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William Shatner Proposes $30 Billion Water Pipeline To California
Taco Cowboy writes The 84-year-old Star Trek star wants to build a water pipeline to California. All it'll cost, according to Mr. Shatner, is $30 billion, and he wants to KickStarter the funding campaign. According to Mr. Shatner, if the KickStarter campaign doesn't raise enough money then he will donate whatever that has been collected to a politician who promise to build that water pipe. Where does he wants to get the water? Seattle, "A place where there's a lot of water. There's too much water," says Mr. Shatner.
Southern California has a long history of stealing water from other places...
Time to just jack up the water rates so people move out.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
He's right, there is plenty of water. It's in the Pacific Ocean. If there's 30 billion to spend (and there isn't), use it to improve desalination methods. Don't rob other cities of their water.
Seattle's water is all going into the ocean. How about using the ocean to transport all that water to southern California instead of building a pipeline? All you have to do is remove a little bit of salt it picked up along the way! I'm guessing 30B bucks would build quite a few desalination plants.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Governor Inslee expands drought emergency to include more of Washington
This seems like a bad idea. It doesn't solve the issue of them wanting to grow crops in a dessert. And they have the audacity to suggest building a pipeline to an area that is currently suffering from a drought? Sure, Washington state won't be drought-stricken forever, but what will they do when both states are in a drought?
How about build a desalination plant with use of nuclear power in California?
Just comping up here isn't enough, now they want to take our water too?
Or, we east coasters could stop eat so much lettuce.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Lots of micro desalination plants powered by solar perhaps?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
“If I don’t make 30 billion, I’ll give the money to a politician who says, ‘I’ll build it.’"
If the people in Liberalwood want to do something constructive, they wold stop opposing desalination and let that $30 billion be spent getting California its own water supply. Putting the best minds in Silicon Valley to work on the problem would benefit all the other parts of the world where drought is a problem.
How about California stops growing almonds. Water crisis averted.
Wouldn't this pretty much just kick the can down the road a little, encouraging MORE people to move to what's essentially a water-starved area?
-Styopa
Well, someone will bring this up
Nestlé bottling water in California
But the first thing I thought when I saw the story (in a campaign email) was "I bet it's a small fraction of the total water usage".
I can't believe that it takes over a gallon of water to grow a single almond. Maybe they should look at ways of improving that.
And of legislating that people should be given a sound thwack around the head for buying bottled water. It's a wasteful, stupid, con.
I hope this raises awareness that the country should have an interstate water sharing system, so that reservoirs can be built in wet areas and pipelines can send excess to states that need it.
It's the key 21st century project that needs to get done to keep the US safe from droughts, aquifer depletion and powerful storms.
Not going to happen since the Chinese are their primary market. It's like Michigan cherries. The Chinese buy them all up and its difficult to get local ones except during the cherry festival.
What does California have lots of?
A: Coast-line.
B: Sunshine!
I wonder why they can't use these together to create a water supply, and natural sea salt without minerals removed, or adding anti-caking agents? Who knows? Perhaps the solar arrays to run this would over-produce, and can add to the national grid?
But hey. I'm obviously mad for thinking such things.
I hope the "water" from the "water" pipeline is not coming from Alberta, Canada.
There's no way you could use all of that water. It's unpossible.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If the people in Liberalwood want to do something constructive, they wold stop opposing desalination and let that $30 billion be spent getting California its own water supply.
Two problems with that scenario:
Sheer amount of water "needed"
Nookz!
If you were simply using water for say the people and farmers of California to live on, maybe. But even then those nuclear power plants would never be accepted.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Fixed it for you. Shatner has lost it, but wanting to use money to get someone to do something, that isn't socialism, you clueless fucking dittohead.
And $30B will get you 30 desal plants like Carlsbad's, which cost $1B, and which will provide 7% of what San Diego area residents need.
But the $30B won't get you the power it takes to run them (new power plants?) Or the energy required to power the power plants.
Also, CA's agriculture depends upon cheap water, not expensive desalinated water.
That said, would a $30B pipeline bring in the same amount of water as desal plants? Or more? Operating expenses are sure to be lower, but there'd need to be a detailed economic and engineering case made for one solution over the other.
--PM
I, for one, will NEVER stop sprinkling shaved almonds on my Romaine lettuce!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It's Chinatown
The water thats going out into the ocean would provide enough extra water to solve the problem, at the very least mandate all lawn irrigation use recycled water.
According to Mr. Shatner, if the KickStarter campaign doesn't raise enough money then he will donate whatever that has been collected...
...to a politician who promise to build that water pipe.
Haha! He almost had me going there, right up until that last bit. Well played, Shatner, well played.
What?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Like many western states CA has a systems of water rights that gives rights to water to whomever got there first. It also means you get all of yours before the next person gets any, and so on down the line. That was fine until CA started to outgrow the available supply, and as a result some are left at the end of the pipe so to speak, with little or no water. Add in a desire by farmers to protect their access at the expense of others, and little demand to limit losses along the way to evaporation, etc, and you have a big problem. If farmers had to pay market rates for water they'd change their use habits, just as other users will as prices rise. As for desalination plants, they would be a good solution but no doubt would face NIMBY battles even as the same people want water; like power, they want it from a tap but don't want a plant next door producing it. The bottom line is souther CA can't continue to grow like it is and keep the same water use habits.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I'm quite tired of the rich, specifically celebrities, telling us how to fix the problems of the world. Meanwhile it's born on the backs of the middle class. I like the idea however to use Kickstarter to "fix" these problems. People voting with their wallets. Seems like a great idea to me.
Of course politics will dip its fingers into this mix and decide to tax this program to hell to pay for their goals and make this project outprice itself, particularly once you have to start involving permitting and zoning and politicians want their palms greased or nix the pipeline come through their backyards.
Or, we east coasters could stop eat so much lettuce.
Or we could start growing our own again.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If the people in Liberalwood want to do something constructive, they wold stop opposing desalination and let that $30 billion be spent getting California its own water supply.
This is exactly the wrong approach. The last thing California needs is more idiotic "top down" solutions that ignore basic economics. Desalination is a way to exchange expensive and scarce electricity for cheap and plentiful water. It only makes sense because of the artificially inflated cost of water in urban areas. Meanwhile, farmers are using massive amounts of cheap subsidized water to grow rice and cotton in the desert. End the subsidies. Set a market price for water. Problem solved.
... how about charging those rural parasites fair market value for the water they use, reflecting the scarce/non-renewable nature of fossil water??
Asking greedy/short-sighted primary producers to take some of that personal responsibility they vote for and foist onto the urban poor is only fair. If the shoe fits, wear it.
... fewer people.
That is the big issue here. Even while they talk about water conservation they're still zoning more land for development. Still building more apartments. Still building more office parks. Still building stuff they can't provide water or power or transport for...
So why are we doing that?
Here is how we fix this issue. Link development to existing infrastructure. Lock California's development to the resources it can actually provide to residents. Then if people want to build something new, they FIRST have to get the infrastructure expanded.
The issue will solve itself quite quickly.
And LA didn't steal the water. It bought it. Yes, I know the people of Owens valley were very sad that the water all went away. It was bought and paid for. Get over it.
The old city fathers of Los Angeles wouldn't have let this happen to them. They took care of business. The existing leadership have their heads so far up their own asses they don't know what is going on anymore. It is sad watching them. They try to do good. They really do. But they can't. Too much corruption. Too many special interests. Too many people milking the system. They can't do anything. All the money and political will goes to graft. Nothing left for visionary urban planning. Nothing left to keep the city vibrant.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Cost of giant desalination plant: $1 bil. So you could get 30 plants for the cost of the pipeline. http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...
Or here's an idea. Don't build in areas where there isn't much water. Wipe Las Vegas and Phoenix off the map because there is NO reason there should be large metropolitan areas in the middle of a desert. I've even heard ridiculous ideas like diverting water from the Mississippi basin or the Great Lakes to make sure the idiots in Las Vegas can fill their swimming pools. Those cities are prime examples of doing something because we can without considering whether we should.
