How an engineer looks at the idea of pumping water from Mississippi to the West
desertsun.com
desertsun.com
And it sounds like the guy's a sane engineer, so he quickly concludes "it's a pipe dream" without needing to get into a bunch of weedy details.
What we should be doing is taxing water heavily with some kind of progressive scale, and a phase-in saying the tax will go up 10% a year to encourage people to invest in efficiency improvements.
We can just stop growing rice in CA entirely and expand a tiny bit more in the south where most rice is grown already.
We can just stop growing (and exporting) alfalfa in California and grow more in other alfalfa producing states with more water available.
There are fruit crops which are important to grow in California, but most of the crops that consume major amounts of water don't need to be grown here at all. It's just not that big of a deal to relocate the vast majority of water consuming crops.
So, in conclusion, CA will: 1. Let the ground water deplete and ground sink 2. Bring in migrant workers from outside / illegally to work the lands 3. Take away water from your showers and toilets
But they will never move these industries out of Central Valley. Now I need to find a public ledger to record my predictions.
So it should be very fixable. Most of the US vegetable crop is grown in California, but there is practically no value in growing other things there.
Most of the alfalfa is exported to feed to foreign animals. In effect we are donating water to those countries.
We need carrots, not just sticks.
To the extent that's true, they are also already grown in those better places. Farmers don't just choose to farm a crop in a bad place when a better place is a available and unused.
> We can just stop growing rice in CA entirely
Why? Rice isn't water intensive (from a consumption point of view). It gets better yield when flooded at the right stages of growth, but it doesn't consume that water, so it's not particularly relevant.
> expand a tiny bit more in the south where most rice is grown already
California grows 19% of the US total rice production, #2 behind Arkansas which grows 49%. There's no “tiny bit more” you squeeze out of anywhere (in the US, at least) that replaces California.
> We can just stop growing (and exporting) alfalfa in California and grow more in other alfalfa producing states with more water available.
Again, California is the #2 state in Alfalfa production. You aren't squeezing a little bit out of other Alfalfa producing states to replace it's output.
Yes, they absolutely do, for two major reasons:
1) To intentionally use water. Water rights are extremely valuable and they are also use it or lose it. It must be wasted on crops or someone else might get it.
2) To capture federal subsidies - the same reason cotton is grown in Arizona. We have many farm subsidies that encourage behaviors we absolutely don't want.
> Why? Rice isn't water intensive (from a consumption point of view).
Yes, it is. More water is consumed growing rice than is used by the entire city of Los Angeles.
> There's no “tiny bit more” you squeeze out of anywhere (in the US, at least) that replaces California.
Of course there is.
> Again, California is the #2 state in Alfalfa production. You aren't squeezing a little bit out of other Alfalfa producing states to replace it's output.
Why not?
California produces these low value, high water consumption crops only because the perverse public policies makes it extremely cheap to do so.
I think you are grossly underestimating the potential capacity in other states. Do you think Texas, Missouri, Nebraska, the Dakotas can't all increase alfalfa production?
You don't even have to drive these industries to zero, or even reduce them much at all. Cut alfalfa alone by 10% and every urban municipality in the state can triple their water usage.
Re-run your numbers.
> Of course there is.
Show me plausible numbers based on available unused land and local yields where this can be done with land that is available without just pushing the same problem elsewhere by displacing other crops.
> > Again, California is the #2 state in Alfalfa production. You aren't squeezing a little bit out of other Alfalfa producing states to replace it's output.
> Why not?
Because the reason California is such a large share of the output is that it has twice the national average yield. And because it is such a large share. And because the other places that are relatively good for alfalfa production are already doing it.
> You don't even have to drive these industries to zero, or even reduce them much at all.
So now you are doing a complete retreat from your argument that we don't need to grow these crops in California st all and it would be easy to replace them in other states? Now your argument is only that maybe we should shave a fraction off the CA production? Well, that gets down to the fundamental problem.
> Cut alfalfa alone by 10% and every urban municipality in the state can triple their water usage.
So, get those urban residents to vote for a ballot measure requiring (and setting the funding mechanism for) the state to pay for the eminent domain costs of condemning the applicable water rights and we can do that.
Because if you are talking about that production decision as a state policy, that's almost certain to be a taking (whether direct or regulatory).
I said this only about rice, and it's absolutely true. It would involve a 20% expansion of production in other states.
> pushing the same problem elsewhere by displacing other crops.
Impossible. Other states do not have drought issues like California. It's simply an issue of perverse economic incentives.
> So now you are doing a complete retreat
No, this is what I've said from the start. It seems you are making unwarranted assumptions.
> So, get those urban residents to vote for a ballot measure requiring (and setting the funding mechanism for) the state to pay for the eminent domain costs of condemning the applicable water rights and we can do that.
