[quote=AN]phaster, again, you’re assuming that desalination as the only source of water. Toilet to tap was estimated to provide ~30% of our water need. So, it’s not necessary to have desalination as the only solution. Then there’s the improvement of storm water run off so that the rain we do get doesn’t go into the ocean. Then build a lot more storage so that when we have wet years, we can bank those water for the dry years. We can also not dump a big chunk of fresh water to save the damn smelt. They can go the way of the flightless dodo too.
However, even if we have to build 20 more desalination, why not? If we can spend almost $100B on the damn bullet train, I’m sure we can spend $200B on desalination plants. As I stated, I wouldn’t mind paying 5X more water, if that mean we can make the water police go the way of the dodo bird.
Your “solution” isn’t really solution at all. Your “solution” is to do nothing at all. Which is what you were railing against. Also, why do we have to restrict ourselves to solution that can provide us with cheap water instead of just providing us water?[/quote]
picture a kid in kindergarten
now imagine if the kindergarten teacher asked the kid what 1+1 is…
obviously as grown ups we would not think the right answer would be if the kid finger painted a car and an airplane (but to a kid they might not know OR care about “math” they just want to draw a car or an airplane because its “sexy” and “fun”)
point being, a “solution” is only possible when the problem is fully understood and there is no bias toward some preconceived outcome!! FURTHERMORE any “solution” to a real world problem must take into account the limited resources of: time, money, and labor
also its important to note sometimes there are “problems” w/ out “solutions”
WRT drought “solutions” you might be (for example) target fixated and buy into say a big beautiful pipeline from alaska to california (which has to cross CANADA which is a foreign country last I checked, as well as the states of WA and OR, which is a hell of long way, before water reaches CA…) so did you ever stop and think what an up hill political “bull shit” battle that would be?
like wise IN THE ADULT WORLD COSTS DO MATTER
consider while some kids might want their mom/dad to drive a ferrari to take them to kindergarten, parents have to worry about details like how much is a ferrari going to cost, what is the insurance, how much will it cost to fix, etc. AND that basically explains why in the real world there are lines of SUVs dropping kids off @ kindergarten (as oppose to a line of ferarri’s)… both are basically just a means of transportation, but the cost and practically between a “ferarri” and a POS “kia” SUV are worlds apart!
same idea of analysis WRT cost and practically is applicable to the problem of securing water supplies (whether its via a pipeline, desalination plant(s), buying water rights from farmers, building more reservoir capacity, etc. etc. etc.)!!!
when I was an undergrad one thing I stumbled upon was a seminar project class w/ the dude who actually started UCSD (about a year before he died)
the idea of the class was to point out to students the real world value of understanding the role of science as it relates to evaluating/making policy
what was cool about the class was 1:1 access to world class scientists who set aside time to interact w/ knucklehead students (figured if the offer was out there, I’d take advantage of the opportunity to ask some questions and hopefully learn something – NOTE google/siri kinda accomplish the same thing today, my how times have changed)
at the time the fed’s wanted SD to upgrade its sewage water treatment to a “secondary” level because of something to do w/ the clean water act
anyway one thing I kinda looked into was the cost/benefit of “secondary” water treatment at the point loma plant before treated water was basically sent a few miles off shore and released into the ocean
local officials were seeking a waver of federal law which mandated “secondary” water treatment, because studies indicated marine wild life would not benefit if the release of regions sewage was upgraded to “secondary” @ point loma
basically “primary” treatment @ point loma was all that was needed, because given the “unique” circumstance of geography of SD, the treated sewage was being released in the pacific ocean and not in a river
long story short, “SCIENCE” indicated it was unnecessary to spend money to upgrade equipment at point loma to clean water to a level that las vegas had to do (because cities like LA and san diego were down stream)
actually toilet to tap has been happening for years (as I learned back in the day) since SD is down stream las vegas which has to have its own sewage treated to “primary” as well as to a “secondary” level before being released back into the colorado river
also at the time pondered the cost/benefits of treating the water of the point loma plant to a secondary level and building a pipeline to the san vicente reservoir (so that water could basically go from toilet to tap w/ in the SD region), but that would have required building a pipeline and associated infrastructure from point loma all the way out to the reservoir, so “treated water” could sit a while then be re-used as a “supply”
if memory serves there was an effort (which failed) to get “toilet to tap” actually working in this region
because to the general public “toilet to tap” wasn’t appealing or necessary to reuse treated sewage (as another supply for this region) the reaction to try and close the deal was a rebranding effort w/ the tag line “showers to flowers”
also about that time period, personally started looking at climate change “data” and had a strong gut feeling (back in the day) it was inevitable that weather patterns were going to change and lessen the precipitation in the region (which has since come true)
so personally have always been in favor or building more reservoir capacity, building lots more desalination plants, upgrading the treatment of sewage for reuse (in this region), tripling if not more the cost of water to the end users to send the economic signal that “water” is a resources that should be treasured and used in the most efficient way possible, BUT sadly very very very few, feel the same way or look and try and understand the big picture
we all learn and pick up stuff over the years and FWIW here are three key object lessons I’ve learned (that seem applicable to the matter @ hand)
1st – its important to remember that shit has its costs which eventually must be paid for… and sometime well intended laws (to protect the environment) makes no scientific sense!
2nd – reality is… it takes a real long time to get shit done, when problems are big, complex and co$tly to implement
[quote=KPBS] (i.e. Drinking Water Starts Flowing From Carlsbad Desalination Plant)
KPBS report @ 0:24 “the roots of this facility really date back 25 years…”
[/quote]
3rd – AND last object lesson learned is… sometimes SHIT HAPPENS and “cannot be avoided” (i.e. when the system is very politically corrupt and financially mismanage, conditions change for say 100 years and mother-nature does not provide enough precipitation in a region to meet demand, etc. etc. etc.) so figure if this is the case, the best approach is “head on” and hope to live through the bad situation…
