California Drought

ThirstyBarbarian said:

And by "elsewhere," you mean California! Many refugees from the Dust Bowl resettled in California.

By the way, it's raining right now! It's only a drop in the bucket, of course. But when the bucket is this dry, every drop counts. I hope we get a good soaking out of it.

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California did get its share of Dust Bowl refugees but the percentage of the total was not as big as public perception would make it appear.

Two things were responsible for that perception; one was the publication of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and the subsequent movie made from same, second was California’s highly publicized, at the time, attempts to keep these refugees out of California.

Those “Produce Checkpoints” that once dotted California’s borders were implemented to “Keep out the riff-raff” not so much to protect California’s produce.

Good luck with the rain, we could use some here as well.

boomtube-mk2 said:

But that plant will provide only 7% of San Diego’s water needs. 7%!!!
You’re going to need a whole lot of DeSal plants before you’re going to make much of a dent in SoCal’s water needs.

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How many de-sal plants could built for price of the "high speed rail" between Bakersfield and Chowchilla? About a hundred I figure.

Yes! What a friggen boondoggle that is. I've asked my co-workers who voted for it if they would actually ride it if it's going to cost $150 for a round trip ticket. They all kind of hemmed and hawed.

jderimig said:

How many de-sal plants could built for price of the "high speed rail" between Bakersfield and Chowchilla? About a hundred I figure.

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No railroad ever made a dime hauling anything with feet; be it furniture, livestock or people.
This has been a mantra of U.S. Railroads since at least the 1920’s and it is as true today as it was back then.

America’s great passenger trains of days gone by were successful only because so much of the cost of operating them was covered by the freight operations of the railroads that ran them.

Personally I don’t think California’s “High Speed” railroad will ever be completed much less ever pay for itself it will go down in history as one of the great boondoggles of all time. And like many, I too believe there are much more important things California can waste tax payer money on.

Though I admit; I’m interested to see how they plan to get over the various mountain chains that separate the Central Valley from the Los Angeles/Orange County region.

I see a lot of demands from city dwellers that the farmers stop wasting water, stop raising cattle, we should all go vegan, etc. Meanwhile they keep watering their lawns and bemoaning expensive produce and dairy products. I'm sorry, but to me food production comes first, everything else is secondary.

I live in an area that used to be all farms and now is a bedroom community for the Silicon Valley. Most of the people that work here in the valley are seriously detached from reality. :bangpan:

Gilroy, where I live, is supposed to be the first stop in the SF Bay area. The tracks are slated to come over Pacheco pass alongside Hwy 152. They won't be going high speed through any of the passes.

boomtube-mk2 said:

Though I admit; I’m interested to see how they plan to get over the various mountain chains that separate the Central Valley from the Los Angeles/Orange County region.

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ChrisAttebery said:

I live in an area that used to be all farms and now is a bedroom community for the Silicon Valley. Most of the people that work here in the valley are seriously detached from reality. :bangpan:

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I lived and worked for better than a decade in Silicon Valley and for a place that is supposed to be the home of the “Best and brightest” there seemed to be a whole lot of people living and working there that didn’t know their @$$ from their elbow when it came to anything outside their field of expertise.

And yes; turning some of the world’s most productive farmlands into shopping malls and apartment complexes was perhaps, in hindsight, not a good idea all things considered.

Kind of like Las Vegas.

ChrisAttebery said:

Gilroy, where I live, is supposed to be the first stop in the SF Bay area. The tracks are slated to come over Pacheco pass alongside Hwy 152. They won't be going high speed through any of the passes.

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But driving a right-of-way through Pacheco Pass will be easy-peasy compared to getting over the Grapevine or any of the other passes that lead from the CV to the L.A. Basin.

Read up on the various Class 1 RRs that built and maintain their ROWs into L.A. and San Bernardino from points north and east.

I suppose they can use the California approved solar power to desal water. Maybe with a giant solar still...

You know California is essentially a desert so it's no surprise there are droughts.

What about using saltwater for flushing toilets?

You residents of California:

Given your recurring drought conditions, and the resultant burn bans, what is the average number of launches you attend IN California each year?

When I landed in Los Angeles, it was raining HARD. I thought it was weird because they kept talking about droughts and stuff.

You know I don't see the sense in high speed rail in California or anywhere else in the states really, the land is far too vast and population density too low for it to be feasible. The only reason rail travel diminished greatly in America is because of air travel, and before that it was because there was nothing better. Europe has lots of rail travel (as does New England) because of relatively high population density.

But I do enjoy traveling between US cities by land... it's a great way to see America.

No railroad ever made a dime hauling anything with feet; be it furniture, livestock or people.

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I believe the exception that proves the rule is the Acela line in the NE corridor. My understanding is that is the one Amtrak line that at least breaks even. That's a pretty unusual combination of population density, terrible traffic (encouraging grade-separated transit), and terrible parking (reducing value/time advantage of driving).

LUNAR has launches from November to April at Snow Ranch every year. They basically will let us launch there as long as the grass stays green.

TCC has launches at Maddox Family Farms throughout the year. They usually fly off alfalfa fields that are irrigated year round. Once in a great while they fly off of a field that has been plowed under.

ROC flies off a dry lake so no problem there.

Tripoli SD flies at a closed down airport. I'm not sure if they have had any problems or not.

I haven't heard of any launches being canceled due to the drought.

