patrick.net

curious2 says

New Renter says

I do not see any previous post in this thread with this link.

Ugh. I didn't post the link before. It didn't occur to me that someone would insist on one. It's like insisting on a link to assert that water is wet. If you doubt that water is wet, nobody is stopping you from searching out links to support your view. Meanwhile, this exchange is adding length but not light to the thread, although at least it is pushing the thread back to the top of the home page, where it might remind people that California does currently suffer from a drought and we ought to consider how to reduce our vulnerability to such events.

As I said it wasn't too long ago that advocates for solar and wind power thought the fact sunlight and wind were free translated to power provided by sun and wind was a no brainer. What they systematically ignored was the high capital costs, the relatively short lifetimes of solar panels, the intermittent nature of the energy sources and the fact most large scale wind turbines (the most efficient kind) tended to self destruct after a while.

So yes, with that in mind I do have to ask you to prove your water is wet.

It is not for me to prove your case but for you to prove it.

Let me give you an example. The link you provided claims the largest RO pump in that line can provide up to 19,000l/day. That's about 5026 gallons/day.

Now the population of California is 38 million. The most water efficient region uses *only* 147 gallons/day:

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25090363/california-drought-water-use-varies-widely-around-state

So very conservatively one can estimate California needs at least 5.6 BILLIONS of gallons of fresh water per day. The biggest RO pump only puts out about 5000 gallons a day (assuming peak efficiency). To supply 1/10th of the fresh water needed by California would take more than 111,000 of these pumps. If they cost as *little* as $10,000 apiece then you are talking over a $1B capital investment and that's not including maintenance,. land, personnel, etc.

Again that's using a very conservative estimate of water demand.

Now if the pumps cost $100 and last forever that changes things considerably.

New Renter says

It is not for me to prove your case but for you to prove it.

LOL - what do I get if I "win"?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/6slibTD9MF0

If you want to argue against desalination, talk with all these people. Adding up all the costs for San Diego, at retail it's a 10% difference compared to the "free" pipeline system. Your numbers counting the whole state's population are a distraction, frankly I suspect you're playing some kind of trolling game, since nobody proposed desalinating seawater and pumping it up to Sacramento or Truckee for example.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/unconventional-desalination-technology-could-solve-153004629.html

An Unconventional Desalination Technology Could Solve California's Water Shortage

A parabolic trough collects energy from the sun. The heat is used to evaporate clean water from the salty agricultural drainage water of irrigated crops.

This year, farmers in California's Central Valley likely won't receive any water through the federal irrigation program, a network of reservoirs, rivers, and canals that is normally replenished yearly by ice melt from the Sierra mountains.

Crippling water shortages have made desalination technology more attractive, including a startup, WaterFX, that uses the sun to produce heat. The heat separates salt and water through evaporation.

WaterFX has fewer environmental repercussions than traditional methods of desalination that rely on fossil fuels to generate electricity.

The technology could not have come at a better time.

No end in sight

During a drought-free year, the federally run Central Valley Project provides enough water to irrigate 3 million acres of agricultural land. Last year, farmers only received 20% of their allotment.

The lack of water is not just worrying for growers. It affects all people who eat food. One third of the nation's produce is grown in the Central Valley — composed of Sacramento Valley in the north and San Joaquin Valley in the south — and the deep water cuts mean that more than half a million acres of crop land will be left unplanted.

Some scientists predict California's drought could last as long as a century . Going forward, the state is going to need a substantial water supply that doesn't rely on the aqueduct system, says Aaron Mandell, WaterFX chairman and founder.

However, in order to counter California's drought, the push must be toward renewable desalination plants rather than fossil-fuel dependent facilities that further contribute to climate change.

Making freshwater from sunshine

In WaterFX's system, a solar trough, which looks like a jumbo-sized curved mirror, collects energy from the sun's rays and transfers that heat to a pipe filled with mineral oil. The mineral oil feeds the heat into a system that evaporates the salty water being treated. Steam is produced, which condenses into pure liquid water. The remaining salt solidifies and can be removed, says Mandell. That salts can be used in other industries as building materials, metals, or fertilizers.

