At least this article notes that the vast majority of water usage is agriculture. This isn't something cities could or should solve by switching to (expensive) desalination to effectively subsidize agriculture. Most notably, alfalfa is mentioned here as farmers are going to have to switch to less water-intensive crops.
Decreasing alfalfa production may well impact the ability to feed cattle. In the short term, that's actually fine. It may just force more beef production, which will be good for costs (again, in the short term).
But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not. It's simply usage. See Figure 2 on page 10 [1]. Additionally, water projections were made at a high point of water inflows that simply haven't been realistic since.
In short, we're using too much water and farming is going to have to take the hit.
I don't trust that a 2012 report is up to date on our latest climate modelling, or even that this is a climate-adjusted projection at all. Actual data past the point of publishing has not followed this graph. Anything more recent that supports your claim?
Your source also says:
> In the long-term (2041 through 2060), the futures that consider the Downscaled GCM Projected water supply scenario [not shown], which incorporates projections of future climate, show a high inability to meet resource needs, regardless of the demand scenario and the operation of Lakes Powell and Mead.
But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not.
Sure, you have a whole host of local disasters caused by local mismanagement (agricultural water use, failure to prevent fuel build-up in forests, etc). And the local mismanagers point to climate change to say "don't blame us".
However, when discussing these things in the large, you have people pointing to the local mismanagers and saying "don't blame climate change", which is pretty much the reverse sort of bullshit. Of course climate change has made these already bad problems worse. Of course, the first way the problems of climate change appear is this making bad problems worse thing. What else would you expect? That climate change appears in a nice, neat way that lets you exclude other causes? Ha (except that results aren't funny at all).
And this mutual finger-pointing works well to prevent anything being at any level.
> This isn't something cities could or should solve by switching to (expensive) desalination
In 2015, the Southern Nevada Water Authority completed a "3rd straw" into Lake Mead to safeguard water availability, at a cost of $817M [1], which is enough to cover the power costs to desalinate Nevada's CO river allotment for ~23 years. It's been a while since I looked into it, but I once ran the numbers and the cost of that 3rd straw was comparable to the cost of building a solar power plant that would generate enough electricity to cover the desalination for NV's allotment as well.
Notes:
Nevada's allotment of water from the Colorado River is 279k acre ft / yr (actual use is 242k acre ft / yr in 2021) [2].
There are desalination systems available that require 3452 kw / acre ft [3].
Southern Nevada wholesale rate of $.37 / MWh [4].
I drove into Sacramento last year in late summer. There are flooded rice paddies just outside the city. Rice paddies! In California! In the middle of a historic drought!
> But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not. It's simply usage.
See "Characterizing Drought Behavior in the Colorado River Basin Using Unsupervised Machine Learning"[0]. The journal article states: "The range of possible climate change considered here, regardless of ESM model, does point to a hotter CRB [Colorado River Basin] with large changes in the timing and magnitude of runoff, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture that will present challenges in managing water resources in the future."
> Decreasing alfalfa production may well impact the ability to feed cattle.
A substantial portion of alfalfa is exported to China [0]. So, at the very least that portion can be eliminated without any impact on domestic US cattle feed.
From 2005 to 2015, Israel changed its entire water system by building desalination plants.
Like Central and Southern California today, Israel used to issue similar dire warnings about freshwater supplies running dangerously low. These days, believe it or not, Israel now exports freshwater. Yes. tiny, little, arid Israel exports freshwater to neighboring Jordan.
Freshwater, like agricultural products, seems to be a product we can now cheaply and easily produce in abundance.
Sure, taking some water from farmers is an option too. But is it viable? I don’t know. Obviously voters living in the conurbation from Los Angeles, California to San Diego, California could vote in politicians who promise to do this. But once in office would politicians actually follow through on such a promise? I doubt it.
This seems like a very tough battle to me because many California "farmers" are extremely wealthy. Some California farmers are billionaires with a "b". If extremely successful businessmen with many thousands of millions of dollars want to keep receiving free water, they will probably very cleverly spend vast sums of money to do so.
