water

[doorhinge]

@wolfpup

Wisconsin and Michigan have no jurisdiction over the Great Lakes, which is subject to the international Boundary Waters Treaty and subsidiary agreements and legislation, and managed by the International Joint Commission.

The International Joint Commission disagrees with your assessment. All of the Great Lakes states plus Ontario and Quebec have a say in where Great Lakes water is diverted.

*Key developments since the 2000 report include:
· Amendments to the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act (Bill C-6) and
International Boundary Waters Regulations, which entered into force in Canada in December 2002, prohibit removals from Canadian boundary waters1 of the Great Lakes.

· In the United States, the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 prohibits the diversion of Great Lakes water unless approved by all eight Great Lakes state governors. Amendments to this act in 2000 further encourage the Great Lakes states, in consultation with the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, to develop and implement a standard for making decisions concerning the withdrawal and use of water from the Great Lakes
Basin.

· In 2001, the Great Lakes states and Ontario and Quebec concluded an annex to the 1985 Great Lakes Charter, a good-faith arrangement called Annex 2001 that committed them to establish a new decision-making standard, and a decision-support system to manage withdrawals of water from the Great Lakes Basin. The Commission commends the Great Lakes states and Ontario and Quebec for their achievements to date, and notes that new draft arrangements to implement Annex 2001 were put out for public comment for 90 days on July 19, 2004, and that a final arrangement will then have to be approved by governments through legislation.

· While there are not, at present, any active proposals for diversions outside the Great Lakes Basin, except to communities on the edge of the basin, this situation could change. Moreover, the increasing demands for water to supply the needs of these near-basin communities, and potential future demands for diversions to other parts of the continent, make it urgent for governments to carry out the recommendations in the Commission’s 2000 report, and for the Great Lakes states and provinces to implement Annex 2001 in a manner that conforms with those recommendations. The Commission recommends that the outcome of the Annex 2001 process should include a standard and management regime consistent with the recommendations in our 2000 Report. Until this process is complete, it is not possible to say whether and to what extent Annex 2001 and measures taken under it will give effect to the recommendations in the Commission’s 2000 Report*.

Warning pdf file ahead -
http://www.ijc.org/php/publications/pdf/ID1560.pdf

[Lamar_Mundane]

You guys didn’t think I was being serious about piping water from the Great Lakes to California, did you?

[tonyfop]

@Lamar_Mundane

You guys didn’t think I was being serious about piping water from the Great Lakes to California, did you?

Why not? I remember back in the 70’s they were talking about breaking a huge chunk off of the Ross Ice Shelf, and towing it to Saudi Arabia to provide water. Of course that would be off the table today, but just for grins, how plausible would it be to bring a large piece of sea ice through the Bering Straights, down to the California coast to provide a fresh water source?

[RTFirefly]

According to this chart from Mother Jones, it takes 3/4 gallon of water to grow one pistachio, 1.1 gallons to grow one almond, and nearly 5 gallons to grow a walnut, at current usage rates.

Maybe let some other part of the country (or world) grow the nuts?

[doorhinge]

@Lamar_Mundane

You guys didn’t think I was being serious about piping water from the Great Lakes to California, did you?

You’re not the first one to suggest it. Diverting Great Lakes water to much closer Great Lakes states is a decades (or longer) old question. Nothing personal.

[Typo_Negative]

@RTFirefly

According to this chart from Mother Jones, it takes 3/4 gallon of water to grow one pistachio, 1.1 gallons to grow one almond, and nearly 5 gallons to grow a walnut, at current usage rates.

Maybe let some other part of the country (or world) grow the nuts?

And California produces nearly all of them for the country. When we say nearly all, we mean 95-99%. At least, according to some sites.

California produces almost all of the country’s almonds, apricots, dates, figs, kiwi fruit, nectarines, olives, pistachios, prunes, and walnuts. It leads in the production of avocados, grapes, lemons, melons, peaches, plums, and strawberries. Only Florida produces more oranges.

Can someone provide a cite for the 2% of California GDP from agriculture?

Also, say California outlaws the growing of rice and cotton, how much of an impact would that alone be?

[foolsguinea]

@RTFirefly

According to this chart from Mother Jones, it takes 3/4 gallon of water to grow one pistachio, 1.1 gallons to grow one almond, and nearly 5 gallons to grow a walnut, at current usage rates.

