Do we really need expensive desalination in California? Domestic water use only accounts for 20% of demand and desalination seems unlikely to ever be cheap enough for agricultural use (the remaining 80%.)
Other than a few coastal places like Marin and Sonoma that aren't on the state water project I think the answer is no. The resulting water will be too expensive. It would be cheaper to pay farmers to stop growing inefficient and largely unnecessary crops (pasture grass, alfalfa) or to move to more efficient drip irrigation. As you said, the domestic use is so low and ag users wouldn't pay for desalination when there is actually a fairly sizable (although possibly dwindling) source of water available.
Most coastal communities in southern California don't even bother to reservoir off their water during rain events, instead letting it drain into the ocean. One major exception being Santa Monica which only uses 40% of it's water from up north unlike other communities which are 100% reliant on it.
Back of the envelope math suggests that based on average rainfall amounts per year a place like Ventura county could be entirely self-sufficient without any desalination plants.
Agriculture can also switch to drip feeding water instead of spraying which cuts usage by 90% without lowering yields.
There's a lot that can be done. We just need the political will to make it happen.
Having extra reservoirs can also support more natural vegetation and potentially actually create conditions for more rainfall further from the coast.
You could get a lot of mileage out of just cutting out that billionaire's almond groves. Or make him pay for his water; at last report, he was stealing it with a pipe stuck through the side of a canal dike.
> Do we really need expensive desalination in California?
It’s a good question, and it’s been discussed quite often in recent media sources for the past two weeks due to the rejection of the proposed Poseidon plant in Huntington Beach.
The honest truth is you could probably argue for both sides. Realistically, it’s cheaper and less environmentally harmful to promote non-desal measures, but not as easy to see quicker and observable benefits. The problem with the latest proposal was that it had a lot of problems, and the company behind it has a paper trail of small scale disasters in its wake (see the failure of the Tampa Bay facility, for example).
I personally believe that this is the kind of project that could benefit from a closer partnership between the government and private industry. From what I can tell, the technology is mature and feasible, but every time someone tries to design and implement it in the states, they seem to drop the ball.
I would be curious to see the record of success of other large scale projects outside the US. I’ve heard about the benefits and risks of the plants in the Middle East and elsewhere, but I don’t know the details.
Id imagine a lot of the other desal plants (esp. those in Saudi Arabia) are less than obligated to admit to their resource usage and waste products. Apparently desal is very energy intensive. OP pointed out using solar but I would like an equivalent of how many 400W solar panels does it take to make 1 gallon desal water.
No idea, but AMTA reports 2.5 to 3.5 kwh/ m3 (10-13 kwh/kgal). They write: "Based on nationwide data from the Energy Information Administration, a typical refrigerator average annual energy usage is 1,400-1,500 kwh. Using the average US water use per household of 100,000 gallons per year, the energy requirement for supplying desalinated water to a house in the US will be less than an old refrigerator, but the same as a newer, more efficient refrigerator power use."
My small desalination rig uses about 1200 watts and makes 30 gallons per hour. It cost me $3500. So it’s doable with 3 panels for this 2 person household.
I’d imagine a plant would benefit from economies of scale. Though these benefits could get eaten up by cost overruns. Frankly, it seems the hurdle in California is working through the people issues/concerns than technical problems.
It’ll be interesting to see the stats on this new desal technique when they have a product for sale.
True, though there's a question of whether there will be demand to keep up those ag uses as water becomes more scarce generally (I could see it going either way).
Electricity is something like half of desalination's operational cost, and we're already in a situation where the price on the grid goes negative (or is curtailed) during solar peaks and more and more solar is being added to the grid each year. So power for desalination is going to be near free in the coming years. (Whereas for other less flexible loads, electricity isn't likely to get cheaper quickly, since we have to either have storage or use gas plants.)
The last desal plan in SoCal just got shot down ... the plant in my area was voted down not long ago as well. There needs to be a bit more suffering and research before most are going to agree to the clear negative aspects ... I love fishing and a clean Bay too. We, however, are gonna run out of water. By that time its going to be an entire California event in which the plants arent supplying just the local water districts but most of the state. At that point were just gonna eminent domain Fort Ord and build an effluent pipe half way to Kauai.
