Going in depth on any subject usually comes about because the things discussed are complex. People are complex. Problems are complex. You start to read an article on Nano Technology, DNA Impressions or RNA Mirroring Engineering and pretty soon you get the feeling that you might be a little over your head in trying to understand what any or all of it means. Someone starts to debate the value of vaccines for children or old folks and the gray questioning cloud may soon find it placed above most people’s heads. Someone says the additives in your food are causing cancer and your eyes glaze over at the thought of looking up 250 various cancenigenic bad things that wind up in everything we eat.
Many folks just go to Google, IMDB or some secret web site they trust to find answers to difficult problems. Those of us that seem to be doing “the Cynical Wave” on just about everything just keep digging and looking until we are exhausted and confused. Then, we call someone we trust or write an important expert we have heard of or even someone that knows nothing, but we trust to be honest – an e-mail and beg for them to bring us a semblance of clarity to some insignificant word of wisdom or missing knowledge value residing in the deep recesses of our cerebral cortext. Some issues seem so basic, you wonder why anyone would even have a question. How about a white Cobra with fangs and active poison ducts for example? Well, even something that basic leaves us with such questions as: The poison glands were still in place? Why didn’t the bitten dog die? Who is the owner? How did the Cobra escape in the first place? Oh well, those questions will eventually be answered and found on page 18 of the LA Times or OC Register, in a one by two inch column next week, after we have forgotten all about it. The information may in fact be lost along the way and we can all look back with great wisdom and finally say: “Who cares?”
So it goes with water in California. Drought? What is that? Our plants are dry, our grass turns brown, we have more wild fires, well water starts to taste like alkaline or even worse like rocket fuel. Lake beds dry up. Prices of water go up. Some places start to ration water useage. Some people start to shut off water automatically when people use too much. Nah, that’s not possible is it? The reality is that poor basic use of water may wind up in fact being very expensive. Maybe if people have to use quarters to take a shower or flush a toilet they might start to get the idea and the reality of the situation.
Iceman refuses to take the Salt Water Bucket Challenge!
Everyone kind of started to worry when the Electricity providers all decided to go with the digital electronic meter monitoring instead of the 100 year old technology or the turning numbers on the three mystic dials. Then came the Natural Gas Meters and soon the Digital Water Meters! Yep, which means if you use too much water…..they can just remotely shut your water off……completely. But let’s get back to the beginning: Where does our water come from? Well, God provides some through rain, mist or other types of storms. The comes the water from ground wells, that catch the overflow of God’s plan. Then come Resourvoirs, which acculmulate rain, reverse osmosis treated run off, Recreational areas – such as Lake Ming, Lake Mead and areas of non use like the Salton Sea. Resourvoirs have to be covered, because bird poop, jet fuel and the like lands on top and pollutes that water before it goes to your city tap, toilet or garden hose. Finally, we have what is known as “Toilet to Tap – Reclaimed Water”. This is Sewage that get filtered, chemically treated sent on its way to Public Parks, Government Facilities, Commercial Properties and certain Residential Associations for use when watering their outdoor plants and grass areas.
The cost of Reclaimed Water has risen to the point that it is just about the same price as our traditional Colorado River or Central Valley Water. A basic sin has been that the Water Districts have never Tiered the price of Reclaimed Water. It should be at a totally different rate based upon demand and price of additives and manufacture. This may change very soon. Consumption Pricing is on the way in a big way. Instead of blessing big water users with a discounted bulk rate, those days may be at an end. Hotels in California are hurting when it comes to supplying water to its guests. Meters are being discussed that would limit an average shower in a hotel to eight minutes, rather than a leisurely 20 minutes or more. New toilets need to be developed. Future Settings may or should be the following: (1) Liquid only – no paper. (2) Liquids with light paper (3) Solids and Liquids and Paper (4) Large Solids/Liquids and Paper. Automatic or Pressure shut-offs for all basin water use. Digital Settings for water temperatures is another one that has been around in Europe for about 30 years.
