Do we really need expensive desalination in California? Domestic water use only accounts for 20% of demand and desalination seems unlikely to ever be cheap enough for agricultural use (the remaining 80%.)
Back of the envelope math suggests that based on average rainfall amounts per year a place like Ventura county could be entirely self-sufficient without any desalination plants.
Agriculture can also switch to drip feeding water instead of spraying which cuts usage by 90% without lowering yields.
There's a lot that can be done. We just need the political will to make it happen.
Having extra reservoirs can also support more natural vegetation and potentially actually create conditions for more rainfall further from the coast.
Nice username :)
It’s a good question, and it’s been discussed quite often in recent media sources for the past two weeks due to the rejection of the proposed Poseidon plant in Huntington Beach.
The honest truth is you could probably argue for both sides. Realistically, it’s cheaper and less environmentally harmful to promote non-desal measures, but not as easy to see quicker and observable benefits. The problem with the latest proposal was that it had a lot of problems, and the company behind it has a paper trail of small scale disasters in its wake (see the failure of the Tampa Bay facility, for example).
I personally believe that this is the kind of project that could benefit from a closer partnership between the government and private industry. From what I can tell, the technology is mature and feasible, but every time someone tries to design and implement it in the states, they seem to drop the ball.
I would be curious to see the record of success of other large scale projects outside the US. I’ve heard about the benefits and risks of the plants in the Middle East and elsewhere, but I don’t know the details.
I’d imagine a plant would benefit from economies of scale. Though these benefits could get eaten up by cost overruns. Frankly, it seems the hurdle in California is working through the people issues/concerns than technical problems.
It’ll be interesting to see the stats on this new desal technique when they have a product for sale.
Electricity is something like half of desalination's operational cost, and we're already in a situation where the price on the grid goes negative (or is curtailed) during solar peaks and more and more solar is being added to the grid each year. So power for desalination is going to be near free in the coming years. (Whereas for other less flexible loads, electricity isn't likely to get cheaper quickly, since we have to either have storage or use gas plants.)
Faucets will never go dry because human drinking water is a minuscule use. Some sprinklers and pools may go dry in times of drought
If you like to eat, yes, you do. I still cannot fathom what distorted minds most transplants possess: California was and is an Ag state, it;s a fundamental part of it's culture it also feeds most of the US with its produce/fruit and exports it's surplus all around the World in surplus commodities.
Yes, stricter water preserving techniques are required for Ag, this recent budget surplus should go towards that as well as desalination to replenish aquifers and reservoirs/quarries after decades of an unsustainable population growth. This recent COVID exodus needs to go on for decades for the population to just return to the norms of the 70-80s.
You guys that write this kind of misinformed responses are so delusional, you cannot eat apps or drink code when you're hungry: and I can assure you will be the first to break when you haven't been fed for a few days or have to ration food/water since you've been accustomed to a lifestyle that simply doesn't reflect reality. And I highly doubt you can do any level of manual labour in order to feed yourself, either.
Get real, water conservation methods all around needs to be enforced BY EVERYONE! AG is guilty of exploiting loopholes when CA water laws were written to serve prospectors, and they should be taxed for over-useage and incentivize them with grants to utilize drip irrigation systems etc... but if you really want to solve this issue, which most of you won't agree to, is remove Farm subsidies: this will force farmers to cut down on these practices to make alfalfa or soy in the Central Valley for export to China that is only profitable because the State subsidies this horrific business model, it in turn will make food get even more expensive, which if you look at it in terms of net income is the historical norm: ~15% of total net income [0].
Food security is a matter of national security for a reason, it's used as a reliable weapon in warfare and has been a reason why most of humanity has gone to war in the first place, and if you like to keep civilization operating it's absolutely critical.
0: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2020/05/07/grocery-store-pric...
This is cathartic and fun to read - and it equally applies to bankers, and other highly paid wankers.
Our economy as a whole underpays and inderinvests in the foundamental things that allow advanced society to exist - as the whole climate crisis demobstrates.
Kek, as a former cook I should have structured those 2 metaphors differently, but yeah... ok yeah you got me on the play on words. Well played.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-staff-report-rec...
Across the US, farmers are not poor. By dint of being landowners, they are in fact some of the richest people around. See, e.g., this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/trump-amer... or this one: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/14/opinion/sunday/rich-happi....
This does not even make sence - Are they going to sell their farmland? To whom, other farmers? Are those other farnera not going to farm the famrland?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Uses_of_wa...
> Water use in California is divided into approximately 51% for environmental uses, 39% agricultural use and 11% urban uses, though that varies considerably between regions and between wet and dry years.
Water that naturally flows into the state’s “wild and scenic” rivers, which are not connected to the state’s water system and can’t be under state and federal protections
Water required for maintaining fish and wildlife habitat within streams
Water that supports wetlands within wildlife preserves
Water needed to maintain water quality for agricultural and urban use
I'm unable to tell whether that's a tally for untapped water or if it's really meant to account for something meaningful.
The CFB does say that ag accounts for 80% of "human use".