Here are two apparently feasible options.
First, we are on the cusp of abundant, cheap renewable electricity (from solar and wind) which, of course, will lead to the potential for cheap desalination.
Like the aforementioned Israel, Carlsbad, California (near San Diego, California) already relies on desalination for much of its water needs. I think I read that residents there pay an extra $5/month to $10/month per person for desalinated water compared to what they were paying for imported fresh water.
Second, I assume the discharge water from washing machines could easily be used to water most of the landscaping in Southern California.
I've watched a few videos on YouTube. Apparently one simply needs to change the type of laundry detergent used so it would be safe for the landscaping, install discharge pipes from the washing machine to the landscaped areas, and control the system with computer to ensure the landscape isn't over-watered or under-watered.
The Los Angeles Times has become a terrible newspaper. COVID has receded from the front page, therefore they need some more bad news to sell. "We are running out of water!!!" is what they are selling these days.
In other words, this entire subject is "much ado about nothing." In other words, this is doom and gloom, "the sky is falling" nonsense.
Desalination isn't that much more expensive than reservoir water. I wish urban areas would just build 'em and look at farmers and the rest of the country and say "OK now what?"
This reference agrees with you in the short/mid term (to your credit, which you explicitly mention), but states in the long term climate change is the most important factor, regardless of demand. Taking action against alfalfa is a sensible thing to do right away, but won't address the looming crisis:
> In the
near-term (2012 through 2026), water
demands are similar across scenarios, and the
largest factor affecting the system reliability
is water supply. In the mid-term (2027
through 2040), the demand for water is an
increasingly important element in the
reliability of the system, as are assumptions
regarding the operations of Lakes Powell and
Mead. In the long-term (2041 through 2060),
the futures that consider the Downscaled
GCM Projected water supply scenario, which
incorporates projections of future climate,
show a high inability to meet resource needs,
regardless of the demand scenario and the
operation of Lakes Powell and Mead. "
The answer to this problem lies here: “Entsminger pointed out that roughly 80% of the river’s flow is used for agriculture, and most of that for thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is mainly grown for cattle, both in the U.S. and overseas.”
The simple solution would be to raise prices on water such that it disincentivizes growing water hungry crops than alfalfa for example. The west’s water crisis is less about cities than agricultural choices made during the last century, which was wetter than it will be going forward. The obvious answer is to either regulate or incentivize using less water hungry crops more strongly. It would be better if this had started slowly a while ago, allowing the market to adjust and reallocate. Alas, looks like it will have to be an abrupt shift in the near future.
This community seems like its at its best when it expresses humble curiosity and its worst when it shuts the door on learning by oversimplifying deeply complex matters as though nobody else had the sense to look straight at them.
Water rights carry a legacy of centuries of personal and political history and thousands of competing interests. The levers with which to control price and set incentives the way you suggest don’t exist.
There are real problems looming, but there are no “simple solutions” or “obvious answers” being missed.
Whatever comes will involve great compromise and very few will think it was the right solution. I guess maybe you’re just joining that chorus early.
Alfalfa is one of the most water efficient and nutritionally rich crops there is. It is also one of the most drought resistant crops. It is hearty and reliable, unlike corn which is far more wasteful when it comes to water.
> Deep-Rootedness—alfalfa roots are commonly 3-5 feet deep and can extend to 8-15 feet in some soils. Therefore this crop can utilize moisture residing deep in the profile when surface waters become scarce. It shares this property with crops such as orchards, vineyards, and sugarbeets and safflower, unlike crops such as onion, lettuce and corn, where it's easy to lose water past the root zone.
> Alfalfa's deep roots are capable of extracting water from deep in the soil, thus much of the water applied is not wasted. Additionally, deep roots enable the crop to survive periodic droughts.
