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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCalifornia adopts environmental rules and guidelines for desalination
Tapping the ocean for drinking water: State lays down the law
By Peter Fimrite Updated 7:55 am, Thursday, May 7, 2015
California adopted new rules Wednesday to help cities and water agencies figure out the best way to siphon water from the sea and turn it into drinking water without killing fish.
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Desalination plants have the obvious attraction of tapping a limitless source of water, the ocean. Critics warn, however, that the plants kill fish as they suck in briny water, and spew greenhouse gases into the air from the energy they require to run.
The states new rules seek to deal with some of those issues by requiring desalination plants to use subsurface intakes when possible, meaning seawater can be drawn in only from below the seabed. If open ocean intakes are necessary, they must have screens to keep from killing fish and other sea creatures.
Operators will have to use treated wastewater to dilute the salty brine that the desalination plants discharge after producing fresh water. If that is not possible, operators must place a device that rapidly mixes the brine with seawater at the end of the outfall. The salinity in the area near the outfall cannot increase by more than 2 parts per 1,000.
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It's not a panacea, Bishop said. You wouldn't think about replacing our water project with desalination, but there are communities along the coast that have very few options and they need to look at everything.
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Tapping-the-ocean-for-drinking-water-State-lays-6247262.php
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)They are a giant "Fuck You!" To the environment.
It's high time we live within our means.
Period.
Throd
(7,208 posts)NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)But commercial scale desal plants at this stage are going to delay doing the right things, like metering all use and tiered rates for water use and mandatory limits on outdoor water use.
Also, water efficient ag techniques need to be more widely deployed.
Throd
(7,208 posts)NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)But as long as there are options available right now that reduce use, we must deploy those.
It's like the California Solar Initiative: You don't get the rebate for solar photovoltaic until you have an energy audit and can show that you've taken the right efficiency measures.
I'm fighting a developer right now in a place where there is no water, none, and the county board is going to let them build anyway based on empty promises with no requirement to perform.
The county wants the revenue. They are a progressive county but want the revenue. And there is no water and the traffic infrastructure cannot take the new load, but they build anyway.
Communities like Cambria, CA, have had a water shortage for quite a while and they did a smart thing.
No more water meters. It's a beautiful coastal town where, if you want to build you need to buy a property with a meter.
You can build somewhere else if you abandon that meter, but no new customers.
Smart growth.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)No wells either then?
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)Commercial scale desal plants have three problems beyond the HUGE energy draw and their polluting outflows:
A: They will encourage continued population growth and development.
B: Their high capital cost may lead to greater privatization of water utilities, we do NOT want that.
C: Their implementation will delay doing the right things:
Meter all use;
Tiered rates for water use;
Building codes to include greywater systems and rainwater catchment;
Mandatory limits on outdoor water use.
Water efficient ag techniques need to be more widely deployed.
I could go on. Like anything else we simply need to look to other more enlightened societies to see how to behave.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)It is so easy to take a stand when you have nothing to risk and nothing to committ to.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)It's not that hard to reduce use to meet supply.
Commercial scale desal plants have three problems beyond the HUGE energy draw and their polluting outflows:
A: They will encourage continued population growth and development.
B: Their high capital cost may lead to greater privatization of water utilities, we do NOT want that.
C: Their implementation will delay doing the right things:
Meter all use;
Tiered rates for water use;
Building codes to include greywater systems and rainwater catchment;
Mandatory limits on outdoor water use.
Water efficient ag techniques need to be more widely deployed.
I could go on. Like anything else we simply need to look to other more enlightened societies to see how to behave.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)be considered. That's what I mean by nothing to risk and nothing to commit to .
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)This is not the first time drought has impacted a human population.
There is still water here, and there are still businesses and citizens wasting it.
There are still users who pay a flat rate without any incentive to use less.
There are still people who insist on three showers a day because they go to the gym or some stupid reason.
There are still water wasting golf courses.
It ain't rocket science, how to solve this water shortage.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)We have a desalination plant here in Santa Barbara. We will do everything to conserve water before bringing the plant on line. Still it takes two years to get it up and running. We have started that process. This drought is related to climate change. It is not a usual occurrence. We cannot afford to take a flippant attitude with people's lives. Wise leaders prepare.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)would be "within our means." By every definition of "within our means" you can come up with.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)Don't even start with me on a topic that is within my scope as a professional engineer.