:eek: Well, I wondered, considering almonds are basically peaches, and any woody tree that makes fruit that big is going to be a water hog.

Maybe let some other part of the country (or world) grow the nuts?

Georgia might not want the almonds to contaminate its peach crop, but the Mississippi Delta could probably do that, yeah.

[Ruken]

@septimus

Cite?
I don’t claim your statement is untrue; “enviros” favor efficiency and desalinization is inefficient. I just wonder what you read that made this “spin” seem usefully informative.

Desalination

[Lemur866]

@foolsguinea

So, refugee crisis in a year?

No, for several reasons. One is that there is plenty of water for people to DRINK, or wash their cars with, or take showers with. The only thing California is short of is water for agriculture. Will a lot of farms have to shut down until the drought ends, and a lot of expensive trees die? Probably yes. Will that cause a refugee crisis? No, because agriculture is a very small part of California’s economy. It’s always hard when an industry suffers a major blow like this drought, but plenty of states have had major industries collapse and it didn’t lead to a refugee crisis.

California agriculture is in crisis, and some types of agricultural products will be more expensive in the next few years. If you like almonds buy them now since there will probably be a collapse in almond production in California pretty soon.

But note that giving away free water to California farmers at vast expense isn’t actually creating cheap food. That food is actually expensive, it’s just that the people who buy the food don’t pay the price, instead taxpayers subsidize them. If we’re concerned about poor people getting enough to eat then it would be much more sensible to make California farmers pay for the cost of their water, and sell their products at higher prices, and just hand out more food stamps to the poor.

[Lemur866]

@Musicat

Just to nitpick, I’d like to point out that the surface of Lake Michigan is nominally 579 feet above sea level; Lake Superior, slightly higher. If you were to build a pipe or canal from there to seaside Santa Monica, the water would travel down about 600 ft from start to finish. You could even (theoretically) make a siphon and it would be pump-less.

SIPHONS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.

[eschereal]

@Lemur866

SIPHONS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.

Technically, yes they do. If the head of a siphon is higher than the outflow, water will be drawn through it, as long as there are no bubbles. The problem is, the peak of the siphon cannot be more than about ten meters higher than the inflow, otherwise, the weight of the water column will cause the water to boil at the peak, thus introducing bubbles that render the siphon ineffective. If you could cut and tunnel across the country to keep the highest point of the pipe less than ten meters higher than the head, it could maybe work, though that would place the pipe in excess of a mile underground for a significant portion of its run. That is a lot of digging.

@Ruken

Desalination - Wikipedia

Ok, so how does that article support “… the enviros don’t like desal.” ?

[Musicat]

@Lamar_Mundane

You guys didn’t think I was being serious about piping water from the Great Lakes to California, did you?

Some people have been, which has led to the Great Lakes Compact, already referenced in this thread.

As far as my siphon comment, it was not intended to be serious, either, and would have major and insurmountable problems if attempted, at least with current technology.

[Ruken]

@XT

I can’t see how it could affect the overall salinity…I mean, there are like 187 quintillion gallons of water in the Pacific. Even if you were creating millions or even billions of gallons of fresh water and an equivalent amount of ‘supersalty water’ it’s going to be a proverbial drop in the bucket. I can see how it could affect local environments though, so a way to disperse it over a large area would probably be necessary.

I recommend you read the environmental section of the wiki article I linked to earlier. Let us know if you still don’t understand.

[eschereal]

graphic depiction of all Earth’s water

[ASGuy]

@eschereal

…they could put up tubes in the air at places like Eureka and San Francisco, suck up all the fog, condense it to liquid in capped highland reservoirs and… If you sucked away all the fog in Eureka, I suspect people would be startled to see an actual town or two there.

Get on reality street. You can joke about the plentiful water we have up here (I live 20 miles from Eureka) but shipping it all down to SoCal, or even the SF Bay area is no laughing matter to us: it has already happened. And we don’t like it.

Many of the things said about California water policy are spot on. Push the problem off. Build another aqueduct. Divert the Sacramento around the delta. All losers in the long run. Arid California (SoCal, and the entire Central Valley) are going to die unless the civil authorities start denying connection to the water supply. And this means residential, commercial and private wells.

