This is starting to get some notice from the general public (17 minute video):
1,066.45 today.
However, CA has had record snowfalls, so weird weather- which will be the “new normal” methinks.
Folks are making a gesture:
The water isn’t being given up by people with lawns and swimming pools, it is being taken from the ranchers and farmers. I understand some water allotments have also been given to the newest water park (which will use less water than the farms it is replacing.
I happen to think that food is more important than recreation, but obviously I am wrong according to the PTB.
I don’t disagree, but there are varying shades here. Water projects are hugely expensive and built with public funds. In many cases (tree nuts in CA, beef) a large portion of production is exported for profit and not for your table. Why should the cost and risk of water delivery be socialized while the benefits are privatized? If food is being produced for domestic consumption that’s one thing, but it is not always the case.
Here is an interesting article on what’s happening upstream from Lake Mead at Glen Canyon…
The Alaska pipeline is 800 miles long and carries about 75 million gallons per day. From the beginning of the first request for permission to build it (1968) until the first gallon reached Prudhoe Bay (1977) was roughly 9 years. Nine years to build an 800 mile pipeline which carries 75 million gallons per day.
According to the USGS, California uses around 38 billion gallons per day. I realize California is not the CO river basin, but I’ll use that number as a rough approximation of Southern CA, Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc. According to Google, 40 million people live in the CO river basin. The population of CA is about 39.5 million, so it’s roughly equal.
Also according to Google maps, LA is about 1600 miles from the nearest point of Lake Superior.
So an absolutely perfect straight line pipeline twice as long as the Alaska oil pipeline, carrying 500 times as much fluid, crossing a hundred or thousand times as many municipalities/states/cities needs to be built in… what? The next 4 or 5 years? And as far as I know, no one has even formed a committee or group to start getting rights and permissions.
Get used to this unavoidable and undeniable reality. There is no solution to the Western Drought. None. Nothing can be done at this point, and we must face the reality that the dams will stop producing electricity, and the water will stop flowing. Within our lifetimes. All those millions of homes in Southern CA, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and their surrounds will be unliveable. Period. We cannot truck it in, pipe it in, nor can we build any imaginable version of mega-sized desal plants in the time left. It’s far too late.
Feel free to check my math. I’d love to be wrong.
Your math is more or less right (within the ballpark, anyway), but the thing that you left out is that even if this project were feasible, it would still be a terrible idea. Tens of millions of people rely on the Great Lakes and the water in their watersheds already. If we pipe it all off, then in a couple decades, the Great Lakes will be drained to unsustainable levels, the South West is right back to where it started, but we’ve destroyed the ecology and economy of the other half of the nation (as well as a substantial part of another nation), in an effort to prop up unsustainable growing practices.
Your math and my math are the same math.
I sold my home in Las Vegas last month and headed east to a place with a good aquifer underneath and plenty of annual precipitation for at least the next 40 years; I doubt I’ll live that long.
I don’t think you need to worry. The California high speed rail project officially began when Proposition 1A was approved in 2008. As I understand it, they expect to complete the first 119 mile section in 2029. Twenty-one years later they hope to have about a 5th of it up and running. And this is with a government of essentially all one party, no “other tribe” opposing it. Imagine the political clusterfuck if a massive pipeline project were attempted across most of the US. It simply cannot, and will not happen. America no longer solves problems, we manage them. Like we’ve “managed” proverty, homelessness, drugs, etc. Essentially we set up large bureaucracies who hold meetings and watch the problems get worse.
Good for you. I’ve been strongly counseling my kids that the main consideration for their location choices is access to water. Humans cannot survive without it, and it will become the single most important battleground issue in their future. We’re Texans, but my eldest has already settled in the rust belt. He was smart enough to take advantage of the lower prices, and can see one of the Great Lakes from his bedroom window. My youngest had been trying out various European locations and even spent a month in one of the Baltic states (I’m starting to agree with her it’s a good idea in the long term).
Me? I’m trying to figure out the future water availability in the DFW area where I live now. It seems we are OK for several decades, and some of the climate change models show an actual increase in rainfall (but also a frightening increase in violent weather). I’ve been here almost 30 years and have watched the CA (and others) migration drive home values up so far I’ve gained another digit on the price of mine. After I’m gone, maybe my kids can sell it for a huge profit to all refugees fleeing the southwest. Who knows at this point?
I think your pipeline analysis is correct, but your conclusion here is not. As mentioned upthread, agriculture is by far the largest water user out west, and when push comes to shove, ag will be the first to start cutting usage, either voluntarily as is already happening, or by force. There is no way ag will take priority over urban drinking water for schools and hospitals and industry, and if people in all those cities you mention cannot flush their toilets, you can bet ag will be targeted first for reductions. And I have not seen any evidence the current drought will become Atacama desert-like, so there is likely to be enuf for urban uses far into the future. I am not trying to minimize the seriousness of the drought and water shortage and tough decisions to come, but I do not think it’s as dire as you state.
If only Edward Abbey could’ve lived to see this.
You’re probably right. I was extrapolating assuming everything remained the same. I think you’re correct that at some point, no amount of lobbying will allow almonds to force people out of their homes. I don’t know how to predict what happens when a substantial portion of our food production stops, but I think that will be bad for all of us (not just California). Either way, we’re facing serious problems.
It would be more accurate to say that the latest projected time when it may be possible for the first passenger to board an operational train is 2029. The chance that this - like all previous projected dates - will slide is near 100%.
And the “scaled back” version is a joke: Justify the project by its goal of connecting SF (area population ~8 million) to LA (~18 million), then say “Okay, it’s going to take much longer and cost much more than the original projections, but look!, we’ll be connecting Bakersfield (~400,000) to Merced (~90,000).”
The cost of this mega-fiasco now looks to be headed toward $100 billion. As you note, the chance we’ll see a consensus toward spending, say, 30 times as much on a pipeline aiming to transport vast amounts of water from an area that has only a small surplus is nil.
Except that there is not necessarily a Western Drought . Climate change for the West does not dictate a drought. In fact, in CA we just had record snowfall. True, pipelines from the Great lakes is a fantasy.
Now on to the facts- about 80% of the water is CA goes to AG, often in vert water intensive crops, like almonds and cotton. 10% industry, 10% residential. So, at least for CA, a lower dependence on water intensive crops would mean plenty of water for residential use.
Correct, and we are not talking about not growing food. Just stop cotton ag, move it to another state , and that means plenty of water. Do we need all those almonds, most of which are exported?
A 10% reduction in Ag water waste means almost double water for residential. CA has plenty of water, we just have to use it wisely.
very interesting - thank you for posting it.
Sadly, good policy does not always trump bad weather.
At some point, it will be cheaper to do large scale desalinization. And that isn’t cheap. But the water is closer.
Desalination is probably doable for household and light industrial use.
For agriculture or other high volume uses, I don’t see how it can be economically viable.
Just have to find a place to dump all that resultant salt. Dumping it back in the ocean makes for local hypersaline dead zones
Maybe if a high-volume method using solar power could be invented.
Or nuclear. 