[quote=AN]phaster, all I see from you is rants. I never said anything about doing the same thing over ad over again and expecting better result. I actually stated solutions. What are your solutions?
Where did you get $20B desalination plant needed for SD come from? The Carlsbad plant supposed to provide 7-15% of our water need. So we only need ~10 of those. That’s assuming we do nothing else. How about water recycling (toilet to tap)? How about brown water system? How about improve storm water run off and build more dams for storage? We have been haven’t water problem for years and have you seen most of CA doing anything?
Whether you think the politician is capable of fixing the problem or not is irrelevant, since they have a monopoly. for our sake, I hope they get their act together and fix the problem. If we can have Tesla, SpaceX, Google, Apple, etc in CA, I’m pretty sure we can fix the water problem.
And removing all the lawn isn’t going to solve the problem, unless you want to also kick out 1/2 of the Californian too.[/quote]
[quote=KPBS] (Drinking Water Starts Flowing From Carlsbad Desalination Plant)
KPBS report @ 0:04 “the billion dollar project…”
KPBS report @ 0:47 “this facility will produce 7 to 10 percent of the regions water enough for 400,000 house holds…”
KPBS report @ 2:42 “at the same time poseidon is throwing its arms up in victory claiming to provide up to 10 percent of our regional water needs…”
[/quote]
knowing the history of failed desalination plant projects, the conservative risk analysis approach is to use the lowest published figure of seven percent (and IMHO that might be still too “optimistic”), never the less:
(20 “similar size Carlsbad plants”)(7%) = 140 % “of reported current water use”
now re-read exactly what was stated in my so-called “rant”…
“for the population of SD city/county a conservative estimate would require 15 to 20 times the existing capacity (of Carlsbad) to meet the local demand (along with some head room for future growth) and given the one billion dollar cost (of the brand new Carlsbad setup), that would mean we would need around 20+ billion in today’s dollars”
QED
FYI the price comparison of the number of Carlsbad desalination plant(s) needed vs. the reported unfunded public pension, was stated to illustrate not only the magnitude of money @ economic risk, but also to point out the long history of various mis-management public resource(s) that have the potential to crash the system
what you might find surprising is the actual data showing the dominance of AG WATER USE vs. URBAN WATER USE
basically lawns like too many ag crops being cultivated (for the export market), in the grand scheme of things is a shit for brains design selection and looking at resource trends, pretty sure suburban lawns w/ in a decade are going to join the list of the…
saber tooth tiger
wooly mammoth
original people/society on easter island
flightless dodo
as for solutions to the drought, sadly don’t see any that are cost effective or politically palatable THEREFORE most likely outcome is, one way or another society will have to adjust to a limited resource world (i.e there will be a lower standard of living for most and just like the 2007 sub-prime crisis, fall out from the “drought” is going to take the general public by surprise!)
