Megadrought Threatens California Power Blackouts This Summer

[phaster]

Wonder what drought and blackouts is going to do to real estate prices and the economy???

Megadrought Threatens California Power Blackouts This Summer

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-28/megadrought-on-the-u-s-west-coast-threatens-blackouts

A troubling sign for the south western USA is,…

Vegas water intake now visible at drought-stricken Lake Mead

http://apnews.com/article/climate-business-las-vegas-lakes-colorado-river-1c5396dc9c43bdb5d14835f4c8dcdb44

FYI looking at the science literature the South Western USA can have dry periods that lasts thousands of years

[XBoxBoy]

Anyone know why San Diego isn’t being hit with the watering restrictions that are happening in LA? Does San Diego get its water from somewhere else? Did San Diego make a better deal regarding how much water they would get?

[Coronita]

[quote=XBoxBoy]Anyone know why San Diego isn’t being hit with the watering restrictions that are happening in LA? Does San Diego get its water from somewhere else? Did San Diego make a better deal regarding how much water they would get?[/quote]

I’m surprised that Phaster hasn’t posted the specifics about San Diego….

From 2021: It’s an interesting read.

[quote]

“Despite a Punishing Drought, San Diego Has Water. It Wasn’t Easy. Sustainability measures that the city and county have taken over decades are paying off. But residents still might have to do more.”

….
For much of the past century, San Diego was almost entirely dependent on water that came from elsewhere in the state, or from the Colorado River. Their supplies were effectively controlled by water officials in Los Angeles — a contentious relationship that seeded long-running legal battles.

In 1991, during a punishing drought, San Diego reached a turning point. The Metropolitan Water District, the Los Angeles-based wholesaler that controlled nearly all of San Diego’s water, slashed the county’s supply by 30 percent for a little more than a year. Grass turned brown. Residents put bricks in their toilet tanks to make them flush less water.

And, crucially, the region’s burgeoning biotechnology industry was hammered by water shut-offs that came with little warning.

….In 1996, the San Diego County Water Authority struck a landmark agreement to buy water from farmers in the Imperial Valley, in California’s southeastern corner, that heralded the beginning of the region’s water divorce from Los Angeles.

Over the following two decades, the agency took on a series of significant — and expensive — infrastructure projects aimed at establishing more diverse sources of water, more places to keep it and more ways to move it around the county.

In 2010, the authority lined canals in the Imperial Valley with concrete to prevent water from seeping into the earth, and made a deal to take the water saved by the process — some 26 billion gallons a year. The authority finished raising the San Vicente Dam in 2014, adding more capacity to San Vicente Reservoir in the biggest water storage increase in the county’s history.

Then there was the long, fraught gestation of a seawater desalination plant, the largest in the United States and now the envy of desperate communities up the coast, in spite of environmental concerns. Since 2015, millions of gallons of seawater have flowed into the $1 billion facility in Carlsbad each day, where it is filtered into something that tastes like it came from an Evian bottle, not the Pacific Ocean.

Across the county, restrictions and conservation pushes have led per capita water use to fall by half over the past three decades.

The next major task? Expand the region’s so-called pure water programs, once given the derisive moniker “toilet to tap,” because they purify gray water to make it drinkable. Today, such programs are seen as some of the most promising paths forward, not just in San Diego but across the state. (The system in neighboring Orange County is often cited as a gold standard.)

San Diego has provided a road map for others now scrambling for water, said Toni Atkins, who is the president pro tem of the California Senate and previously served on the San Diego City Council. And she is proud of that.
[/quote]

Also….

San Diego Is Relatively Drought-Proof – and Has Prices to Prove it

Water Authority Confident in Local Water Supply, But Still Urges Conservation Amid Drought

Also. This was interesting…
https://www.sandiego.gov/public-utilities/sustainability/water-supply

And this…

https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/city_of_san_diego_2020_uwmp_final_6_29_2021_send.pdf

And this…
https://www.carlsbaddesal.com/faqs.html

And this

[an]

Considering the desalination plant in Carlsbad cost us $1b and can give us 8% of our water usage, we just need to build 12 more and we’re set. Considering global warming and sea level rise, that supply of water is only increasing. Maybe we can just do what OC did w/ their freeway and build 20 desalination plants, go bankrupt, and we’ll be set w/ water for a very long time.

