California Has Never Experienced A Water Crisis Of This Magnitude – And The Worst Is Yet To Come

End of the American Dream ^ | 06/18/2015 | Michael Snyder

[Sacajaweau]

You have a whole damn ocean there. Build more desalination plants. I believe there is newer technology available now.

[Ingtar]

But they can still ride the commuter train they spent the funds allocated for water supply improvements on.

[dware]

California Has Never Experienced An Inept Political Ruling Class Of This Magnitude – And The Worst Is Yet To Come

This whole situation does an amazing job at illustrating a fact about the left that the right just can't seem to grasp: The fact that leftists WILL DIE for their cause. This is precisely what makes them entirely dangerous. Never mind the fact that the state is on the brink of utter annihilation, we hafta save the smelt and the marine ecosystems and the owls and the granola...

[Ingtar]

Is that a good idea on the San Andreas Fault? (just kidding... mostly)

[Benito Cereno]

But cut that even further and you risk salt water intrusion into the greatest and most productive agricultural land in the world.

[BitWielder1]

...the desalination process itself pollutes the ocean with high concentration salt brine...

Bunk. Even if, so what?
The same salt that's already in the ocean is hardly a pollutant.
The volume of the ocean is so much more than the entire brine output of all the desalination plants, so it should not be a problem.
If it's really a concern, they can just mix the brine with unprocessed sea water to dilute it to some acceptable level.
Or spread the output over a larger area and it will be not much different than what happens naturally when ocean water evaporates.
Or put the desalination plant near a river mouth where it can mix with the fresh water.
There are solutions to every one of these problems, if they are even problems at all, but Libs are always inventing new problems to hamper any progress, not fixing them.
And they call themselves "Progressive". BAH!

[Sacajaweau]

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25859513/nations-largest-ocean-desalination-plant-goes-up-near

[TexasCajun]

Hoisted upon my their own environmental petard.

[SoConPubbie]

What do you expect when you invite millions of illegal aliens into your state?

Nirvana?

[blueunicorn6]

Vote Democrat!

That’s the answer!

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

I will not make light of CA’s drought one iota.

But 1900 wells, I mean, this is not a big number in a state the size of CA. And Mountain House, no matter what the homes there sell for or how upscale they are, this is a 100% synthetic community built at the very height of the prior bubble. Anybody who bought there has a minimum 1-1.5 hour commute to *anything* resembling employment other than the standard Home Depot and giant-mall outlets that fell out of the sky and were plopped there once enough houses had been built. There was no reason for a community to have been built there back then (other than pure housing frenzy) and there is not now. I am not at all unsympathetic to the plight of the people in that community. I am just pointing out that these illustrations of CA’s plight are on the edge of high drama. I repeat, I am not understating CA’s situation one droplet nor arguing with the theme of this article. CA’s situation *is* the result of idiot politicians.

[Political Junkie Too]

The community of Mountain House is days away from having no water at all after the state cut off its only water source.

I don't mean to belittle this story, but come on!

Up until a few years ago, "Mountain House" was just a dive biker bar roadhouse on Mountain House Road. Mountain House Road was a back road shortcut through the Altamont wind farm to Byron and Discovery Bay. Now, it's a master planned community off of Grant Line Road at the edge of the Central Valley by the Altamont hills.

Also, they are just a mile or two from the Los Vaqueros Reservoir, which is currently claiming good fishing on their website. Maybe the website is out of date? The reservoir is on the other side of the Altamont Pass.

-PJ

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

A long time ago, a geologist pointed out in the geological record where dozens of times California has had 100 and even 300 year long droughts.

[TheDon]

But the truth is that desalination is very expensive and it is really bad for the environment.

Keep repeating the lie long enough and it becomes the truth.

[RichardW]

I don’t get this. We are about to float away where I live in Arkansas. If we have 2.6 million miles of oil pipelines in the U.S. why don’t we build water pipelines and build reservoirs across the United States. Imagine the jobs that would ensue.

[Darksheare]

The salt can be put aside and processed for other uses.
It often contains useful materials in small quantities.
Ocean water contains uranium, thorium, etc etc.
Process enough salt out of seawater, melt the salt, skim off the heavier material, reprocess that for useful stuff, turn the salt into table salt.
Supposedly sea salt is the current “healthy salt du jour” with certain crowds.
Market the recovered salt to them, at a markup of course.

[TheDon]

If it's really a concern, they can just mix the brine with unprocessed sea water to dilute it to some acceptable level.

Correct. This was done successfully at the Tampa Bay desal plant and their outlet is in a bay. You are correct about the misinformation libs use to stop progress on desal.

[txhurl]

nail!

[minnesota_bound]

Here is an example I am talking about.
The one where the politicians are deliberately keeping water from the central valley is criminal. There is no natural shortage as they had the water turned off.
I bet insiders are buying up the dried up farmland.

Why Does California Let Billions Of Gallons Of Fresh Water Flow Straight Into The Ocean?
Excerpt: Even on the driest year in recorded history in 2013, it still rained 3.6 inches in Los Angeles. An inch of rainfall in L.A. generates 3.8 billion gallons of runoff, so you’re talking about more than 12 billion gallons of water that could be captured, but that flows within hours down our concrete streets and into the ocean. There’s enough rainwater to be harvested to produce 30-50% of the entire city’s water needs.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/2015/04/15/why-does-california-let-billions-of-gallons-of-fresh-water-flow-straight-into-the-ocean/

[Mariner]

This is not all a manmade disaster.

And disaster it is.

There are 10's of thousands of Valley Oak trees dying. They are the largest oaks in the world...magnificent trees.

Their taproot reaches down to the water table thus they are able to survive a normal Calif arid climate.

But the water table has dropped to such an extent as to endanger large swathes of these natural wonders.