I don’t live there and I haven’t checked my sources. I read a list of water consumption in the Las Vegas area and by far the largest consumer, 1 bill gall/yr) is Lake Henderson. An entirely artificial lake outside Las Vegas. Surrounded by 18 hole golf courses it is apparently a very nice place. It may not compete with he Arizona cotton farms, but that is a lot of water. More than, I believe, the city of Las Vegas uses.
The problem will be solved when the area hits zero day. Not before.
The treatment of the Native Americans is something the US Govt has failed at for so many years. I do not have a great deal of experiencing dealing with many of them but I read enough to know and understand they’ve received the short end of the stick for way too long.
In Santa Clara county that is already being done. New buildings use this reclaimed water to water lawns and any water features. Water is pumped up the coyote creek head water area in South San Jose. I I do believe there are some perk ponds that the water goes to. Also some of the buildings have both domestic water and reclaimed water. The reclaimed water goes to toilets, urinals, and cooling towers.
People don’t use much water. The food to feed them can. But most of our calories come from places with water. CA specializes in high-value crops, with cattle/dairy, tree nuts, and grapes, comprising more than half of their agricultural receipts.
Somewhere on these boards I made a somewhat tongue in check calculation of how many nuclear desal plants you’d need. For some reason people were touchy about so many reactors along seismically active coasts.
But “let alone again the population centers and non-agricultural users” isn’t the hard part. Agriculture is the hard part.
Effluent is currently dumped in the ocean, injected underground where there’s already saline water, or mined. The newer CA plants dilute the effluent so that it has about the same TDS as the surrounding ocean water. That’s not to say there is no environmental impact. Or that it’s a good idea. But we’re in FQ so I’m not going to talk about good/bad ideas.
Right, if there were no longer any fresh water flowing into southern California, providing enough desalinated water for the populace would be a challenge, and pose some environmental concerns, but is probably reasonable to accomplish. However, providing water for agriculture would be a ridiculous undertaking, and would cause environmental catastrophe.
Agreed, I should’ve switched the order around a bit in that list as it gives a false impression that residential consumers are the lion’s share. As has been noted (I think) in this thread agriculture uses something like 80% of the fresh water volume used in the southwest.
That’s what Google pops up when I ask it. I didn’t dig to verify.
My years-ago probably-wrong estimate was 35 GW to meet the state’s water needs. That was with no regard to safety, environment, or actually moving the water.