LW Bercini said:

You residents of California:

Given your recurring drought conditions, and the resultant burn bans, what is the average number of launches you attend IN California each year?

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boatgeek said:

I believe the exception that proves the rule is the Acela line in the NE corridor. My understanding is that is the one Amtrak line that at least breaks even. That's a pretty unusual combination of population density, terrible traffic (encouraging grade-separated transit), and terrible parking (reducing value/time advantage of driving).

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But even the Acela trains make use of a catenary system, the overhead wires from which power is drawn, that was installed long ago for freight use by the Pennsy and NYC primarily.

Amtrak also uses old freight yards and locomotive service centers to house and maintain the equipment. If Amtrak had been required to build that entire infrastructure from scratch then Acela would never have come to fruition.

taiwanluthiers said:

What about using saltwater for flushing toilets?

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Saltwater is incredibly corrosive and it will build up scale deposits like nobody’s business.

Nothing being used today in the public or commercial transmission of water including sinks and toilets would last a year if exposed to saltwater.

A completely separate and contained water system would have to be built from the ground up and right into each and every home, apartment and business.

There isn’t enough money in the world.

Not to mention that a leak of this system would probably be considered a hazardous materials spill.

I heard that was how Hong Kong does it, they flush toilets with seawater...

Seawater might need a big infrastructure workaround. There is a lot that can be done with recycled wastewater though for non-drinking water needs --- flushing toilets, irrigating landscaping, and certain industrial uses. Also, individual residences can set up greywater systems to flush with greywater from sinks and showers. My parents have used greywater from their washing machine to irrigate parts of their landscaping for years. I might try to set up something like that myself.

Solar stills, bright sun is in the desert and the sea is hundreds of miles away. And then the clean water would need to be piped back to where the people are.
I believe all the rain on LA just runs off into the ocean, so rain does little good.

I live in Arizona, we have rocks in the yard instead of grass. The only plants I water are a couple of Palm trees I may do once a year. One of the things done here is called water banking. Water that would run off in wet years or not used from the CAP canal is pumped into the aquifer where there is no evaporation losses. It is pumped out in dry years.
There is essentially no run off from AZ, even when the lakes are full and forced to release through Phoenix the water is held by another dam and sinks into the ground to be used by the huge farms SW of Phoenix.

M

So why can't CA just redirect the runoff from rainstorms through the LA river into a storage area?

Also since most of CA is essentially deserts, they should phase out lawns completely and instead grow desert friendly plants as front yard decoration.

The water running off the LA streets is very polluted an the tree huggers will not allow a reservoir to be built

Well it seems tree huggers are not interested in any development in any way. Not sure what their goal is.

LA experiences rainstorms every now and then, to have all that water run into the sea is a waste. They could have captured them and used it. I'm sure removing road surface pollutants have to be easier than removing salt from water.

Actually, last fall all but the December launch at Snow Ranch were canceled because of dry conditions. This spring we had monthly launches through April. That's five launches instead of the normal 7-8 in Northern California so this was actually a good year.. Next scheduled launch at the ranch is November so building season is upon us.

Long before the tree huggers and silicon valley and all the things that California has used to attract people and business, LA had a water problem. The movie "Chinatown" is based on the shenanigans used to gain control of water rights outside the LA basin to provide water to a city that, without that water, couldn't and probably shouldn't, exist. It's a classic example of the negative effects of Chamber of Commerce boosterism. Brought to you by capitalist greed.

Water in the West is worth more than gold. Even though this would have very little impact on the current drought the Colorado River Compact needs to be re-negotiated. Having the upstream states conserve water just to send to water hungry downstream states that are not conserving makes no sense. Everyone needs to conserve. California has been living off the surplus' of the other states but now those surplus' are not available due to development. Ooops.

Edward

boomtube-mk2 said:

No anger here; I’m just realistic about these things.

Your comment “So we’ll use SOME power” is part of the unrealistic aspect about this venture and De-Sal. in general.

It doesn’t take “Some power” it takes one whopping huge amount of power and that energy has to come from somewhere. California in and of itself doesn’t even begin to produce enough electricity, refined petroleum products or natural gas to satisfy its own energy requirements and now it is going to need even more if California attempts to ramp-up de-sal plants. Where’s that going to come from?

This reminds me a bit about a documentary I saw way back in the early ‘80s about how much additional electricity would be required if Sothern California commuters started driving battery/electric cars in mass and the enormous increase in electricity demands that would entail.

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Time to build a bunch of nuke plants near the desalination plants.

markkoelsch said:

Time to build a bunch of nuke plants near the desalination plants.

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Use the cooling heat to distill the seawater, it is waste heat normally. The Palo Verde NGS west of Phoenix evaporates 45,000 gallons a minute.

All the treehuggers will go nuclear from all the nuke plants needed...

The power required to desalinate sea water is greatly overestimated. Current reverse osmosis plants operate at about 14kwh to produce 1000 gallons. It takes 9.5kwh to pump, transport and treat 1000 gals of Colorado River water to SoCal.

Here's a reference for those who are interested. https://www.watereuse.org/sites/default/files/u8/Power_consumption_white_paper.pdf

You know desalination also generates a side business... they can take the salt and sell it as organic sea salt...

taiwanluthiers said:

You know desalination also generates a side business... they can take the salt and sell it as organic sea salt...

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Not with an RO process unfortunately, it just produces more concentrated salt water... But it will produce "jobs".