Water Issues - Desalinaton

[Artemis Windsong]

Israel is deslinating.

www.yahoo.com/news/israel-refills-sea-galilee-supplying-215147564.html

[Tennesseer]

It appears southern California is slowing approving desalination plants for their area.  Probably something which should have started a long time ago.  So much of southern CA wants to treat their lawns and other water-wasting projects as if they were the green fields like the UK. 

And Las Vegas and other places like them needs to stop with all the water displays inside and outside their casinos. A complete waste of water.

[thyme4change]

Jan 31, 2023 13:43:21 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

It appears southern California is slowing approving desalination plants for their area.  Probably something which should have started a long time ago.  So much of southern CA wants to treat their lawns and other water-wasting projects as if they were the green fields like the UK. 

And Las Vegas and other places like them needs to stop with all the water displays inside and outside their casinos. A complete waste of water.

Each Golf course in desert settings use 10x - 20x the amount of water as the Bellagio fountain does per year.

Plus - the water loss is through evaporation- so theoretically, wouldn’t that come back down to earth? I guess no drop of water ever actually leaves the earth’s atmosphere (except space travel) - it is just a matter of keeping it out of the ocean. Once we get used to the cost of desalination, transport will be the big issue.

[Tennesseer]

Jan 31, 2023 14:55:41 GMT -5 thyme4change said:

Jan 31, 2023 13:43:21 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

It appears southern California is slowing approving desalination plants for their area.  Probably something which should have started a long time ago.  So much of southern CA wants to treat their lawns and other water-wasting projects as if they were the green fields like the UK. 

And Las Vegas and other places like them needs to stop with all the water displays inside and outside their casinos. A complete waste of water.

Each Golf course in desert settings use 10x - 20x the amount of water as the Bellagio fountain does per year.

Plus - the water loss is through evaporation- so theoretically, wouldn’t that come back down to earth? I guess no drop of water ever actually leaves the earth’s atmosphere (except space travel) - it is just a matter of keeping it out of the ocean. Once we get used to the cost of desalination, transport will be the big issue.

THe evaporated may come back down to earth but not necessarily over where it evaporated from.

[Tiny]

Desalination sounds like a great solution (the oceans are full of water!) 

But what are the consequences of doing it? 

I imagine it takes some sort of fuel (to power the plant(s))  that's probably not renewable or very efficient.    And doesn't that effect climate change? 

What happens to the waste from one of these plants - what happens with the salt and minerals and whatever else is left behind?  I'm guessing it's considered "toxic".   I bet lots of people want that dumped in their 'backyards'! and want to live near that.... or maybe we can just haul it out to sea and it and hope it washes up on someone else's shore?  Or pay some other country to store it for us (and contaminate their land)??     I'm gonna guess that it's the waste is not going to be a 5 gallon bucket of "salt" for a days worth of desalination...


What does this do to the marine life near an intake?   What gets sucked into the plant?  how does that effect our shore lines? 


How does the water get from the coast to the interior?  Truck? Pipeline? little plastic bottles? 
 

Does solving a bigger problem by creating lots of local "critical"  problems really solve the problem??   All those local "critical" problems will be easy to ignore because it's not one big problem --and which will be left to the future to solve...   Don't we already have plenty of those kinds of problems (from past "this is a great fix! we should do this!" solutions?)    


I would think a better plan would be better use of the water we have.    But what do I know. 

[thyme4change]

Jan 31, 2023 15:12:06 GMT -5 Tiny said:

Desalination sounds like a great solution (the oceans are full of water!) 

But what are the consequences of doing it? 

I imagine it takes some sort of fuel (to power the plant(s))  that's probably not renewable or very efficient.    And doesn't that effect climate change? 

What happens to the waste from one of these plants - what happens with the salt and minerals and whatever else is left behind?  I'm guessing it's considered "toxic".   I bet lots of people want that dumped in their 'backyards'! and want to live near that.... or maybe we can just haul it out to sea and it and hope it washes up on someone else's shore?  Or pay some other country to store it for us (and contaminate their land)??     I'm gonna guess that it's the waste is not going to be a 5 gallon bucket of "salt" for a days worth of desalination...


What does this do to the marine life near an intake?   What gets sucked into the plant?  how does that effect our shore lines? 


How does the water get from the coast to the interior?  Truck? Pipeline? little plastic bottles? 
 

Does solving a bigger problem by creating lots of local "critical"  problems really solve the problem??   All those local "critical" problems will be easy to ignore because it's not one big problem --and which will be left to the future to solve...   Don't we already have plenty of those kinds of problems (from past "this is a great fix! we should do this!" solutions?)    


I would think a better plan would be better use of the water we have.    But what do I know. 

Food production uses the vast majority of water. We could outlaw particular crops, maybe? I think that would mean lowering our use of soy and wheat - which seem like pretty important crops. We could import more of our food, assuming other countries have water. We could move our crops from the dry areas to wetter lands. Banning grass and asking people to take shorter showers will be ineffective.

[Tiny]

Jan 31, 2023 16:32:04 GMT -5 thyme4change said:

Food production uses the vast majority of water. We could outlaw particular crops, maybe? I think that would mean lowering our use of soy and wheat - which seem like pretty important crops. We could import more of our food, assuming other countries have water. We could move our crops from the dry areas to wetter lands. Banning grass and asking people to take shorter showers will be ineffective.