To get back on topic, there is NO way a $30 billion pipeline makes more sense than some very large scale desalination plants. If they need the water that badly then there is literally a whole ocean of it on the coast of California. You can buy a LOT of desalination for that kind of cheddar.
Shatner isnt saying anything new, just regurgitating shit he hears on AM radio and KTLA. As an LA resident, there is a shortage of water and there honestly always has been. Car washes recycle water up to 25 times, fruit aisles with sprayers recycle their water, toilets are already damned efficient, and anyone in DTLA can attest we rarely wash sidewalks. The solutions are dead simple, but ardent vocal minorities oppose them.
Farms: the northern half of the US is going to need to stop insisting on a seasonless produce aisle. Its unsustainable. Strawberries in january contribute to carbon emissions and water depletion. Stop pumping the avocado market and realize its a fatty fruit that doesnt need to become the staple diet of a population with 60% obesity and leading the world in heart disease. We dont need to be grazing cattle and making rice, a crop that requires a flooded field. The thing we do best is dates, a plant that grows in arid climates anyhow. Rooibos, Honeybush, Drumstick, and other tough-as-nails plants can come play on the farm too.
The well-to-do.: Stop insisting every gated community and shopping consumatorium in OC needs flushing fountains and gurgling streams. trade in your opulent midwestern lawns for landscape that conforms to the climate. I know, its a step closer to the unwashed masses, but youre doing us a favour.
Beer: We probably dont need to be making this, or if we need to revisit it. It takes 5 litres of fresh purified water to create 1 litre of beer. Bottled water, while often associated, hasnt been popular in LA for a while. Its mostly filtered and decanted from the restaraunt.
Works Departments: FIX. THE. LEAKS. I cant tell you how many times ive seen legacy hillside irrigation blasting 20ft jets of clean water near roads on the 101. Hydrants, pipes, water fountains, and the automatic public toilets need regular service or they just waste water.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Because there isnt enough water to do it. The enviromental impact study would take years. Look at what happened to the colorado river
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
If they did, they would stop subsidizing water use by farmers. Let everybody pay market prices for water and let market prices adjust according to demand, and the problem would solve itself. If that means desalination becomes cost effective, all the better.
Set a market price for water. Problem solved.
While I agree that this is probably the right thing to do, who gets this money? And how is the government setting some arbitrary price for a commodity to achieve some objective not a "top down" solution?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That's a fallacy.
The 2 "crops" that are taking the water:
Shut those 2 things down and water problem solved.
UPS Sucks
Or, we east coasters could stop eat so much lettuce.
Or we could start growing our own again.
We do. Find a nice local CSA, Support them. Ours is now doing produce year round thanks to hoop and green houses .
UPS Sucks
Guys, people plant in California because it's one of the most fertile soils in the USA.
No, they plant there because of the temps. NOT the soil. Its "fertile" because of Monsanto chemicals.
UPS Sucks
How about taking the fresh river water as it is about to dump into the Pacific, and pipe it through the ocean in poly blend pipes that are easy to install and repair... a leak would do no damage
You mean except for the salt getting into your freshwater supply when you inevitably spring a leak? (Think osmotic gradient) You mean except for altering the ecosystem of the river delta? You would have to have some pretty huge pipes (or REALLY high pressure) to take a meaningful amount of water to where it is wanted. It is NOT trivial to pipe a significant percentage of the outflow of a river somewhere else.
I don't mean to be overly harsh because the idea does have some charm to it but there are some pretty serious issues in play with such a scheme. I have a hard time believing that it would make more sense than simply building some large scale desalination plants close to where the water is needed. You would still have to pipe the water across land at some point anyway.
Hmm... How about a floating-yet-submerged pipeline?
Water flowing through plastic tubes anchored offshore ... (still submerged mind you - but not laying the seabed).
It could start small -- say two 12 inch pipes, then more, or larger, pipelines added once the concept was proved.
Why does this work? For one thing, eminent-domain, right-of-way issues pretty much go away. And the problem of structural support turns into keeping pipeline sections from _rising_, rather than falling (caused by the natural bouyancy of the pipeline and its contents)
While I agree that this is probably the right thing to do, who gets this money?
Its not like California couldn't use the money. Its government is doing better than it was five years ago but it isn't exactly the most solvent state in the union.
And how is the government setting some arbitrary price for a commodity to achieve some objective not a "top down" solution?
What is top down about letting the price of water settle at whatever level is necessary to reduce consumption to a manageable level? That is what would happen naturally if the government wasn't involved at all. The government's only role should be (IMHO) to stop abuse such as private companies from profiteering at the state's expense. Perhaps also spending money on water reclamation and desalination programs to lessen the burden of paying for water as well.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Silicon Valley *used* to be the most fertile soil in the US, but it has been paved over...
and that was true before Monsanto was in the GMO business.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
First, most of California agriculture is not in desert. Those areas tend to be rather low on rainfall, but not low enough to qualify as a desert.
If they don't have enough water to the degree that they are thinking about insane schemes like piping it from Washington then it is a distinction without a difference.
Second, presence of water is not the only reason to grow something in a particular region. Southern California happens to be famous for a pleasant climate and a lot of sunny days.
You are correct that there are other factors besides water availability in play. Soil composition, climate, location, transportation, etc all matter. But the water IS a critical component. If you have to pipe in more than can be sustained then it is NOT a good idea to do so. This includes times when there is a drought.
No, we'll just do what everyone else does with pipelines. Tie it up in congress and the courts for several decades.
Just think. It can be the next Keystone. Politicians on both sides can ride the outrage to re-election.
San Diego is quite nice, and there's a lot of cool stuff to do in and around San Francisco too. The Los Angeles area is far too well represented by the SNL skit, "The Californians," though.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'd rather a pipeline delivering a product essential to life be constructed, than a pipeline delivering a product essential to corporate profits...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If CA is short a percent or two in its water supply, Nestle might be a big deal. Otherwise, it's meaningless....
When you are in the middle of a drought (which California is) it very quickly becomes meaningful. One or two percent is not trivial even in times of plenty. During a drought it becomes even more ludicrously wasteful than bottled water normally is, which is really saying something.
I support this idea, for the simple reason that it will help keep Californians from trying to suck the Great Lakes dry instead.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
How about build a desalination plant with use of nuclear power in California?
Did you learn nothing from Fukushima? Don't build nuclear power plants in earthquake zones! Bad idea.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
hahaha, your brain can't grasp rudimentary concepts of scale and magnitude.
Nestle used 50 million gallons from Sacramento sources last year. California households alone use 360 million gallons PER DAY.
Does that mean anything to you? Does that make one neuron of common sense fire between your ears?
a four-foot pipeline isn't going to fix bugger all.
At high water velocity (i.e. not long haul practical) the best a four foot pipeline can do is approximately 4 000 litres per second (about 1000 usgal/s) or about 300,000 cubic meters per day. At this flow rate, the headlosses would require multiple pumping stations to keep the water moving. The electrical costs would be enormous. Additionally, At 0.4 cu.m./cap/day that would support approximately 750,000 people at average North American usage rates. Somehow a generational project like this should serve more than just a portion of L.A.
How about California spends a whole lot less cash and start recycling a portion of the billions of gallons of water released by Californians into the sea?
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
...to just buy Nestle and stop pumping the water out of the area on mass?
Well that was easy.
Its not like California couldn't use the money. Its government is doing better than it was five years ago but it isn't exactly the most solvent state in the union.
So your answer is "the state", which makes it a tax. That's fine - I just want to be clear that we're talking about taxing water to solve a water crisis, which you may understand may not play well in all spheres of the political world.
What is top down about letting the price of water settle at whatever level is necessary to reduce consumption to a manageable level?
That is not what he suggested. He suggested "setting" a price for water. Letting the price of water float is a different idea that requires that private people be allowed to own and trade water. This has to be done carefully, and California screwed it up when they tried it with electricity.