> Perenniality—The fact that the crop grows for 4-8 years, grows quickly with warm conditions in the spring is a major advantage of alfalfa—it can utilize residual winter rainfall before irrigation is necessary. This is unlike summer-grown annual crops that need to be replanted each year (water use efficacy is low during this time). In many areas, the first cutting of alfalfa of the year requires zero irrigation– supported only by rain and residual soil moisture.
> Very High Yields—Alfalfa is a very high yielding crop, and can grow 365 days a year in warm regions (such as the Imperial Valley of California and southern Arizona). Its biomass yields are very high—we can get up to 12 cuttings per year in those regions, and growers with top management can obtain more than 14 tons/acre dry matter yields. High-yields create higher water use efficiencies.
> High Harvest Index, High Water Use Efficiency—Alfalfa's Water Use Efficiency is not only due to high yields, but because nearly 100% of the above-ground plant material is harvested (known as the harvest index). In most seed-producing and fruiting crops, only a portion of the plant is harvested (typically 30-50% of the total plant biomass).
Yes, market prices on water and beef (incorporating what are now climate externalities) would seem to solve these problems. Why isn't that being considered? Remember when conservatives, neo-liberals, and libertarians supported the market as a solution for everything?
Of course, we would need a reasonable amount of water available to consumers at below-market rates.
The reason this doesn’t happen is that farmers/farming lobbies have a lot of political power, especially in rural districts and no politician wants to be painted as anti-farming interests.
Too bad the California Coastal Commission just denied the permit for a desalinization plant in Huntington Beach at the site of a decommissioned steam plant and reusing some of its infrastructure. It would have provided water to several Southern California cities.
> would have provided water to several Southern California cities
It blows my mind that it's simpler to build, in one of the most water-blessed parts of our planet, a desalination plant, than it is to get farmers to quit growing literal fodder. Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture. Eighty percent.
> salt discharge being pumped back out into the ocean and raising salinity levels around there to significantly damage ocean life, would prevent them from approving the plan
Offshore oil platforms with annual spills coating the beaches? Go for it!
Massive ports with dozens of container ships anchored off shore dumping who knows what for months? Perfect, ship it!
Putting salt back into the ocean after taking it out and producing water for people to drink? Nah man, what if the ocean gets too salty?
> The Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in cities from Denver to Los Angeles
> “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River"
> roughly 80% of the river’s flow is used for agriculture, and most of that for thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is mainly grown for cattle
Somebody needs to wake the people in those cities up. If they don't start screaming at their representatives, they won't be able to use their faucets, because some cattle farmers don't want to import feed. This is ridiculous.
But then again, this is America. If 25 million people need to go without water so my burgers will be cheaper, so be it, right?
> if they don't start screaming at their representatives, they won't be able to use their faucets, because some cattle farmers don't want to import feed
The situation will rapidly sort itself out once faucets are turned off. Ordinarily, that would happen after irreparable environmental destruction. Fortunately, we have the Bureau of Reclamation to pull the plug on the Colorado River Compact states before that happens.
As long as we're still turning the Arizona desert into an alfalfa field for the Suadis, I won't believe that we're in a water crisis and certainly won't be doing anything that effects my life in any negative way to "remedy" this: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/02/453885642/sa...
Went kayaking in Lake Powell last year. Locals were saying the lake was down 30 feet (!!) from the past couple of years. I have no idea if that sort of fluctuation is common but that was enough to make me feel very concerned about the water situation in the southwest
Could we feasibly just run desalination stations from the coasts and pipe the water - like oil - to fill up these reservoirs? Setting cost aside for a second, is there any reason not to do something like this?
Anything is possible for enough money but I don't think you understand how much money what you're proposing would cost. In electricity alone desalination costs around 3kwh/m^3. 3.7mwh/acre foot of water. Last year we got 9.2 million acre feet of water in the Colorado River of the allocated 15 million acre feet. So if we say we want to supplement flows with just 2 million acre feet of desalination water, that's 7 Pwh of electricity. Per year. That's approximately 1000x the annual generated power of the largest nuclear plant in the world.
And we haven't even pumped that water 3700 feet up from sea level to the elevation of lake Powell.
