patrick.net

"We have only two modes—complacency and panic.” - James R. Schlesinger, the first energy secretary, in 1977.

They should tax someone - not me! - and get those farmers the subsidized water they deserve.

If their input costs rise, they'll pass them on to the consumer! I ain't payin' more for a resource just because it's scarce!

El HydroCabron says

"We have only two modes—complacency and panic.” - James R. Schlesinger, the first energy secretary, in 1977.

On wall street we call it Greed and Fear. Kind of the same thing if I think about it.

Water isn't scarce though, and people do pay for bottled water, which makes no sense. America is not a landlocked country. Desalination and filtering can already produce unlimited water cheaply; gallons of it for a penny. People buy bottled water for $8 gallon, even where tap water is safe, but refuse to invest in desalination and filtration that would supply unlimited water for 99.9% lower cost.

When bottled water appeared in every convenience and grocery store, my opinion of the human race fell as my awe at the power of marketing rose.

Think of any lie. There is a marketing department that can convince at least 30% of the population that it's true.

They can have my swimming pool water when I am done with it.

curious2 says

Water isn't scarce though, and people do pay for bottled water, which makes no sense. America is not a landlocked country. Desalination and filtering can already produce unlimited water cheaply; gallons of it for a penny. People buy bottled water for $8 gallon, even where tap water is safe, but refuse to invest in desalination and filtration that would supply unlimited water for 99.9% lower cost.

IMHO the main draw of bottled water is the disposable bottle. Just like disposable needles for medical applications, the single use container makes the hassle of washing and cleaning bottles unnecessary when people are away from home and taps.

El HydroCabron says

When bottled water appeared in every convenience and grocery store, my opinion of the human race fell as my awe at the power of marketing rose.

Think of any lie. There is a marketing department that can convince at least 30% of the population that it's true.

Water from natural springs has to be bottled, glass or plastic. Don't tell me you actually think that tap water matches spring water even remotely.

Reality says

IMHO the main draw of bottled water is the disposable bottle.

They can be refilled. I keep two empty for airport security, and refill them before boarding. As long as they're only used for water, by the same person, they don't need much washing.

mell says

Don't tell me you actually think that tap water matches spring water even remotely.

video: Penn & Teller expose bottled water, 75% preferred NYC tap water

Pure H2O is the same everywhere. If you like the flavor of the impurities from your favorite spring, ok, but the actual water is the same. Some bottled water brands are actually municipal tap water. Some municipalities add chlorine, which some people don't like, but a good two stage filter can remove chlorine and impurities efficiently and cheaply. BTW, I actually tried the taste test on a friend in NYC; he preferred the tap water, no filter.

As for bubbly water, the CO2 bubbles make people more flatulent, and the carbonic acid is bad for teeth. I don't know why people buy it.

curious2 says

video: Penn & Teller expose bottled water, 75% preferred NYC tap water

Pure H2O is the same everywhere. If you like the flavor of the impurities from your favorite spring, ok, but the actual water is the same. Some bottled water brands are actually municipal tap water. Some municipalities add chlorine, which some people don't like, but a good two stage filter can remove chlorine and impurities efficiently and cheaply.

In this case I don't care about what Penn and Teller say, maybe they used crappy bottled or purified water which is the same as tap water and we all know American taste buds are not the best ;) Give me some German or Italian Spring Water and I can distinguish that from crap tap water in under a second. It's also much healthier than tap water. Sure tap water is a good daily alternative, also good for making tea or coffee, but to put it on par with water from natural springs defies science and medicine. If people don't know the difference between purified drinking water in a bottle and a bottle of Apollinaris or Hirschquelle, then nothing can help them anyways ;)

Watch the video anyway. It isn't about what Penn & Teller say, it's about what the people drinking the water say. I'll grant that spring water may contain minerals that you would otherwise find in food or a pill, but that doesn't mean you benefit from it unless your diet is deficient in those minerals. There was a time when people in cities with poor sanitation and air quality derived benefit from traveling to the mountains and drinking from (or bathing in) spring water, but that was because of problems in their diet and urban environment. As for taste, try some double-blind testing yourself, with volunteers to help. You might save a lot of money.

I watched it and it is pretty funny. One thing I cannot believe is that nobody tasted the chlorine or chloramine (harder to taste but still noticeable) unless they filtered the water very well before serving it. In some European countries Ozone is used which you cannot taste in comparison to chlorine. Another problem is that water stored in plastic bottles will change its taste, but plastic simply won the convenience battle. Water should be stored in glass for best taste and durability. Lastly, drinking expensive worldly water for status is stupid, but a lot of these brands don't cost much in their originating countries. Though I barfed the first time I tasted US tap water, I have gotten used to it and now drink 50% tap water and 50% bottled water (of the cheaper kind, but still spring water).

mell says

Another problem is that water stored in plastic bottles will change its taste, but plastic simply won the convenience battle. Water should be stored in glass for best taste and durability.

