Drawing from the bank

Cookie said:
I have brought up these ideas before, not one single cut is going to fix this problem, here are my suggestions:

1. more wastewater recycling needs to be done, no reason each house can't have a small wastewater recycling (maybe just grey water). I know some water districts don't want this, they want that water to resell.

2. Reduce the turn of the fields in the Southwest, from 6 turns a year to 4, that is a 1/3 savings. Also find better ways to irrigate, hard to believe flooding the fields is the most efficient way?

3. Urban expansion/growth is slowing down in the west, especially in California. I saw a study recently, that in Southern California, they plan no growth in population from 2030 to 2050.

4. And find a way to share more water throughout North American, absolutely no reason we can't have water pipes transferring water from one part of the country to the next, at the headwaters??? Why not bring some Canada water down to headwaters of the Colorado and use it as needed?

5. Desalination

At the end of the day, all of this cost money and this is pretty much the one thing stopping this from happening. If we can pump gasoline across the west, we certainly can do this with water.
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Just a few comments from a lowly water engineer...

1. Yes to wastewater recycling. It doesn't make as much sense for a locked in basin like the Great Basin where there are no flows to the ocean since you wind up robbing water from places like the Great Salt Lake that need it, though you may be able to reduce inter basin transfers of water doing so. You do wind up reducing in stream withdrawals, which I think is a plus, allowing higher quality water to remain in the environment. The water districts don't really care about recycling of wastewater in Utah since they continue to own that water if it is recycled outside of the user that originally purchased the water. They just look at it as a water efficiency project and they have plenty of demand for the water that is reduced.

2. A shift to drip irrigation for alfalfa would reduce water withdrawals massively. You can increase crop yield while reducing water usage by 25-40%. However, there is a certain Utah politician who believes that agriculture is a super efficient use of water since the excess water applied to fields simply returns to the environment as a return flow, which is not true since a significant portion winds up evaporating and transpiring, making it a net reduction in water in the local system. You should always remember that every time you move water, you lose water in some way.

3. Urban expansion/growth does not materially impact overall water usage in an area. Taking land away from agriculture and toward urban development will result in net reduction in water consumption per acre as long as the agricultural water is not transferred elsewhere (which it nearly always is). More efficient urban development and replacement of old systems with new should also improve water use efficiency. In Moab, they grew their population by 40% (and hotel base by even more) from 1990 to 2000 but water consumption and wastewater production was flat due to greater fixture efficiency and the hotel laundry rooms moving to water efficient machines. We will see more of this if someone doesn't get in the way of water efficiency regulations.

4. Moving water is very hard in this area due to the energy associated with pushing water uphill. The Lake Powell pipeline, if it is ever constructed, is intended to deliver water for Page to St. George and would require 5 massive pump stations, each with their own power generation systems. They would try to recover power as it flows back down the hill. This is a major contrast to moving water up and down the coast or down through AZ, which has less topography and is easier to move. Moving Canada water to the Colorado would require massive pump stations, elevation gain, and power, not to mention anything about the difficulty in easements, pipeline construction in challenging areas, and figuring out how to get Canadian farmers to allow a taking of their water.

5. This is very promising right now. Development in desalination technology is likely to reduce the overall energy requirements for desalination facilities. All coastal water should come from desalination plants. Power is still the big driver. As others noted, San Diego now has excess water, allowing them to sell to upstream users to offset costs of desalination. We will all wind up sharing these costs.

In my mind, the money needs to be spent by all basin users to provide desalination and irrigation improvements to reduce overall system viability.
 
nzaugg said:
Just a few comments from a lowly water engineer...

1. Yes to wastewater recycling. It doesn't make as much sense for a locked in basin like the Great Basin where there are no flows to the ocean since you wind up robbing water from places like the Great Salt Lake that need it, though you may be able to reduce inter basin transfers of water doing so. You do wind up reducing in stream withdrawals, which I think is a plus, allowing higher quality water to remain in the environment. The water districts don't really care about recycling of wastewater in Utah since they continue to own that water if it is recycled outside of the user that originally purchased the water. They just look at it as a water efficiency project and they have plenty of demand for the water that is reduced.