I mean, if you don't care in the slightest about cost of the plants, the energy required, the land needed to run the giant tunnels... maybe? It's probably technically possible within the constraints of "I have a full country's resources available and can demand they be used to satisfy my absurd requirements and won't face huge blowback for using resources this way."
But you can pencil it out. Cuts next year are 2-4 million acre feet of water. What would it take to bring that in?
An acre foot is 325,851 gallons, give or take. So, four of those is ~1.3e12 gallons of water for a year. A year has 31,536,000 seconds, so you're looking at a mere 41,000 gallons per second, or about 6500 cu*ft/s. Which is a good sized river's flow.
It's also 155 m^3 of water per second, or about 3.5 billion gallons a day.
I'm seeing [0] a plant in San Diego running 50M gallons a day on 35MW, so you'd need ~70 of those plants (or about 2.5GW) to manage your water supply. California's purring away at 33GW right now, so the energy required, while massive, is feasible.
Trying to figure out how to move 40k gallons a second a distance of 1000 miles exceeds my physics skills, but you could probably figure it out with the right calculators or CFD handwaves. But it's not going to be cheap.
Seems... somewhat easier to reduce demand, though.
The real solution is to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact acknowledging that historical flow is several million acre feet less than what is allocated. Desalination and pumping is prohibitively expensive and would require as much interstate cooperation as reopening the original deal. And at the end you have hundreds of millions of gallons of brine to deal with.
It would require a tremendous amount of energy. Lake Powell is more than 1km above sea level, which means each liter of water would require 10kJ just in gravitational potential energy.
The reclamation effort is 1 maf (million acre-feet) of water over a year, which if supplied continuously from sea level with perfectly efficient pumping and transport corresponds to ~10 GW of power. A typical nuclear power plant generates 1GW, so without any transport losses, you'd need 10 new plants running full-time just to move the water up the hill.
Add in the desalination challenges and transport losses, and you're talking what, 20-40 new nuke plants?
We call them “desalination” plants, but the salt doesn’t just disappear. The more fresh water you have them produce, the more salt (brackish water) you need to manage as well.
So even while you may imagine the ocean as a limitless supply of water, there’s only so far you can scale desalination.
You wouldn't have to pump it back up to refill the reservoirs: just slow the release from the reservoirs by the same amount you replace we desalinated water.
It's weird how people don't want to pay more money for water when we literally can't go for more than a few days without drinking it and can't grow the food we need without it.
The average American lifestyle is very resource intensive. There are also many subsidies and social constructs supporting it. The end of abundant water is forcing hard choices. Less livestock and cheap beef. Water is an industrial input to cotton used in clothes, electricity generation, and fracking for oil & gas. Sacrificing wetlands and coastal groundwater to salt intrusion to squeeze out the last acre feet from rivers that normally flow into the sea.
Water increasing in price will reduce waste and increase efficiency. But everything will become more expensive, not just luxury or wasteful water uses.
I'll be curious to see if this reverses the westward migration in the United States that we've seen over the past 100+ years. Large rust belt and east coast saw stagnant, if not declining, populations as new families moved west for better weather, mountains, cheap land, access to the west coast, ... the Great Lakes, Ohio, Upper Mississippi, and New England (and the Upper Colorado) watersheds are least likely to be impacted by severe droughts. Throw the Mid Atlantic in there, too, despite the increasing risk of severe tropical events.
neonate|3 years ago
jmyeet|3 years ago
Decreasing alfalfa production may well impact the ability to feed cattle. In the short term, that's actually fine. It may just force more beef production, which will be good for costs (again, in the short term).
But this article makes the same mistake so many make: blaming this on climate change. It's not. It's simply usage. See Figure 2 on page 10 [1]. Additionally, water projections were made at a high point of water inflows that simply haven't been realistic since.
In short, we're using too much water and farming is going to have to take the hit.
[1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad...
creatonez|3 years ago
> [1]: https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/Colorad...