The truth is that water rights are a very complicated issue. Water falls on a combination of private and public land. You obviously can't go full-libertarian and have downstream users at the full mercy of upstream landowners, and things get even dicier when multiple governments (or even nations) are involved. I think a quasi-market based approach (that starts as a tax) is the right way to go, but there are a lot of very complicated issues to slog through. And market based approaches to rationing are rarely kind to the poor.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Aw! Now I remember.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Yes, it is. He'd be giving somewhat less than $30 billion to a politician's campaign. I mean, you can't write a check to the government with "FOR WATER PIPELINE PROJECT ONLY" in the memo.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
California uses 38 billion (with a "b") gallons of water per day. That desalination plant being built will be able to provide at most 50 million gallons a day using 38 MW of power per day to produce. Don't forget to add in the cost of that power generation, infrastructure, new power plants, further degradation of the environment (all that brine has to go somewhere) to your 30 plants.
Except those Great Lakes are facing hydrological issues themselves. The lakes are left over puddles, with rainfall not keeping up with the water we force the lakes to continue to provide now. If you need more water, generate it yourself, or better yet, reduce your need. If you charge the correct amount for water, your water use issues will very quickly fix themselves.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
What is the water source? The hundred thousand square miles of watershed? How would this work? There are probably thousands of "owners" across multiple states or even nations. You are acting like water rights are some simple issue that hasn't been contentious for the last 10,000 years or so.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Guys, people plant in California because it's one of the most fertile soils in the USA.
Too bad it's a semi-arid climate-- that's to say, much of the time it's a desert.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So then, we should avoid building cities in the Great Lakes region, where it gets really cold in winter and people have to use natural gas that was mined in Texas and the Dakotas?
Nice bit of absurd reductionism. There's nothing wrong with SOME diversion and trade of a natural resource. But there is something VERY wrong with doing it when you have a limited resource like fresh water that is being used badly. You might have an argument if it weren't for the absurdly stupid uses of water in places like Las Vegas and Phoenix and even in big parts of California.
There's this thing called comparitive advantage.
I don't think you understand what comparative advantage actually means. Comparative advantage is why two places can produce the same good and have it be economically beneficial to both even though one has an absolute price advantage. It has little to do with why building large cities in the middle of the desert is bat-shit crazy.
The southwest has tons of potential for producing solar energy, let's not shut down development there yet.
A bunch of solar plants do not require a city with the population of Phoenix to exist in the middle of a desert. Rather than diverting water so we can have fountains in front of the Bellagio hotel and lush golf courses in the desert, how about we actually make sane use of the water we have before you start draining the Great Lakes.
You could decide not to build cities on deserts. Isn't most of Southern California a desert that's been terraformed.
There is never too much water, and frankly this is what you get when you build in a desert.
It won’t be much longer before mountains have no snow, then there will be no rivers, no fish, nothing.
When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money
-Cree Indian
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
So, instead of fixing the horrible problem that California's (the West's - pretty much all of the US's) archaic system of legacy water rights has created, the solution is to do more of the same, except more expensively? Isn't one definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again, expecting things to change?
As for it being a fix for California's immediate drought problem - as I recall, the project he compares this to - the Alaska Oil Pipeline - took 20 years to survey, design, & build. Even if the political and legal environment could work it's way around the idea that this is extremely urgent and absolutely necessary, I don't see a water pipeline taking less than 10 years to build - 5 years at massive cost.
And market based approaches to rationing are rarely kind to the poor.
Most of California's poor are urban. They are the people currently getting screwed by water pricing. The poor would likely benefit by any move to more rational prices.
But I disagree that market pricing of commodities is bad for the poor. If you want to help the poor, it is better to give them money directly, so they can spend it on something they actually want, rather that giving them an incentive to waste water or electricity or whatever. Subsidies lead to miss-allocation of resources, and are usually co-opted by the non-poor anyway.
Desalination is a plausible solution for water for consumer use--that is, urban and suburban locations.
It is not a very plausible solution for agricultural use-- too expensive. Do you realize that those people take the water and just dump it on the ground?
*(well, some of the suburban people just spray it on the ground, too. But they spray millions and millions of gallons on lawns. Sounds like a lot... but agriculture uses trillions of gallons.)
Water rights are complicated. Since the rule is, whoever grabbed it first owns the rights to the water, the people who own it aren't necessarily the ones who use it most responsibly. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Agriculture is 80% of California's water use (although only 1.5% of California's economy) The big problem is almonds. Who would have thought that such a niche foodstuff would drive agricultural water? https://www.bostonglobe.com/bu...
Trillions? Yep: http://science.nasa.gov/scienc...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Spock: Dr. McCoy, it appears that the Captain has gone off his nut. Is there anything you can do?
McCoy: I'm a doctor, not a psychiatrist, you pointy-eared computer!
Spock: Is a psychiatrist not a type of physician, Dr. McCoy?
McCoy: Look, Spock - my name's "McCoy", not "Webster." I'm a doctor, not a dictionary!
Spock: Entomology notwithstanding, Doctor, is there nothing you can do to help the Captain with his fantasy of solving the drought problem via a multi-billion dollar pipeline from Seattle?
McCoy: I'm doctor, not an engineer, Spock!
Spock: (Pauses)
Spock: Captain, it appears that the Doctor has gone off his nut. Is there anything you can do?
Kirk: It looks like the Californian water crisis will have to wait. We didn't beam down with any "Red Shirts" so we'll have to solve the doctor's problem ourselves. Phasors on stun, Mr. Spock. Fire at will.
(Spock fires at Dr. McCoy. McCoy drops.)
Kirk: Spock, scan the Doctor with the Tricorder. Any sign of intelligence?
Spock: No, Captain. Intelligence readings are unchanged. However, the Doctor has been successfully stunned.
Kirk: Good work, Spock. Now, back to the drought problem.
Spock: But Captain, doesn't The Prime Directive prevent you from stepping in to solve Earth's environmental problems?
Kirk: Precisely, Mr. Spock. But we finally solved the "McCoy" problem - at least for now.
Spock: I see, Captain...your logic is impeccable...
Kirk: Scottie, two to beam up.
Do the math - bottled water doesn't even move the dial compared to agriculture. Total US consumption of bottle water per year = 10 billion gallons or about 31,000 acre feet. An acre-foot is about what one household uses per year, so it's the equivalent of a small city. In contrast, California uses 38 billion gallons a DAY. Stopping bottled water will not solve the water crisis. Alfalfa would certainly have a bigger impact.
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
Water scarcity in California is a political problem with a political solution.
To better understand why a pipeline is a non-starter...
From the perspective of the cashew farmer: would you rather buy cheap water from the local utility or expensive water from the Great Lakes?
From the perspective of the pipeline investor: would you invest in a project to send water to CA when the people most likely to buy it will have ever more restrictions on water use?
And now for the solution to this and many problems...
Simply remove use restrictions and let the market properly set the price of this scarce product.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
The govs there should be encouraging more modern irrigation techniques thru subsidies and tax incentives.
No. The govt there should be encouraging more modern irrigation techniques thru rational water prices.
It's not the free market. Those alfalfa farmers get subsidies. Not sure about Nestle... considering it's a public water company, I'd say it's reasonable to impose consumption limits.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Right, and for an encore they can figure out how to get the water from that desalination plant to flow uphill.
People don't realize how much water distribution networks rely on gravity; yes you can pump water to create more head but it raises the operational cost of the system astronomically. It's only practical to supply coastal cities, and then only if there is no water that can feasibly be piped from elsewhere. In California's case that doesn't really solve the problem, which is that their agricultural economy is going to collapse.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
One of the great ironies.. the east coast has a good watershead and extremely fertile land, but we moved so large chunks of our agriculture to regions with crappy land.
Middle Eastern countries use nuclear reactors and desalination plants in order to provide arable farmland, and it has worked well in self sustainability.
This is a good example of economic insanity. It would be an order of magnitude more cost effective for desert countries to simply buy grain on the world market. Desalinating water, to dump it on the ground in the desert, makes no sense.
People plant there because the land is cheap and the agricultural lobby has the local government wrapped around their finger for getting special concessions. It took massive public works (public money, private benefit) projects to produce much of the arable land. Then they had to go annex a bunch of seagull poop islands to fertilize the crap (but now moist) land.