The California Drought has caused all of us to initially “roll our eyes”, suggesting and assuming that the whole thing was just a put on. We must have plenty of Ice Pack in the Sierra Nevadas……eh? How could a state that was 10 million people, when we had our first water shortage, now with 34 million people find ourselves in a similar shortage situation? Global Warming? Over Population? Seasonal Deviations? It matters not. The truth is: We are now going to need “Tiered Pricing” for all water in the State of California. The price of water should rise as your useage rises – that is not Space Science; that is pure logic. We should of course start with all of our Commercial users first. Then our large residential abusers. Then every residence in the state. Charging on a per gallon basis must replace the per acre foot…….as the basis of water pricing structure. This they call a Sea Change in thinking. The games that the water districts have played around our state must come to an end. One week they are short, the next week they have too much, the next week they want a price hike, the following week consumers demand the money back. Too many games with water. Too many.
This brings us to the method by which the Water Games must come to an end: Desalination! Without competition, any industry has the market cornered and will charge the most they can, without concern for the consumer. Three Desalination plants are being built in California today. The great harping from Water Districts that Desalination is (1) Too Expensive to produce, (2) Destroys the Enviroment and (3) Cannot supply enough to make a difference: are all hollow straw arguments which do not stand the truth test. More product into the system, either supplies and meets the demand or creates a lower cost based upon over supply. The computer read outs and projections tend to make us believe we will not be facing a water bumper crop anytime soon. We need two more Desalination plants in Southern California – one in Huntington Beach and one at San Onofre….on the site of the now defunct Edison Nuclear Facility. Without more water, future growth for California looks very dark for development and growth to the projected 50 million people in a few years.
In the 1973 movie: “The Iceman Cometh!” Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan and Fredric March teach us how to re-tread the oldest arguments we can think of and finally come up with something new. The time has come for Californians to understand that we need to start thinking about the future. Our own!
The Iceman (Waterman) Cometh! But of course, we are just Alarmists……but just remember, the day your toilet won’t flush……we told you so!
“The great harping from Water Districts that Desalination is (1) Too Expensive to produce, (2) Destroys the Enviroment and (3) Cannot supply enough to make a difference: are all hollow straw arguments which do not stand the truth test. ”
Bullshit.
Desalination is the most energy intensive and expensive way to produce potable water that man has ever known.
OK, guys, I’m going to suggest an experiment. I am issuing you both the SALT WATER BUCKET CHALLENGE, described at the end of this post.
You both seem like you are confident in your statements about what is largely a factual challenge. Perfect.
Ryan says that ocean desal is the most expensive way to produce potable water.
Ron says that that this is a straw (man) argument.
Ryan says that ocean desal is the most energy-intensive way to produce potable water.
Ron says (not a direct contradiction, but in the ballpark) that the argument that ocean desal destroys the environment is false.
Ron says that the notion that desal cannot produce enough water to make a difference is false.
Greg wonders if the benefits of ocean desal can eventually be produced without the detriments through the development of small, geographically distributed, renewable power generated desal operations.
These could be designed so as not to require outside energy (given that generally they could be powered by some combination of solar, wind, tidal, and ocean geothermal gradient passive energy sources.
These would produce small enough amounts of brine as byproducts (plus whatever else) as not to mess up the local ocean environment — and could be distributed as widely as necessary (probably not all THAT widely) to prevent environmental harm, and if necessary some could simply be decommissioned as need be.
These would have very limited capital costs that states, cities, private companies, and even families could readily afford — and those costs might be recouped (based on fresh water produced and sea salt produced.) One could even imagine families going to the beach anyway driving home some buckets of seawater for their own backyard use — It’s OK; the oceans are rising — with the sea salt being collected and resold by the sorts of people walking the streets who currently pick through garbage for recyclables.
Essentially, I’m wondering whether one way to reconcile the Winship and Cantor positions is through supplanting the economy of large scales with the ecology of small scale — pretty much the same sort of debate going on between (1) distant, large-scale, bird frying solar farms that require extensive infrastructure to transit that power back to coastal civilizations and (2) backyard, rooftop, and parking-lot-shelter solar.
So: THE SALT WATER BUCKET CHALLENGE is for you to assemble good sources for your factual assertions and come back with them by Monday so that they can be discussed further. Meanwhile, I’ll reprint my part of this post on Facebook and get other people to do my work for me (only because I have other posts to write.)
