Decision looms for controversial Poseidon desalination plant
latimes.com
latimes.com
California environmentalism has been finely crafted by its boomer/hippie inventors as a way to stop everything, but that needs to shift into a mindset of building the large-scale projects we are going to need to face climate change: a huge amount of solar and wind, numerous desalination stations, many storage projects since we are losing the snowpack, etc.
So here's my question: why are we considering making consumers pay for expensive desalinated drinking water instead of diverting snowmelt to drinking water? What we're effectively doing is using expensive desalination for agriculture and making consumers pay for it.
And before anyone says "we need food" well... yes and no. Different types of food require different amounts of water. A decade ago California farmers were exporting almonds and alfalfa to China. Why? Both are water-intensive crops (eg almonds require ~1 gallon of water each; for reference a person only needs 0.5 gallons a day).
Not one mention of agriculture or snow in this article.
(other posters call this calamity by it's legal name, "water rights".)
Water rights are a thing. In order to divert that water, it would essentially be eminent domain, and you'd have to compensate farmers. It wouldn't just be the dollar amount for wholesale water, it'd be what it does to the value of the land, too. You could see farmland go from $30,000 per acre to $5,000.
There are also second-order economic effects. It could cause a dust bowl-like recession in the central valley. And then you run into all the other crops that are grown there. Expect peaches and melons to double in price.
The thing is, peaches, melons, etc aren't going to double in price. Just stop growing alfala: https://ucmanagedrought.ucdavis.edu/Agriculture/Crop_Irrigat... It's worth little but it's "the largest agricultural user in California" because their water is free.
Are you in favor of that approach to land tenure? If not, why would water rights be different?
I think your usage of the word "solution" here is also at odds with common usage.
ehh, property rights here sorta did come out of colonization, much of the land was bought from communities who didn't have a concept of private property.
it's not a technical issue of legality, it's that this was unjust and wrong.
> Now this obviously would open a whole different can of worms
potentially undermining the legal and economic foundation of contemporary tribal sovereignty, for one.
Perhaps that indicates that the more palatable solution would be a tax on the exercise of water rights.
Land is not.
https://modernfarmer.com/2015/03/california-farmers-are-sell...
You try to change this system and you'll open a _huge_ can of worms for all of the US west of the Minnesota to Louisiana border, the legal fights would consume the relevant courts for decades. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_law_in_the_United_States and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_right for a start.
Hetting worse with clumate change
This is just one of many examples where a "can was kicked down the road" for future politicians and the people they rule over to deal with, this mess was made certain in the 1960s. The unfalsifiable concept of climate change has nothing to do with it, except that the climate cycles were well known long ago.
More recently it's been discovered this is at least partly linked to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o%E2%80%93Southern_...
"During El Niño events, increased precipitation is expected in California due to a more southerly, zonal, storm track. During La Niña, increased precipitation is diverted into the Pacific Northwest due to a more northerly storm track."
We realized El Niño was a thing no later than the 19th Century, and per a Wikipedia skim evidence has been found for the cycle going back at least 10,000 years.
Blaming the urban population "skyrocketing" for contention of water usage is ridiculous. 80% of water used by humans in California is used by agriculture.
It's about the same share as 1970: cities have increased water consumption slightly (despite a doubling of the population, urban water use has also gotten significantly more efficient), but farmers have also moved towards more water intensive crops... keeping the shares about the same.
Meanwhile, farming's share of California's GDP has halved.
Dual-use agriculture + solar PV farms should get priority for water. PV can seriously cut evaporation and water loss while also providing power for (eventually) desalination or (immediately) to displace fossil fuel use.
By recent report, almond and pomegranate orchards were being irrigated primarily via stolen water. Cutting that off should be high priority.
Because you find them distasteful? It was the duty of California's political class to continue to provide water for its people and industries, and they decided also for reasons of taste to stop doing that in the 1960s. When Ronald Reagan was governor for eight years, very much a sea change from Jerry Brown's father Pat Brown who was governor from 1959-67 and previous governors and legislators (Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" at the time replaced Reagan).
> Dual-use agriculture + solar PV farms should get priority for water. PV can seriously cut evaporation and water loss while also providing power for (eventually) desalination or (immediately) to displace fossil fuel use.