Okay let me paraphrase.
Hello I am trying to raise $30B to build a pipe line, would you like to contribute? Be advised however if you choose not to contribute and I don't reach my goal I am going to spend the money lobbing instead to get government to force you to contribute via taxation under threat of prison.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
. If you want to help the poor, it is better to give them money directly, so they can spend it on something they actually want, rather that giving them an incentive to waste water or electricity or whatever.
Again, I think we largely agree. It's just that - if you take no other action, like your example of giving them money - the commodity price will increase and the poor will suffer a larger percentage of their income than everyone else. And we are talking about water, so there is a relatively inelastic demand here. Even if you don't think it will affect the poor that much, it is a concern that needs to be addressed or the market pricing route is a political dead end.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Either way California *could* stand to be a little more self sustaining. It doesn't seem California is able to supply their own anything. 25% of their electricity is purchased from Arizona, and even then they still have rolling brownouts because they can't meet the demand.
They are good ideas, but have some significant problems. When people talk about the desalination plants, the problem they tend to leave off (or not be aware of) is that even building a whole array of them barely makes a dent in California's water usage. They can help the areas right around them since water can be produced locally rather than piped or shipped in, but they just don't produce that much water and are expensive to construct and maintain.
Almonds will also become a scarce luxury foodstuff, with California accounting for 80% of the world crop.
All those hipsters who drink almond milk will have to find another kind of nut.
*nod* if california was a video game, desalination plants would be that item no one builds because the cost vs benefit is so terrible, unless they have reached that stage in the game where money is effectively unlimited (because balance is difficult), which does not really happen in the real world.
If they did that then you'll get the usual crowd of yammerheads complaining about gentrification as the prices increase and start driving the less well off out of the state. Since no one wants to tell them to pound sand you just end up continuing the same unsustainable policies again and again.
You forgot to take 1 issue into your factoring ... food security. a country that goes under siege will starve unless they food security.
I think if we ( as a civilization ) get to that point which we see in the tv show star trek, then your conclusion is much more valid.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Perhaps he can install some astroturf to cover the unsightly bare spot where his lush, vibrant lawn used to live.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The other danger in a market based solution here is then you have private entities who have the power of life and death over your citizens. One of the classic ways to deal with cities you do not like is to cut off their water and give it to someone more loyal/allied.
We know how that ends up. Owners jack up the price, poor get weapons, mob up and murder them down as death of thirst starts to threaten them.
It happened in the past. Many times.
Nobody buys local Michigan Cherries at Cherry Festival in Traverse City. They haven't ripened yet.
Perhaps one can get dried ones or some preserves made from Michigan Cherries, but the fruit comes from out of state.
A couple of points:
1) Seattle has less rainfall than NYC. Seattle "rain" is drizzle. Drizzles a lot. Not much water in it, though.
2) We have droughts. It's because the watersheds are in the mountains, and rely on snowpack. Some year there's lots of rain in the Cascades, but not enough snow.
If you post it, they will read.
I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment on this. I'm a Professional Engineer in Water Resources in Las Vegas. But, I'm not a Hollywood actor, or famous or anything. Maybe we should just defer to our leaders, like Mr. Shatner, to determine what course of action we should take.
From my experiences in LA: Clueless was documentary.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
From what I've read, The Alfalfa crops are about 1B gallons of water being moved to China.
This chart http://www.rollingalpha.com/wp... shows what crops are the thirstiest...
From: http://www.rollingalpha.com/20...
UPS Sucks
That is not what he suggested. He suggested "setting" a price for water. Letting the price of water float is a different idea that requires that private people be allowed to own and trade water.
He said setting a market rate. Using a market rate clearly implies letting the market set the rate. It does not imply setting an arbitrary rate.
The truth is that water rights are a very complicated issue. Water falls on a combination of private and public land. You obviously can't go full-libertarian and have downstream users at the full mercy of upstream landowners, and things get even dicier when multiple governments (or even nations) are involved.
These complications are already being dealth with by the California government. California has a wide range of short term, long term, and permanent contracts to ensure public use of water in the state. Here are some details on the California water market if you are interested. The problem of obtaining the water and paying whoever owns the water is already a solved problem.
We are only discussing how to divvy the water out. That is a much simpler problem. There would probably be complications as the state's current contracts expire and the land owners want a cut of the extra money, but I'm sure eminent domain could be used to prevent any excessive profiteering.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
California could siphon water out of Lake Michigan to Imperial Valley. No need to pump as there is sufficient drop in altitude between the two. Obviously one hell of an engineering and construction projects, but if the Romans could build aqueducts surely we could accomplish this. The real challenge isn't the engineering and construction, it's the politics and the fact that there is no such thing as national water policy.
Um, yeah, no.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Why don't you just teleport the water? You did it with the whales for cryin out loud!
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
Nestle's claims they use 700 million gallons a year bottling. This is the equivalent of what two golf courses use. CA has over 1100 golf courses.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
$80 billion is a lot of almonds.
And we are talking about water, so there is a relatively inelastic demand here.
Water demand can be very elastic when there are actual economic incentives. For anyone to say demand is inelastic shows just how wasteful we are with water in modern society.
Even if you don't think it will affect the poor that much, it is a concern that needs to be addressed or the market pricing route is a political dead end.
Just use subsidies for now, and wait for the next crisis for an excuse to end those subsidies.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You'll get none of my water; I need it for my mawn.
I disagree on a couple of points. Electricity is no more scarce than water. The Earth is being bombarded with 77 Petrawatts of solar energy every moment. We could harvest a great deal of that energy as solar/wind/hydro energy. We are not harvesting it. Electricity is not a "finite resource". We currently use fossil fuels(a finite resource) to create the majority of of electricity, but there is no concrete reason for electricity to be linked with a finite resource.
If we desalinate water, it will be sold by the volumetric unit. This creates a market price for water.This will change the water market. This is what you want to accomplish.It might crash and burn rather quickly, but it would accomplish your goal, so why oppose it?
If Washington State is anything like British Columbia (and considering they're right next door to each other, and Washington is south of the 49th), there are looming water problems; an extremely low snow pack which will likely mean water restrictions in some areas. Yes, it's rains a lot in the region, but the way that rain is "captured" is through snowfall.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The "agriculture uses 80% of California's water" argument has become a thing because there's a concerted effort to steal water rights. That's true, 80% of the water rights in California are used in agriculture. However, unlike the urban uses of water, that water goes back into the ecosystem. Flood stage water used to irrigate rice fields soaks into the ground and recharges aquifers. Water used for irrigation percolates through the soil and back into the Sac/San Joaquin basin. A large fraction of the evaporated water (numbers vary by study) gets dumped on the lower Sierras as rain. This water is recycled and re-used; in a year, the same cc of water can be used 2-3 times for irrigation and then end up in the delta keeping fish alive.
On the other hand, water pumped to SoCal and used in the Bay Area never re-enters the freshwater ecosystem. Most of it gets treated as sewage and dumped in canals to the ocean (or directly into the ocean) and the large amount that gets used for lawns and pools either percolates to the ocean or evaporates and gets carried out to sea. That water is completely lost to the ecosystem and water cycle until the next winter when it gets deposited as snow. That small 20% is a whole hell of a lot larger in context than the 80% that's used for agriculture.
But, building a progressive narrative and stealing water rights is a whole lot cheaper if you ignore the whole "poor people need to eat too" thing.
I don't know about crappy land, but the climate is more temperate and the growing season is much longer (provided water, of course). If you're a farmer, those are excellent attributes to exploit.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
... and genetically modify Californians' kidneys so that they can consume seawater.
You are one of the few mentioning rainwater collection. Well done.
Average rainfall is California is around 10 inches per year. Google says California has 163,696 square miles of area.
1 furlong per fortnight = 0.000166309524 m/s. Carry the naught. [This is to appease Europeans, and hillbillies, alike]
3,800,000,000,000 cubic feet of water fall on California each year. 7.5 US gallons per cubic foot. 28 trillion gallons in total.
Total water usage, average to a per capita is around 2,000 gallons per person.