I’m not going to pretend I have a solution. But allowing aquifer extraction and diversion proposals are not going to work. Jerry Brown has made an appropriate step. But if he proposes solving the problem by diverting water north of Mendocino County there will be a terrific fight.

And it’s apparent, eschereal, that you have never been in far northern California. We see our towns, hills and valleys all the time and most of them are green because we choose to live where the water supply is provided without having to steal it from somewhere else.

I wish SoCal civil governments would wise up recognize that water is not infinite.

[XT]

@Ruken

I recommend you read the environmental section of the wiki article I linked to earlier. Let us know if you still don’t understand.

Got a mouse in your pocket, ehe? From your link (I presume):

Outflow
Edit

All desalination processes produce large quantities of a concentrate, which may be increased in temperature, and contain residues of pretreatment and cleaning chemicals, their reaction byproducts, and heavy metals due to corrosion.[44] Chemical pretreatment and cleaning are a necessity in most desalination plants, which typically includes the treatment against biofouling, scaling, foaming and corrosion in thermal plants, and against biofouling, suspended solids and scale deposits in membrane plants.[45]

To limit the environmental impact of returning the brine to the ocean, it can be diluted with another stream of water entering the ocean, such as the outfall of a wastewater treatment or power plant. While seawater power plant cooling water outfalls are not as fresh as wastewater treatment plant outfalls, salinity is reduced. With medium to large power plant and desalination plant, the power plant’s cooling water flow is likely to be at least several times larger than that of the desalination plant. Another method to reduce the increase in salinity is to mix the brine via a diffuser in a mixing zone. For example, once the pipeline containing the brine reaches the sea floor, it can split into many branches, each releasing brine gradually through small holes along its length. Mixing can be combined with power plant or wastewater plant dilution.

Brine is denser than seawater due to higher solute concentration. The ocean bottom is most at risk because the brine sinks and remains there long enough to damage the ecosystem. Careful reintroduction can minimize this problem. For example, for the desalination plant and ocean outlet structures to be built in Sydney from late 2007, the water authority stated the ocean outlets would be placed in locations at the seabed that will maximize the dispersal of the concentrated seawater, such that it will be indistinguishable beyond between 50 and 75 meters (164 and 246 ft) from the outlets. Typical oceanographic conditions off the coast allow for rapid dilution of the concentrated byproduct, thereby minimizing harm to the environment.

So, sounds exactly like what I said. It’s not going to make a huge difference, except locally, and the way you get around that is, again, pretty much what I said, which is to dilute it and distribute it widely. So, I’m wondering what part of this all you thought I didn’t get, but then a link and a bit of snark is less than illuminating. Another poster brought this part up, though, so glad to see it here as well:

Alternatives without pollution
Edit

Some methods of desalination, particularly in combination with evaporation ponds, solar stills, and condensation trap (solar desalination), do not discharge brine. They do not use chemicals in their processes nor the burning of fossil fuels. They do not work with membranes or other critical parts, such as components that include heavy metals, thus do not cause toxic waste (and high maintenance).

A new approach that works like a solar still, but on the scale of industrial evaporation ponds is the integrated biotectural system.[46] It can be considered “full desalination” because it converts the entire amount of saltwater intake into distilled water. One of the unique advantages of this type of solar-powered desalination is the feasibility for inland operation. Standard advantages also include no air pollution from desalination power plants and no temperature increase of endangered natural water bodies from power plant cooling-water discharge. Another important advantage is the production of sea salt for industrial and other uses. Currently, 50% of the world’s sea salt production still relies on fossil energy sources.[citation needed]

So, another thing that could be done is basically the exact same method used to produce sea salt, i.e. evaporation pools and then mining of the resultant salt. I have no idea how much salt is needed on the market (I know that sea salt seems to be in everything these days, however), or how much would be produced from the resultant brine/‘supersalty’ water, but I suppose you could use a variety of methods. So, again, I’m not seeing this as more than an engineering and probably a regulation issue…other than the massive amounts of energy needed, of course. But thanks to ‘us’ for providing that and really for the interesting discussion you’re part of ‘us’ has made (one liners and drive by links, unless I missed the meatier part of your posts in this thread).

