Environment & Energy
Related: About this forum100% of California in severe to exceptional drought
I believe the current status is that Southern California is on fire.
100% of California in severe to exceptional drought
Today's U.S. Drought Monitor report showed grim news for California: 100% of the state is now in severe or higher drought, up from 96% the previous week. Though just 25% of California is classified as being in the highest level of drought, "Exceptional", Erin McCarthy at the Wall Street Journal estimates that farms comprising 53% of California's $44.7 billion market value lie in the Exceptional drought area. Averaged state-wide, the Palmer Drought Severity Index during April 2014 was the second worst on record, behind 1977. For the 12-month period ending in April, drought conditions in California for 2013 - 2014 were also the second most severe on record, slightly below the 2008 - 2009 drought. To break the drought, most of the state needs 9 - 15" or precipitation to fall in one month. This amounts to more than a half-year's worth of precipitation for most of the state.
California's rainy season is over
The California October through April rainy season is now over. Between October 2013 and April 2014, the state received 10.44" of precipitation, which is just 51% of average for the period, and the third lowest such total on record. Going back to 1895, the record low mark was set in 1976 - 1977, when the state got just 34% of its average rainy season precipitation. California typically receives less than 10% of its annual precipitation between May and September, and the coming hot and dry summer in combination with a severely depleted Sierra snowpack will cause a severe fire season and significant agricultural damages. The fifth and final snow survey of the season on May 1 found that the statewide snowpacks water content--which normally provides about a third of the water for Californias farms and cities--was only 18% of average for the date. Already, the 2014 drought has cost the state at least $3.6 billion in agricultural damages, the California Farm Water Coalition estimates. CAL FIRE recently announced it had hired 125 additional firefighters to help address the increased fire threat due to drought conditions.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2679
Figure 3. The May 13, 2014 U.S. Drought Monitor showed 100% of California in severe or higher drought, with 25% of the state in the highest level of drought, "Exceptional." Image credit: U.S. Drought Monitor.
nationalize the fed
(2,169 posts)When CA gets busy building more desalination plants there will be no more drought.
there are between 15 and 20,000 desalination plants around the world. In the US there are less than 4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Existing_facilities_and_facilities_under_construction
At 5:16 Scott Jenkins, PHD Scripps Oceanographer says:
"The environmental effects of desalination plants have been studied for more than 20 years. In fact today thousands of these plants are operating all over the world providing scientists with a vast body of data which has confirmed that these plants do not harm the marine environment"
Myth: The desalination facility may harm marine life.
Fact: The Huntington Beach Desalination Facility is environmentally safe. Dr. Scott Jenkins and Dr. Jeffery Graham of Scripps Institution of Oceanography conclude that the science has demonstrated the effects of the desalination facility on the marine environment are benign, and in principle, no different than the effects of natural evaporation.
Myth: Desalination uses a lot of energy and is more expensive than importing water to make this a viable facility.
Fact: It takes the same amount of energy to produce enough desalinated water for a familys needs for a year as it does to run a refrigerator for a year. With the cost of imported supplies from Northern California increasing and the reduction in our allotment from the Colorado River, desalinated water is competitively priced with any new high quality water supply. Improving technology, however, means that desalinated water gradually will become cheaper, and at the same time, reduced allocations of Colorado River water and higher energy rates will drive up imported water costs. Prices are expected to intersect in about a decade, said Kevin P. Hunt, general manager at the Municipal Water District Orange County (Orange County Register, April 4, 2005).
http://hbfreshwater.com/desalination-101/desalination-myths
Desalination= Fresh Water and Jobs. A twofer
Get Busy California
FBaggins
(26,756 posts)There are far more than that. Thousands of them in fact.
nationalize the fed
(2,169 posts)Link?
Existing facilities and facilities under construction
United States
Texas
There are a dozen different desalination projects in the State of Texas, both for desalinating groundwater and desalinating seawater from the Gulf of Mexico.
El Paso: Brackish groundwater has been treated at the El Paso, Texas, plant since around 2004. It produces 27,500,000 US gallons (104,000,000 l; 22,900,000 imp gal) of fresh water daily (about 25% of total freshwater deliveries) by reverse osmosis. The plants water cost largely representing the cost of energy is about 2.1 times higher than ordinary groundwater production. On average, the plant produces 3.5 million gallons per day (about 11 acre-feet) at an average production cost of $489 per acre-foot.