I don't trust that a 2012 report is up to date on our latest climate modelling, or even that this is a climate-adjusted projection at all. Actual data past the point of publishing has not followed this graph. Anything more recent that supports your claim?
Your source also says:
> In the long-term (2041 through 2060), the futures that consider the Downscaled GCM Projected water supply scenario [not shown], which incorporates projections of future climate, show a high inability to meet resource needs, regardless of the demand scenario and the operation of Lakes Powell and Mead.
joe_the_user|3 years ago
Sure, you have a whole host of local disasters caused by local mismanagement (agricultural water use, failure to prevent fuel build-up in forests, etc). And the local mismanagers point to climate change to say "don't blame us".
However, when discussing these things in the large, you have people pointing to the local mismanagers and saying "don't blame climate change", which is pretty much the reverse sort of bullshit. Of course climate change has made these already bad problems worse. Of course, the first way the problems of climate change appear is this making bad problems worse thing. What else would you expect? That climate change appears in a nice, neat way that lets you exclude other causes? Ha (except that results aren't funny at all).
And this mutual finger-pointing works well to prevent anything being at any level.
vwoolf|3 years ago
Charge market prices for water and build desalination. Create abundance.
cwalv|3 years ago
In 2015, the Southern Nevada Water Authority completed a "3rd straw" into Lake Mead to safeguard water availability, at a cost of $817M [1], which is enough to cover the power costs to desalinate Nevada's CO river allotment for ~23 years. It's been a while since I looked into it, but I once ran the numbers and the cost of that 3rd straw was comparable to the cost of building a solar power plant that would generate enough electricity to cover the desalination for NV's allotment as well.
Notes:
Nevada's allotment of water from the Colorado River is 279k acre ft / yr (actual use is 242k acre ft / yr in 2021) [2]. There are desalination systems available that require 3452 kw / acre ft [3]. Southern Nevada wholesale rate of $.37 / MWh [4].
[1] https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn/the-third-straw.htm [2] https://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/News/Blog/Detail/lake-mead-wa... [3] http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/water.html [4] https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/nv-energy-introduce...
ericbarrett|3 years ago
julienchastang|3 years ago
See "Characterizing Drought Behavior in the Colorado River Basin Using Unsupervised Machine Learning"[0]. The journal article states: "The range of possible climate change considered here, regardless of ESM model, does point to a hotter CRB [Colorado River Basin] with large changes in the timing and magnitude of runoff, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture that will present challenges in managing water resources in the future."
[0] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021EA00...
yumraj|3 years ago
A substantial portion of alfalfa is exported to China [0]. So, at the very least that portion can be eliminated without any impact on domestic US cattle feed.
[0] https://hayandforage.com/article-3388-thank-china-for-record...
Jistern|3 years ago
Like Central and Southern California today, Israel used to issue similar dire warnings about freshwater supplies running dangerously low. These days, believe it or not, Israel now exports freshwater. Yes. tiny, little, arid Israel exports freshwater to neighboring Jordan.
Freshwater, like agricultural products, seems to be a product we can now cheaply and easily produce in abundance.
Sure, taking some water from farmers is an option too. But is it viable? I don’t know. Obviously voters living in the conurbation from Los Angeles, California to San Diego, California could vote in politicians who promise to do this. But once in office would politicians actually follow through on such a promise? I doubt it.
This seems like a very tough battle to me because many California "farmers" are extremely wealthy. Some California farmers are billionaires with a "b". If extremely successful businessmen with many thousands of millions of dollars want to keep receiving free water, they will probably very cleverly spend vast sums of money to do so.
Here are two apparently feasible options.
First, we are on the cusp of abundant, cheap renewable electricity (from solar and wind) which, of course, will lead to the potential for cheap desalination.
Like the aforementioned Israel, Carlsbad, California (near San Diego, California) already relies on desalination for much of its water needs. I think I read that residents there pay an extra $5/month to $10/month per person for desalinated water compared to what they were paying for imported fresh water.
Second, I assume the discharge water from washing machines could easily be used to water most of the landscaping in Southern California.