I agree completely with that. I wonder when I see people drinking water from plastic bottles, how much BPA are they getting, or what else might they be getting. Plastic can also be more vulnerable to harboring microorganisms than glass or metal, and plastic is gas permeable so bubbly water goes flat sooner. I keep some plastic bottles of water for emergencies, thinking that plastic won't shatter in an earthquake, but I drink filtered tap water most of the time. (And the filter is because of old plumbing in the building, not the water supply itself.)

curious2 says

IMHO the main draw of bottled water is the disposable bottle.

They can be refilled. I keep two empty for airport security, and refill them before boarding. As long as they're only used for water, by the same person, they don't need much washing.

The point is not refilling and keeping track of how many times the bottle has been refilled. On average, people spend far more time in cars than on planes. Keeping track of which bottles are newly opened and which are refilled can be messy, especially where there are passengers in addition to the driver.

curious2 says

Pure H2O is the same everywhere. If you like the flavor of the impurities from your favorite spring, ok, but the actual water is the same. Some bottled water brands are actually municipal tap water. Some municipalities add chlorine, which some people don't like, but a good two stage filter can remove chlorine and impurities efficiently and cheaply. BTW, I actually tried the taste test on a friend in NYC; he preferred the tap water, no filter.

Not everyone lives in NYC. Some municipalities have poor water quality; some houses have questionable pipes or don't have backflow check valve between the drinking cold water vs. the hot water from either the water heater or the boiler.

curious2 says

And the filter is because of old plumbing in the building, not the water supply itself.

The water supply itself is irrelevant unless you are walking to the original supply for every cup of water. The plumbing in many houses are questionable on top of many street blocks in many cities being questionable.

El HydroCabron says

"We have only two modes—complacency and panic.”

Agribusiness uses 80% of the water in the state, and they use it INEFFICIENTLY like it's nearly free, which it is to them. The majority of the water diverted for agriculture is wasted. Telling people to not flush as often, is just theater to make them realize there is a problem. The REAL solution is to get agribusiness to use the equivalent of your efficient toilet.

Is desalination competetive economically? I would think if it were, CA would have a string of desalination plants on the coast??

lostand confused says

Is desalination competetive economically?

For coastal cities, the wholesale cost of desalination is competitive with the retail price of the "free" water that comes from dwindling reservoirs and aquifers. But, the existing infrastructure of reservoirs and pipelines delivers the "free" water for a slightly lower cost. So, there isn't much economic incentive to build desalination capacity, until something happens to the "free" supply. In line with the first comment above, people don't think about it until it's too late.

lostand confused says

I would think if it were, CA would have a string of desalination plants on the coast??

There are some environmental concerns, which can be addressed depending on the budget. California originated environmentalism, and these well-intentioned organizations look for new missions. For example, some want to restore the Hetch Hetchy valley to its original condition, which was prettier than the current reservoir. As long as the "free" water lasts, they can prioritize aesthetics without worrying about water security.

The trouble is, people can't survive more than a few days without water, and any disruption to the "free" supply would devastate the economy. Every few years, droughts remind us of our dependence on water from hundreds of miles away. Vicente is right that the vast majority of water waste results from agribusiness, but that isn't a reason to ignore the improvements in desalination that have occurred in recent decades.

P.S. I don't usually delete anyone's comments, even if I disagree with them, but I had to delete one that was astonishing in its ignorance of both science and history.

For more about water in ancient Rome, you can read here. They did use lead pipes, but the hard water kept moving and coated the inside of the pipes with other minerals, so they didn't have the problems of standing water in lead pipes in 20th century American houses. Romans did notice the health effects of lead, btw, at least on the workers who made the pipes. Some ancient Romans lived into their 90s, still alert mentally, which would not occur if they were suffering lead poisoning. One interesting observation in the PBS link is that Roman aqueducts were initially underground pipelines, for protection against enemies; the famous above ground aqueducts worked only so long as imperial security could protect them.

The deleted comment also had some gratuitous homophobia tacked on, as ignorant males tend to do. Maybe that bit was a lame attempt at humor, but it certainly didn't add to the discussion of water security.