2. A shift to drip irrigation for alfalfa would reduce water withdrawals massively. You can increase crop yield while reducing water usage by 25-40%. However, there is a certain Utah politician who believes that agriculture is a super efficient use of water since the excess water applied to fields simply returns to the environment as a return flow, which is not true since a significant portion winds up evaporating and transpiring, making it a net reduction in water in the local system. You should always remember that every time you move water, you lose water in some way.

3. Urban expansion/growth does not materially impact overall water usage in an area. Taking land away from agriculture and toward urban development will result in net reduction in water consumption per acre as long as the agricultural water is not transferred elsewhere (which it nearly always is). More efficient urban development and replacement of old systems with new should also improve water use efficiency. In Moab, they grew their population by 40% (and hotel base by even more) from 1990 to 2000 but water consumption and wastewater production was flat due to greater fixture efficiency and the hotel laundry rooms moving to water efficient machines. We will see more of this if someone doesn't get in the way of water efficiency regulations.

4. Moving water is very hard in this area due to the energy associated with pushing water uphill. The Lake Powell pipeline, if it is ever constructed, is intended to deliver water for Page to St. George and would require 5 massive pump stations, each with their own power generation systems. They would try to recover power as it flows back down the hill. This is a major contrast to moving water up and down the coast or down through AZ, which has less topography and is easier to move. Moving Canada water to the Colorado would require massive pump stations, elevation gain, and power, not to mention anything about the difficulty in easements, pipeline construction in challenging areas, and figuring out how to get Canadian farmers to allow a taking of their water.

5. This is very promising right now. Development in desalination technology is likely to reduce the overall energy requirements for desalination facilities. All coastal water should come from desalination plants. Power is still the big driver. As others noted, San Diego now has excess water, allowing them to sell to upstream users to offset costs of desalination. We will all wind up sharing these costs.

In my mind, the money needs to be spent by all basin users to provide desalination and irrigation improvements to reduce overall system viability.
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Very interesting. Thank you for the education. I've often come across folks pushing taking water from the Columbia and/or the MIssissippi rivers. If only it was easy to make water flow uphill maybe then it would be practical.
 
Cookie said:
1. more wastewater recycling needs to be done, no reason each house can't have a small wastewater recycling (maybe just grey water). I know some water districts don't want this, they want that water to resell.
Click to expand...


Here in California when we were in severe drought about 3 years ago, we were capturing our shower water in a bucket and I was pumping that water into a plastic trashcan outside and then using that water to irrigate our lawn and garden. It was a bit of a hassle, and kind of annoying to have the bucket in the shower. BUT, it would be great if plumbing solutions were standardized to be able to make this a permanent system in our houses. If we could have a drain in the shower that goes to some sort of holding tank to use the water for irrigation. It's especially frustrating that I have to waste so much water just waiting for the shower to reach the proper temperature.

Though I'm not really sure what happens with the water that goes down my drain currently. It gets treated at a facility. Is some of it recycled there? Maybe - I need to research.

At the end of the day, all of this cost money and this is pretty much the one thing stopping this from happening.
Click to expand...

Which seems like it would probably be a small price relative to the interstate fighting we are having (and will likely get worse) about water usage.
 
Cookie said:
If we can pump gasoline across the west, we certainly can do this with water.
Click to expand...

Delivered water to a San Diego municipal user is around $5000/af or $0.015 per gallon. Agriculture varies, but is more like $50/af or $0.00015 per gallon, and they are the largest users.

Gasoline is can get as low as $3 per gallon, usually higher though.

So gasoline is priced 20,000x higher than agricultural water and 200x higher than municipal water.

In addition, per capita water use is about 100 gallons a day while per capita gasoline consumption is about 1 gallon per day.

That's why we can pump gasoline around to useful purpose but we can't pump water around. Water movement only makes sense if gravity is on your side.