In order to operate continuously, the solar trough is very large so that it collects extra heat during the day. The energy is stored and used to run the system at night when the sun isn't shining.

By using sun as the fuel source, WaterFX uses roughly one-fifth of the electricity consumed by traditional desalination plants, according to Mandell. Less electricity means lower operating costs. With conventional desalination, electricity makes up 50-60% of the water costs, says Mandell. A typical desalination plant in San Diego operates at about $900 per acre-foot, while it costs around $450 to produce an acre-foot of water with WaterFX. (An acre-foot is 325,000 gallons, or the amount of water it takes to cover an acre at a depth of one foot).

"Solar desalination is still a very immature technology so there's a quite a bit of room to drive that cost down even further," said Mandell.

Many desalination facilities, including the $1 billion Carlsbad plant set to open in 2016, use a process known as reverse osmosis that forces seawater through billions of tiny holes that filter out salt and other impurities. This method can produce fresh water on a large scale, but has economic and environmental drawbacks. It uses an immense amount of electricity and only about half of the seawater that goes into the system comes out as clean water. The remaining half is dumped back into the ocean as salty brine where it can be harmful to marine plants and animals.

By contrast, Mandell says that WaterFX has a 93% recovery rate, meaning that for every 100 gallons of water that goes in, 93 gallons of usable water are spit out.

WaterFX also helps solve an issue that has long plagued irrigated land. Soils in the arid west of San Joaquin Valley naturally contain a lot of salt as well as high concentrations of metals, like selenium, which can be toxic to humans and wildlife. When the soil is irrigated, the salt, selenium, and other elements become concentrated in the drainage water that collects in a system of drains and pumps under the crops. In the past, harmful drainage water might have been discharged into rivers, wetlands, and aquifers in the San Joaquin Valley. Now, that otherwise unusable water can be diverted to WaterFX and turned into irrigation water again.

The first test

The Panoche Water District in Central Valley is home to the first demonstration plant, a 6,500-square foot system that is capable of producing around 10 gallons of freshwater a minute, or roughly 14,000 of freshwater each day.

When the demonstration plant is operating in commercial mode, running 24 hours a day, it can put out 25 to 30 gallons of freshwater a minute, says Mandell.

The pilot project, funded by the California Department of Water Resources, will hopefully prove that the WaterFX system is more reliable (it doesn't depend on the Sierra snowpack) and affordable than other freshwater sources.

The water that's being treated by the pilot plant streams in from a canal that collects salty drainage water from around 200 farms in the area and brings it to a single location. In the pilot phase, the clean water that's produced is blended back in with the drainage water, but a commercial plant would send the water back to farmers through a series of canals that are already in place.

Additionally, small-scale systems could be used by individual farmers on site to recycle their own drainage water.

A bright future

WaterFX is not the first company to experiment with solar desalination. The Sahara Forest project in Qatar and an Australian company called Sundrop Farms are using the technology to grow food in greenhouses. But this is the first time a company has focused on using the sun's energy "to produce a scalable, long-term water supply," Mandell said.

The goal is to eventually be able to treat salty groundwater in addition to drainage water.

The immediate next step for WaterFX is to expand operations in Panoche to produce 2 million gallons of water per day. "From there it's about laying out a pathway for replicating this model all up and down the Central Valley," Mandell said. "We're trying to put a plan in place so that by 2020, we may be in a position to wean ourselves off the aqueduct system entirely."

jojo says

In old apartments the water is brown from rusty pipes. In that context it does make sense.

You mean that there are still galvanized water pipes installed places, and the pipes haven't broken yet????

curious2 says

New Renter says

It is not for me to prove your case but for you to prove it.

LOL - what do I get if I "win"?

Well a convert a skeptic into true believer and a clarified argument to make more. To some people (e.g. missionaries, lobbyists) that is worth everything. It must be worth something to you as well else you would not be on this thread at all.

curious2 says

If you want to argue against desalination, talk with all these people. Adding up all the costs for San Diego, at retail it's a 10% difference compared to the "free" pipeline system.