This whole topic is about how desalination is not being allowed to alleviate one part of California's water shortages and we can assume in other locations (who else is going to even try after this debacle?). Solar provides neither baseline or peaking power, so if you want real power from it you've got to add $$$ storage systems. Also not sure how you can capture the sun's light for PVs and provide it to growing plants at the same time; what I was able to dig up searching just now is "use on marginal land" and other half measures.
California is demonstrably not interested in reducing fossil fuel use when it's forced or is forcing all its nuclear plants to shut down. One article I read not long ago credibly claimed a lack of serious power after the last plant shuts down soon may make it generally impossible to lift water to get to the LA region I think it was.
If you chose to deny any of these points, doing the math first will make your case more convincing, if you ignore science and engineering realities, as discussed elsewhere in this subthread you'll hit the brick was of the laws of nature.
But until we have enough renewable overcapacity to meet demand and also charge up storage, any storage built out would sit empty. You get far more generating capacity for the dollar from renewables than any other means, so that is the obvious place to put money just now.
When the time for it does come, the storage will be radically cheaper. Just now, the utility-scale iron-air battery factories are under construction, to be ready for that time. There are dozens of other energy storage options. All of them work, so the only uncertainty is which will end up cheapest, or most useful. Synthetic ammonia and hydrogen have the advantage that they are exportable, so 100% of your overcapacity after filling local tankage generates revenue, an advantage over other modes. California has dozens (hundreds?) of existing high-altitude reservoirs that could be used cheaply for pumped hydro with minor retrofits.
California is very aggressively adding renewable generation capacity to displace fossil fuel, so the accusation of "not interested" falls flat. Nukes are not being "forced" down: Diablo Canyon, e.g., will cost $2B to refurbish, but that $2B would pay for more renewable power than Diablo Canyon could produce, and then Diablo Canyon would continue sucking down money to operate that solar would not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect
That other parts of California's economy have gotten really big, high tech rather obviously for the HN crowd, doesn't mean its agriculture sector has become less important for the US and the world. Something we're going to become generally well acquainted with as fertilizer price rises due to unrelated political polices decease yields all over the place.
If they've indeed moved towards more water intensive crops, that doesn't change the terms of the original compact made with them and the urbanites that allowed these water systems to be built in the first place. If the rule of law still means something, as noted elsewhere taking their water rights away will not be cheap as it's a "taking" as used in the Bill of Rights, and our diets are going to change as these "more water intensive crops" are no longer available or at their usual prices.
E.g. urban water use was about 6 million acre feet in 1970 and is about 8 million acre feet now-- +33%, but a small share of the total. Agricultural water use was about 30 million acre feet in 1970 and is about 37 million acre feet now-- +23%.
So, agricultural uses of water have increased a big fraction of urban increases on a percentage basis, and 3.5 times as much on an absolute basis.
> If they've indeed moved towards more water intensive crops
Almonds have grown from 100 million pounds a year in 1970 to 3.1 billion pounds in 2020-- +3000%. This is a change in allocation that no one rational would make with the scarcity of water in California, but artificially cheap agricultural water encourages it.
> as noted elsewhere taking their water rights away will not be cheap as it's a "taking" as used in the Bill of Rights
While occasionally a court has agreed with this argument, for the most part federal judges have rejected this line of argument.
If you're open to naked theft as so much of the US and world is today, that's going to have long term consequences you won't like. Water rights are a real thing in US jurisprudence, their abrogation by Federal judges, especially I assume in the 9th Circuit doesn't make them any less so. As I said, "if the rule of law still means something...."
So, uh, I don't think that property rights should extend to a large share of all water produced in the state in perpetuity. It's been bad law from the beginning and we should not be stuck with it forever. Fortunately, California never really went down this path.
In California, the State Water Resources Control Board issues water right permits, and can modify them. They have a "senior interest" in property law to the individual holders of these permits.
Of course, snatching back water rights isn't necessary for sanity to prevail. All that has to happen is the state needs to start moving to charging a true market cost for agricultural water use, and this is well within the state's taxation powers. One of the most commonly agreed legitimate uses of governmental power is to allocate the cost of externalities.
Also, farmers are already not getting any state water. Guess who has to cut back next?
From a disaster planning standpoint, having a water source that doesn't depend on rain or snowfall is important for reducing risk. Cities can afford this and it's worth doing because they don't have the option of not planting in a dry year.
(Also, if you care about housing, the lack of water is sometimes used to oppose new projects.)