[phaster]

[quote=Coronita][quote=XBoxBoy]Anyone know why San Diego isn’t being hit with the watering restrictions that are happening in LA? Does San Diego get its water from somewhere else? Did San Diego make a better deal regarding how much water they would get?[/quote]

I’m surprised that Phaster hasn’t posted the specifics about San Diego….

[/quote]

well seem’s I didn’t need too given ya posted lots of specifics about SD

anyway FWIW decades ago (just before 9/11) found myself exploring the aral sea (or what was left of it)

closest analog pigg’s would relate to is the Salton Sea region,… which most would say is harsh,… BUT having explored both areas have to say the Salton Sea region is akin to a walk in the park compared to,…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea

sadly the same mindset (i.e. a lack of ‘situational awareness’) that caused the aral sea environmental destruction issue,… is happening here in the USA

WRT watering restrictions in LA vs SD,… if people were smart they would start conserving and look at water as a very precious resource which is a need for people to live (AND have a working economy)

said another way w/ out water an economy is not possible AND w/ out water a person is dead

[quote]

May 6 (Reuters) – California energy officials on Friday issued a sober forecast for the state’s electrical grid, saying it lacks sufficient capacity to keep the lights on this summer and beyond if heatwaves, wildfires or other extreme events take their toll.

…In an online briefing with reporters, the officials forecast a potential shortfall of 1,700 megawatts this year, a number that could go as high as 5,000 MW if the grid is taxed by multiple challenges that reduce available power while sending demand soaring, state officials said during an online briefing with reporters

http://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-says-it-needs-more-power-keep-lights-2022-05-06/
[/quote]

[an]

[quote=phaster]
WRT watering restrictions in LA vs SD,… if people were smart they would start conserving and look at water as a very precious resource which is a need for people to live (AND have a working economy)

said another way w/ out water an economy is not possible AND w/ out water a person is dead[/quote]
If people were smart, they would demand the cancellation of the $105B bullet train project and spend that $105B to build 105 desalination plants. We would stop talking about water right now and people would not die from lack of water. Afterall, we have virtually limitless water right next to us. If you want to go crazy, build 1000 desalination plants or build ways to collect water from the east and create water pipelines (like oil pipelines) to bring water to the West. It’s not a hard problem to solve, just require $.

[gzz]

Most of the train money is coming from the federal government.

It still should be cancelled.

From 2009-3/2020 I flew to the bay area about 10 times per year.

Only 1 time since then.

About 90% of court hearings now are video or telephone conference. Bluejeans, zoom. MS Teams, I do them all. State, federal, appellate. All remote.

Intra-city transit is also cheaper, used more, and has larger environmental benefits. Those above ground muni trams in SF were awful, usually packed to the brim with people and barely moving faster than a brisk walk.

[phaster]

[quote=an][quote=phaster]
WRT watering restrictions in LA vs SD,… if people were smart they would start conserving and look at water as a very precious resource which is a need for people to live (AND have a working economy)

said another way w/ out water an economy is not possible AND w/ out water a person is dead[/quote]

If people were smart, they would demand the cancellation of the $105B bullet train project and spend that $105B to build 105 desalination plants. We would stop talking about water right now and people would not die from lack of water. Afterall, we have virtually limitless water right next to us. If you want to go crazy, build 1000 desalination plants or build ways to collect water from the east and create water pipelines (like oil pipelines) to bring water to the West. It’s not a hard problem to solve, just require $.[/quote]

…about that ‘virtually limitless water right next to us’

spending $105B to build 105 desalination plants is simplistic thinking,… point being desalination plants and moving water requires lots of energy (so it might be a good idea to think about electrical generators)

things can get more complicated with other unaddressed ticking time bomb issues (for example),… ever wonder about the millions of pounds of spent fuel left on the beach at san onofre (basically spent fuel is left on the beach simply because democratic politicians ignored the science)

FYI in the meantime SoCal water departments are considering using physical water restrictors in affluent areas to prevent using water for outdoor landscaping

[svelte]

[quote=gzz]
Those above ground muni trams in SF were awful, usually packed to the brim with people and barely moving faster than a brisk walk.[/quote]

We rode those once. It was relatively empty when we boarded but as we went through Chinatown that thing was wall to wall people. It would have been impossible to fit a sheet of paper between me and those surrounding me. I couldn’t even see where my wife was on that little tram.