Yup, and it will cost less than current water reclamation projects. I'm glad you agree.
But they’re not so I assume that’s not the case.
Honestly this is a problem economics is ultimately best at solving IMO. If water supply does slow then prices will go up and water heavy ag will move away on its own. Honestly I’m not too worried
This is all consequences of utterly insane water allocation policy.
Excellent farmland near cities is turned into housing because that pays better than farming.
The best agriculturally place to grow tomatoes might be Manhattan, but we're not going to knock down the borough to grow tomatoes there.
Now, one may argue that the price includes all of these factors, although that would make the appeal to economics tautological.
Why didn't economics prevent the Dust Bowl? What does economics say about dealing with a new wave of Okies?
My residential water source charges $8/1000 gallons, or about $.30/bbl. Oil is around $100.
My recurring idea to build next and in parallel or under major interstate highways a water way,sewage route and a high speed railway. The availabiliy of water wherever there is a an interstate highway and railway would solve so many problems including housing and it will be an economic boom. Much more land would be habitable and towns would explode. The economic activity generated will offset the costs in a few decades and this can be all powered by a combination of nuclear (water source), hydro (transmission/route/boosting) and wind+solar (anywhere?).
Actually, my idea was to use nuclear power by the pacific coast, desalinate it, deposit the brine in the desert and send the water to reservoir lakes from which my proposed interstate transportation and utility route will be fed. This will then unsher a new era of the megapolis!
Of course I will need become your leader then, naturally! (Jk).
Can someone more sane tell me how crazy this idea is and why it would cost more than the IHS? You can bond out most of the financing because the profit from rail travel, excess power and water would pay of long term bond interests, you wouldn't need to print new money or anything.
The 3,700 ft terminus refers to the surface elevation of Lake Powell ("Lake Power" in the article) when full.
A tunnel 2,000 ft below ground doesn't do any good if you need surface water.
Plants don't grow well in tunnels.
To raise a mass m a height h given the gravity g you need mgh energy.
The minimum energy needed to raise 1 kg 1000 meters given gravity of 10 m/s/s gravity = 10,000 Joules.
It doesn't matter if you raise the water to the top to pour it in at the surface, or send pressurized water out of vents at the bottom of the lake. With the latter, sure, you're putting the water lower down, but that water is pushing other water up and out of the way, so the end result is the same - if you add more water, the water level goes up.
So without the elevation step, this project would drain the lake.
If you are desalinating, you have absolutely no need to run it when the sun is not out. So, use cheap solar. You don't even need photovoltaics; greenhouses suffice. You just need to move the water vapor to someplace cooler to condense out.
Pumping sea water to spread out in a coastal desert to evaporate, so the water vapor is blown up to the mountains and fills reservoirs, would be much cheaper than pumping fresh water up, and would provide hydro power besides.
You might need to bulldoze up the salt once a year.
Takes about 4000 kwh an acre foot. Aqueduct delivers around 3 million acre feet a year. About 1.2 X 10^13 Watt-hours.
If you assume 5.5 hours of sunlight a day, 365 days a year. You get
~6 GW of solar. That's a doable number.
3M acre-ft = 3.7e12 L.
At 2L/kWh, that would seem to take >200 GW 24/7. Kind of makes sense... Who would bother with desalination if a dehumidifier would suffice?
Is 4000 L/kWh for desalination right? Online I find 285 L/kWh for RO, yielding... 6 GW!
So 1.233X10^6 liters/acre-foot divided by 285 L/kWh is 4326 kWh/acre-foot.
Checks out.
I think California announced that shading existing canals with solar, besides cutting millions of gallons of evaporation, would generate 12 GW.
But investors really, really want to put all the panels out in deserts.
Some highlights:
- “When floods, tornadoes hit the Midwest, the West helps pay. So why can't we have some water?”: https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/readers/2022/07/17/w...
- “If California comes for Midwest water, we have plenty of dynamite in Minnesota”: https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/readers/2022/07/11/i...
- “If Midwest doesn't want to share water, fine. But don't ask us for help with your problems”: https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/readers/2022/07/22/i...
There are so many letters, and it’s kinda fun to watch. That said, I feel a profound sadness that so many people cannot envision any solution to unsustainable water practices other than “just give us your water.”
Agricultural practices in the west simply cannot continue; and truly arid desert regions (for example, Las Vegas) simply must adapt. We cannot divert more water to solve the problems - the crisis today shows exactly why that’s not the right answer.
It amounts to running a big dehumidifier. You would of course only need to run the system when the panels and turbines are producing, so opex is close to zero.
Agriculture is the problem. Arizona shows us that cities can be very water lean.