"California drought to drive up food prices in the long term
***
"We're really concerned about the extent to which acreage is being taken out of action," said Richard Volpe, an economist in the Foods Markets Branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "The real economic impact is long term and will be felt down the road, when there will be a structural shift in prices.""

CA has a water management nightmare, and it has for a very long time. Farmers have heavily subsidized water, so they're growing rice and alfalfa in the middle of the desert, which squanders water. To subsidize their water, other light water users have to pay a lot more for theirs. The central valley is an ancient sea bed which is impermeable to water, so years of irrigation have deposited salts, which have nowhere to run off to, and are slowly poisoning agricultural land an making growing some crops harder, and in another generation, impossible.

The water usage in this state, due to the price distortions over the years, is unsustainable, and I think the only way to fix it is to cut the subsidies, and see what it's economical to grow. My guess is that there will be lots more fruit and nut trees, and far fewer water intensive crops.

curious2 says

people do pay for bottled water, which makes no sense

Well... who do you trust more?

Tap water has been known to contain mercury, lead, arsenic, hexavalent chromium, PCBs, benzene, toluene, hexachlorobenzene, nitrites, dimethyl disulfide, carbon disulfide, Napthalene, trimethyl benzene, perchlorate, MtBE, dioxin, DCPA, psychoactive drugs (Prozac, benzodiazepines), fecal matter, and bacteria like Giardia and Cryptosporidium.

Even chemicals that are deliberately added can have negative health effect. Chlorine produces carcinogenics chemicals like trihalomethanes and fluoride can cause cancer and osteoporosis, can damage the heart, brain and kidneys, and can cause behavioral disorders, birth defects, arthritis, hormone imbalance, and excessive calcification of arteries and joints.

Not that bottle water is necessarily much better.

Heraclitusstudent says

who do you trust more?

I trust the tap water, but I filter it because of old plumbing. Filtering costs very little, and I trust it more than bottled water.

As a simple heuristic, the more something costs, the more powerful the incentives are to fool you into buying it. For example, realtors tell really big lies to get that 6% commission. Similarly, there is a huge push to get you to buy diagnostic radiation, which is very lucrative. I trust more to cheaper things, like clean water.

SF is on a peninsula, we are literally surrounded by more water than we could ever use, so it makes more sense to me that we should desalinate rather than depending on water from hundreds of miles away. We have plenty of sunshine, so solar desalination shouldn't cost too much, and it would free us from worrying about droughts.

myob says

The water usage in this state, due to the price distortions over the years, is unsustainable, and I think the only way to fix it is to cut the subsidies, and see what it's economical to grow.

Aren't several jurisdictions not even metered?

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.

curious2 says

As for bubbly water, the CO2 bubbles make people more flatulent, and the carbonic acid is bad for teeth. I don't know why people buy it.

Because they enjoy farting!

lostand confused says

Is desalination competetive economically? I would think if it were, CA would have a string of desalination plants on the coast??

It traditionally has not been economic since it was normally distilled as a byproduct of electricity generation (using the waste heat). But with modern reverse osmosis, it's possible to desalinate ocean water without having to boil it off and then condense it back into water (still practical if done with solar energy). The difference being that old traditional method one uses a lot of energy to produce drinkable water and the other uses something that can be thought of (in rough terms) as a filter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis_plant

n 1949, the University of California at Los Angeles first investigated desalination of seawater using semipermeable membranes. Researchers from both University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Florida successfully produced fresh water from seawater in the mid-1950s, but the flux was too low to be commercially viable until the discovery at University of California at Los Angeles by Sidney Loeb and Srinivasa Sourirajan at the National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, of techniques for making asymmetric membranes characterized by an effectively thin "skin" layer supported atop a highly porous and much thicker substrate region of the membrane. By the end of 2001, about 15,200 desalination plants were in operation or in the planning stages worldwide.

Areas that have either no or limited surface water or groundwater may choose to desalinate. Reverse osmosis is an increasingly common method of desalination, because of its relatively low energy consumption. In recent years, energy consumption has dropped to around 3 kWh/m3, with the development of more efficient energy recovery devices and improved membrane materials

I still have no idea if that makes it economical enough to use in agriculture.

zzyzzx says

I still have no idea if that makes it economical enough to use in agriculture.

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.

curious2 says

the wholesale cost of desalination is competitive with the retail price of the "free" water that comes from dwindling reservoirs and aquifers.

What are you basing your assertion on?

Desalination requires a LOT of power at least as much if not twice as much as it takes to import water to SoCal:

http://www2.pacinst.org/reports/desalination_2013/energy/

California needs a lot of water (especially agriculture), ergo large scale desalination would require a LOT of power.

