Moisture Farming and Water Rights

[gnoitall]

Inspired by this post in MPSIMS regarding how a new planned community in Northern California was going to be able to provide water for its residents when all the available water was already spoken for because of California’s water rights laws:

Mysterious company buys land next to Travis Air Force Base in California. What's going on?

Actually, there is a potential tech solution to water shortage: condensation. Every once in a while I see some report of a new surface or other technique to condense water from the air for use in places that have insufficient potable water. I don’t think any of them have been commercialized, but perhaps some have. At any rate, the question is, can they do it in sufficient volume at a low enough cost to make their town liveable?

So, all the existing surface and subsurface water is already claimed. Haha, we’ll just get the water we need from the air!

But doesn’t that impact surface and subsurface water in the immediate future? Some part of that humidity would otherwise have become precipitation that the water laws already address. (Such as, for instance, once upon a time you were not allowed to capture your own rain runoff into rain barrels.)

I truly wonder if current water rights holders are going to sit idly by while someone else jumps the queue for precipitation.

[iiandyiiii]

The hardest part of moisture farming is dealing with the moisture vaporators. Damn things break all the time, and only speak in binary language – damn near need a protocol droid just to tell the blasted thing to restart!

[burpo_the_wonder_mutt]

Can I bum a ride into Tosche Station with you? I need some smokes.

[Mama_Zappa]

@gnoitall

(Such as, for instance, once upon a time you were not allowed to capture your own rain runoff into rain barrels.)

There are still restrictions in a lot of states. Colorado used to be the worst - and is still pretty bad (max of 110 gallons).

I’m wondering about the energy costs associated with extracting water from the air. Let’s just burn some more fossil fuel to power a distillation plant, amirite?

It’s hard to imagine taking enough moisture out, from a smal localized area, to affect things all that much - but I could be quite wrong about that.

[dtilque]

@Mama_Zappa

I’m wondering about the energy costs associated with extracting water from the air. Let’s just burn some more fossil fuel to power a distillation plant, amirite?

The one I posted a video for upthread was solar powered. Direct solar power, not converted to electricity and then used.

[Common_Tater]

@gnoitall

Such as, for instance, once upon a time you were not allowed to capture your own rain runoff into rain barrels.)

The runoff already spoken for, eh? I noticed Goolag Erf street view images blurred out the wooden rain-barrel I used for watering plants. I don’t live in Colorado or other large, square state out West. It was the only thing blurred out. Thought that was strange.