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Comment by sidewndr46 | Hacker News Reader

Discharging >40% of the freshwater usage in a country to the open ocean is not a 'small' anecdote.

The lake is in a reasonably remote part of the country, in an area with exceptional high rainfall. Plenty of other sources of water. Most of that fresh water was going to flow out into the ocean anyway, this just sends it via a more direct route.

The longer route (which actually flows next to the farm my mum grew up on) doesn't even go near a major population centre. The largest town (Tuatapere) has a population of 500 people.

It's a large amount of water but the anecdote itself is only ~32cm² on my screen :)

> the anecdote itself is only ~32cm² on my screen

This comment reminded me of a cute tool I used to have installed back in the WinXP days called "Screen Calipers". It was a super sweet tool. 100% skeumorphic :D

http://www.iconico.com/caliper/

What percentage of a non-negligible amount of fresh water pumped/dumped into the ocean is returned to the freshwater ecosystem/loop given, say, 10 years?

Plenty of places can do this with essentially zero environmental impact. If it rains a lot and the rain came from ocean evaporation and the natural water route was a big river quickly back to the ocean, you can pretty harmlessly divert a portion through hydroelectric.

Not everywhere is the American west where it doesn’t rain a lot and water sources are being used way past their capacity.

Instead of discharging into the ocean, could it be used for drinking water?

Can't do that and generate power. You'd spent all (or at least a lot) of the generated energy pumping the water where it needs to go.

That was proposed but rejected by the government.

It looks to be a fairly long ways from major cities, is that why?

That is correct. It's located in one of the most remote areas of New Zealand, and a very long way from cities with a decent population.

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