In California, a Race to Capture the Water Before It Escapes
wsj.com
wsj.com
Hopefully the underground aquifers can start filling back up too, not just the reservoirs like Tahoe. That's where a lot of the other agriculture water comes from, being pumped up out of the ground. Unfortunately, it takes years of consistent water to refill the underground stores.
It's worse than this. Some of California's Central Valley aquifers are porous clay. When you drain it beyond a certain point, the clay collapses and cannot be refilled.
Complete anecdote, I have a relative in California whose well has ran dry. They are trying to find the money and motivation to dig a new well, but it's a dilemma, like if the next well runs dry in a few years too.
The California water situation is really scary right now, even with the high levels of reservoirs mentioned in the article. Those high levels and recent storms are likely going to quell the urgency of the discussion, which is maybe the most unfortunate thing to come from all of the recent weather.
The California Central Valley water situation is scary. It's Easter Island playing out in real time--the agribusinesses will continue sucking everything up until it finally hits the wall and collapses.
Desalinization will cover the people near the coasts.
Pistachios will probably go away. Beef will get more expensive. Rock and astroturf will replace lawns.
The real problem is the social strife from all the incumbents that believe somehow they are entitled to not adapting.
What about filling the underground aquifers faster by digging a hole to connect a pipe to the aquifer then pressure-pumping water into it?
and, the South is moving North.. look at all that desert area nearby.. Los Angeles looking at you
Cows don't like new food. That's one of the problems. Once a farmer starts feeding a cow alfalfa, the cows are afraid of trying other alternatives. So the farmer has to start early and break with tradition. It's a hard problem.
Also, cows/alfa or almonds is a false dichotomy, so defending almonds by citing cows doesn't make sense. Almond farming in California should be banned and not replaced with more cows/alfa, since that would obviously defeat the point. The point is for Californian agriculture to use less water, not shuffle the water use around, least of all to other crops which aren't necessary to keep humans fed (e.g. staple crops, of which nether of these are.)
So a Californian farmer grows a watermelon that when ripe contains, say, 3 liters of water in it. If that watermelon is then sold to China, 3 liters of water have been removed from California. If it's instead sold in Fresno, then that water remains in the California system.
I wouldn't call it waste, I would call it subsidy. Price water and let people make decisions on how valuable the water is instead of subsidizing private consumption.
I understand there is a lot of political pressure against desalinization plants in California but I never understood why? These are used effectively in other countries including the border country Mexico. The source is the essentially infinite and steady supply of ocean water, which would seem to be a clear win, right?
The arguments against desalinization in California have only been hyperbolic and devoid of facts. i.e. "environmental disaster!", "unsustainable stop gap!"
What are the environmental concerns at play that seem to be hyper specific to the California coast and no other coastal country employing these processes?
Same up river from California on the Colorado (Utah, New Mexico, Arizona) as well so it's not like changing industrial or residential consumption by even 50% makes a dent. Limiting or taxing export of water intensive agriculture (alfalfa, rice) would though!
Edit: Too many people are responding to this comment with the argument ocean is big, a little bit of salt water doesn’t change anything. That is not what the ecological damage is about. Think of this as a dropping ice cubes in a bathtub scenario. The overall the bathtub water isn’t going to cool down a lot, but the water around the ice will be very cold. And that is the problem. Oceans are sensitive and hyper local problems can have devastating effects across the globe. If there was a technology to uniformly distribute the brine across the ocean, then we would be fine, but until then, “the ocean is big” is not a great argument.
Again, seems like a solvable problem with minimal incremental infrastructure (particularly given the overall cost of desalination plants with adequate urban capacity).
The local increase of salinity can made arbitrarily close to the local salinity by pre mixing it with an appropriate amount of water
Now you could argue you could dilute the release water, but then why desalinate?
....because you dilute brine with seawater so its a simple and (overall) energetically cheap solution.
You can mix the brine into treated sewage.
Nothing if you appropriately dilute it or a some very localized damage
Where do you think the water that forms the runoff comes from? Rain. Rain from where? Clouds. Clouds from where? The ocean is a significant source of rainwater.
Where do you think the water goes when the river takes it to the ocean? Well, goes back into the ocean.
How many gallons of water does the ocean have? Trillions? A few million will not measurably increase the salt content of the ocean. And, because it's a cycle, it already happens naturally.
So keep the cycle going. Guide the cycle to be more useful to us.
Capturing “every drop” of run off is likewise environmentally damaging to all kinds of watershed ecosystems if done in a blunt thoughtless manner.
I just don’t get it.
The cost of desalinated water in California exceeds the market rate, so nobody in the state wants to pay for more expensive water. What they do want is for someone else to pay the bill for them. This is a purely self serving goal and it sets off political fights with the people who don't want to pay for someone else's water.
In places where the market rate for water is higher (Israel), or where the cost of energy is lower (Saudi Arabia), then the situation would be different but in California it is just about trying to get more benefits stuff from the government.
The market price for water in CA is artificially low, in my view. Many corporate users are effectively subsidized with fixed or below-cost supply. Nestle, for example, was taking 58m gallons/year (about 25x its land allocation) from streams in the San Bernadino forest to bottle as Arrowhead water until the state intervened in 2021: https://www.ecowatch.com/california-nestle-water-public-land...
Your dismissive comment that 'it is just about trying to get more benefits stuff from the government' should equally be applied to incumbent market actors if you wish to be consistent. I did not argue for subsidy, but for desalination as a hedge against water shortages, and that the costs of desalination could likely be significantly reduced.
California is passionately against building anything!