And how will those people in San Diego feel when energy prices skyrocket because the desalination plant is sucking up more electricity just when San Onofre is being shut down? Or how might they feel IF the rains return for years on end and the plant is no longer needed but still needs to be paid for? Who knows by 2016 the state might be suffering from floods again. I lived in San Diego for almost a decade and I was there for a few El Nino years. I still remember seeing the the parking structure of Westfield Mission Valley under water and people kayaking down a flooded Mission boulevard. That was after the severe drought of 1986-1991.

curious2 says

Your numbers counting the whole state's population are a distraction, frankly I suspect you're playing some kind of trolling game, since nobody proposed desalinating seawater and pumping it up to Sacramento or Truckee for example.

Trolling? Why, have I attacked you personally? Have I said desalination is stupid idea or put it down out of turn without offering a rational argument?

I used the population of California because we are talking about the state of California. Most people in the state live on the coasts so it makes sense that if desalination is to be employed to provide water they will be build near the population centers of SD, LA, SB, SFBA. As your own link mentions Santa Barbara and Monterey are considering desalination plants. The SD plant is going to cost at least $1B. My question is simply is it and it planned brethren going to be worth their costs?

New Renter says

My question is simply is it and it planned brethren going to be worth their costs?

Yes, because people can't live without water, cities can't function without water. Some years we get a lot of rain, other years we don't, but we need water every day of every year. In centuries past we had to rely on long pipelines, a technology that dates literally from ancient Roman times, but now we can desalinate the seawater that surrounds us. The cost is a fraction of high speed rail from nowhere to nowhere, or Homefool's Obamacare pills that are obviously not working. If you feel compelled to ask people to waste a lot of time persuading you that water is wet, then you're trolling. The Internet isn't all about you, and I'm not a missionary or a paid lobbyist.

@curious2, One of your supporting links was for a desalinization plant in Singapore, as desperate a place for water as you can get in the developed world. They drink their own wastewater over there. A marvel of modern day technology for sure -- but it also shows they lengths they are willing to go. An interesting topic for sure; I found zzyzzx's solar thermal link fascinating.

@EBGuy, necessity is the mother of invention. Your link (to Wikipedia) says Singapore's reclaimed wastewater is used mostly in industries that require a high standard of purity, but people do drink it. NASA astronauts have been drinking recycled wastewater for decades, it doesn't seem to have done John Glenn any harm; at 77, he even went back for more, and he's now 92. Anyway I added the Singapore link only because New Renter kept insisting on numbers and that requires a plant actually in operation, as opposed to California which has mostly plans. The main issue is, water on a large scale requires planning. Recycling water, desalinating water, and reducing agricultural misuse of water, all take time and commitment. Without a plan, the tendency is to lurch from one crisis to the next; in a previous drought, the river salmon were nearly exterminated because the water they needed to swim in was diverted to farmers.

curious2 said: The main issue is, water on a large scale requires planning.
I've not been paying attention to the whole "Delta Tunnels" project -- perhaps it's time. When you're talking about infrastructure on a scale like that, maybe some rethinking is needed.
There is a growing trend to view the "utility grid" as a backup resource and to instead produce locally -- mostly in electricity generation, but I can see how that could hold for water as well.

curious2 says

New Renter says

My question is simply is it and it planned brethren going to be worth their costs?

Yes, because people can't live without water, cities can't function without water. Some years we get a lot of rain, other years we don't, but we need water every day of every year.

Of course we do, that is not the question. What is the question is whether desalination is the best way to go.

As you point out we DO get rain in CA, just not as reliably as we'd like. Building huge electrically powered desalination plants for a need that arises 2 out of every 5 years may not be the most efficient way to go about solving the problem. Look at ethanol - Those distilleries were a reaction to expensive gasoline and corn was relatively cheap. Now corn is expensive and those distilleries are idled. Seawater isn't expensive but power sure is. What happens when power costs skyrocket and suddenly those RO plants are too expensive to operate?