(The Texas paragraph doesn't provide details of the "dozen different desalination projects".)
California
California has 17 desalination plants in the works, either partially constructed or through exploration and planning phases.[138] The list of locations includes Bay Point, in the Delta, Redwood City, seven in the Santa Cruz / Monterey Bay, Cambria, Oceaneo, Redondo Beach, Huntington Beach, Dana Point, Camp Pendleton, Oceanside and Carlsbad.
Carlsbad: The United States' largest desalination plant is being constructed by Poseidon Resources and is expected to go online 2016.[139] It is expected to produce 50 million gallons a day to 110,000 customers in San Diego County at an estimated cost of $1b.
Concord: Planned to open in 2020, producing 20 million gallons a day.
Monterey County: Sand City, two miles north of Monterey, with a population of 334, is the only city in California completely supplied with water from a desalination plant.
Santa Barbara: The Charles Meyer Desalination Facility was constructed in Santa Barbara, California, in 199192 as a temporary emergency water supply in response to severe drought. While it has a high operating cost, the facility only needs to operate infrequently, allowing Santa Barbara to use its other supplies more extensively.
(The Santa Barbara plant is not currently operating.)
Florida
As of 2012, South Florida has 33 brackish and two seawater desalination plants operating with seven brackish water plants under construction. The brackish and seawater desalination plants have the capacity to produce 245 million gallons of potable water per day.
Arizona
Yuma: The desalination plant in Yuma, Arizona, was constructed under authority of the Federal Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act of 1974 to treat saline agricultural return flows from the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District into the Colorado River. The treated water is intended for inclusion in water deliveries to Mexico, thereby keeping a like amount of freshwater in Lake Mead, Arizona and Nevada. Construction of the plant was completed in 1992, and it has operated on two occasions since then. The plant has been maintained, but largely not operated due to sufficient freshwater supplies from the upper Colorado River. An agreement was reached in April 2010 between the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Central Arizona Project, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to underwrite the cost of running the plant in a year-long pilot project.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#United_States
How many SEAWATER desalination plants do you count in the above summary?
If you want to credit Texas with 12 (where are they and are they seawater desal?), then there are 12 +4 or 5 -(depending on whether you count plants not currently operating) SEAWATER desal plants.
Not "thousands"
FBaggins
(26,756 posts)Why do I need to rely on the above summary? It's a Wikipedia entry that you for some reason assume represents all US desalination.
http://www.pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/desalination_report3.pdf
Here's a report that's almost a decade old. You'll note (page 21) that there were over 2,000 plants of at least 300,000 gal/d capacity in 2005. It's surely grown since then since we're reportedly the 4th largest market globally for new equipment sales
Yes... many of them are in brackish areas rather than straight seawater... but that hardly matters.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I was on the Carlsbad desal site twice today. It's really funny watching truckers with trailers negotiate where there isn't really room.
You're really out of your league. Again.
Do you even know how much energy it takes to desalinate water? Do you know the impact on the grid, the increase in GHG production for your pie in the sky idealized world of hydrogen claptrap and desalination fakery?
And its price tag is at least four times the cost of obtaining "new water" from conservation methods -- such as paying farmers to install drip irrigation, or providing rebates for homeowners to rip out lawns or buy water-efficient toilets.
"We look out and see a vast ocean. It seems obvious," said Heather Cooley, water director for the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Oakland. "But it's cost prohibitive for most places in California."
In Carlsbad, two gallons of seawater will be needed to produce each gallon of drinking water. And to remove the salt, the plant will use an enormous amount of energy -- about 38 megawatts, enough to power 28,500 homes -- to force 100 million gallons of seawater a day through a series of filters. The process, known as reverse osmosis, removes salt and other impurities by blasting the water at six times the pressure of a fire hose through membranes with microscopic holes.
Truth: San Diego is overpopulated, can't survive on native water, sucks water from other places, it's needs to be scaled back, water meters installed everywhere, rate increases and conservation, grey water and rainwater catchment written into the building code.
There. I fixed it.