Saltwater is pushing its way up the Mississippi River | Hacker News Reader

Saltwater is pushing its way up the Mississippi River

nytimes.com

48 pointsperihelions19 comments

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. People have already started hoarding water a month in advance of the arrival of the "salt wedge"... The last time this happened in New Orleans was 1988 and lasted ~2 months[1], life continued, and the event was largely forgotten.

From a post on /r/neworleans: "In the last event sales of bottled water skyrocketed before the event. Once the salt wedge arrived, sales went down and everyone stopped buying water. Data suggested public didn't view the situation as sufficiently threatening enough to continue buying water."

So it doesn't seem to be the 'emergency' that media is trying to make it out as... Seems like the larger issues are increased heavy metal contamination from the salt and silt relocation affecting the health of the delta and related ecosystems...

The current plan is to ship in fresh water, which is what was done last time, and also there is talk about building a fresh water pipeline in the next 30 days that would extend ~12 miles up river. [2]

[1] current estimate is that current the situation will last ~3 months

[2] https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/saltwater-intrusion...

This comment reminds me a bit of people saying that Y2K must have been way overhyped because nothing bad actually happened. Ordinary people spent money stocking up on bottled water, the Army Corps of Engineers spent a ton of money and effort dredging the river and shipping in barges of fresh water. It wasn't a disaster, because people prepared relatively well, but having to mitigate a potential disaster is itself a pretty big problem.

> it doesn't seem to be the 'emergency' that media is trying to make it out as

I haven't seen any exaggerated coverage. If you're seeing the word "emergency" that's because the governor requested a state of emergency and the president approved it.

> This comment reminds me a bit of people saying that Y2K must have been way overhyped because nothing bad actually happened.

You're comparing apples and oranges ... Y2K was a know problem, with known trigger conditions, and prescribed remediation steps. The salt water intrusion is a moving target whose remediation steps aren't clear cut.

The most recent estimate has pushed back the timeline for potential water fouling back by over a month and the new estimate put the salt ppm at <250 which is below the EPA's public safety floor.

> I haven't seen any exaggerated coverage. [...]

That might be because you're not from the area and haven't seen the empty shelves of bottled water and the run on water filtering equipment

That Reddit thread also points out in 1988 more people were drinking non-water beverages, Coke, beer, etc.

The costs of climate change are going to be unfathomably huge. This has always been the problem with the “prioritize economic growth, it’s a tradeoff” argument: we can’t even begin to calculate the uncertainty in what we’re going to pay for using the atmosphere as a garbage dump, because we don’t have a clue what’s coming for us.

This is what happens when profits are privatized and the risks are socialized.

This is also because "we" probably aren't going to pay for it. Maybe we'll throw a few bucks at it, but future generations are really going to pay.

> This is what happens when profits are privatized and the risks are socialized.

This statement doesn’t mean anything useful. It also describes every social safety net.

> This statement doesn't mean anything useful. That might be true if that wasn't a well known phrase that carries decades of examples behind it.

> It also describes every social safety net. Social safety nets are not spending millions of billions of dollars on disasters, especially disasters we've been predicting since the dawn of industry. Social safety nets have upper bounds. Being able to handle these disasters is a benefit of society, yes. Social safety nets help people get on their feet, not prevent entire towns from being wiped out. It's disingenuous to imply America's social safety net (which it doesn't have) has anything to do with this.

When individuals create liability this large, they are jailed. When corporations do it, we pretend we never could have expected this outcome.

> That might be true if that wasn't a well known phrase that carries decades of examples behind it.

It is true and there are decades of examples. It’s just meaningless because it matches every social safety net so you can use it to argue against anything you want.

> Social safety nets are not spending millions of billions of dollars on disasters, especially disasters we've been predicting since the dawn of industry.

They are. Look at the military, which is another example of everyone paying in but small groups receiving outsized benefits on many different fronts.

> Social safety nets help people get on their feet, not prevent entire towns from being wiped out.

This is what FEMA is for.

> It's disingenuous to imply America's social safety net (which it doesn't have) has anything to do with this.