I've watched a few videos on YouTube. Apparently one simply needs to change the type of laundry detergent used so it would be safe for the landscaping, install discharge pipes from the washing machine to the landscaped areas, and control the system with computer to ensure the landscape isn't over-watered or under-watered.
The Los Angeles Times has become a terrible newspaper. COVID has receded from the front page, therefore they need some more bad news to sell. "We are running out of water!!!" is what they are selling these days.
In other words, this entire subject is "much ado about nothing." In other words, this is doom and gloom, "the sky is falling" nonsense.
nr2x|3 years ago
bcrosby95|3 years ago
twelfthnight|3 years ago
> In the near-term (2012 through 2026), water demands are similar across scenarios, and the largest factor affecting the system reliability is water supply. In the mid-term (2027 through 2040), the demand for water is an increasingly important element in the reliability of the system, as are assumptions regarding the operations of Lakes Powell and Mead. In the long-term (2041 through 2060), the futures that consider the Downscaled GCM Projected water supply scenario, which incorporates projections of future climate, show a high inability to meet resource needs, regardless of the demand scenario and the operation of Lakes Powell and Mead. "
ar813|3 years ago
The simple solution would be to raise prices on water such that it disincentivizes growing water hungry crops than alfalfa for example. The west’s water crisis is less about cities than agricultural choices made during the last century, which was wetter than it will be going forward. The obvious answer is to either regulate or incentivize using less water hungry crops more strongly. It would be better if this had started slowly a while ago, allowing the market to adjust and reallocate. Alas, looks like it will have to be an abrupt shift in the near future.
swatcoder|3 years ago
This community seems like its at its best when it expresses humble curiosity and its worst when it shuts the door on learning by oversimplifying deeply complex matters as though nobody else had the sense to look straight at them.
Water rights carry a legacy of centuries of personal and political history and thousands of competing interests. The levers with which to control price and set incentives the way you suggest don’t exist.
There are real problems looming, but there are no “simple solutions” or “obvious answers” being missed.
Whatever comes will involve great compromise and very few will think it was the right solution. I guess maybe you’re just joining that chorus early.
kolanos|3 years ago
> Deep-Rootedness—alfalfa roots are commonly 3-5 feet deep and can extend to 8-15 feet in some soils. Therefore this crop can utilize moisture residing deep in the profile when surface waters become scarce. It shares this property with crops such as orchards, vineyards, and sugarbeets and safflower, unlike crops such as onion, lettuce and corn, where it's easy to lose water past the root zone.
> Alfalfa's deep roots are capable of extracting water from deep in the soil, thus much of the water applied is not wasted. Additionally, deep roots enable the crop to survive periodic droughts.
> Perenniality—The fact that the crop grows for 4-8 years, grows quickly with warm conditions in the spring is a major advantage of alfalfa—it can utilize residual winter rainfall before irrigation is necessary. This is unlike summer-grown annual crops that need to be replanted each year (water use efficacy is low during this time). In many areas, the first cutting of alfalfa of the year requires zero irrigation– supported only by rain and residual soil moisture.
> Very High Yields—Alfalfa is a very high yielding crop, and can grow 365 days a year in warm regions (such as the Imperial Valley of California and southern Arizona). Its biomass yields are very high—we can get up to 12 cuttings per year in those regions, and growers with top management can obtain more than 14 tons/acre dry matter yields. High-yields create higher water use efficiencies.
> High Harvest Index, High Water Use Efficiency—Alfalfa's Water Use Efficiency is not only due to high yields, but because nearly 100% of the above-ground plant material is harvested (known as the harvest index). In most seed-producing and fruiting crops, only a portion of the plant is harvested (typically 30-50% of the total plant biomass).
[0]: https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1772...
thepasswordis|3 years ago
wolverine876|3 years ago
Of course, we would need a reasonable amount of water available to consumers at below-market rates.
pm90|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
thehappypm|3 years ago
joshuaheard|3 years ago
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-coastal-comm...