That’s the only time I can honestly say I’ve felt claustrophobia. I can recall the thought going through my head that if I lived in SF there is no way in hell I would ride the tram. I’d rather walk.

[an]

[quote=phaster]
spending $105B to build 105 desalination plants is simplistic thinking,… point being desalination plants and moving water requires lots of energy (so it might be a good idea to think about electrical generators)[/quote]
Of course, it’s simplistic thinking. But it can be done if we want to… but obviously, we don’t want to. We whine about it. As for energy, we have the desert east of us where we can spend another $100b to build solar farms, we can spend $100b to add a few more nuclear power plants, etc. We have the technology to solve the problems. Whether we really want to solve them is the real question. The Huntington beach desalination plant proposal was rejected. So, I don’t see it happening.

[barnaby33]

It’s not a hard problem to solve, just require $.

It is exactly a hard problem to solve because it is expensive to do so. Water is the foundation of our society, cheap water that is. It must be transported in bulk and is heavy. We consume more of it than our ecology can produce (at least the non-salt version.) Most importantly, people are not smart. Nobody cares as long as the taps still function.
Josh

[phaster]

sigh,… given California has almost a 100 billion dollar budget surplus

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-13/california-governor-sees-record-97-5-billion-operating-surplus

…so just like TRUMP (spending other people’s money)

http://money.yahoo.com/coronavirus-stimulus-checks-trump-tweet-172756371.html

seems Newsom sees fit to hand out checks to voters?!?!

http://abc30.com/california-gas-rebate-checks-delayed-newsom-report/11828736/

…meanwhile there are water and power shortages

http://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-06/colorado-rivers-california-arizona-powell-mead-risks

http://www.wsj.com/articles/electricity-shortage-warnings-grow-across-u-s-11652002380

Just thinking out loud,… seems sending out checks is a calculated political move that does nothing to address the problem of insufficient water AND insufficient electrical power generating capacity in the South Western USA

Perhaps concerned citizens (and especially elected officials) should be made aware there is a wiser way to spend taxpayers money (such as) ‘Covering the 4,000 miles of California’s water canals could save billions of gallons of water and generate renewable power for the state every year, according to a new study.’

http://news.ucmerced.edu/news/2021/solar-panels-over-canals-can-save-money-energy-and-water-study-shows

[phaster]

[quote=barnaby33]

It’s not a hard problem to solve, just require $.

It is exactly a hard problem to solve because it is expensive to do so. Water is the foundation of our society, cheap water that is. It must be transported in bulk and is heavy. We consume more of it than our ecology can produce (at least the non-salt version.) Most importantly, people are not smart. Nobody cares as long as the taps still function.
Josh[/quote]

yup 100% agree,… people are not smart. Nobody cares as long as the taps still function.

…infrastructure while necessary for survival, isn’t sexy or thought about by the masses till it no longer works

[an]

[quote=barnaby33]

It’s not a hard problem to solve, just require $.

It is exactly a hard problem to solve because it is expensive to do so. Water is the foundation of our society, cheap water that is. It must be transported in bulk and is heavy. We consume more of it than our ecology can produce (at least the non-salt version.) Most importantly, people are not smart. Nobody cares as long as the taps still function.
Josh[/quote]
CA have $100b surplus in just 1 year. Spend that $ to build infrastructure to increase our supplies on stuff that keep society running instead of trying to limit demand.

Storage, recycling, and desalination would be some of the solutions. I’m sure there are more. But given the rejection of desalination in Huntington Beach, I’m not encouraged that we’ll solve the supply problem.

[barnaby33]

CA have $100b surplus in just 1 year. Spend that $ to build infrastructure to increase our supplies on stuff that keep society running instead of trying to limit demand.

Woe to him who treats water as a market commodity. He shall reap what he sows. It takes decades to build the kind of infra you’re talking about. It won’t solve the problem. Humans are maximizers. All you are doing by playing the lets-expand-supply-game is heightening the fall. Water is the most fundamental human need. It almost doesn’t exist in Southern California. Market forces will not in any real sense lead us to a better place, or even a place where our society can survive. Think tragedy of the commons.

We will drill, drill, drill until the water runs out; or is too expensive to extract. That will presage a collapse. One where food will get much more expensive and millions around the world will starve. Lets just stop growing almonds and other stupid for profit, for export shit we don’t need and save the water for things we do.

Getting used to doing with less is the only way forward till fusion becomes a reality. Then all bets are off.
Josh

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