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Comment by Victerius | Hacker News Reader

The state needs to start overruling the local NIMBYs and build the desal plants the rest of the state needs.

And the regulators need to chill out: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-reject...

We don't need desal, we have plenty of water for people to live here. The vast majority of water goes to agriculture. If we were just a bit more selective in what we farmed, we could reduce our water usage by a significant amount.

> If we were just a bit more selective in what we farmed, we could reduce our water usage by a significant amount.

If California had spent the last 20 years (let alone 50) building out desal plants, we wouldn't need to be selective.

> We don't need desal, we have plenty of water for people to live here.

For how long?

Why are you advocating for scarcity? Scarcity causes conflict. We live in a world where we don't have to fear scarcity. Why not advocate for desal AND better water use?

"We have enough water, we just need to stop growing food and starve instead."

I mean, yes, but no. We could cut on beef, I agree with that, but then the electorate will be enraged at their expensive steaks.

Dryer places don't starve. But they don't export almonds.

No, just stop growing stuff we can't eat or stuff we export. And then water more efficiently with drip. This is so wildly wrong. Alfalfa is useless.

States with plenty of water could grow some of the crops.

San Diego got its desal plant in the husk of an old coal plant, and it has been the GREATEST thing. We are much closer to water independence than anyone else in the state and not having to listen about constant drought nagging has been FANTASTIC

strong agree! it comes out to just about 7% of the total water though doesn't it?

Is it really that little? The last few droughts to roll through California have been a non-issue. But maybe that's because domestic (non-agricultural) water consumption is like 5% of total water use

Yup! It's actually 8% according to a recent NYTimes article about the plant https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/us/san-diego-drinking-wat...

It's not really the NIMBYs, it's the Coastal Commission which has a singular mission to protect the coasts no matter the larger big picture issues that keeps killing desal plants.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Coastal_Commissio...

My thought about that is the coastal commission needs to think hard because decisions like that are likely to result in their power being curtailed.

> keeps killing desal plants.

and diablo canyon nuclear plant, too.

Desal could be run in a less energy efficient manner that reduced the salinity of the discharge water, but my understanding is that as far as the coastal commission is concerned no amount is acceptable.

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