Posted on 04/25/2015 7:34:42 AM PDT by Mean Daddy
As surely as the hot, dry Santa Ana winds bring blue skies to the coast and wildfires to the hills, severe California droughts bring calls to build desalination plants up and down the seashore.
All that ocean water, begging to be converted to fresh and pumped into our pipelines, would solve our water supply problems instantly and permanently, boosters say. In the coming months, the drumbeat will only get louder.
That's not only because the current drought is the longest and most severe in memory, but because a $1-billion desalination project scheduled to start operating in Carlsbad this fall will be attracting lots of attention. The plant, the largest of its kind in the U.S., is designed to provide San Diego County with about 50 million desalinated gallons a day, about 7% of its water needs.
"A lot of people are watching what's going to happen in Carlsbad," says Peter MacLaggan, the executive overseeing the project for its developer, privately held Poseidon Water. "They're going to base their future decisions on the success of this project."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Cargill should buy a plant, sell the fresh water to Silicon Valley and use the effluent to make salt. I bet it would be the equivalent of the concentration levels from the 51,100 acres of salt ponds they lost to the EPA...
Desalination is something that will help. That is why the left is against it.
Yup. They attack this as too costly but have no problem with public transit that is more expensive than most any other option.
If the LA Times is against it then it must work.
One of the progressives favorite words is “sustainability”.
The current population is not sustainable in a desert state like California. Perhaps we should send a few million back to Mexico?
So why not just salt water aqueduct to the desalination plants located a mile or whatever inshore. Minimal view spoilage.
Liberals can’t be concerned about 10 years solutions but push solutions for global warming effects that even they claim are 100 years in future.
They’re still after the Klamath farmers? Thought American Rivers and Nature Conservancy had bought up the place to sell some to the gov to recoup costs and the rest to members to hobby farm.
Liberals can’t be concerned about 10 years solutions but push solutions for global warming effects that even they claim are 100 years in future.
Bingo!
Israel’s plants, that they invested in YEARS ago, are now beginning to produce precious water.
If they don’t want water from the Pacific, build a pipeline from Lake Superior.
All I know is I don’t want the fruits and nuts moving east when they run out of water. We don’t want them here.
Deporting the millions of illegals who use water would solve the other half of the problem.
Libs cannot think straight. You are so right. This same lib that sees all the things wrong with desalination, has undoubtedly written favorably about the 7 billion dollar high-speed train to nowhere that California is building.
I wonder, which project is more important to their lifestyle? I guess it depends on whether you are of the ruling class or not.
Oldplayer
The writer is a liberal idiot. The real solution is cheap 4th generation nuclear plants combined with desalinization. Just won’t happen in California.
A pipeline would kill millions of spotted darter snails.
Must not be any clear way to divert any of the money to major Democrat contributors, unlike the high-speed rail plan which would take just as long.
The Left doesn’t quite have a policy or slogans on desalinization yet - but you can see it being formed.
The answer will be “No” and “it won’t solve anything.”
He is referencing older technology. Reverse osmosis does indeed consume a lot of energy. However there is a newer technology using nanotube filters, which will only pass through water and molecules smaller than water. It uses about 1/3rd the energy of reverse osmosis, is scalable, and is low maintenance.
As such, instead of a giant desalination plant, they could have dozens of much smaller plants producing far more potable water.
“And besides, If more water is available it will just attract more people to California. “
Actually, what has happened is that more water being made available has opened up more acreage to farming. While there is no question that the population has doubled here since any new water storage facilities have been built, it’s agriculture that’s the gorilla in the room. No farming, plenty of water for people. Big AG here pays off the government so they can continue to use old, intensive water use farming methods and grow water-intesive crops because they make a lot of money, while we residents flush our toilets with our bath water. Blame Brown and the RATs.
I was wondering how the one in Tampa was working. I know several years ago when they were trying to get it online they were having a lot of problems, but I hadn’t heard anything about it recently.
Looks like liberal politicians aren’t getting enough kick backs.
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