California's Drought

I'm happy to sell any of you  three days of the weather we have had here in Wales .
My wheel barrow got nearly 4 inches of liquid sunshine between 21.00 hrs last night and 09.30 hrs this morning

 They will only cost each of you  $ 200 USD for each day and will only be shipped once the PayPal payment has cleared .  
As I have a fair sized stock of this item , multiples will only attract a single shipping cost .

Love your entrepreneurial spirit, Plantoid!  (Of course, I already knew you had it.)

There was a comic strip here in the U.S. not long ago that featured a similar idea: Hijack water from the Great Lakes, then transport and sell it in California.

Then it's a darn good idea to build  the HST lines from the nippiest of the North to stickiest of the South and put two gert big syphon pipes in either side of the track lines for the river of life to flow from the fridge to the frying pan .

As the frying pan is much lower down than the ice cool great lakes which contain a massive amount of the earths easily accessible fresh water ,it will run unaided without pumping engines  exactly like a thermo syphon once the pipe work has been filled up with water.

 Right, job done,  drought solved with great green credentials ....."  Next job please " .
 
 Here in Wales in the early 1960's  the locals went apoplectic when a 10 foot diameter subsurface pipe line & water way was constructed  , it runs for 90 miles or more and has gravity flow ... all the way from Central Wales to Birmingham UK .  The city pays Wales for the water .

 Five or so sparsely or totally un populated valleys were dammed up to make the head & volume of water available ..
You can still hear the racist & spiteful mutterings about it even 55 years after the event amongst some of the locals  . 
Funnier still is that the high levels of annual  rain water would have simply run out to sea,  benefiting no one in particular.... not even the fish in the sea.

In CA, we already pump water over mountains to southern Los Angeles and San Diego.

http://www.goldenstateimages.com/GSI_search.php?srch=Pumping&op=ex

I read an article yesterday by a Representative from Central California.  Among other things, he stated that much of the state's water is pumped into the ocean.

Sounds like political bull pucky to me.

Thanks for the editing.  Hee,hee.

I just found a list of Op-Eds from the Los Angeles Times.  One included the following statement:


A renewable source: wastewater
By Doug Owen
In a drought, is it possible to discover new sources of water?
Every day in California, billions of gallons of highly treated wastewater are discharged into the ocean or inland waterways that could be recycled.  


Doug Owen is executive vice president and chief technical officer of the Water Division of Arcadis North America and board chairman of the WateReuse Research Foundation.



I hope this post isn't considered too political!  I think we all need to be concerned about water shortages and to be open to possible solutions, as well as problems in the way water supplies have been managed.  

Is it too political?  Water in CA is partly political, partly natural distribution, confounded by drought.  I really don't think that LA (and San Diego) and San Francisco folks are going to drink treated waste water.  In the Valleys, where the mountain runoff water is shipped to these other areas, we discharge treated waste water into recharge basins for the underground aquifer.  Even ag water goes to the aquifer.  We need rain more than anything else.    

I wouldn't drink treated wastewater, either!

But I don't see why it couldn't be used for irrigation and other purposes.  Why should it be pumped into the ocean?

Because, there isn't any agriculture in the big cities by the Pacific ocean.

But there are yards, trees, and gardens.

If there are pipes/aqueducts carrying water from, for example, the Colorado River, can't some means be designed to carry that purified waste water back to the agricultural areas?

sanderson wrote:Is it too political?  Water in CA is partly political, partly natural distribution, confounded by drought.  I really don't think that LA (and San Diego) and San Francisco folks are going to drink treated waste water.  In the Valleys, where the mountain runoff water is shipped to these other areas, we discharge treated waste water into recharge basins for the underground aquifer.  Even ag water goes to the aquifer.  We need rain more than anything else.    

Water reclamation is very commonly part of a city's water supply. We drink it in L.A., but honestly, only if we can't afford not to. There are some locations in which the water tastes okay, and others in which it is yellowish and/or tastes lousy. Because of that, bottled water is ubiquitous in L.A., even in private homes.

Because of high levels of chlorination and long exposure, it is often recommended that people even filter their showerheads.

The Department of Water and Power reports that the quality of its water supply is way above the necessary minimum standards, but there's also another vital link in the chain that leads to your tap: the pipeline that leads into your house. It could be very old. It could be cracked or in some other way worn out or damaged, letting soil contaminants (all too common in a city) in. So it's possible for houses in the same neighborhood to have varying contaminant levels in their water. It all gets very confusing and hard to control or remedy unless you simply buy bottled water(some of which may have its own issues), so that's what a whole lot of people of every income level do.

On another note, the news in the past few days is reporting that some areas in California are sinking at the rate of two inches PER MONTH! The drought is making people draw more heavily on the state's aquifers, causing land subsidence that is in some cases irreversible.

Sounds kinda scary in a state already subject to earthquakes.

donnainzone10 wrote:But there are yards, trees, and gardens.

