California: Desalination Plants May Be State’s Only Solution Despite Environmental, Energy Concerns

International Business Times ^ | July 27, 2014 | Angelo Young

[grundle]

Full title: California Sand Fire: Desalination Plants May Be State’s Only Solution Despite Environmental, Energy Concerns

One of the solutions could be something parts of the Middle East began adopting decades ago: desalination plants, an energy-intensive process of converting seawater into drinking water.

Meeting California’s water needs might not help combat the effect of global warming, but an ample supply of water would at least help keep back the dry conditions from around residential communities, and it would help the state’s massive agricultural industry meet its own water needs.

Currently California is building the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere in Carlsbad. At a cost of $1 billion, the plant will produce 50 million gallons a day for San Diego County by 2016. The plant, and others like it in California, use reverse osmosis technology, which uses less energy than the thermal desalination process of evaporating and re-condensing seawater. Fourteen other desalination plants are in the works. Critics say the process is too costly.

"This [Carlsbad project] is going to be the pig that will try for years to find the right shade of lipstick," Marco Gonzalez, an attorney who sued on behalf of environmental groups that tried to halt construction, told the San Jose Mercury News last month. "This project will show that the water is just too expensive."

“As the cost of imported water is on the rise and technological advances are bringing down the cost of converting seawater into potable water, desalination has become the only truly drought-proof process to deliver a new source of clean, safe, high-quality water in a cost-effective and environmentally sound way,” Allan Zaremberg, president and CEO of the California Chamber of Commerce, wrote in a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times recently.

[Aria]

Why would they want that? It would mean the rich liberals would have to pay ALL the taxes and they’d have no one to do their mid-level work for them, the programming, the accounting, etc.

[Mike Darancette]

Since so much of the population is on the coast desalinization is a natural for California. No reason not to drive the plants with solar or wind power (or both) since 24 hour a day operation is not necessary.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

Red River and the Mississippi...large pipelines...bring that water into the Colorado and the arid southwest

You want to pump water over the Continental Divide?

[HangnJudge]

Or drop a pipe into a nice, big, high altitude lake, Yellowstone 7700’ so pumping is not an issue, siphoning will work just fine, run the pipe down Jackson Hole, across Wyoming into a tributary of the Colorado river.

Just ignore that volcano under the lake

[Mike Darancette]

How are they going to power these science miracle plants?

They are a natural for wind and solar power, maybe even thorium reactors. You could also take power from the grid during off hours.

[TauntedTiger]

I agree, manmade droughts are real.

[denydenydeny]

Critics say the process is too costly.

Say the people trying to inflict gigantic new energy costs on taxpayers and consumers.

[pterional]

The bottom line is there is way too many people living in California and in the San Joaquin valley. They are actually moving the poor to Fresno from LA and the Bay area which is another story .
You look over the San Joaquin valley and you see a sprawling population with lush landscaping and you know all good things must come to an end. Living here in Fresno I can see the trees and private landscaping is stressed and dying in the 108 degree sun. Now we can only water twice a week which I expect most yards will die. The water source for Fresno is ground water which is technically a non renewable resource. The water table has gone from 60 feet in the 1930’s to 250 feet, dropping several feet a year and is even much deeper in other parts of the valley.

Yesterday they stopped the flow of canal water out to the farms which seems earlier than previous years. If we get another year like this, Agriculture will be gone in the valley and so will America's most important bread basket.

[MSF BU]

Unlike the other two, thorium reactors are not a joke and the Chinese fortunately are doing their best to perfect the technology.

[kabar]

There are 38 million people in CA compared to 6 million in Israel. And Israel is a much smaller size in area, which makes it easier to move the water around to where it is needed.

Desalinization isn't cheap and it is energy intensive. And you need to build the infrastructure to distribute the water. The taxpayer/consumer will face a larger bite in an already overtaxed state. And I wonder how agriculture will deal with the increased costs of doing business.

[C210N]

California MUST have desalination plants. How else can they avoid being flooded by rising sea levels due to GlowBull warming, if they don’t drain seawater? This is the perfect solution... remove seawater on the Calif. coast, divert that freshwater inland, lowers the seas by the coast offsetting its rise.

Trick question for Lieberals: If the water on the California seacoast is lowered, could the differential in weight of all the seawater elsewhere make CA tip over?

[rottndog]

Desalinization will help, but there is actually plenty of water in California over the long haul. The problem is most of it flows out to sea in the heavy rain years. With adequate infrastructure, far more of it can be captured and moved back upstream to the reservoir system rather than let it go to waste.

This could all be accomplished with a fraction of what the idiots want to spend on high speed rail.

[kabar]

Desalination plants a pricey option if drought persists

Seventeen plants are in planning stages along the coast to convert salt water from the ocean or bays, including one near Concord that would serve every major water agency in the Bay Area.

That plant is tentatively targeted to open in 2020, but could be kick-started earlier in an emergency, officials say - and once online, would gush at least 20 million gallons a day of drinkable water.

Starting up this string of desalination plants would be no easy skate, though. Machines that filter salt out of water still face the same opposition they have for generations from critics who say they are too expensive to run, kill fish as they suck in briny water, and spew greenhouse gases into the air from the energy they require to run.

But in recent years, as technology and techniques for desalination have improved, such plants have gained momentum - enough so that in Carlsbad near San Diego, the biggest desalination facility in the Western Hemisphere is under construction and set to begin operation in two years.

During the last major California drought, from 1985 to 1991, there was enough interest in desalination that a large plant was built to serve Santa Barbara. But it was promptly mothballed after being finished in 1992. By then, with the drought over, water from traditional sources was again about two-thirds cheaper than the $3,000 per acre-foot it cost to produce the plant's water.

An acre-foot is equivalent to one acre covered by water 1 foot deep, enough to supply two families of four for a year.

That cost gap has narrowed, however. With better screens and technology that helps the plants power themselves by recycling the energy used to suck in water - in a way, like a hybrid car regenerates power from its own motion - the typical cost of running desalination plants can dip below $2,000 an acre-foot. Because pulling up groundwater from wells and recycling water can now cost the same or more, desalination is suddenly relatively affordable for many areas - such as the Bay Area.

Surface water from reservoirs and mountain runoff, in plentiful years, can be as cheap as $100 an acre-foot. But that bargain has become scarce in the drought.

[allendale]

It can be done using the power from gas that is currently being burned off to power the pumps. But it will never be allowed by the EPA.

[hoosierham]

My thought exactly;desalination powered by nuclear plants.And then California could stop stealing water from the interior.

[Captain Peter Blood]

If your going to do that then use Thorium Reactors.

[Vendome]

Should have been doing De-Sal twenty years ago.

[Hotlanta Mike]

How are they going to power these science miracle plants? With wine and cheese farts from San Francisco?

---

With wind turbines and solar panels of course...

[Lockbox]

Why not just buy Great Lakes water like China?

http://www.westernjournalism.com/obamas-blessing-nations-water-supply-disappearing/

[ApplegateRanch]

If I lived in a desert, I’d prefer the train, so I could get out. LOL

If I wanted to stay, the train could bring me tanker cars of water, and clean unicorn farts for carbon-free fuel.
It could also bring me stowaway illegals to work for me, and keep up the golf course and resort.
The tanker cars of water would keep the everything green and growing; the unicorn farts would power the A/C and hotel for rich progressive environmentalist coming for the regular conferences to discuss energy and water conservation for everyone else.

/sarc