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 ...
This could all be solved by installing another 5,000 windmills.
“I’ve never heard any desalination proponent claim that desal would “instantly” solve the water shortage.”
I have not either and the BS meter went off instantly.
I guess the LIBERAL answer is: “Let everyone dies of thirst until they figure out a NEW TAX to stop it.”
Israel is a desert and it uses desalination plants to provide water and it has some of the best agricultural products in the world growing there. Truly a land of milk and honey thanks to those plants.
It’s bad enough that California has become the only place in the civilized world where its residents are prohibited from taking leisurely showers, it’s also becoming a place where its residents have virtually no hope that its many growing crises will be solved.
This article shows that California’s environmental fanatics have taken on a new cause — preventing desalination plants from being built, just as environmentalists throughout the country have prevented the X-L pipeline from becoming a reality.
However, the U.S. is not running out of oil, as California is running out of water, so the consequences of allowing the environmentalists to prevail could be catastrophic for California.
First they came for the showers, and we did nothing...
Then they came for the lawn sprinklers, and still we did nothing...
And so on.
Is that desalinization plant in Santa Barbara still operational?
Many decades ago, when the federal money was flowing freely, the Corp of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation were in their peak. There were lots of projects proposed at the time but never went anywhere.
One of these was the Ah Pah dam on the Klamath. There were also 2 more dams on the Colorado river proposed, one being the Bridge Canyon dam. But these would have flooded the Grand Canyon.
The biggest of all the projects was NAWAPA which would bring water from Alaska and British Columbia to the lower 48 and northern Mexico.
Search the internet for more info on these projects.
But the reality is the California voters approved $7.5 billion for solving water problems last Nov and some of that goes to surface water storage projects: Sites Reservoir, Temperance Flat Dam, and raising Shasta dam.
Two years ago, when they were two years into the drought, people scoffed at these expensive solutions. But now, 4 years into the drought, it all seems more reasonable.
De-populate LA. Send ‘em back to Mexico!
The solution is a free market in water. People should pay what it costs to produce with no more subsidies. Every time government gets involved in something, it’s screwed up. As Milton Friedman said, if the government were in charge of deserts, there would soon be a shortage of sand.
You can prove anything by omitting all the data which disproves your point. This guy plays those games.
“Will all you poor, ugly, untalented, resource-snatching people just get the hell out of California!”
Anyone tat came here from the north east in the last 100 years go back to where you came from!
The left does not want development or any modern solutions, period. They want us to die so they can live without us. That’s about it.
It's too far from the ocean...
So put the desalination plants in Arizona. Just don't spoil George Strait's view from his ocean-front property.
Debate with a liberl...
Power it with windmills
-Nope, it will kill the condor and ruin my view of Catalina Island
Power it with wave generators
-Nope it will interfere with the whales
Power it with Solar Panels
-No it will shade the 4 striped desert tortoise
Power it with coal
-ARE YOU KIDDING?
Power it with hydroelectric
-No we need the water for the delta smelt
Eliminate your landscaping
-That’s for little people
The reality is California has just ignored their growth and assumed new toilets and faucet aerators would solve their problems. They need desal powered by cheap nuclear located inland away from the faults. Along with that would need cooling water piped in. While the nuclear plants run at a steady baseload the excess energy is stored by pumping water back in to the dams. There’s no other practical way to store the energy. Any other access electricity is converted to hydrogen and oxygen and stored. There is no political will to get any of this done however so they will just have to wait for the rains to return.
And my two cents. The California Coastal Commission is the biggest collection of crooks and power hungry nazi jerks anywhere in the state.
Too many plants would drain the oceans then we’d be in real trouble........no more sea salt potato chips.
It’s the LAT.
Don’t even think of taking science advice from them.
Oh well, let’t be blunt- you’d be a fool taking ANY advice from a low IQ collection of journalism majors.
Get serious.
I've long advocated wind/solar desalination plants. Not the reverse osmosis type; think lifeboat survival unit writ large. Solar evaporation, wind for pumping and some electrical functions. A goodly number of moderate sized plants vs. a few huge ones.
There are places in the US that flood every year like clockwork. If we're going to consider any kind of pipeline it should be set up to collect excess water from those areas and move it where it is needed. Wind and solar pumping wherever feasible to transport it, too.
Why not just import more illegal aliens? That always seems to be the answer to most problems out there.
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