I think another complication in some of the area that Colorado River Valley supplies water to - is that the water rights were sold to foreign land owners. They don't have to conserve water and I'm not sure we can make them do so. There are alfalfa farms the Saudi Arabians "own" and ship the hay to where ever their horse farms are (not sure if they are here in America or in Saudi Arabia or in some other country. I know there are Saudi owned stables and horses in different areas of America.

[thyme4change]

Feb 1, 2023 9:58:35 GMT -5 Tiny said:

Jan 31, 2023 16:32:04 GMT -5 thyme4change said:

Food production uses the vast majority of water. We could outlaw particular crops, maybe? I think that would mean lowering our use of soy and wheat - which seem like pretty important crops. We could import more of our food, assuming other countries have water. We could move our crops from the dry areas to wetter lands. Banning grass and asking people to take shorter showers will be ineffective.

I think another complication in some of the area that Colorado River Valley supplies water to - is that the water rights were sold to foreign land owners. They don't have to conserve water and I'm not sure we can make them do so. There are alfalfa farms the Saudi Arabians "own" and ship the hay to where ever their horse farms are (not sure if they are here in America or in Saudi Arabia or in some other country. I know there are Saudi owned stables and horses in different areas of America.

I think that Saudi deal in AZ will fall apart - I am not sure what is in the contract, but Ducey is looking like a real dick right now, and Katie Hobbs is keen to expose it. Saudi’s don’t have rights to Colorado River Water - they are just sucking our unregulated ground water. Given the problem with Rio Verde and Scottsdale, along with the federal mandate for a water plan, I can see the AZ Legislature actually trying to do something useful. Maybe they will put in laws that would force the Saudi’s out.

That said - California has many “private owners” of water supplies - and they provide 10x the food that AZ does - so CA will likely continue to sell the water to the lowest bidder, and any attempt to change that will result in food shortages (real or engineered).

[happyhoix]

Jan 31, 2023 16:32:04 GMT -5 thyme4change said:

Jan 31, 2023 15:12:06 GMT -5 Tiny said:

Desalination sounds like a great solution (the oceans are full of water!) 

But what are the consequences of doing it? 

I imagine it takes some sort of fuel (to power the plant(s))  that's probably not renewable or very efficient.    And doesn't that effect climate change? 

What happens to the waste from one of these plants - what happens with the salt and minerals and whatever else is left behind?  I'm guessing it's considered "toxic".   I bet lots of people want that dumped in their 'backyards'! and want to live near that.... or maybe we can just haul it out to sea and it and hope it washes up on someone else's shore?  Or pay some other country to store it for us (and contaminate their land)??     I'm gonna guess that it's the waste is not going to be a 5 gallon bucket of "salt" for a days worth of desalination...


What does this do to the marine life near an intake?   What gets sucked into the plant?  how does that effect our shore lines? 


How does the water get from the coast to the interior?  Truck? Pipeline? little plastic bottles? 
 

Does solving a bigger problem by creating lots of local "critical"  problems really solve the problem??   All those local "critical" problems will be easy to ignore because it's not one big problem --and which will be left to the future to solve...   Don't we already have plenty of those kinds of problems (from past "this is a great fix! we should do this!" solutions?)    


I would think a better plan would be better use of the water we have.    But what do I know. 

Food production uses the vast majority of water. We could outlaw particular crops, maybe? I think that would mean lowering our use of soy and wheat - which seem like pretty important crops. We could import more of our food, assuming other countries have water. We could move our crops from the dry areas to wetter lands. Banning grass and asking people to take shorter showers will be ineffective.

Yes in California a bunch of the water goes to irrigate agricultural property. The problem is a political one and an environmental one - they have tons of farms in areas that don’t have the natural rainfall required to support it, so irrigation is necessary. It would be good to outlaw agriculture in places not naturally able to support it, but then you have the big agricultural block against that idea. After all, you have generations of fruit orchards, for example, that rely on irrigation, and now we’re going to make that use illegal and all those orchards will now be dead and worthless?  Kind of the same issue in Florida, where heavy use of fresh water aquifers and rising sea levels is causing salt water incursions into the drinking water - but if we announce that Florida can no longer support the number of people/golf courses/theme parks/the Villages that they currently have, some segment of the population is suddenly going to be sitting on worthless real estate. Who do we pick to be the losers, the farmers? The golf courses? The businesses? The homeowners? 

We can already see the answer in Florida. Some of the eastern coastal areas are having salt water incursions during storms, with salt water backing up through the storm water systems and threatening the freshwater supply. All the public money has been going to building dikes and storm berms around the high dollar McMansion areas, but not in the middle class/poor neighborhoods also experiencing incursions. Really, we should be debating if these coastal, low lying areas should be protected at all, or if we need to just announce that all along the coast, properties below a certain sea level will need to be abandoned because it’s too expensive to try to keep them - and who ends up eating that enormous loss. 

I know in some places (North Carolina, for one) where people who buy certain homes along the coast are told they can’t get flood insurance for it, and if the house ever gets destroyed by a hurricane, they can’t rebuild on the property. So if you buy that house, you take the chance the next hurricane wipes your home value out completely.