Dumb question, why doesn't California invest in desalination plants? I know they're expensive and complex. But Israel and Singapore have several of them running, if they can do it California should be able too.
The progressive wing is against desalination plants and dams. They say that they are anti environment. They push for conservation.
The problem is that since 80% of the water is used by agriculture all the conservation efforts won't be enough. You can't reapportion the water because of water rights. The agricultural interests won't give up theirs.
Thus you end up doing nothing much and hoping for rainy seasons.
Other longstanding California issues: wildfires, insufficent power generation, bad schools, expensive housing.
Yes absolutely, flooding a huge area for a dam can potentially destroy habitat for both humans and animals and will create greenhouse gases from dying plant matter and such. Agreed. What is the alternative? Burn a bunch of coal? That btw does the same but is not renewable. Look up "Garzweiler 2" in Germany.
Wind is curious. Destroying the view? Really? You care about 30 wind turbines destroying the view more than coal combustion particles in the air killing people slowly and painfully? That said, if you look at the "total possible wind capacity" in Germany for example it is laughable compared to the energy needs. As in the solar potential at max built out capacity ignoring all 'view' concerns is in the low Gigawatthours territory. Energy consumption in Germany is in the hundreds of Terwatthours. As in over 500 TWh, so over 500000 GWh. Installable wind capacity less than 15 GWh with estimates around half of that actually usable due to 'view concerns' and such. Other countries will have better ratios for sure.
Map of general area and power plants
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler#/media/Datei:Rheini...
How the updraft of one such power plant looks from the air
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:FrimmersdorfWolke.JPG
Memories from around 30 years ago have them always soaring there.
This is the case for most developed areas.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-water-st...
https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system...
I tried to find it quickly but can't. I seem to remember hearing on the radio about some 100 year contract to sell water cheaply from BC or Alberta to CA. So potentially it's one of those scrapped plans or maybe they figured how bad the plan was just buried it. I can easily find propaganda trying to co Vince us that Canada has so much water and that it magically renews itself that it would be stupid not to sell it. Over and over.
Which is in stark contrast to my experience here. We have had less and less snow in recent years. We've had rivers running lower. We've had watering bans and lawns looking like we are in Arizona (yes, an exeggeration to make a point) more often in recent years. This year is an exception with more normal sun/rain cycles returning after a really dry spring (lawns recovered - who cares - some crops not so much, other are doing much better than in recent years)
That's a gasoline price, but don't they typically pump crude through pipelines? So more like $1.50 a gallon, based on my calculations.
I suppose if they built such a pipeline, they'd have to charge a lot more than 2-3 a gallon for the water. Though as a project, it seems less ambitious than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Tran....
Edit: I wonder if this was the (defunct) North American plan that was being referred to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Pow...
(this is old stuff, what I remember from the radio was pre-pandemic drive to the office radio reporting of recent events at the time)
[0]: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-water-scarcity-increases-d...
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545...
I think some context can be helpful here. As a nation, we're happy -- hell, our elites (yes, we on HN) practically begged -- to spend $6.4 trillion dollars over 20 years to have fun foreign adventures in the sand, playing guardian of freedom and feeling real nice about it [1].
$1bn for 7% of the water needs for a major (and growing) US metro area sounds like a bargain to me. For a measly $14bn we'd cover the whole city. Defund the Pentagon, turn it into a WeWork, and let's do fun, neat stuff with our civilization. If we're gonna throw piles of money at things with low ROI, why not throw it at fusion and desalination instead of drone striking children at Pakistani weddings? 100% sincere here, not being cheeky.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/desalination-advances-calif...