You can’t even form a coherent sentence here. You can’t on one hand defend the safety net from a comparison and simultaneously claim it doesn’t exist. If it didn’t exist, you wouldn’t reply.

> When individuals create liability this large, they are jailed.

No they aren’t. People in positions of power in the government do this all of the time and receive absolutely no punishment. One regulation change can decimate people’s homes, jobs, paths to citizenship, etc.

> When corporations do it, we pretend we never could have expected this outcome.

No we don’t. It’s the reason many of the corporate insurance programs exist (superfund, fdic, etc).

Obviously climate change is contributing to the droughts that have caused this problem, but it's also exacerbated by much more tangible climate change: we changed the river climate by digging it deeper so it could fit bigger boats, which makes it easier for saltwater to move upriver. When the Army builds a barrier to try to delay the saltwater, they have to put a big hole in it so the boats can still get through.

More details: https://sph.tulane.edu/5-things-know-about-saltwater-intrusi...

From the source linked to by the other commenter[0]:

- "Salt water intrudes up the Mississippi River about once every decade. It happened in 2012 and again in 2022. The ocean water usually doesn’t come this far north, but it isn’t unprecedented."

- "You should prepare to some extent. Residents across Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Jefferson and Orleans parishes should be ready to conserve water to relieve pressure on the system as needed"

- "Different school systems are taking different approaches, but closures aren’t likely."

- "most healthy people will not see any impact from the water. But people who are more vulnerable to a higher salt diet due to pregnancy, kidney disease or high blood pressure should be vigilant."

And from the OP's NYT article: "The low-water season typically runs from May through the end of October. Once temperatures cool, the river should start to rebound. “In a typical year, we typically don’t see low water conditions improving for our area until we start to get into November,” Mr. Graschel said."

It doesn't sound like an unfathomably huge cost.

Speaking of, the NYT had a series of hysterical articles[1,2] earlier in the summer about extremely hot ocean waters in coastal Florida, painting a picture of 90-100+ degree waters in the open ocean. It didn't elaborate on the fact that the buoy in question[3] with the "possible world record for sea surface temperature" of 101.1 degrees was less than 100 feet from land, in less than neck-deep water for the average person, in an enclosed bay that is further enclosed by the Keys; basically, a swimming pool, not the open ocean. Actual average temperatures[4] at the time were about the same as the long-term average or a degree higher.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703983

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/climate/florida-ocean-tem...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/climate/florida-100-degre...

[3]: https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=mnbf1

[4]: https://seatemperature.net/current/united-states/florida-key...

Sorry that the buoy wasn’t at the appropriate depth for whatever arbitrary assessment you’d like to make, but yes the climate research community was and remains extremely alarmed by that data.

Years of "the overall trend is extremely worrying": "errhmm idk, I need specific instances of bad things."

Here's a specific, interesting datapoint -- also worrying: "sorry the bay isn't shaped to my arbitrary preference."

It has been a dry summer in my little corner of the midwest.

One time in the late spring, we even had ten days with no rain!

This is a way better article not locked behind a paywall. I'm not sure why people always share paywalled articles on here.

https://www.wwno.org/coastal-desk/2023-09-27/we-answer-your-...

Currently everybody in New Orleans who isn’t emptying store shelves of bottled water is trying to secure water filters that will remove lead because of the thought of what saltwater will do to lead pipes. Personally, I’m wondering why they’re not using 9 mile point nuclear plant as a big desalination energy source.

Can’t you just evaporate out the cooling water after it cools the reactor instead of powering a desalination plant? Same brine waste problem either way

Fun fact: the reversing falls in Saint John, New Brunswick (canada) are a place where the tides change the direction of the saint john river twice a day. In high tides, ocean salt water pushes into the river system and on low tides the river drains fresh water into the ocean. This is part of the bay of fundy which, due to a resonance effect, has the highest tides in the world. Tom scott did a video link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCrTsWtPVIY

It’s important to note that the intakes are at 12 feet deep and the river is 200 feet deep and remains below sea level for hundreds of miles upstream.

That's nothing compared to the Moncton reversing tide!

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