California population is around 37M.
28 T / (37M * 2K) = 425.
One year's California rainfall could service the entire state's water needs for 425 years.
Recovering one-quarter of one percent of the rain that falls on the state each year would provide enough water for everyone for the entire year.
I come here for the love
You could divert a lot of water from the Columbia before it dumps into the ocean. The pipeline would have to be much bigger than 4 feet, but very large underground pipelines are feasible.
Once you have the pipeline in place it would make sense to continue growing food in the desert: warm, plenty of sunshine, and almost full control over the inputs.
The lakes are puddles. The water accumulated there is left over from the melting of the glaciers. If you try to draw down the lakes, the rainflall in the catchment area will not fill them up again. The St. Lawrence river and all the great lakes shipping depend on in>out.
And to top off all of that, the concept of using non-replaceable materials for operating costs is utterly stupid. Spend the surplus not the capital. Using Great Lakes water is spending capital. Using surplus water from another area is what you need to do.
Gee, and what about all that water you currently send to the ocean ?
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
That's a fallacy.
The 2 "crops" that are taking the water:
Shut those 2 things down and water problem solved.
You forgot the delta smelt. Not exactly a crop since you can't harvest them, but a huge sink of water nonetheless.
Better yet, build a telecom that isn't a dick. If it works right, I won't care about my brown lawn, I'd probably never even see it. I'll put up damned cacti to get away from AT & Comcast Warner, who are already prickly.
Table-ized A.I.
a KirkStarter?
I'll be here all week.
Because I've got nowhere to go.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Average SF home is over 2,000 sq. ft. Assume a roof size, conservatively, of 1,000 sq. ft.
10 inches of rain on 1,000 sq. ft. is around 6,000 gallons available per household per year.
Coastal usage per person is around 145 gallons per day.
You could provide for 12% of residential water needs just by people not sending their roof water to the sewer system.
Imagine if we reused the water that lands on roadways...172,000 miles of highway, average width of ~10 feet...68 billion gallons of water wasted each year...almost what the entire state uses in a year.
I come here for the love
Sam Kinison's solution is more practical
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
That's worked in other applications.
... and he's kind of a jerk. It doesn't surprise me that he's thinking about simplistic, over-costly "solutions" to the problem. Note that he's going to give the money as political campaign donations to whatever politician says that they'll build it (if he doesn't hit the mark, which he has no hope of hitting). Politicians all tell the truth, too, right?
All we see here is a pretty obvious play that Shatner is making to aggrandize himself and magnify his political influence... with other people's money. It's all about him making himself a bigger celebrity in political circles. Free dinners of chicken and peas, and easy, casual podium gigs he can write off.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Bottled Water...
What a racket.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Almonds are fascinating, using over a trillion gallons of water per year in California. I always thought eating nuts was lower impact on the environment than eating meat and so a better use of resources. Not sure why we can't grow almonds in water-wealthy states - almonds grow all over the Mediterranean. In fact, almonds are very genetically close to peaches, and I'm sure would make Georgia more money than peaches, with a little investment.
Might as well face it I'm addicted to data.
They tried real hard and 'succeeded' at Aral sea. They also tried but not so hard with lake Sevan so it still exists. Let us see how US env. engineering can fuck things up.
BTW Could this be that huge number of mad cows steaks have been consumed by Shatner along his service in Enterprise?
Spoken like someone with absolutely no engineering experience. Engineering as a discipline has this impish habit delivering things most people never imagined possible. This misleads them into thinking that engineering can give them anything they can imagine, particularly if the concept seems simple to them.
Take the suggestion elsewhere in this discussion that water be piped from the Great Lakes to California. Nothing could be simpler in conception -- a 2000 mile long pipe. We've built oil pipelines longer than that. The longest crude oil pipeline in the world is the 2500 mile Druzhba pipeline from Russia to Germany, so a 2000 mile long water pipe should be a cinch, right?
Here we get to the place where engineering starts being a bitch. You see, it's one thing to imagine a cost-is-no-object project, but the truth is cost is the single most important limitation on water use. It does no good to supply water to California almond farmers if they have to sell their almonds at the same price/weight as gold to pay for it. We use a *lot* more water than oil, and we expect it to be way, way cheaper. The current spot price for crude oil is about $57 per barrel -- roughly $1.36/gallon. Agricultural users in California pay something like 3/10 of a penny a gallon -- roughly speaking they expect water to be about 500x cheaper per gallon than oil. If pumping adds a penny to the price per gallon to the price of crude oil, that's no big deal, less than 1%. Add a penny per gallon to the price of water and you've quadrupled your farmer's water cost.
A system that delivers water can be expensive to build, but it has to operate cheaply and reliably. That's why water systems engineers avoid pumps and rely on gravity to do most of the work of moving water. The longest water supply pipeline I know of is the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, which transports water 330 miles with the aid of 20 pump stations. The economic justification for this project? To support gold mining. To give you an idea of how much expense was tolerated when the Goldfields system was built, it replaced a system where water was packed in by camel train. Today users there pay 7x as much per gallon as users in California do for water. Assuming the CA system could be operated for the same price, you could actually dispense with actually building the system. Raising the water price from $0.003 to $0.02 would reduce water consumption in California to sustainable rates -- even under drought conditions. It'd do so by causing agriculture to move out of state. Probably some population too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
From what I've read, The Alfalfa crops are about 1B gallons of water being moved to China.
The fact is that California harvest alfalfa up to 12 times a year, it sucks up a lot of water not because it is a particularly thirsty crop (it is not), but because farmers want very high yield. Cutting alfalfa would mean less returns for farmers, guaranteed.
Better yet, how about California stops growing alfalfa (see page 4) for their beef and dairy industry. A better idea would be to quit providing subsidies to the beef and dairy industry that makes it economical to raise them a what otherwise would have been a desert. Between alfalfa, other grass forages, and corn for cattle, the other uses of water for producing food are pretty small. Unfortunately California is a state with a lot of electoral votes and no one wants to put an end to cheap shitty beef in this country so don't expect logic to ever win out, these same policies also help out states like Washington and Oregon which also like to raise cattle out in the fucking desert.
Time to offend someone
Water demand can be very elastic when there are actual economic incentives. For anyone to say demand is inelastic shows just how wasteful we are with water in modern society.
I agree, but in the context of the conversation I was talking specifically about the demand of poor people. They probably are not huge users of water, and while their behavior can change a bit (flush the toilet less, take less showers, use disposable dishware, etc) - it's really not going to change overall water use much.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
But unlike the East, CA has all year growing. That greatly increases a farm's earning potential. That attracts a lot of farmers.
He said setting a market rate. Using a market rate clearly implies letting the market set the rate. It does not imply setting an arbitrary rate.
Letting the market set the rate and "setting" a market rate are different things - but I'll agree that the statement is ambiguous. I was addressing the statement as if it were the state actively setting a rate somehow as opposed to setting up some kind of a market.
The problem of obtaining the water and paying whoever owns the water is already a solved problem.
The fact that we are having this discussion at all would seem to contradict you. There is not enough water in CA to satisfy demand at the moment. There is plenty of water in other places. There is certainly a problem here that is not solved.
We are only discussing how to divvy the water out.
A more accurate word would be "rationing". We are actively limiting a resources that has more demand than supply. I happen to agree with you and ShanghiBill that rationing by raising the price is the way to go, but I think we disagree about how hard this would be to get right. I don't live in CA, or anywhere within pipeline distance of CA - so my opinion does not really matter much in the end. But I can tell you that rationing purely based on price is going to muster a whole lot of people to fight politically.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
All those hipsters who drink almond milk will have to find another kind of nut.
Most probably already have.
Time to offend someone
If not then its plights would be ignored by the rest of the world. Much like the 49 other states.
New York (Well its city will get attention too)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
How much more energy is there in a spoonful of salt plus a cup of fresh water vs a cup of salty water. Is the problem with desalination that there is an immense energy difference to overcome or that the technology we have is very inefficient ?
Nullius in verba
Um, rolling brown-outs? Not lately. We did have some of that early 2000's, because of a TEXAS business.