DEAL? YOU MATES REDDY T’ USE YER BRINES?
Must be nice to be so confident! Regardless, there are more expensive methods.
I don’t think that’s the relevant measure, however. the cost to deliver clean water to end users is better metric.
*Ryan is such a sewage plume…. try a little tenderness bloviator! Ask yourself why all the Caribbean islands, Qatar, Abu Dabi and thousands more are utilizing Desalination. Aruba, Curacao and even Venezulela…..but we shouldn’t mix you up with the facts….eh? You probably think we have too much ice above the Artic Circle….too?
“Sewage plume”? Wow.
Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and (in some years) Venezuela have had money to burn. If you have money to burn, spending it is better. And if ocean currents sweep rapidly by you so that your environmental problem quickly becomes someone else’s.
It also helps, in the first two cases (and some would argue the third, although I disagree) not to have a functioning democracy. (Sadly, that sometimes seems to be true here.) If their foreign workers die of thirst — well, they can just bring in more! Your “facts” are essentially appeals to authority, and not particularly good ones.
I think, but am not sure, that you’re suggesting that I am not interested in stopping and reversing global warming. If you want to look for climate change deniers, Ron, I suggest that you can do so more easily and successfully in your own neighborhood.
*Dr. D., in those countries leaders get replaced overnight for bad decision making. Desalination is important in those locations because, no matter how much rain…..they cannot build enough storage to see them through the dry seasons. Desal does a couple of important things……it builds a supply for Commercial endeavors and Scientific Research Facilities. If seven hotels in Huntington Beach are supplied with high dollar water…and all Commercial business is put on that water…..how can anyone that is a Residential user complain?
“Dr. D., in those countries leaders get replaced overnight for bad decision making.”
Here, your expertise in bad decision making is more than offset by not knowing anything about ‘these countries’.
“If seven hotels in Huntington Beach are supplied with high dollar water…and all Commercial business is put on that water…..how can anyone that is a Residential user complain?”
And if a unicorn and a wood nymph kiss under a scarlet moon then… WTF are you on about?
Because they don’t have another option AND they have access to relatively cheap energy.
We have options and kilowatts are expensive.
This isn’t complicated.
Some have said that desal is the next logical step. It is not, the next logical step is conservation. It was also the last logical step, and the one before that.
Debating desal is fine, but there will soon be local-ish operational examples to evaluate, which is a whole hell of a lot better. And even if desal passes the tech test, that doesn’t mean a Poseidon-esque racket is a good idea. No one thinks electricity is bad, unless you have to get it from Enron.
i know two things to be true
1. we have no problem getting water at our house. a guy brings six of seven cases of fiji water every couple of weeks plus whatever it takes to refill the pool
2. my electric rates were lower when enron ran a direct line to the house
Give me that cool glass of water from the private seller who’s end product is checked for quality.
The state wants to use its credit card and borrow many billions of dollars more to improve the system. But over the last decades they used the card and failed. Why should the taxpayer believe they can succeed now?
Aren’t one trick ponies supposed to be good at the one trick?
*Agreed…
@cook
so you are advocating private water quality over public?
Not really Neil, just not excluding private investment and competition from the mix.
There is no way to have competition in water. There isn’t going to be multiple inlets to people’s homes.
There is no reason that there can only be one water suppler using one water distribution system.
We have one road system with many auto suppliers.
who is going to maintain the distribution system. and be legally responsible for health concerns?
“Tiered Pricing” is a gimmick. It’s a punishment for daring to actually use water.
It’s main purpose is to increase profit and to insure that Desal seems more viable.
Focus should be on those who use the most water – Ag and Industry.
*Tier Pricing…..exactly….Neil Page……… The more water you use, the more it should cost you.,….not the other way round. That is why we support Desal water for Commercial and Industrial use. This would ensure conservation would become a major concern. Reclaimed Water which is use now for Parks and Government Facilities….as well as most Home Owners Associations can be targeted and used for strictly these purposes.
Great. Double the utility cost for industry. That’ll go over well.
*Simply add HSR…….and we are talking…..