Do you want to see the return of rolling blackouts? I don't!

Electricity is far too valuable to squander on purifying water, especially if waste heat is available. For instance the waste heat from a nuclear or natural gas power plant can be used to purify water via reverse osmosis without substantial amounts of electricity:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110512082949.htm

Thermosolar does not use as much electricity but a large scale water purification plant would still need a lot of real estate - that's coastal California real estate, some of the most expensive in the nation. There is also the problems of night and weather. Lots of overcast on the coast.

No, I think electrically generated desalination is still not viable except for the most dire of emergencies. Sorry , but power still isn't cheap enough.

New Renter says

What are you basing your assertion on?

@New Renter, try reading all of the comments in the thread instead of only the one you quoted. I'm not going to waste time answering the same questions over and over again, winding the thread in a circle simply because you don't know how to scroll a screen.

Your link to the Pacific Institute, founded by Peter Gleick, is dubious.

You might want to read these threads: "Lack of money to fix Californias water woes," "Drought picture dims throughout West," "improving local water supplies best solution to drought," "We as Californians need to work toward self-reliance."

curious2 says

New Renter says

What are you basing your assertion on?

@New Renter, try reading all of the comments in the thread instead of only the one you quoted. I'm not going to waste time answering the same questions over and over again.

You might also want to read these threads: "Lack of money to fix Californias water woes", "improving local water supplies best solution to drought", "We as Californians need to work toward self-reliance."

Oh I did. You talk a lot but you provide no actual evidence to back up your claims that desalination is economically viable as a means to provide vast amounts of useable water.

For instance the first two of your latest links don't even mention desalination, the third only says:

“We as Californians need to work toward self-reliance in Southern California and helping them in that need,” Mr. Frazier says.

But it’s not been an overnight project. It has taken 12 years to plan and another six years to plow through the thickets of bureaucratic approvals. Actual construction has been underway for a year and the plant is now about 25 percent finished It’s expected to begin delivering water by 2016.

Nothing whatsoever on the economics of the technology, only a generic call to arms and a reference to an unfinished and unproven desalination plant.

Now if you are referring to zzyzzx's Wikipedia article that claims Reverse osmosis energy consumption has dropped to around 3 kWh/m3, with the development of more efficient energy recovery devices and improved membrane materials - sure, that may work PROVIDED the capital costs don't kill the deal. There is also the question of volume, can such pumps provide enough water to make a difference? We are talking about a HUGE volume of water here.

When I ask what you are basing your assertion on I am not just asking about lab results but real world, real scale results.

New Renter, if you must persist with this, then rather than put words in my mouth, let's stick to what I said.

New Renter says

curious2 says

the wholesale cost of desalination is competitive with the retail price of the "free" water that comes from dwindling reservoirs and aquifers.

What are you basing your assertion on?

Desalination plants already in operation deliver desalinated water at costs competitive with the retail price of the "free" water that comes from dwindling reservoirs and aquifers.

I said at the start of the thread:

curious2 says

Even coastal cities will continue to depend on inland reservoirs until more desalination capacity goes online.

If you can disprove that fairly obvious assertion, please do so. Otherwise, I don't see why you're chasing your tail here; if you want to read more about the economics of desalination you're free to do so and you don't need my help.

curious2 says

New Renter, if you must persist with this, then rather than put words in my mouth, let's stick to what I said.

New Renter says

curious2 says

the wholesale cost of desalination is competitive with the retail price of the "free" water that comes from dwindling reservoirs and aquifers.

What are you basing your assertion on?

Desalination plants already in operation deliver desalinated water at costs competitive with the retail price of the "free" water that comes from dwindling reservoirs and aquifers.

Something is wrong then, I do not see any previous post in this thread with this link.

curious2 says

I said at the start of the thread:

curious2 says

Even coastal cities will continue to depend on inland reservoirs until more desalination capacity goes online.

Making this statement does not prove desalination is the best or only solution.

If you can disprove that fairly obvious assertion, please do so. Otherwise, I don't see why you're chasing your tail here; if you want to read more about the economics of desalination you're free to do so and you don't need my help.

I provided numbers on which you have cast reasonable doubt on the creditability of the source. You then provided a link which you claimed you had provided earlier but somehow is not apparent to me. The source claims to be able to provide 2.6 KH per Cubic Meter; however thsi is only part of the picture. How about the capital costs - will these RO systems be too expensive to be practical? That was the favorite tactic of alternate energy advocates for decades, promising "free" power while ignoring the capital and maintenance costs.

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.

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.