I don't know if we're truly going to run out of water or not, but there are many measures it would make sense to take before building desalination plants, such as recycling water and more efficient agricultural water use.
Agricultural use accounts for the overwhelming majority of water use in CA. I doubt Bay Area and LA residential faucets will go dry before water use is reformed. The rural areas are massively out-voted by the urban centers.
> Do we really need expensive desalination in California? Domestic water use only accounts for 20% of demand and desalination seems unlikely to ever be cheap enough for agricultural use (the remaining 80%.)
If you like to eat, yes, you do. I still cannot fathom what distorted minds most transplants possess: California was and is an Ag state, it;s a fundamental part of it's culture it also feeds most of the US with its produce/fruit and exports it's surplus all around the World in surplus commodities.
Yes, stricter water preserving techniques are required for Ag, this recent budget surplus should go towards that as well as desalination to replenish aquifers and reservoirs/quarries after decades of an unsustainable population growth. This recent COVID exodus needs to go on for decades for the population to just return to the norms of the 70-80s.
You guys that write this kind of misinformed responses are so delusional, you cannot eat apps or drink code when you're hungry: and I can assure you will be the first to break when you haven't been fed for a few days or have to ration food/water since you've been accustomed to a lifestyle that simply doesn't reflect reality. And I highly doubt you can do any level of manual labour in order to feed yourself, either.
Get real, water conservation methods all around needs to be enforced BY EVERYONE! AG is guilty of exploiting loopholes when CA water laws were written to serve prospectors, and they should be taxed for over-useage and incentivize them with grants to utilize drip irrigation systems etc... but if you really want to solve this issue, which most of you won't agree to, is remove Farm subsidies: this will force farmers to cut down on these practices to make alfalfa or soy in the Central Valley for export to China that is only profitable because the State subsidies this horrific business model, it in turn will make food get even more expensive, which if you look at it in terms of net income is the historical norm: ~15% of total net income [0].
Food security is a matter of national security for a reason, it's used as a reliable weapon in warfare and has been a reason why most of humanity has gone to war in the first place, and if you like to keep civilization operating it's absolutely critical.
"you cannot eat apps or drink code when you're hungry: and I can assure you will be the first to break when you haven't been fed for a few days or have to ration food/water since you've been accustomed to a lifestyle that simply doesn't reflect reality. And I highly doubt you can do any level of manual labour in order to feed yourself, either."
This is cathartic and fun to read - and it equally applies to bankers, and other highly paid wankers.
Our economy as a whole underpays and inderinvests in the foundamental things that allow advanced society to exist - as the whole climate crisis demobstrates.
The Midwest is capable of growing all the alfalfa we need. Ending alfalfa alone would solve the water shortage for at least a decade. And it's mostly just exported to China.
Yeah! California could fix the water issue by restricting agricultural use water. That way, California could finally kill off it's agricultural production. This will ensure farmers will move to other states and turn to the plentiful supply of hard drugs. This seems exactly what California will do. You would think California politicians might make a good decision -- EVEN by mistake once and while -- but NO. How is that train from LA going?
Exactly. They are loaded, especially from farm subsidies. On paper they are super rich. We should cut off their water, force them to pay taxes on their still operating farms, and sprinkle salt all over the land. California should shoot down the water desalination projects (like it has for 20 years) and punish it's citizenry.
> Water use in California is divided into approximately 51% for environmental uses, 39% agricultural use and 11% urban uses, though that varies considerably between regions and between wet and dry years.
"Environmental" uses seems to mean they're just allowing the water to run naturally to maintain the environment. (This is the source Wikipedia cites: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/). It's funny that they call that a use of water in California. If you remove that, then yes, agriculture uses 80% of the water.
Water that naturally flows into the state’s “wild and scenic” rivers, which are not connected to the state’s water system and can’t be under state and federal protections
Water required for maintaining fish and wildlife habitat within streams
Water that supports wetlands within wildlife preserves
Water needed to maintain water quality for agricultural and urban use