JumpCrisscross|3 years ago
It blows my mind that it's simpler to build, in one of the most water-blessed parts of our planet, a desalination plant, than it is to get farmers to quit growing literal fodder. Eighty percent of California's water goes to agriculture. Eighty percent.
jakear|3 years ago
Offshore oil platforms with annual spills coating the beaches? Go for it!
Massive ports with dozens of container ships anchored off shore dumping who knows what for months? Perfect, ship it!
Putting salt back into the ocean after taking it out and producing water for people to drink? Nah man, what if the ocean gets too salty?
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
throwaway892238|3 years ago
> “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River"
> roughly 80% of the river’s flow is used for agriculture, and most of that for thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is mainly grown for cattle
Somebody needs to wake the people in those cities up. If they don't start screaming at their representatives, they won't be able to use their faucets, because some cattle farmers don't want to import feed. This is ridiculous.
But then again, this is America. If 25 million people need to go without water so my burgers will be cheaper, so be it, right?
JumpCrisscross|3 years ago
The situation will rapidly sort itself out once faucets are turned off. Ordinarily, that would happen after irreparable environmental destruction. Fortunately, we have the Bureau of Reclamation to pull the plug on the Colorado River Compact states before that happens.
shagie|3 years ago
It's the cattle farmers in other countries that want to import California feed (because it's on the west coast and easier to ship?).
flybrand|3 years ago
It’s a great place to start if you’re interested in learning more.
thepasswordis|3 years ago
limaho|3 years ago
ShiftedClock|3 years ago
https://mead.uslakes.info/Level/
prawn|3 years ago
MengerSponge|3 years ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/how-the-we...
vwoolf|3 years ago
no_wizard|3 years ago
pilom|3 years ago
And we haven't even pumped that water 3700 feet up from sea level to the elevation of lake Powell.
Syonyk|3 years ago
But you can pencil it out. Cuts next year are 2-4 million acre feet of water. What would it take to bring that in?
An acre foot is 325,851 gallons, give or take. So, four of those is ~1.3e12 gallons of water for a year. A year has 31,536,000 seconds, so you're looking at a mere 41,000 gallons per second, or about 6500 cu*ft/s. Which is a good sized river's flow.
It's also 155 m^3 of water per second, or about 3.5 billion gallons a day.
I'm seeing [0] a plant in San Diego running 50M gallons a day on 35MW, so you'd need ~70 of those plants (or about 2.5GW) to manage your water supply. California's purring away at 33GW right now, so the energy required, while massive, is feasible.
Trying to figure out how to move 40k gallons a second a distance of 1000 miles exceeds my physics skills, but you could probably figure it out with the right calculators or CFD handwaves. But it's not going to be cheap.
Seems... somewhat easier to reduce demand, though.
[0]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/09/f66/73355...
Dylan16807|3 years ago
ch4s3|3 years ago
2OEH8eoCRo0|3 years ago
MengerSponge|3 years ago
The reclamation effort is 1 maf (million acre-feet) of water over a year, which if supplied continuously from sea level with perfectly efficient pumping and transport corresponds to ~10 GW of power. A typical nuclear power plant generates 1GW, so without any transport losses, you'd need 10 new plants running full-time just to move the water up the hill.
Add in the desalination challenges and transport losses, and you're talking what, 20-40 new nuke plants?
yes_really|3 years ago
The cost would be so massive that, even if the answer to that question is "no", we shouldn't do it.
swatcoder|3 years ago
So even while you may imagine the ocean as a limitless supply of water, there’s only so far you can scale desalination.
bushbaba|3 years ago
cwalv|3 years ago
no_wizard|3 years ago
elliottkember|3 years ago
newaccount2021|3 years ago
labrador|3 years ago
supertrope|3 years ago
Water increasing in price will reduce waste and increase efficiency. But everything will become more expensive, not just luxury or wasteful water uses.
eclipticplane|3 years ago
mdrzn|3 years ago
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park:_The_Streaming_Wars
Hellion|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
sJ646U9k6c6gME9|3 years ago
[deleted]