Perhaps improving our reservoir infrastructure would be more cost effective, things like building more reservoirs, adding waterproof linings to eliminate seepage, building a roof for the aqueduct to eliminate evaporation, refilling depleted aquifers, requiring swimming pools be covered when not in use, lots of room for improvement there.

Agriculture is the obvious choice for conservation, maybe new agriculture regulations is the way to go. Forbidding water intensive crops like rice and alfalfa, subsidizing drip irrigation, introducing drought resistant GMO strains.

I also liked zzyyzz's photothermal plants.

These are all of course subject to the scrutiny of cost/benefit.

In centuries past we had to rely on long pipelines, a technology that dates literally from ancient Roman times

Yes, I've seen such aqueducts firsthand. They are impressive feats of engineering.

but now we can desalinate the seawater that surrounds us. The cost is a fraction of high speed rail from nowhere to nowhere, or Homefool's Obamacare pills that are obviously not working.

We can also send men to the moon. We're running out of space down here but here is plenty of real estate on the moon. Since we can send a man to the moon we should obviously start building condos on the moon. It may seem expensive but its only a fraction of the cost of a manned trip to Mars

After all water is wet right?

If you feel compelled to ask people to waste a lot of time persuading you that water is wet, then you're trolling.

New Renter says

water is wet right?

I can see why 11 people ignore you. I'll make it an even dozen.

My what a lively debate! Back and forth, round and round they go. So entertaining! Until one of the kids took his ball and went home.

Quigley says

So entertaining! Until one of the kids took his ball and went home.

It was getting silly. California has already enormous reservoir capacity, in fact some environmentalists want to get rid of Hetch Hetchy, so the suggestion to build more reservoirs was the sort of click bait that is used by certain creatures that live under bridges. (I won't use the word, in case there might be disagreement about what it means. Some people are very needy and require more attention than anyone IRL is willing to give them.) Then the bit about condos on the moon. Waste of time. I am glad that some coastal cities are investing in the new technology that may end California's century of water wars, and I wish they showed that kind of creativity and foresight more often. The same technology can also address agricultural runoff problems, and reduce agricultural waste. If you were hoping to watch more of a boxing match or something, there are other channels.

Automan Empire says

corntrollio says

Aren't several jurisdictions not even metered?

That was the case in Sacramento until recent decades. The people were up in arms about it when it became time to install meters. Water resources are one semi-valid reason for Northern Vs Southern California rivalry.

Because making people pay for water is Socialism!!

(Sarcasm. Sort of. Some recent articles pointed out that the people against metering water are also anti-tax small-government types. Perhaps they also want to keep the government's hands off their Medicare.)

curious2 says

Pumping desalinated seawater up to inland elevations would require too much energy to be economical for agriculture, but that would not be necessary. In California, the major urban areas are on the coast. The current water systems, built around a century ago, pipe fresh water downhill from inland to the coast. If the coastal cities desalinated seawater instead, then that inland water could stay inland for agriculture.

Ag already uses 80% of the water in CA. So setting up the desal for the coastal cities would at most improve Ag's water by 25% (20% / 80%). And there are inland cities, like Sac and Fresno. They would still have a big problem in drought years like now.

SiO2 says

Automan Empire says

corntrollio says

Aren't several jurisdictions not even metered?

That was the case in Sacramento until recent decades. The people were up in arms about it when it became time to install meters. Water resources are one semi-valid reason for Northern Vs Southern California rivalry.

Because making people pay for water is Socialism!!

(Sarcasm. Sort of. Some recent articles pointed out that the people against metering water are also anti-tax small-government types. Perhaps they also want to keep the government's hands off their Medicare.)

This is not unusual behavior.

When the Teton Dam, which burst in 1976, was originally proposed for construction at great taxpayer expense, opponents were called "communists" in local pro-rancher editorials. Nevermind that, before the dam, farmers were already using 10 feet of water per year - clear evidence that the dam was a useless boondoggle.

New Renter says

And how will those people in San Diego feel when energy prices skyrocket because the desalination plant is sucking up more electricity just when San Onofre is being shut down?

