real physical experiment by his students. Physical and mental experimentation could then be contrasted: Mach asked his students to provide him with explanations whenever the results from their subsequent, real, physical experiment differed from those of their prior, imaginary experiment.

--more--

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

You should see what I can do when I'm the Emperor of Earth!

In one of my decrees I ban all motorized transport from traveling at speeds greater than 50 kilometers per hour. This is enforced from my space fortress. For a first time infraction violators are blasted with a headache phaser, which will of course cause terrible headaches for a week or more. Vehicles that repeatedly violate the universal speed limit will be disintegrated as soon as the passengers disembark. Rare exceptions will be made for humanitarian reasons.

How would such slowdown affect energy use, land use, vacation time, etc?

I do think the factory farm dairy industry is in for some rough times. I can easily picture a future where the preferred burger at McDonalds is vegan and that costs a dollar less than an actual meat burger, and school children preferring vegan milks over the real thing.

We always had soy milk in our house when our children were growing up because my wife is lactose intolerant. As teens our children began to prefer the soy milk to regular milk, so I quit buying regular milk. I haven't bought liquid cows milk for many years. I do keep powdered milk around for cooking.

Conservatives always extol the virtues of the free market until it bites their own sacred cows in the ass.

[Clash City Rocker]

6. As I understand it, one of the biggest challenges to desalination is energy usage

I’ve read that the process uses a lot of energy. I’m not a scientist by any means, so correct me if I’m wrong about that. I’ve also read that one of the problems with solar power is storing the energy. So why not a solar powered desalination plant? The energy collected could be used immediately, without a need to store it. It seems like a win-win.

The initial expense of setting something like this up is no doubt considerable, but once it’s running, the plant shouldn’t be too expensive to maintain. Again, I’m not a scientist, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

[Auggie]

8. Desalination is part of the package; not the only solution

So yes, while it's expensive, that expense can be lessened by creating water other ways.

Israel and Australia do it.

[brewens]

7. I got curious about this awhile back and looked at desalinification plant pics. Those would be

some massive plants along the coast. I'm thinking they can't just find stretches of the coast not in use for those. If it requires building them on some prime oceanfront property, it will be interesting to see how that goes. I've been thinking they should do that for years.

[Auggie]

9. Build them inland?

Antioch. Pittsburgh. Draw water from Suisun Bay. It's not that far from the California aqueduct. Being inland there's more sunshine, less fog.

[modrepub]

11. Reverse Osmosis?

If this is it, it would leave with a brine to dispose of; old fashion ocean dumping. Yea they do it in Israel and Australia, but it's probably on a much smaller scale.

The whole process is pretty energy intensive. I haven't had water treated this way but I wouldn't be surprised if the drinking quality is not good or if it has too many dissolved solids to be useful for industrial purposes. All in all probably not a magic bullet.

[OneCrazyDiamond]

16. Golf courses

and toilets.

[hunter]

12. Burning natural gas to desalinate water is insane.

Fossil fuels cause the droughts that make more desalinization necessary. It's a vicious circle.

Furthermore, the environmental impacts of desalinization are not negligible.

I happen to live in a place that recycles wastewater into potable water which is used mostly for agriculture. Some of this water is further refined into tap water. Expansion of desalinization projects here is generally opposed, often for fear it will lead to more development.

Desalinated water is affordable for household use (heating water costs more...) but too expensive for all but the most specialized sorts of farming. Realistically only the cannabis growers could afford it.

Eventually inland Colorado River water users will be paying coastal users for their water rights. I can easily imagine Arizona exporting electricity to California coastal cities to desalinate sea water in exchange for the Colorado River water these coastal cities currently use.

Ideally, for the sake of the natural environment, the energy required to desalinate water (about 3 kWh/m³) would come from nuclear power plants.

Intermittent power supplies such as solar or wind energy substantially increase both the dollar cost and material cost of desalinization. Desalinization is most efficient as a continuous process.

[Retrograde]

14. Yeah, because mucking with the environment never has bad consequences

Getting rid of water-guzzling lawns and changing to more efficient use by agriculture would be a better first step. At least the former are getting rarer in my neck of the woods. Now let's look at all those almond and pistachio groves in the Central Valley

[PoliticAverse]

15. California agriculture has benefited greatly from very low cost water. n/t

[IcyPeas]

17. Well it's certainly something California should be thinking about and planning for

It's just pretty much constant drought here. There is this one in San Diego.

Developed and owned by Poseidon Water, the plant overcame significant practical, regulatory and economic hurdles to deliver a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly water supply to 300,000 residents and businesses in San Diego County.

https://esemag.com/water/san-diego-countys-water-desalination-plant/