Within our means if you don't mind paying private companies 10x what you pay now and polluting the environment and using tons more energy from, likely, fossil fuels.
Do you care about these thing, even a little?
Commercial scale desal plants have three problems beyond the HUGE energy draw and their polluting outflows:
A: They will encourage continued population growth and development.
B: Their high capital cost may lead to greater privatization of water utilities, we do NOT want that.
C: Their implementation will delay doing the right things:
Meter all use;
Tiered rates for water use;
Building codes to include greywater systems and rainwater catchment;
Mandatory limits on outdoor water use.
Water efficient ag techniques need to be more widely deployed.
I could go on. Like anything else we simply need to look to other more enlightened societies to see how to behave.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Read my post again. You must have missed something. Neither A, B or C have anything to do with "In our means." That is the only point I addressed. Your credentials are impressive none the less.
The current method most areas are getting water are also not in our long term best interests. That doesn't mean they are not within our means. As an expert, I'm sure you are well aware of the importance of jargon within a profession. If this is your direct area of engineering, you might want to consider brushing up on jargon if you plan on lecturing.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)Then, all those other things I mentioned.
There is absolutely no need for a single desalination plant in the state of California.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)no new meters at all?
whatever. you're outdoing yourself.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)Water and air and a clean environment are civil and human rights, CreekDog.
The irresistible forces has met the immovable object.
The only way to have all three is to find and fine the wasters.
Some folks are using other peoples' water and that needs to stop.
Easy peasey, my good friend.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)You're talking about not allowing any building permits. How does that work? Just not allow any building in California?
You are just making noises, rather than expressing thought out responses to the consequences of your ideas.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)You can have new freeways, or we can have more public transit.
We can add desal plants and pretend they don't have an impact, or we can use what we have more wisely.
Commercial scale desal plants have three problems beyond the HUGE energy draw and their polluting outflows:
A: They will encourage continued population growth and development.
B: Their high capital cost may lead to greater privatization of water utilities, we do NOT want that.
C: Their implementation will delay doing the right things:
Meter all use;
Tiered rates for water use;
Building codes to include greywater systems and rainwater catchment;
Mandatory limits on outdoor water use.
Water efficient ag techniques need to be more widely deployed.
I could go on. Like anything else we simply need to look to other more enlightened societies to see how to behave.
MindPilot
(12,693 posts)I already pay tiered rates...problem with that is like the tiered rates for electricity, they are unreasonably low. It is next to impossible to stay on the first tier even with frugal usage.
A greywater recovery system would be nice but it would cost tens of thousands to have one installed, plus probably several thousands more to get the building codes waived to permit the installation. Like solar, it would really cool to have, but I won't live long enough to pay for it.
Already have mandatory restrictions on outdoor water use; San Diego has had them for pretty much as long as I can remember.
And all the conservation efforts are undone as soon as another one of our 100-year old water mains cracks open and dumps a few million gallons into the ocean.
Anyone who's lived in the west for any period of time soon learns, you cannot conserve your way out of a drought. We need more water, it's that simple.
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)Desal plants should be used to replenish the reservoirs.
4% per year increase in CA population, and you're not going to stop it by any means.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I've challenged the notion that growth is inevitable and unstoppable my entire life and career.
It simply isn't so. It's hard to do but not impossible.
The state could mandate restrictions and conditions on growth that could make it darned hard for a community to add population, but getting such rules passed would be a challenge.
What seems a fair compromise, then, is to see to it that population growth only occurs where the infrastructure and environment allows it.
Teabaggers are usually the first to scream about how the government is interfering with their free-market property rights, but the truth is that the infrastructure and utilities are, in the end, shared resources.
I'm all for big government putting a stop to growth.
Desalinization plants powered by fracked gas and other fossil fuels are simply insane; like hacking off and eating your own arms and legs because you are hungry.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)I think desalination plants on a mass scale are a big mistake, but limited and heavily regulated seems appropriate if circumstances warrant it.
MindPilot
(12,693 posts)Where i work one of the things being developed are high-speed, high-power motors that are super-efficient specifically for these kinds of applications. We are also trying to build a wind turbine that will produce 10MW.
I just wish there were more of a "space race" kind of mentality in Washington with regards to solving the technilogical challenges surrounding issues like this.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)It sucks when you live in a desert using technology to make it not so.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)Please don't lecture us about the environment if you don't know this simple fact.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)And I never said that it was a desert.