If conditions permit, they can only run the plant at off peak times to balance the overall electrical load.

New Renter says

Perhaps improving our reservoir infrastructure would be more cost effective, things like adding waterproof linings to eliminate seepage, building a roof for the aqueduct to eliminate evaporation,

Have those ever been done, anywhere?

michalmontoya says

The states which are located at the coast should invest more in desalination projects.

Fixed:
The states which are located at the west coast should invest more in desalination projects.

zzyzzx says

New Renter says

Perhaps improving our reservoir infrastructure would be more cost effective, things like adding waterproof linings to eliminate seepage, building a roof for the aqueduct to eliminate evaporation,

Have those ever been done, anywhere?

I don't know if you've been seeing my replies to your posts, they seem to keep disappearing...

Anyway, the problem with that of course then you reduce the output which means you have to make the plant larger which in turn increases the capital costs. If hte power can be otherwise buffered, perhaps with dedicated pumped hydro storage, the plants can be operated at peak output 24/7.
zzyzzx says

zzyzzx says

New Renter says

Perhaps improving our reservoir infrastructure would be more cost effective, things like adding waterproof linings to eliminate seepage, building a roof for the aqueduct to eliminate evaporation,

Have those ever been done, anywhere?

Yes:

Reservoir linings:

http://www.coloradolining.com/applications/dam1.htm

Covered Aqueducts:

http://www.romanaqueducts.info/24panels/mainelements.htm

Some 80% of all Roman aqueducts were subterranean

Automan Empire says

That was the case in Sacramento until recent decades. The people were up in arms about it when it became time to install meters.

Wasn't it the case for even longer in the Central Valley, especially in agricultural areas, but also in some of the towns and cities?

Here's one of the missing pieces that wasn't in the article that zzyxxy linked:
That brings Mandell's water cost close to what farmers are paying, in wet years, for water from the Panoche and other valley districts - about $300 an acre-foot. And that makes it a more economically attractive option than any of the 17 conventional desalination plants planned throughout California.
And for review:
His solar desalination plant produces water that costs about a quarter of what more conventionally desalinated water costs: $450 an acre-foot versus $2,000 an acre-foot.
Quotes from California drought: Solar desalination plant shows promise.

EBGuy says

That brings Mandell's water cost close to what farmers are paying, in wet years, for water from the Panoche and other valley districts - about $300 an acre-foot.

Wow, those guys get water so cheap. I just calculated and $300 would get me less than 0.08 acre-feet of water. In other words, I pay almost 13X what farmers pay for water. It doesn't help that SFPUC raised their rates for all of the local water districts that get water from SF, due to all the infrastructure projects.

New Renter says

Covered Aqueducts:

http://www.romanaqueducts.info/24panels/mainelements.htm

Some 80% of all Roman aqueducts were subterranean

Just saw that on TV earlier today on an episode of Rick Steve's Europe where we has showing Roman ruins in southern France (near Nîmes).

corntrollio says

Wow, those guys get water so cheap. I just calculated and $300 would get me less than 0.08 acre-feet of water. In other words, I pay almost 13X what farmers pay for water. It doesn't help that SFPUC raised their rates for all of the local water districts that get water from SF, due to all the infrastructure projects.

Aren't you farther away from the water source? You are also not buying in volume, and you probably require more processing of the water.

zzyzzx says

Aren't you farther away from the water source? You are also not buying in volume, and you probably require more processing of the water.

Not necessarily farther. Delta to north end of the San Joaquin Valley is closer, but to the south end is farther. In addition, the land area over which the water has to be distributed for farms is larger and requires more piping, but then where I live is dense and more pipes have to be run to more people.

Hetch Hetchy water requires minimal processing -- it's one of the cleanest municipal water supplies in the country.

For volume, yes, that's true, but it's still almost 13X. A volume discount isn't usually 92% off. I suppose the price could be wholesale vs. retail. In any case, it's better than when some of this stuff wasn't even metered in the Central Valley.

