California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth [NYT pretends desalination doesn't exist]

New York Times ^ | April 4, 2015 | ADAM NAGOURNEY, JACK HEALY and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

[grundle]

A punishing drought is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been the state’s engine has run against the limits of nature.

... a punishing drought — and the unprecedented measures the state announced last week to compel people to reduce water consumption — is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature.

Can Los Angeles continue to dominate as the country’s capital of entertainment and glamour, and Silicon Valley as the center of high tech, if people are forbidden to take a shower for more than five minutes and water bills become prohibitively expensive? Will tourists worry about coming? Will businesses continue their expansion in places like San Francisco and Venice?

[grundle]

Meanwhile, in the real world, there's this other article from McClatchy: Israel no longer worried about its water supply, thanks to desalination plants

[stillfree?]

Yeah, but we are building high speed rail!

[rbg81]

I saw a comment on a [real] blog comment along the lines of:

Desalination is bad because it KILLS FISH. California should just run out of water. If we die the fish will still be okay and that’s good.

[justlurking]

What's the percentage of water used by the urban areas (for drinking, washing, etc.) vs. the water used for agricultural irrigation?

Desalination requires power -- lots of it (although there has been some progress on that front). Is it cost effective to divert power to desalination to irrigate crops?

[doug from upland]

Problem with endless growth? I’m aboard. I want to lessen the population by about 5 million in California and send them to their homeland.

[Misterioso]

The sky continues to fall, especially here in California.

[Veto!]

I deleted the NYT from my bookmarks when they published Darren Wilson’s home address. Interesting to see that they are still idiots, but not surprising.

[Crazieman]

What else does California lack? Power.

Nuclear/Desalination plants.

[ErnBatavia]

I've been proposing that Moonbeam drop the multi-zillion dollar choo-choo, and pay for an aqueduct that runs right down the I-5 corridor from the soggy northern states into our central valley.

The land's already there, for crying out loud -- run it all down the median.

[Cowgirl of Justice]

I wish I could get those sonsabitches off of my Samsung Galaxy tablet. Get a download from the NYT every day and can’t make it stop.

[justlurking]

Here we go:

https://www.watereuse.org/sites/default/files/u8/Power_consumption_white_paper.pdf

At the scale of 50 million gallons of water per day, desalination using reverse osmosis is about 10.4 kilowatt hours per 1000 gallons.

At our electric rate of 12.6 cents/kWh (which is much lower than California), that's $1.31 per 1000 gallons. That's acceptable for residential usage: we used 4,000 gallons last month, and that's an additional $5.24.

But what about agriculture irrigation? I wasn't able to find numbers specific for California in a quick search, but I was surprised at the result.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1405/

Public-water supply was #3 in 2010, at 14% of freshwater use.

Agricultural irrigation was #2 in 2010, at 38% of freshwater use.

The #1 use of freshwater, at 38% of freshwater and 45% of all water (including saline), was thermoelectric power generation

So one has to ask: how much additional freshwater will be needed by power-generation to desalinate a gallon of sea water?

[Crazieman]

Go to settings - application manager. Find the Slimes application. You may have to swipe over to ‘all’. Tap on it and hit uninstall.

[justlurking]

Nuclear/Desalination plants.

See my post #11. It turns out that power generation is THE biggest user of water in the US, and is tied with agriculture for freshwater use.

[Cowgirl of Justice]

I was told that it was pre-installed and removing it could cause trouble for my tablet.

Grrrr.....

[justlurking]

I wasn't able to find numbers specific for California in a quick search,

I found it here:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1268/htdocs/table04.html

For California, in 2000 they used 15,200 million gallons per day (MGD).

Public Supply was 2,800 MGD, or 18.42%.
Irrigation was 11,600 MGD, or 76.32%.

[drypowder]

Someone needs to remind the liberal communists in Sacramento those illegals need water too so they’ll get right on water desalinization plant constructions. Union workers to build them and China to make the parts. How can Jerry Brown and company say no to that?

[Two Kids' Dad]

Thanks for posting these articles. If the clowns in California government would work on de-sal instead of that high speed rail garbage we’d be much better off in the long run. But asking Sacramento to do anything right is an exercise in futility.

[Steve_Seattle]

Too much growth? Then deport the illegals. Or are they pushing for machine guns, mass graves, and bulldozers?

[Wolfie]

I look forward to California’s multi-billion/trillion dollar desalination program, and the howls of FReepers protesting big govt spending.

[21twelve]

I remember as a kid I wrote a report on desalination plants that were being designed at the time. Taking cold water from the depth and as it warmed it would create steam which was used to generate electricity to run the plant, and then the condensation was captured as fresh water. Or something like that.