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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?
How about California stops growing almonds. Water crisis averted.
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.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
What this would amount to in practice is tapping the Great Lakes to enable unsustainable development in the Southwest. This would be an ecological disaster for both the Great Lakes, which are already losing volume due to climate change, and the Southwest, which has been unsustainably developed for decades.
How about, instead of massive engineering projects, we just don't build cities where there aren't enough natural resources to sustain them?
Other than the problem that few desserts are big enough, what's the problem there? I mean, a good peach cobbler has plenty of water to grow crops in, assuming it was big enough....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say 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.
Silly boy. Under what scenario do you figure that the western states won't simply use all the water we have back east, then demand more? The west coast of California is seeing the dream of living where it hardly ever rains, yet taking other people's water, come to an end.
Get your water where the Colorado river reaches the sea.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
If they don't, terrorists will start buying almonds to destroy California.
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
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
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
So maybe we should develop solar plants there and not almond farms. Just sayin'
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
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...
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.
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.
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.