Update:
"The year 2013 was the driest in California's recorded history, and predictions for 2014 aren't much better. Three consecutive years of below-normal rainfall have left reservoirs at a fraction of their normal depth, seriously threatening farms in the state that grows half the nation's fruits and vegetables. "
[PHOTOS]
"Almond farmer Barry Baker had 1,000 acres, 20 percent, of his almond trees removed because he doesn't have access to enough water to keep them watered as the California drought continues."

I don't know why this isn't the lead story on the news. The state that produces half of America's healthiest food, and a significant share of American export revenue, feeding much of the world in the process, is facing such a severe drought that trees are being uprooted. The loss of those trees will cause a reduction in output and higher prices for years to come. America continues to subsidize unhealthy grains from the red states, and subsidize the medical consequences of obesity for maximum revenue, while healthy crops get erased by drought.

In my opinion, it seems related to the partisan tribal divide. Republicans claim that their invisible friend is in charge of the climate and everything else, and the solution is we must all pray and follow their selective misinterpretations of Bronze Age scripture, while Democrats require everyone to buy more pills and diagnostic radiation. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, California is running out of water, and soon we will begin running low on healthy food. Maybe at that point, people might recognize that Republicans' invisible friend won't feed them, and Democrats cannot live on pills alone, but on present trend it seems more likely that each side will continue to blame the other until there is too little time left to solve the problem.

curious2 says

I don't know why this isn't the lead story on the news.

Because few alive can comprehend the concept of food scarcity due to poor production. How many Ukrainian immigrants can remember 1932? How many Ethiopians and Sudanese are living in the United States? That's about it.

It's why disgusting, worthless, wastes of human life can refuse to vaccinate their kids: the last generation to suffer childhood polio, TB, or high childhood mortality due to infection is just about to die off.

Each of my four pairs of great grandparents lost a kid in childhood, between 1900 and 1930. Now nearly nobody does, although Jenny McCarthy and her ilk are working to change that.

curious2 says

The state that produces half of America's healthiest food, and a significant share of American export revenue, feeding much of the world in the process, is facing such a severe drought that trees are being uprooted

what's happening this year is operators with both tree and row crops are not planting the row crops to save the trees.

There's a lot of cotton -- ~300,000 acres

http://www.cottonfarming.com/home/issues/2010-01/2010_JanCF-CACotton.html

~400 square miles that doesn't "need" to be planted, food-wise

They say if we don't get rain next year, it will be truly catastrophic to California ag, going beyond a really bad year to a wealth-destroying year.

Iosef V HydroCabron says

Because few alive can comprehend the concept of food scarcity due to poor production.

what scares me is that we're going to have 100M more mouths to feed by 2060.

Hello Soylent Green

And China's going to own us -- we're going into debt to them at $300B+/yr:

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2013

That banked surplus can buy a lot of food, OUR food.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/chinese-get-ok-buy-american-pork-producer-f4B11243408

Which will be immensely inflationary to us, and not in a good way.

This is why I'm not overwhelming bearish on Japan. With less people this century

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/9999591/Japans-population-suffers-biggest-fall-in-history.html

their farms will be able to feed their population better. They simply got too overcrowded, 1900-1940. A lot of their push into Manchuria was to find needed 'lebensraum'.

zzyzzx says

Just saw that on TV earlier today on an episode of Rick Steve's Europe where we has showing Roman ruins in southern France (near Nîmes).

Been there, all the way from Uzes (source of the aqueduct) to Nimes (terminus) via Pont du Gard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard

If you get the chance I recommend a visit. Roman architecture is something else!

Iosef V HydroCabron says

curious2 says

I don't know why this isn't the lead story on the news.

Because few alive can comprehend the concept of food scarcity due to poor production. How many Ukrainian immigrants can remember 1932? How many Ethiopians and Sudanese are living in the United States? That's about it.

It's why disgusting, worthless, wastes of human life can refuse to vaccinate their kids: the last generation to suffer childhood polio, TB, or high childhood mortality due to infection is just about to die off.

Each of my four pairs of great grandparents lost a kid in childhood, between 1900 and 1930. Now nearly nobody does, although Jenny McCarthy and her ilk are working to change that.