If there are pipes/aqueducts carrying water from, for example, the Colorado River, can't some means be designed to carry that purified waste water back to the agricultural areas?

 Here in the UK where I used to live it was about 30 feet of ancient deep peat and sand .
We took  the liquid  " HUMANURE " from the big city waste treatment plants by tanker trains to rail sidings out in the countryside ,where was/ is decanted into 30,000 litre trailer mounted tanks that are then delivered to farms .
At the farms , the farmers use massive fast track tractors to pull 6 inch dia flexible plastic high pressure lines off reels like the auto crop sprayers reels you have in the USA. it is taken off the reels in a snake like pattern across the fields and is also attached to the rear of the tractor.

The pipe terminates in a massive strengthened hollow mole plough arm that is pushed down into the soil to about three feet deep .

The Humanure is then pumped at about 24 psi from the static tankers at the field edge / hard road  /edge  through the pipes and ends up 3 foot down down into rows about 15 foot apart across the fields.

The crops from the fields where it take place are fantastic.

 The  Humanure quality & liquidity is strictly lab controlled & tested to ensure that there are no nasty pathogens etc in it.

 It gave rise to people writing on the toilet walls in London & other cities where people who had a wicked sense of humour & were in the know the following message.
" Please flush twice as it's 90 miles to the Fertile Fenland Fields "

I am an agent for plumbed in UV carbon & silver nitrate  water purifiers ..it removes almost all known contaminants & bugs from your water system.

Please form an orderly queue on the left side of the thread .. ensure sure your PayPal has cleared before I ship it because if it hasn't , I won't.

 I am also starting to sell small medium & large massive dessert stils that can give you about seven pints ( large size only ) of  pure water per hot sunny day .
 
 The source material can be anything that contains water . Including loo soup etc.

PayPal me just $ 15, 25 or 56  USD & don't forget folks ......queue up on the right of the thread .
 

 Seriously, when you think of it we are always drinking recycled water, because that's what mother nature does to water . She heats it , evaporates it and then condenses as fog , mist rain, sleet or snow .

 Some of the condensate we drink from rivers & reservoirs ,some comes from deep underground some from water mines set up on mountainsides , but it's still recycled by evaporation & condensing.

Marc Iverson wrote:The [LA] Department of Water and Power reports that the quality of its water supply is way above the necessary minimum standards, but there's also another vital link in the chain that leads to your tap:  the pipeline that leads into your house.  It could be very old.  It could be cracked or in some other way worn out or damaged, letting soil contaminants (all too common in a city) in.  So it's possible for houses in the same neighborhood to have varying contaminant levels in their water.

This sort of leads in to Donna's reply about using secondary water for household irrigation.  Re-plumbing a city with duel water systems would be a monstrous undertaking.  Pumping it back to ag areas would would be like a mosquito on an elephant.

On another note, the news in the past few days is reporting that some areas in California are sinking at the rate of two inches PER MONTH!  The drought is making people draw more heavily on the state's aquifers, causing land subsidence that is in some cases irreversible.

Add to that the 1" of topsoil that is blowing away with the dryness and winds.

Sounds kinda scary in a state already subject to earthquakes.

I don't know what the effect will be in other areas, I am only familiar with the SJ Valley.  We are okay in the middle but the west side near the coastal foothills have had significant earthquake damage.[/quote]

This is not a bad article on the middle of California, the collective Central Valley, with San Joaquin in the south and Sacramento in the north.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_%28California%29

many, many thanks for that great article by Mark Bittman.  The comments were excellent and many of them certainly saw into the future regarding water.

[quote="plantoid"]

donnainzone10 wrote:
 It gave rise to people writing on the toilet walls in London & other cities where people who had a wicked sense of humour & were in the know the following message.
" Please flush twice as it's 90 miles to the Fertile Fenland Fields "

In elementary school the joke went, Flush twice; it's a long way to the cafeteria.

Mark Bittman article? So I looked at Wikipedia and found the article. I have no idea where the Valley is headed. Sometimes I wish I was younger so I could see.

Ah, I finally found it too. Nice article.

I remember working in Stockton, and a day of 125 degree heat. How hot a place is seems to be half my impression of it. It was blistering. No wonder the gangbangers are all crazy there.

I just turned 80 today and most of the time I am pretty happy that I will not be around for the disasters that I fear will be coming about.

Sneaky way to let you all know it's my birthday!  I am so happy to be in good health, although of course slowing down a lot, and living with great people.  I count myself extremely fortunate.

I post a Happy Birthday on the Happy Birthday topic. Glad you are in good health and surrounded by good people. Thank you for being a Regional Host for Hawaii.

kauairosina wrote: and living with great people.  I count myself extremely fortunate.

This is awesome at any age. Happy birthday! And remember, 80 is the new 60.

+1

Just how hot is the air temp getting  in the open ( no sun traps )  ?

The hottest I've suffered is 44. 1 oC in Qubec & 44.6 oC in Cyprus .