Rule of thumb, if you make an intractable problem sound trivial you've failed to actually understand what you are talking about.
 
I certainly hope desalination can compete with river water for cost in my lifetime. But if it does that unfortunately likely means the rivers have dried up.
 
Dorado said:
I’m a broken record on this subject…but growing the low value forage crops for livestock.
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I have an issue with the term beneficial use. How was that defined and interpreted when That was written into water law. I'm just a lowly auto technician turned boat washer. I believe growing animal feed for export could definitely be argued as not beneficial to the country. When compared against growing Food crops with that water. It is clearly beneficial to the person who is using water From a system that the taxpayers paid for. There are currently a couple proposals in wyoming that the cost of the dam and the associated costs Far exceed the value of years of animal feed growth. It simply doesn't pencil out. One of the projects a over one hundred year old dam that was ordered demolished. It was a newly engineered construction method That had a fifty year proposed lifespan. In over one hundred years , the irrigation company made zero plan saved zero money to replace the dam that was fifty years beyond its expected life. Now they want the taxpayers to build another dam, which will re-establish a lake that the public was never allowed to access. And they don't want the public to be allowed to access in the future. Up to 190 million dollars to continue irrigating twelve thousand acres. I , as a taxpayer am , unwilling to support that. If they were growing a high value food crop, I might feel different. If presented actual numbers. Sorry for the long winded post. Ten hours at the Boat station today 0 Boats , I needed to talk to someone. 28f 35mph wind 2inches fresh I was there till 8pm. I was hoping for at least one person to talk fishing with.
 
jayfromtexas said:
Very interesting. Thank you for the education. I've often come across folks pushing taking water from the Columbia and/or the MIssissippi rivers. If only it was easy to make water flow uphill maybe then it would be practical.
Click to expand...

It really isn't practical because even if it could be done that still doesn't mean the water is there to begin with. There have been recent dry spells for the Mississippi, Missouri and Columbia rivers where they had issues... I don't expect that to change.

The same goes for the Great Lakes - as the heat increases there will be more and more people wanting water for farm irrigation and to make sure people have potable water. It is easy to see a future where too many people stick more straws in and cause the Great Lakes to dry up...

If you are not already managing your ground water levels and preventing ground water pollution (in any state) you eventually are going to be forced to deal with these issues.
 
RichieW13 said:
Here in California when we were in severe drought about 3 years ago, we were capturing our shower water in a bucket and I was pumping that water into a plastic trashcan outside and then using that water to irrigate our lawn and garden. It was a bit of a hassle, and kind of annoying to have the bucket in the shower. BUT, it would be great if plumbing solutions were standardized to be able to make this a permanent system in our houses. If we could have a drain in the shower that goes to some sort of holding tank to use the water for irrigation. It's especially frustrating that I have to waste so much water just waiting for the shower to reach the proper temperature.

Though I'm not really sure what happens with the water that goes down my drain currently. It gets treated at a facility. Is some of it recycled there? Maybe - I need to research.



Which seems like it would probably be a small price relative to the interstate fighting we are having (and will likely get worse) about water usage.
Click to expand...
About 30 years ago, I had a plumber install a diversion valve on my gray water drain pipe which normally would go to my septic tank along with my black water. When I opened the valve, the gray water would be diverted to water my trees mostly but also my garden.
 
Sorry. A short, small defense of forage crops. Assuming corn and alfalfa: In wet years when pastures are lush, a beef rancher doesn't need "irrigated/processed" forage to limp a herd through the summer/fall, but would supplemental feed during the winter in any case. The dairy industry is typically a confined operation where silage/haylage is a pretty typical feed. Sometimes, a dairy man might resort to carrots or onions (don't ask). So, if you consume beef, ice cream, yogurt... Even chickens and hogs can rely on farmed product that is milled. I too cringe at the idea of farming alfalfa in AZ that gets shipped to Saudi Arabia, but for now, at least, where is that corn/alfalfa producer getting his/her best price for the crop? Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
 
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