Interesting how you bemoan the addition of 100M more mouths to feed while simultaneously bemoaning actions which can "correct" that population change.

Here's the flipside to the "feel good" solar still story.
Decades of irrigation have leached salts and toxic minerals from the soil that have nowhere to go, threatening crops and wildlife....The 600,000-acre Westlands Water District, representing farmers on the west side of the valley, has already removed tens of thousands of acres from irrigation and proposed converting damaged cropland to solar farms.

EBGuy says

Here's the flipside to the "feel good" solar still story.

Decades of irrigation have leached salts and toxic minerals from the soil that have nowhere to go, threatening crops and wildlife....The 600,000-acre Westlands Water District, representing farmers on the west side of the valley, has already removed tens of thousands of acres from irrigation and proposed converting damaged cropland to solar farms.

How is that a flipside?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CALIFORNIA_DROUGHT_WATER_PATROLS

A few California cities start water-waste patrols

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Steve Upton thinks of himself more as an "Officer Friendly" than a water cop.

On a recent sunny day, the water waste inspector rolled through a quiet Sacramento neighborhood in his white pickup truck after a tipster tattled on people watering their lawns on prohibited days.

He approached two culprits. Rather than slapping them with fines, Upton offered to change the settings on their sprinkler systems.

"I don't want to crack down on them and be their Big Brother," said Upton, who works for the water conservation unit of Sacramento's utilities department. "People don't waste water on purpose. They don't know they are wasting water."

At least 45 water agencies throughout California, including Sacramento, are imposing and enforcing mandatory restrictions on water use as their supplies run dangerously low. Sacramento is one of the few bigger agencies actively patrolling streets for violators and encouraging neighbors to report waste.

They teach residents to avoid hosing down driveways, overwatering lawns or filling swimming pools. While gentle reminders are preferred, citations and fines can follow for repeat offenders.

"We do have the stick if people don't get it," said Kim Loeb, natural resource conservation manager in Visalia, a city of 120,000 people that has hired a part-time worker for night patrols and reduced the number of warnings from two to one before issuing $100 fines.

Mandatory restrictions aren't as widespread as in previous droughts, even among the drier parts of Southern California. One reason is more cities are conserving and making it expensive for residents to guzzle water.

Sacramento, where about half the homes are unmetered, is deploying the state's most aggressive water patrols to compensate. In February, the city of 475,000 deputized 40 employees who drive regularly for their jobs, such as building inspectors and meter readers, to report and respond to water waste. Of them, six are on water patrol full-time.

Providing a boost to their efforts is a campaign asking residents to report neighbors and local businesses breaking the rules. In the first three months of this year, Sacramento has received 3,245 water waste complaints, compared to 183 in the same period last year.

"There are tons of eyes out there watching everywhere," said Upton, looking at a computerized map of suspected offenders throughout the city.

Lina Barber was among those warned by Upton about watering on the wrong day, but she said she's still drought conscious. She's already waiting for full loads to wash clothes and dishes and just needed a simple reminder, a courtesy she'd extend without dragging in the water cops.

"I'm just going to talk to my neighbors," Barber said. "I know them well enough to say they are trying to enforce the water rules."

Sacramento's suburban neighbor to the east, Roseville, also is deploying an aggressive water-patrol program.

Despite steady rain and snow in February and part of March, the state's water supply and mountain snowpack remain perilously low, meaning there will be far less water to release to farms and cities in the months ahead.

More consistently water-conscious communities have found they don't need to spend as much time or money on enforcement.

Los Angeles has just a small water-enforcement program but has mandated conservation since 2009 and has cut water use by 18 percent. Just a single inspector patrols the streets full time in a city of nearly 3.9 million that imports most of its water, a program that is expected to expand to four by summer.

The program will take a softer approach than its "drought busters" program of 2008, said Penny Falcon, a water conservation manager. The workers will no longer roam the city wearing special uniforms and driving Priuses. Standard, city-issued vehicles will be used instead.

