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Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

True, but it seems like it's only a matter of time then.

What can you call a chronic 20 year drought when it stretches to 40 years?

Agreed. We don't know the consequences of pushing Mountain West aquifers the way we have. There is good evidence we are pulling out more than is replenished and therefore are incurring a deficit.

What's more, we tend to think of the "West" as "won" but these states are mostly still growing as part of the American Westward expansion. A lot of Western State land only became easily accessible with the completion of the interstates in the 1960s 1970s and even 1980s. Therefore, the material abundance necessary for truly large scale populations to live in comfort has only come to these places in the last 40 years. This has caused a consistent population boom in some places which is not yet tapering and will lead to increased stress on these resources.

Fortunately (except for lawns and the like) water isn't destroyed or lost. Cities can take the output of their sewer systems and put it right back into the water towers. No city does that today, but only because the thought grosses people out, the water is safe and clean enough that they could.

At a cost, cheaper to just get fresh water I would imagine

In the US at least if you are not treating it to drinkable the epa will stop you. Though where the epa tests is important, some times that means after it percolate through soil.

You do loose some of the bacteria, minerals, and trace elements though. But then again, those can be put back in with some ease. The problem comes when, like in Flint, the government decides to do really dumb stuff. I would not put it past some idiotic council to just pump raw sewage back into the water supply to save a dollar.

I wonder if anyone has done an estimate of water losses in a home/day to evaporation (e.g. toilet bowl evaporation, humidifiers, drying laundry, drying dishes, etc.).

R/O is expensive. Tons of opportunities in the average home for re-use. Can use that shower/sink/laundry/dish water for toilets. A selective automatic bypass system could save the (mostly soapless) water to replace plant/garden watering (though that’s evaporation!).

A fairly large amount across a whole city, but compared to the amount of water run down the drain after use not a lot. Makeup water is needed for sure. However watering the lawn is one of the few that are significant enough to matter.

We don't do it directly, but there are certainly municipal water supplies that are downstream of other town's waste water treatment plants.

>What's more, we tend to think of the "West" as "won" but these states are mostly still growing as part of the American Westward expansion. A lot of Western State land only became easily accessible with the completion of the interstates in the 1960s 1970s and even 1980s.

On the one hand, this is true in a literal sense. On the other, there are as many people (~20M) in the SoCal triangle southwest of the Transverse Ranges as there are in the remainder of the Colorado and Great Basins (NV+AZ+UT+CO = ~20M) combined, yet we continue to ship water from Lake Mead and Owens Lake to Los Angeles. Improving the situation in California would take a lot of stress off of everyone else.

A liberal conspiracy /s

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