California is the 5th largest economy in the world, and grows most of the food in the country. But yeah, your right, we're water pigs. I hope you don't mind paying $10 for a small basket of strawberries.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Admittedly, Brad Paisley is the (credited) author of this song, but Shatner spoke the words. Maybe he should listen to the track again.
"I'd love to help the world and all its problems
But I'm an entertainer, and that's all
So the next time there's an asteroid or a natural disaster
I'm flattered that you thought of me
But I'm not the one to call"
I think drought qualifies as a natural disaster. Why the change of heart, Mr. Shatner?
All you need is a solar powered project to convert sea water into potable water. I'm pretty sure $30B will go a long way to set up several projects all along it's coast. Also, converting current pipes from metals to plastic so your sewage systems etc can handle a little bit of salt water, then you don't need to flush with clean water and it's a lot healthier (salt water is inhospitable to a lot of bacteria)
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I don't know about crappy land, but the climate is more temperate and the growing season is much longer (provided water, of course). If you're a farmer, those are excellent attributes to exploit.
Right. That water part though - seems to be a problem for you all. Seems you want everyone elses water and plan on doing to other rivers what you did to the Colorado River. We grow food crops just fine here in the Northeast.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm not sure how he expects to raise 30B on something that only benefits one specific demographic. All successful kickstarter campaigns are for products that could potentially benefit anyone willing to plunk down their money.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
a country that goes under siege will starve unless they food security.
Except that they are not "under siege" nor is there any reason to believe they will be in the future.
all that brine has to go somewhere
How about back where it came from?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Desalinization is expensive. It's energy intensive, they're ugly as sin, it results in bad-tasting water, it pollutes the oceans with saline, the resulting water still needs to be pumped hundreds of miles to be used, etc. etc.
It's a raw deal and it's stupid to mention it. Please don't.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
There are plenty of places that do have the climate and the rain and that would desperately like to export produce to the US, but the US agricultural lobby is keeping that from happening.
Yes, and those places would need to burn down their rain forest to convert the land to commercial agriculture. There are massive environmental consequences for doing so, a unoffset massive carbon release, an ongoing loss of carbon sequestration and oxygen generation, the loss of possible medicinal botanics that have not been evaluated yet (ex. a new family of antibiotics that would be effective against the current resistant strains circulating in our hospitals). Plus these regions tend to be high on corruption and low on regulatory compliance. See the recent Vice episode on Palm Oil production.
Alredy paying that much here in Texas. There must be a conspiracy theory from the Californians!
why don't we reserved all the residential usage and some quota for criticalinfrastructure. Agriculture and mining users can bid to use the surface and underground water - after general public has their fair share of water usage.
Free market at its best. Let them pay for the water they reap profit from.
Sometime back in my Geomorphology class back in the early 1980's I either read of the professor said there was a theory the Snake River wound its way down the backside of the Sierra Mountains and down to Baja and joined up with the Colorado River. The change came after one of those massive Northwestern volcanic eruptions. So it doesn't seem so far fetched.
So by that reckoning, any pipe doesn't have to be built the whole way. Just over that portion where it got shunted to the Columbia River back to its old course.
At late middle age, my memory could be faulty also. Or the theory may have been disproven by now.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Some (most ?) of that rainwater landing on roofs drains into the soil not the urban drainage system, which for the record is separate from sewage. So leave the roofs alone. Collect water at the urban drainage system.
One would need a massive inland industrial solar facility to power a desalinator. Assuming such a facility could be built it might be better put to other uses. A far more practical plan would involve massive updating of water policy and watering techniques in California agriculture. That is where 80% of the water goes.
With the south north water diversion project. Cost $80bn so far and has 2000km of pipes.
The 2 "crops" that are taking the water:
Shut those 2 things down and water problem solved.
You are clueless.
Look, I hate Nestle and I think bottled water is stupid too, but the amount of water they bottle is trivial compared to the trillions of gallons of water shortage representing the drought. They could bottle a hundred times more water, or a thousand, and it still wouldn't make a lick of difference.
The problem is measured in trillions of gallons. It's not drinking water that's the problem here.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
No, seriously, half of the Washington State counties are already in Drought Emergency, and we barely have enough water to provide bottled water to all the Hollywood folk drinking bottled water that is really our tap water from Seattle (Tolt River watershed).
Stop subsidizing agricultural water use for "high-profit" water using crops. That might actually work.
We use 1/4th the water in Seattle that you water wasters in California use. One-fourth. Per capita.
Change YOUR behavior.
Then we'll talk.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
On the other hand, my grandfather used to ship peaches from Traverse City to Georgia for their Peach Festival, for much the same reason (plus his quality was a lot higher).
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Desalination is a plausible solution for water for consumer use--that is, urban and suburban locations.
It is not a very plausible solution for agricultural use-- too expensive.
Actually, there are a number of issues with desalination as it presently exists. The cost of plant construction and operations puts the cost of water supply at roughly triple that of traditional methods.
Exactly. That's why it's not a plausible solution for agricultural use. If your application is to take water and spray it on the ground, yes, it needs to be cheap.
For urban and suburban use-- well, given the rents, and the cost of housing, in San Diego (not even to mention San Francisco!)-- the cost of water just isn't a factor. You could triple it and not notice.
They also depend on fossil fuels and thus contribute to greenhouse gasses. They produce brine and boron contaminants that can not easily be disposed of on either land or sea without potentially significant impact of the wildlife exposed to them.
Those are engineering problems.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
California does not grow "most of the food in the country." California does grow most of the Artichokes, Strawberries and Almonds, but those are hardly staples like corn and wheat, which are not grown in California in any significant amount.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
1) Stop exemptions and subsidies.
2) Change more for water.
3) ???
4) PROFIT!!!
This would fix the whole water shortage thing in short order. It would likely destroy a lot of unsustainable agriculture in the area as well. It would also promote a lot of conservation and probably innovation. So win-win-win.
Even doubling what the cost per volume of water would probably be pretty trivial to most domestic households.
I prefer the farmers move out. Those assholes use 60% of the water.
Actually, there are some easy fixes to use less water.
1. Stop subsidizing agricultural water use.
2. Plant mixed crops (alternate rows) and plant cover crops between tree rows. Bonus: more soil retention, more water retention, easier to control pests.
3. Plant barrier trees around fields. Birds on those eat pests, Trees reduce soil loss, and water loss.
We learned this all in the 1970s in British Columbia, just north of Seattle. Adapt.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
One of the great ironies.. the east coast has a good watershead and extremely fertile land, but we moved so large chunks of our agriculture to regions with crappy land.
"Crappy" is defined by more than fertility. What California's land has lots of, that the East Coast doesn't have as much of, is sunshine, which is even more difficult to ship around from place to place than water.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
I've read the most of the alfalfa grown in CA is actually shipped to China to feed Chinese cows.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
People plant there because one of the most important ingredients in farming is not water, or nutrients (not that those aren't also very important), but sunlight. And California has lots and lots of it.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Well shit, I guess if that 1.5 billion gallons a day that 30 desalinization plants would produce doesn't completely fix the problem, better not pursue it at all. We can't have multiple solutions that all add up, can we?!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Our agricultural economy makes up barely 2% of the state's GDP. It's only a problem for the plantation owners and their quasi slave labor in the middle of the state. Unfortunately, those plantation owners give a shitload of money to state politicians in order to make sure production trumps sustainability.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
There's bigger problems than that with what he's proposing here, like the fact that Oregon is between Washington and California.
Oregon doesn't like massive pipelines of stuff spanning their state - they don't even like the pipelines if they get a piece of the action, such as the proposed LNG terminal on the coast.
Better file this under "Good Luck With that."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
This is why the Greens' whole approach is to make both electricity and water scarce and expensive, to punish man for the sin of having civilized prosperity. If we could unleash technology on the problem with no restraints, as we have in the computer/electronics field, we could make both those resources cheap and plentiful. But under current conditions Greens would love to set urban society against the agricultural world by maintaining artificial scarcity until southern and central California become deserts once more, as they were in the state of nature.