[DSeid]

@RTFirefly

According to this chart from Mother Jones, it takes 3/4 gallon of water to grow one pistachio, 1.1 gallons to grow one almond, and nearly 5 gallons to grow a walnut, at current usage rates.

Maybe let some other part of the country (or world) grow the nuts?

It does seem that historically the artificially low cost of water to California ag has encouraged long term investments in water intense crops, that they are now to some degree stuck with. Almonds, walnuts, and pistachios are in general high profit crops.

… farmers have to make important decisions—and it often comes down to money. If given a choice between keeping fruit trees alive (which take years to mature and can bring 10 times more money per acre), or planting rows of vegetables that live only a few months, that’s a no-brainer if you’re trying to maximize profit. This year, farmers are fallowing vegetable fields and scrambling to save high-dollar fruit and nut orchards. The result is counterintuitive: In the midst of the worst drought in half a millennium, the most water-intensive crops are getting priority. … Almonds alone use about 10 percent of California’s total water supply each year.

Logically it makes sense for California agriculture to gradually switch to less water intense crops, such as more olives. And if the cost of almonds goes up as a consequence then indeed other regions of the world will step up and plant to gain the profit. The possibility of sticking with almonds but using drought-tolerant root stock deserves serious exploration and support if feasible.

Nowhere in its historic range does the almond gets much rain. Many of the wild relatives of Prunus dulcis, the domesticated sweet almonds, are therefore highly drought tolerant, thriving in places even drier than California’s San Joaquin Valley.

No one is going to replant the Valley’s more than 900,000 acres of sweet almonds with Prunus scoparia, a wild Iranian almond, overnight. Creating a drought-tolerant future for almond growing in California requires separating what’s above and below the soil. Growers could continue to harvest Prunus dulcis while the trees are grown on the rootstock of wild or drought-tolerant domesticated varieties. That’s because almond trees, like other fruit trees and vine crops (the kernel is technically a seed), can be grafted onto the roots of another variety or even that of a close cousin, such as peach, apricot, or plum.

Prunus scoparia is just one of the wild varieties that could provide drought-tolerant rootstock for commercial orchards. “In undisturbed habitats, you might find them growing alongside a profusion of other desert trees and shrubs,” Bijan Jobrani writes in his Subversify essay about a stand of wild almonds planted to preserve

The choice of crops has apparently been based on greed and the protections being given to them comes off to my first read more like banks that were too big to fail than anything else.

[Ruken]

@XT

So, sounds exactly like what I said. It’s not going to make a huge difference, except locally, and the way you get around that is, again, pretty much what I said, which is to dilute it and distribute it widely.

The local problem is the problem. While it can be reduced (not eliminated), dilution and distribution means more cap/opex.

@XT

So, another thing that could be done is basically the exact same method used to produce sea salt, i.e. evaporation pools and then mining of the resultant salt. I have no idea how much salt is needed on the market (I know that sea salt seems to be in everything these days, however), or how much would be produced from the resultant brine/‘supersalty’ water, but I suppose you could use a variety of methods.

Evaporative pools have their own environmental issues, real or imagined. E.g. Aussie enviros from a few years back: http://www.haltthesalt.org.au/

But yes, we could use direct solar evaporation for water production. At 49 km[sup]3[/sup] of water managed by CA’s water system each year, or 1.3 x 10[sup]11[/sup] L/day, and 4 L/m[sup]2[/sup].day from our evaporators, we could get by with 34,000 km[sup]2[/sup] of land dedicated to water production. And we could restore the Colorado river delta.
You have no idea how much salt is needed on the market, or how much would be produced from the resultant brine, but that’s ok because someone else does. So after evaporating for a day, we could then use solar-powered bulldozers to scoop up the distributed 4.7 million metric tons of salt produced each day. It may disrupt global salt markets a touch, but we can adjust.

[eschereal]

Given the long-term climate projection for north america, desalination is unlikely to be a workable solution, beyond, maybe, a drop in the bucket. Granted, most of us will probably be pushing up drought-tolerant wildflowers well before this becomes a really serious concern, so I guess we should just worry about next month and let our future generations try to deal with what they are left with.

[elucidator]

Canada. Lots of water. Minimal military defense. Just sayin’, is all.