Comment by cco
3 hours ago
I would love to see the major cities in California start building desalinization plants.
Every plant built would give us a much needed buffer and in the good times could even let us refill ground water (we'd never do that, I know).
Most desalination plants (at least the ones that are economically viable) focus on brackish groundwater, not ocean water. This contributes to the problem GP is pointing out. California already does more desalination than any US state other than Florida.
But there's a million environmental restoration projects we could be doing right now to increase the water holding capacities of our environments that are simply not being sufficiently funded. The science is pretty well done on most of these strategies while desalination of ocean water is still mostly an experimental technology that is not economically viable.
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You do realize that agriculture uses 80% of the (mostly free) developed and deliverable water, while urban cities use about 10%?
That's true of basically all of the West and the Colorado River, too.
It's bad but one thing not often pointed out in this conversation is that about 50% of water used in irrigation for agriculture returns as groundwater. In most other cases, used water ends up in sewers or evaporating
50% of 10% is still only 5%.
Sure do! But people die in a few days without potable water, crops are usually more drought resistant.
And yes, I do get the point that if you suggested we build $6B desalination plants to grow lettuce people would balk and say, "That's not worth the money!". We should use less water on crops.
That and investing in better rainwater management -- those muddy torrents of water that pour into ocean would be much better if slowed down upstream and allowed to percolate into the aquifers.