Where do you get this stuff? Hey, check out my new wheels!
hunter
(38,325 posts)... Hetch Hetchy to San Francisco, Owens River to Los Angeles, and the first (and later second) Folsom Dam all generate power. In modern times California water projects have been greatly optimized to balance the state's electrical supplies, soaking up electricity when there is a surplus, generating electricity when demand is high... but it only works when there is water.
I think gentrification and development are huge problems. I've been around long enough to see far too many interesting California communities, especially beach communities, turned into bland, unaffordable, overly commercial playgrounds for the wealthy. I think desalinization plants can only make that problem worse. It's the kind of infrastructure only people living in half million dollar three hundred square foot condos and above $$$ can support. I have in-laws and direct relatives still living in gentrifying California communities, just scraping by. Desalinization plants would push them over the edge. Time to move on.
My grandma and her sister were born in San Francisco, my great aunt born just before the Great Earthquake with clear memories of the aftermath, my grandma after. My great grandparent's house still stands, subdivided into many very small, very expensive, apartments. The home was sold in the Great Depression because my great grandfather had over-leveraged his wealth betting on the wrong players in the aerospace, automobile, and movie industries, a man ahead of his times. Then he died. My great grandparents were affluent white California people; racist, and hell bent on "improving" the natural environment, but still somewhat liberal for their time, which isn't saying much. My great grandma, who I remember well, and from what I've heard, wasn't sitting on the fence about Hitler before the war like so many "good" U.S.Americans were. I think she was a somewhat "separate but equal sort" who could fish on the public piers with a "Colored" man fishing on her right and a "Chinaman" fishing on her left (in her words!), and have jovial pleasant conversations. She loved to fish. Nor did it bother her that many of my grandma's lifelong friends were Jewish. But she still sometimes said "Jap" since she had Chinese "friends" of the Colbert Report "black friend" sort.
Back to water... I believe before climate change and rising seas become truly terrifying phenomena in the U.S.A. (they already are in some places) we need to figure out practical political methods for gently relocating communities, both rich and poor, ahead of the storms.
Being the cynical son of a bitch that I am (hi mom!) I expect the wealthy will deal with thees problems in the only way they know how: by crushing everyone "beneath" them.
My own parents got tired of California. They moved to a place where they drink and bathe in water that falls on their roof, and they buy food at the local farmers market. For me it's the sailboat at the end of Children of Men.
That's my family history going back as far as I can trace. That's how my lily white ancestors ended up in the Wild West of the Americas. Europe was turning to shit for them, they refused to fight, and they sailed, jumped ship, and ran away.
My most recent U.S. immigrant ancestor was a mail order bride to Salt Lake City. She didn't like sharing a husband so she ran off with a non-Mormon guy, who as surveyor knew some maths and trigonometry and how to avoid trouble.
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)We need snow in the mountains to stop the bark beetles from killing the trees. As I've looked back at old photos of where I grew up in Simi Valley Ca. In the 40's and 50's they had more snow in the hills and streets. I lived there in the 60's and just remember maybe 3 days throughout my time there it snowed. It wouldn't snow all the time, and when it did it wasn't much. Then I remember in my teens visiting Big Bear, and in those days you had to worry if the road would be open to go skiing. Now you have to worry if there will be snow on the hills to ski. And now I live near Yosemite, and there is no snow up there. I'm thinking maybe Ca is done with snow, and if that's the case we're so screwed. Maybe use some of this desal water to fill lakes and rivers. Maybe that will bring back the rain and snow clouds we need so bad.
Once the trees are dead, it's going to be a desert once again.
Rocketdyne in 1957. This place would always be testing rocket engines and the whole town would rumble, but that is the surrounding Mountains in Simi. I've never seen those mountains with snow that I could remember.
<a href="http://imgur.com/VM77eZn"><img src="" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)At about 7,000 feet in elevation, it was not a desert in recent memory.
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)The first dam was built in 1884 and the lake has NO source of replenishment other than snow melt and rain. In its history, Big Bear Lake has never been dry. It's 11 feet low at the moment, about what it was when I moved up here in '07. By the end of '07 they were letting water out because it was topping Big Bear Dam.
Our water table is stable, and I'm confident the lake will once again be its old self. I'm told that back in the day, the lake was low enough to wade from Gilner Point on the south side, to Captain John's Marina in Fawnskin on the north side.