San Diego is doing a lot better than LA in part due to their desalination plant.
This always blows my mind (when I think about it). Driving through that region of CA is really jarring because you can see all the ag work being done in the middle of the desert.. I’ve made the drive between LA and Seattle a number of times and I’m always shocked to see fruits and nuts being grown in such a counterintuitive location. I don’t know much of anything about optimal/suboptimal locations for growing these things, but it sure doesn’t seem like a great use of water. I wonder how much water is wasted just due to the climate in the area.
https://www.amazon.com/Dreamt-Land-Chasing-Across-California...
What’s your point?
To determine the impact of almond growing on the water supply you have to follow the water, not the almond, and see where it goes. 99.97% of that water ends up somewhere other than the almond. The net water impact of growing almonds depends greatly on how much of that 99.97% ends up someplace useful.
Because the correct answer--"Shut down agribusiness in the Central Valley"--is politically infeasible.
So, we will continue on this path until the aquifers are completely pumped out by the big agribusinesses who will then abandon the Central Valley to its collapse.
This is simply wrong, by a lot. Americans use about 100 gallons/day of water per person on average, including things like toilets, showers, etc. Maybe we don’t “need” to use that much (whatever “need” is supposed to mean) but it’s the way people live, which is not going to change any time soon.
Even just considering drinking this is wrong. Adult men should drink close to a gallon a day, women somewhat less.
He's talking minimal human survival. Though that depends on temperatures, body weight and activity level:
http://www.aircav.net/survival/asch13/fig13-2.gif
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f2/e1/22/f2e122972c93b1f2a67e...
Anyway, I don't know anything about almonds. I do remember seeing the pecan orchards in New Mexico flooded 2 feet deep in an area where most people didn't even attempt a lawn or any gardening that didn't involve cactus. And the dairies. Dairy cows take a lot of feed and water to be productive. Traditionally you'd find cows like the Texas Longhorn in the area, not Holsteins. Apparently land is cheap enough there that folks from California buy it up and use it for ag that would be much more at home in East Texas or Georgia than the desert. Meanwhile the Rio Grande dries up most years now and the native fish only survive due to captive breeding and constant reintroductions.
Also incorrect. Humans need to drink about 0.7 gallons PER DAY. To grow, an almond needs 1 gallon PER YEAR. (I'm guessing almond trees produce nuts once per year.) Point is they're different units, by a lot.
Ignoring the reality of how modern humans live sanitary lives is quite silly. Without lots of clean water to wash things, people live miserable lives - this is a focus of much NGO work.
A more reasonable analysis would conclude that a typical 1st world person's water consumption is equivalent to a hundred almonds per day. Per day.
Agriculture does seem kind of important...
I find the opposition to be shortsighted. I feel like we are rapidly approaching the point where we should be beginning the work on the last resorts while also continuing to work on the other options like recycling, etc.
Especially given today’s article in latimes about parts of socal requiring max of 85 gallons daily. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-30/can-you-...
A better solution is direct solar thermal desalination, and flushing at night. Brine might also be drained to the Salton Sea.
(Dual-use generates power, and also increased ag yield, reduced water loss, and more PV efficiency.)
$2,710 per acre-foot is $2 per cubic meter or $0,01 per gallon.
But it's not profitable for regular crops:
Crops need about 700mm of water [1], so 0.7m, which is $1.4 per square meter.
Maize/corn can be sold for $0.13 per square meter [2]. However, other crops like lavender can be sold for $5 per square meter.
The price of desalination must be energy bound. Does this mean that in coastal deserts, when renewable energy brings energy prices down to 1/10, it starts being profitable to grow regular crops with desalinated water?
[1] http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/content/water-requirement-differ... [2] https://entrepreneur-360.com/most-profitable-crops-9945
By the way, thanks for running the numbers. I checked them, amd they are correct, with the small observation that recently the pricd of corn has gone up more than twice.
$1,000,000,000 / (50,000,000 gallons * 365 days per year * 20 years) = $0.00273972602 per gallon.
Please. The objections are largely the usual NIMBY types and concerns.
There is a lot of inane nimby stuff mixed in with reasonable concerns. For instance owners of hobby horse ranches in the San Gabriels suing to stop the California's high speed rail's plans to run a tunnel 1000+ feet under their property. Opposition to desalinization is like that.