If you're going to spend $30Bn on a pipe to Seattle, build a Hyperloop instead!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Oh, really?
Yes really. A small town is fine. A city of 1million+ in the middle of a desert is an absurdity.
Yes, Phoenix and Tucson have added to our natural water supplies by diverting some of the Colorado River,
"Some"? The Colorado River doesn't even reach the ocean anymore. ALL of it gets diverted. Not just by Phoenix to be fair but really there is no reason the diversion to Phoenix should even be necessary at all.
The communities have existed for a VERY long time.
Not with 1.5 million people they haven't. Phoenix existing as a small city is fine. At it's current size is not.
I dare say it's far easier to deal with water conservation in the desert here, then the floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, frosts, tornados, mudslides and other forms of natural disasters found in other parts of the country that we are quite immune to, thank you very much.
I think you have no idea what living in other parts of the country is actually like if you think those things are huge problems most of the time. Plus we aren't sucking down massive amounts of power for air conditioning for most of the year and diverting entire rivers to support a huge city in a place where there is no justification for a huge city to exist. I've been to Phoenix. Nice enough town. But it should be no more than 1/10th it's current size.
Please ask the residents of Washington and Oregon what they think of this 1500 mile water pipe before you start throwing money at Kickstarter.
There's exactly zero chance this thing gets built.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
California doesn't even come close to "grow[ing] most of the food in the country". The account for 13.2% of the food grown in the US. While that is good for a single state, it's falls far shy of "most". In fact, California, while nearly 3 times the size of Illinois in area, only generates slightly over twice the food. That seems a lot less impressive.
Unfortunately, if you dump it straight back into the ocean without carefully dispersing it, it can end up killing all of sea life around it.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
That's actually the point. Warm temperatures and near constant sunlight = high productivity - if you import water. Ag in California takes up 80% of the water, but ag + mining together is only 2% of the economy. It's fine when water is abundant, but when it's in short supply, ag has to give.
*Kid Rock runs for Senate* Democrats: We must run Kid Scissors.
Wannabe central planners think they have all the answers.
Here's a crazy idea - stop artificial price fixing of water and let the stupid uses become unprofitable through millions of decisions by people who know about their own business.
"Oh, no," they say, "we know better. Even though they created this mess with that attitude.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Area of the states taken from Wikipedia. Crop production taken from the respective state's agricultural departments.
:) I live in Colorado, and we have our own water problems. (Though less of them, of late, but it's always been really dry out here.) Our snowpack fills a bunch of rivers. At the same time, our glaciers and year-round snowpack are fading, and that takes a lot of elasticity out of the supply. It'll be dry times up here, too, before long (again?), and there's nobody around to pump water to us.
There's a lot of agriculture out here, too, but it's nowhere near the scale or variety of California. I suspect that this is why New York isn't, for example, a big producer of almonds. It's dead last, in fact. So yeah, you can grow "food crops" in the northeast, but not nearly as many different ones, and not nearly as productively/cheaply.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Magical market approaches only work when there is some possibility of an actual market existing. Water supply is a natural monopoly, there is no real way to have more than one source available to a residence unless you're willing to tear up the streets and run several thousand miles of pipes. Any sort of "market-based" approach to water supply in California are likely to replicate the Aguas de Tunari privatization fiasco, where the water company executives had to run for their lives because of the (justifiably) irate customer base was coming.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Maybe we could dilute it with fresh water.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Just for future reference, if you find yourself in a position of authority and someone comes to you with a solution to your pressing problem, and he doesn't know exactly what the solution is or how to make it happen, but he knows exactly how much it costs? You throw that guy out on the street, because that guy is at best a con artist, at worst utterly clueless. (Yes, in that order.)
The original parent said "for the past century" and this is correct, California did have the climate. You can state that conditions have changed. They have, indeed, but not in such a way as to imply the falseness of the quoted sentence.
It is just a matter of playing fair in an argument.
Yes, at best it could be a market like the electrical market where you have suppliers and distributors. The suppliers could certainly compete, I guess.
I think what they are really suggesting is that rationing should be implemented via price increasing with demand or inversely with supply. This would definitely work, but I'm not sure they have thought through all of the repercussions and it would be very tricky to get right.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
A lot of wars began when the water supply dried up. Fortunately northern and southern California are not separate countries otherwise we'd be in a shooting war. But as water crises continues, we will also see a lot political nonsense. I'm sure there are cooler and more intelligent heads working this situation, but a licensed engineer is no match against The Shatner on the talk shows.
mfwright@batnet.com
And that produce will have more minerals and grow bug free. Double win!
Yup. They use stuff like Azomite and Elomite (Rock Dusts) as soil amendments.
I used it for the 1st time last year and my garden's yeilds were amazing (I harvested double the plum tomatoes from the less plants - 132lbs in 2014/15 plants vs. 66lbs in 2013/18 plants
UPS Sucks
What exactly is wrong with anti-caking additives? Generally people don't like their salt as a single solid mass.
texas electric is fully within the borders of texas. not on the national grid. how can you blame texas for that?? http://www.texastribune.org/20...
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
free markets would mean ye who owns the land owns the water. not a bidding war after the government takes and distributes it
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
NY is mostly apples and corn, at least in the hudson valley
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
san fran is the capitol of left wing lunitics
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
All that water that Shatner won't use to dilute his Scotch . . .
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
No way.
People get impressed when they see millions, billions, trillions etc.
You want to build a pipeline from Seattle to California providing water? How much per day? Actually not relevant ...
Look at the cost of the Panama Channel, 400 million dollars. For just diging a trench ... a few locks and using mostly the lakes already there.
No way anyone is building a super pipeline for water for a mere 30 billion ... he is off by one magnitude, if not ny two!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
whats wrong with thinking local first? Instead of trying to fix the entire state at once, take smaller areas and fix them
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
By the time the pipeline is built, Washington will be dry as well: http://kuow.org/post/drought-d...
Not as bad as CA, but this year's snowfall is just a fraction of normal. Expect lots of fires in the forests of OR and WA this year. I don't know where Shatner gets the idea that Seattle has more than it can use.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Good point. Desalination typically does produce a lot of "gunk".
Even ones using old fashioned multistage evaporation still has large quantities of residue left.
We could take that plastic-filled residue and dump it in the nearest Marianas Trench, thus providing food for the next invading aliens, or we could just give up and pretend we can't do something with it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
First, a 4 foot diameter pipeline is going to make any kind of significant difference? This wouldn't even have the capacity of a small creek. Second, he wants to build it aboveground. Maybe in California that's doable, but in piping the water from Seattle, there are some places that do freeze. How would such a pipeline handle that? As others have posted here, that $50,000,000,000 would be much more effective in working out better (more economical, environmentally friendly, etc.) methods of desalination. Also, the economics just don't make sense. It takes 5 gallons of water to grow a single walnut. How in the world would it be cost effective to power the pumps needed to transport that much water that far to raise so little? Unless people expect to pay hundreds of dollars per pound of walnuts, I can't fathom how this would work. I think if California is being hit by drought, it needs to take a hard look at where their water is going. If the crops they love to grow there just aren't sustainable for the water they use, they really have no choice but to transition to agriculture appropriate for their climate. A bandaid solution like this is in no way the right way to go.
So Shatner is looking for charitable donations to provide water to one of the richest regions on the face of the planet? Seriously? Is he going to back this campaign with a video of slow-mo shots of people suffering in the OC because their lawn is looking a little brown and the water level in their swimming pools is slightly lower than they'd like. "The people of Beverly Hills are slightly uncomfortable -- let's make their lives better."
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
A lot of lettuce is grown in Yuma. Not liberal territory.
No, not all of it,and that water comes from elsewhere also...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Agriculture in California happens primarily in the central valley. That is an arid part of the state would pretty much be desert if the water wasn't piped in there. So yea, if they want to claim the groundwater before any other water is piped in then I expect that the central valley will dry up in the next few months and no one will have any water. The reason they have water now is that they are allotted water rights over a certain amount that is piped in from other places.
Free markets would mean that they would get no water and they would have been stupid to create a agricultural business in the desert.