"No one wants to be the water cops," said Lisa Lien-Mager, spokeswoman for the Association of California Water Agencies. "When they are asked to conserve, Californians will generally respond."

Some agencies have found that it's better to maintain a culture of conservation no matter what the winter brings. The Marin Municipal Water District north of San Francisco deployed water patrols during the mid-1970s drought but has since implemented tiered water rates that spike for guzzlers.

It also focuses on voluntary home visits to catch leaks and point out appliances and other devices that are not water-efficient, said Dan Carney, the conservation manager.

Another emerging conservation measure is using peer pressure through bills that show how much water homeowners use each month compared to their neighbors. Studies show such programs reduce overall water use as much as 10 percent.

The San Francisco-based company Water Smart sells software to compare ratepayers' water use at eight California agencies.

"It certainly feels a lot better to take care of business yourself," said Andrea Pook, a spokeswoman for the East Bay Municipal Water District, which uses the software and does not have active water waste patrols. "Who wants a nagging mother?"

"Harry Tracy is the closest project to The City that's a part of the Water Systems Improvement Project, the $4.6 billion rehab and overhaul of the network of pipes, tanks and aqueducts that carries San Francisco's freshwater supply... If The City is ever cut off from its major freshwater supply from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park, Harry Tracy is the backup emergency supply."

Cities need water, and "free" water from far away isn't really free. In America, we take for granted a vast but aging infrastructure that makes "free" water appear cheap compared to desalination, but the current drought illustrates the value of recent improvements in desalination technology.

Drought expected to intensify and spread through western states and Texas.

curious2 says

In America, we take for granted a vast but aging infrastructure that makes "free" water appear cheap compared to desalination

Desalination plants are problematic because they are not free to build, and then maintain during long stretches of non-scarcity (consider Santa Barbara's long-mothballed desal plant as an example - nothing but a headache, even in as water-insecure a town as Santa Barbara). You have to go big or go home - full-time desalination or none at all.

If things ever get really grotesque, consumers will be asked to pay much higher rates for water, which will cut consumption by a large amount instantaneously. And then, maybe, desal will take root in the coastal cities.

I guess you're thinking of putting large coastal cities on desalination completely, which probably makes sense in the long term, but we're the anti-Switzerland. The Swiss are willing to spend the cash to tunnel through the Alps, even though it won't be recouped (in lower travel energy expenditure) for 100 years. Nobody in the United States is willing to spend money now which will not be recouped within 5 years.

So the transition costs bar the move to desalination.

"California staggers toward a third drought-plagued summer that will probably include rationing and lots of fighting about how the state should use its precious, dwindling supplies of water.

The snow levels in the Sierra were only 18 percent of average on Thursday, when the last of the season's once-a-month measurements was taken by the California Department of Water Resources. That's worse than last month, when the snowpack was 32 percent of normal for the date.
***
Conditions get worse the farther north one goes in the Sierra and Cascade ranges. The snowpack is a paltry 7 percent of average in the northern part of the state, according to the measurements."

Iosef V HydroCabron says

If things ever get really grotesque, consumers will be asked to pay much higher rates for water, which will cut consumption by a large amount instantaneously.

I thought $4/gallon gasoline would stop people buying SUVs, but it didn't. They simply borrow more against the quantitatively eased prices of their shacks.

I do see your point about Santa Barbara's maintenance costs, though I have to wonder about their decision to sell off some of their equipment. The main issue is, when a city needs water, it can't wait long enough to build something. We spend unlimited sums ("no lifetime caps!") on toxic SSRI placebos that end up polluting the water, then suddenly there is no money to ensure a safe supply of water that people need to drink every day in order to survive at all.

The article linked in this new thread goes into the math on San Diego's desalination plans. As the article notes, the cost of "free" piped water depends on how much of your allocation you actually receive. When you need the piped water most, i.e. when there is a drought, is likely to be when you get the least of it. As a result, the cost of desalinating can actually be less than the cost of "free" piped water, and desalinating enables coastal cities to have local control of their water instead of depending on remote allocation decisions that they don't control.