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Or they may be looking at Australia as a cautionary tale--Australia invested billions in desalination infrastructure during their drought and then the drought broke. Now the equipment is underutilized and the return on investment was minimal. The real bozos are the people who think that millions of people can live in the desert and continue plundering resources.
Since when do environmentalists care about return on investment? There is not a single large scale wind energy or solar energy project in the world that is economically self-sufficient without massive taxpayer and ratepayer fleecing. Failure of a seaside desalination plant to have a positive ROI shouldn't be any kind of obstacle for the smelt huggers, I shouldn't think.
There is a lot of California farming history I don't understand. For instance, much of California appears to be desert like... why is there so much farming there. The lost jobs California would lose from farming..how much of that is jobs that would be taken from legal workers?
It appears to me that farming needs to go back to the smaller family farmers who do farm, but don't impact such a large area at time...spread it out. It would possibly be jobs back to Americans and a more eco-friendly choice. There are regions of the US that have more naturally occurring above ground fresh water that wouldn't be depleting an underground source.
That's not how it works, Sarah, despite our fond memories of happy small farms from past TV shows as The Waltons. Efficiency in water conservation increases with size of operation, not lessens. True, each small operator uses less water than a single big one, but all the small operators added up use considerably more water than a competing large operation.
What should happen is that the rich should also be forced to cut back on water use. All their golf use an enormous amount of water that does not benefit the people but the few.
They should stop all swimming pools including public ones, it's another big source of water waste and then stop car washes.
Is this a masturbatory class warfare fantasy of yours, or do you have actual numbers to show the savings you're confident would result from your commie/fascist (same thing, actually) rulemaking would save water in any meaningful amount?
The biggest issue with desalination is the cost, environmental concerns are a secondary issue. It is not just the cost of building the plants (which is high) it is also cost of the huge amounts of energy that is required to desalinate the water. The new desalination plant that is being built San Diego will produce water at a cost > $2000/acre foot, which is about double the cost of other sources of water (reservoirs etc), and about four times the cost of implementing water efficiency measures to save the same amount. It just doesn't make economic sense.
But don't let that stop you politicizing this and blaming it all on the 'greenies'.
again, as I've stated elsewhere, since when do environmentalists care about return on investment? There is not a single large scale wind energy or solar energy project in the world that is economically self-sufficient without massive taxpayer and ratepayer fleecing. Failure of a seaside desalination plant to have a positive ROI shouldn't be any kind of obstacle for the smelt huggers, I shouldn't think.
I want states that get a lot if rain to catch the water before it hits the ground and sell it. I don't want to drain anyone's lake. I do agree that getting the water there would be an issue.
Taking rainwater from those states would cause severe droughts in their states. Lakes would eventually dry up, kill off wildlife, destroy the ecosystems, the economies - essentially destroy life as you, and they, know it.
Agriculture accounts for 80% of the total water usage in the state. Single family residential accounts for 10%, about half of which is used for landscaping. Multi-Family is 2.7% indoor and 1% outdoor. Golf courses almost all use at least some recycled water these days (it should be mandated that 90% of it is). So even if all us urbanoid thugs cut our water usage in half and had rocks and cactuses for landscaping (and most of us have cut our use by 20% already) we are talking less than 7% of the slice of the pie. It won't make for more than a tiny trickle in the spigot even as we are expected to shoulder most of the burden.
Agriculture accounts for 2% of California's GDP and 80% of our water usage. Who again are the thugs?
I grew up in the agricultural region of the state, San Joaquin Valley- Modesto's motto is Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health. For far too long Agriculture has gotten nearly free water, it's time for them to get with the program along with the rest of us.
As a native midwesterner with an ag background, I heartily endorse the notion of California shooting itself in the foot/head/transgendered-genitals/whatever by killing off its agriculture sector so the rest of the farming states can take over your former lucrative business.
Location: When you take flak it means you are on target
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I just thought this might be a good time to remind the folks in Los Angeles and Phoenix know that all of us who live on the Colorado River upstream of Lake Havassu PEE in your drinking water.
It's unimaginative that an area getting less than 10 days of rain a year (Central Valley CA, Southern CA) are the major producer of agricultural products of this country. Why don't we move the agricultural sector elsewhere to places that actually receive rain more than 10 days a year.
Also people choose to settle the driest part of the state while the area north of San Francisco is practically uninhabited, and that's where the most precipitation lands.
I'm the OP and I just want to say, I saw a lot of good/interesting ideas tossed around in this thread.
I still can see my rainfall heavy state collecting and selling rain water. No lake draining. If they can build an oil pipeline from Canada, why not water pipelines? But, I don't think I'd like it if I saw it being used to fill pools.
Interestingly, scientists are now trying to find out how Mars lost its water.
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