Posted on 04/06/2015 3:51:29 AM PDT by grundle
Yeah. California has multiple problems combined into one that can never be solved through a single simple fix.
How is water an inconsistent return.
You would spend hundreds of billions of dollars and it would take years to complete a pipeline that would have no use after the drought ended.
Dan from squirrel blog is also far, far away from reality.
The EPA has been blocking desalination plants since the 1980s.
Sorry Dan. As much as you wish to make it so, the Environmental Protection Agency is part of the federal government. Not the California state government.
Congratulations on taking up the issue though (however belatedly).
I don’t know if the current EPA rules allow desal.
All that concentrated brine has to go somewhere, and the rules are it can’t go back to the source water (you can only discharge cleaner water than you take in).
That is the issue.
The Western Hemisphere’s largest desalination plant will be up and running next year, just outside of San Diego.
Santa Barbara built a desalination plant in 1991, then the rains hit, and they mothballed it in 1992, now they are reopening it and Carlsbad is building the largest desalination plant in the Western hemisphere.
In 2011 the United States, along with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Spain was among the top 4 markets for desalinated water, it isn’t like we don’t know about it, or won’t incorporate it as the market dictates.
“Despite these hurdles, however, the United States ranks fourth among markets for desalinated water behind Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Spain, according to an International Desalination Association presentation from 2011.”
http://www.bna.com/us-desalination-industry-n17179876105/
If we could make the ice caps melt more, than that would have to produce more evaporation and rain I would think...
More freshwater means more people moving in, more construction, more government, more socialism. Democrat voters become the majority when the local population density reaches 800 people per square mile. CA has an overpopulation problem, not a water problem.
As I already posted, in normal years when reservoirs are full, those water districts have enough water without buying it from a private company. So what happens to those companies then? Maybe there could be some sort of water futures system, where water districts contract long term, but that doesn't exist now. I'm just saying there could be a decade or more between droughts, so it's not as simple as just building them.
There’s a lot more to growing than just water. The Central valley has the best climate and soil of pretty much anywhere on earth.
But mostly it has cheap illegal labor.
That’s a great point - desalination would indeed slow the rising sea level caused by global warming.
That’s a good point. Perhaps some kind of long term contract could address that issue.
Thanks for the link.
I agree with you about using nuclear power to power desalination plants.
Thank you for the links.
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