California towns running out of water
By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News
As California’s drought deepens, 17 communities across the state are in danger of running out of water within 60 to 120 days, state officials said Tuesday.
In some communities, wells are running dry. In others, reservoirs are nearly empty. Some have long-running problems that predate the drought.
The water systems, all in rural areas, serve from 39 to 11,000 residents. They range from the tiny Lompico County Water District in Santa Cruz County to districts that serve the cities of Healdsburg and Cloverdale in Sonoma County.
And it could get a lot worse.
Some of these Districts are near the coast or salt water. They should be thinking desalination… quickly.
I’m surprised California does not already have desalination plants, there is a huge coast line, sell the water to our landlocked neighbors ;)
There ARE some desal plants in California. The only one that is actually running has been in place for some time, and it is used just to cool the Nuke plant (Diablo Canyon). The desal plant in Santa Barbara has been de-commissioned for some time. The new monster plant in So. CA was proposed a dozen years or so ago, and it took 6 years to get it through all the red tape (called: Permitting Process). It will produce about 7% of the County water, about 50M gal/day, cost a billion bucks. Probably be on line in two+ years. What is really going on is just more of the same North-South fighting over who gets the North’s (and, Central CA) water. It started long before L.A. went after Mono Lake, ETC. It was not all that many years ago that DWP lost in its fight to drain Mono almost completely. That after MANY dozens of years. The California Aqueduct collects and sends south the water from the north and central areas of the Sierra’s. The politics involved with just THAT is simply huge, and by that I mean it is VERY far-reaching. Basically, you have cities with expanding population who use a lot of water, and farmers who use a lot of water. City-ites VOTE in large numbers, but farmers produce huge income for the State. A gross simplification, I know.
With the drought, there are just a lot more in the media talking about the same old problems, but now…. as the reservoirs get drawn down; same for the aquifers too….well, nothing like waiting for a crisis, eh? (that crisis is not fully here yet). Desal plants are quite expensive to build, and the water output is much more costly than collecting rainwater, diverting rivers, etc. With population growth in such as Los Angeles and San Diego, the water-wars, or water grabs, whatever… will accelerate. It will be all sorts of fun and games and you can expect the usual ‘clever’ ballot propositions. The South has the votes and thus the captured politicians, but the North has the water. The farm lobby is huge and will be “mostly” in bed with the North…..with some division as one goes down the Central Valley, past ~~Stockton.
Our great-grandchildren’s children will stil be talking about water and droughts. I think.
Desalination has been used on Catalina Island for a long time as well.
I’ve always wondered why there hasn’t been more effort put into improving the process and building more plants. I mean, how much longer can the big southern cities of the west keep stealing water from the rural north? Las Vegas has drained its reservoirs, sucked off the aqueduct in CA, and now is trying to poach the aquifer of north eastern NV’s farm and ranch land. Gotta keep those dancing fountains full.
ROB. Seventy Five percent of worldwide desalination is used in the arid Middle East because of the obvious lack of fresh water. Look up CETO desalination process that uses Ocean wave technology from Australia. Also, there are a number of Universities researching better reverse osmosis technologies. As the Planet looses fresh water via lack of snow fall, extinct glaciers and Polar Cap melt, we have to start looking at new technologies to convert sea water to fresh water.