Free market is not the answer to every business question.
Who cares if Nestle is reselling water ant any price? Their usage is a tiny fraction of the total, and shutting down ALL bottled water production in California would change nothing about the drought and impact.
Agriculture is the big user, and then people who live where water isn't. As with many resource shortages, this is equally a problem of delivery and planning. There is water to be had for Californians, but it takes planning, and there are few excuses for not doing that already. Only now do they start looking at desalination.
Looking to take it from Arizona is sort of cheap. Not going to happen.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Santa Barbara has a plant in standby mode - 2 years to reactivate, and they have begun planning for that. Planning.
San Diego will be getting water form the Carlsbad plant late this year. It took only about 15 years to build this, mostly to overcome objections from everyone.
These plants take time to permit and build, and planning is the most important step. But in California, that is in short supply, like the water.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Interesting, in Michigan farmers who grow alfalfa, cut it and let it lay until it's dry before they bale it. That way you don't lose the water, it stays local. I can't even imagine how you would ship wet baled alfalfa to china in a ship without it catching fire from the fermentation! It's hard to imagine exporting Alfalfa to China period, but stranger things have happened, I'd imagine the shipping would be several times the cost of the alfalfa.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This has nothing to do with bringing water to California.
"..if the KickStarter campaign doesn't raise enough money then he will donate whatever that has been collected to a politician who promises..."
The probability of kickstarter providing 30 billion seems....low so the secondary plan must actually be the real plan.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Free markets would mean that they would get no water and they would have been stupid to create a agricultural business in the desert.
thisa sums it up nicely.
why should cali get to take water from other places because of their poor planning? I mean if they want to buy it AFTER the state that has the location of water has gotten all it needs/wants, and they sell it to cali, thats fine i suppose. but plain and simple. if you plant in a desert, dont complain when you run out of water
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
ahh, I got you now. Still it has nothing to do with texas. a private company screwed cali (and a bunch of others) I wonder how many companies screwed millions of americans that are located in cali
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
im sorry are you proposing the government raise taxes on water??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
sorry, that's a fallacy.
Under siege might not be a good word
but here are some examples of what I am trying to present
bananas ( we have no bananas today ) long modern history of food shortages
Potatoes, real good example of improper management lead to the Irish famine, blamed on the virus ( which is a factor ) but the restrictions of import / export from Ireland lead to it.
Corn as a stable product ... biodiesel changed all that
production history variations and the market did respond well to it.
http://www.card.iastate.edu/io...
Rice as a stable product ... subject to weather issue, one good flood can wipe out %'s of the worlds production
storms and percentage of damage http://environmentalresearchwe... ( I think it might be a tainted new source, but I feel the idea of damage of crops is presented properly )
panic and rumors caused http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
if you see me, smile and say hello.
But unlike the East, CA has all year growing. That greatly increases a farm's earning potential. That attracts a lot of farmers.
And so does Florida. They just have water to go with it.
Without th ewater that California steals from other states, it's just scrubland.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over."
Um, rolling brown-outs? Not lately. We did have some of that early 2000's [wikipedia.org], because of a TEXAS business.
Don't confuse a blackout with a brownout.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
A brownout is often unobservable to people, however computer equipment is known to fail faster if it has to endure too many. California has generally had them every few years or so, lasting different variations, with the last one happening in 2013 for about 4 hours.
We already pay to much for California crops. Beef in Idaho 2.99 Cali 7.99. California has a cost problem. It's a desert quit growing grass.
The same place as piss from people who drank Nestle bottled water
Mod parent up! The drought has hit Seattle. It is going to be a long summer!
I will not mourn that which I never had to lose. - Unknown
Urban: 11% Agriculture: 39% Environmental: 51% http://www.ppic.org/main/publi... Urban is already doing what it can to save, which is not really known because I see a bunch of ads for saving water at home recently where I live in Orange County, CA. The finger should be pointed at Agriculture. Don't force what you can't grow at the cost of the citizens funding the imbalance.
Why spend more public money to prop up an oversize municipality built in a desert? Southern California doesn't have a water problem but an overpopulation and overbuilding problem.
If you read some Mark Twain; you can get an idea of what California was like before it was overpopulated and overbuilt. "A squirrel could go from Angel's Camp to San Francisco Bay without ever touching the ground." Now, all you have between Angel's Camp and San Fran Bay is cheat grass dotted with small towns and a few vineyards.
NRRPT/RCT
....you could tell companies like Nestle to stop bottling it for profit and make THEM move out. Why does a foreign company get more than local farmers? Or not have to ration at all?
As a stop-gap measure (on the way to poisoning the entire planet anyway, eventually).....desalination would buy some time. Religion and cigarettes are two obvious proofs as to why the human race has no future. Not a rational one, anyway. If we can't guard our sanity / mental health and our physical health directly from delusion and voluntarily consumed carcinogens........the air, earth and water doesn't stand a chance. Take the salt out of the ocean water. It's right there at the beach. It will buy some time.
Only boring people are ever bored.
How about California stops growing almonds. Water crisis averted.
Perhaps they should learn from the Israelis. They run plastic water tubing with directed drip spiggots to each plant (tree). Don't arial spray, water is too precious to be wasted thusly.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
In fact, it's called "Silicon Valley" because of the high silica content of the soil, which helped nitrogen propagation in crops. True story!
This Sig does not Exist.
I think you mean meat and dairy, which waste far more water.
Then it is an even shittier idea. The fact is that there is a lot of water that is being used to grow food for grazers that we then eat. Still why does California even have a dairy and beef industry, when I had over the air TV I would regularly see ads stating "Happy cows come from California" here in Minnesota. So some of it is being turned into cattle feed for local use.
Time to offend someone
California's problem is that too much water is exported. Farmers grow very thirsty plants and then export the crop and the water out of state. Less thirsty plans will make a huge difference...and yes, that also means less Californian wine. Another huge water waster are golf courses...there are 1140 golf courses in California...a few hundred less will make a big difference.
Either way California *could* stand to be a little more self sustaining.
Maybe the rest of the country could be more sustaining and not eat all the food that California grows for them.
J
Except modern conventional agriculture requires two things: 1) lots of sun, and 2) lots of water. Those two items rarely are in the same region at the same time.
It makes a lot of sense to have agriculture growing in desert regions as opposed to wet/dark regions. It is far easier to deliver water to a desert than it would be to deliver more sun to a shady region.
A market price for water doesn't make a lot of sense, if you are thinking about that market price being the same that consumers pay. Urban consumers are paying price X because it is supporting the infrastructure and other resources used to deliver the water to their individual houses.
Farms aren't using any of the urban infrastructure to get their water. They have a whole 'nother set of pipes (where I lived it was a river, and you bought your own water pump to fill your own set of pipes, private infrastructure per farm), entirely different usage patterns, etc... I can see value in have some more market forces influence the price of agricultural water, but it would never make sense to have it be the same set of market forces that influence consumer water prices.
Plus, there are some goods that we intentionally subsidize, because the forces don't exist in the market, or the market would do a poor job of delivering the outcomes we want. Keeping food/power costs down, are often things that get direct or indirect subsidies because it is beneficial for so many people.
It would be an interesting experiment though, seeing if people would really want something like avocados if they cost 10 bucks because water was pricey.
I'm sorry, but even reverse osmosis plants use chemicals to prep and clean the water and to protect their equipment. Sea water is astoundingly corrosive, so if you don't want to be replacing all the core parts of your plant every year you have to treat it to prevent that damage. Those chemicals are not typically filtered out before being dumped back into the ocean.
But let's just assume they filtered out all those chemicals and only dumped saltier concentrated sea water back into the ocean. The area around the dump site would still be a death pit for any and all marine life very close by. Now you can get away with a few of these plants, sure. But if you start trying to provide enough water for, say, the entire state of California, through desalination alone, you're going to absolutely murder the coastal ecology.
Again, I'm not an eco-freak. I think we should have maybe a dozen or so such plants (maybe a few more) to help offset the drought and tough beans for some of the sea life involved. But if you scale it out too much you will wreck the coast.