Decision looms for controversial Poseidon desalination plant

https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/story/2022-04-26/decision-looms-for-poseidon-desalination-plant

by perihelions • 4 years ago

35 69 4 years ago

jmyeet2• 4 years ago

Let me put this in a different perspective: California still gets significant water from snowmelt every year from the Sierra Nevadas. A huge portion of this water is diverted to agriculture. A lot of these places couldn't survive as farms without significant external water like this.

So here's my question: why are we considering making consumers pay for expensive desalinated drinking water instead of diverting snowmelt to drinking water? What we're effectively doing is using expensive desalination for agriculture and making consumers pay for it.

And before anyone says "we need food" well... yes and no. Different types of food require different amounts of water. A decade ago California farmers were exporting almonds and alfalfa to China. Why? Both are water-intensive crops (eg almonds require ~1 gallon of water each; for reference a person only needs 0.5 gallons a day).

Not one mention of agriculture or snow in this article.

rektide2• 4 years ago

The United States made a lot of vast vast vast promises to farmers ~100 years ago they could have oodles of free water in perpetuity & the legal system believes there is no way to ever take back these rights short of paying these users-of-natural-rights dump truck loads of money forever to stop.

(other posters call this calamity by it's legal name, "water rights".)

DubiousPusher2• 4 years ago

The devil collects on his end of the Faustian Bargain that was manifest destiny. The American system turns out to be a system for making convenient choices and not wise ones.

rektide2• 4 years ago

*users-of-natural-resources, oops

dehrmann• 4 years ago

why are we considering making consumers pay for expensive desalinated drinking water instead of diverting snowmelt to drinking water?

Water rights are a thing. In order to divert that water, it would essentially be eminent domain, and you'd have to compensate farmers. It wouldn't just be the dollar amount for wholesale water, it'd be what it does to the value of the land, too. You could see farmland go from $30,000 per acre to $5,000.

There are also second-order economic effects. It could cause a dust bowl-like recession in the central valley. And then you run into all the other crops that are grown there. Expect peaches and melons to double in price.

coryrc2• 4 years ago

Let's just bite the bullet, end the water rights system and auction the water, using the money to pay back the cost.

The thing is, peaches, melons, etc aren't going to double in price. Just stop growing alfala: https://ucmanagedrought.ucdavis.edu/Agriculture/Crop_Irrigat... It's worth little but it's "the largest agricultural user in California" because their water is free.

cameldrv• 4 years ago

Ok why can’t the farmers just sell the water to the cities then or have a city buy some farmland with water rights?

Throwawayaerlei5• 4 years ago

The US West's water allocation policies are based on history, often old compacts made between various interest groups. The big California water systems would have never gotten off the ground back then without the farmers being part of it, the problem is that starting in the 1960s new water projects were canceled on a bipartisan basis while the urban population continued to skyrocket.

You try to change this system and you'll open a _huge_ can of worms for all of the US west of the Minnesota to Louisiana border, the legal fights would consume the relevant courts for decades. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_law_in_the_United_States and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_right for a start.

ClumsyPilot• 4 years ago

something gotta give and its nit going to be laes of nature, so when are we gonna byte the bullet and fix laes of men?

Hetting worse with clumate change

mlyle3• 4 years ago

while the urban population continued to skyrocket.

Blaming the urban population "skyrocketing" for contention of water usage is ridiculous. 80% of water used by humans in California is used by agriculture.

It's about the same share as 1970: cities have increased water consumption slightly (despite a doubling of the population, urban water use has also gotten significantly more efficient), but farmers have also moved towards more water intensive crops... keeping the shares about the same.

Meanwhile, farming's share of California's GDP has halved.

skybrian• 4 years ago

Yes, cities can always outbid farmers if their water were for sale, but often it isn't. Water rights are complicated.

Also, farmers are already not getting any state water. Guess who has to cut back next?

From a disaster planning standpoint, having a water source that doesn't depend on rain or snowfall is important for reducing risk. Cities can afford this and it's worth doing because they don't have the option of not planting in a dry year.

(Also, if you care about housing, the lack of water is sometimes used to oppose new projects.)

San Diego is doing a lot better than LA in part due to their desalination plant.

alimov2• 4 years ago

“…(eg almonds require ~1 gallon of water each;”

This always blows my mind (when I think about it). Driving through that region of CA is really jarring because you can see all the ag work being done in the middle of the desert.. I’ve made the drive between LA and Seattle a number of times and I’m always shocked to see fruits and nuts being grown in such a counterintuitive location. I don’t know much of anything about optimal/suboptimal locations for growing these things, but it sure doesn’t seem like a great use of water. I wonder how much water is wasted just due to the climate in the area.

jeffbee4• 4 years ago

If this subject is terribly interesting to you, I recommend the book The Dreamt Land.

https://www.amazon.com/Dreamt-Land-Chasing-Across-California...

tzs2• 4 years ago

That gallon of water used to grow an almond doesn’t actually end up in the almond.

jmyeet2• 4 years ago

That half gallon of water the human consumes every day doesn’t end up in the human either.

What’s your point?

bsder• 4 years ago

So here's my question: why are we considering making consumers pay for expensive desalinated drinking water instead of diverting snowmelt to drinking water? What we're effectively doing is using expensive desalination for agriculture and making consumers pay for it.

Because the correct answer--"Shut down agribusiness in the Central Valley"--is politically infeasible.

So, we will continue on this path until the aquifers are completely pumped out by the big agribusinesses who will then abandon the Central Valley to its collapse.

oofbey3• 4 years ago

a person only needs 0.5 gallons a day

This is simply wrong, by a lot. Americans use about 100 gallons/day of water per person on average, including things like toilets, showers, etc. Maybe we don’t “need” to use that much (whatever “need” is supposed to mean) but it’s the way people live, which is not going to change any time soon.

Even just considering drinking this is wrong. Adult men should drink close to a gallon a day, women somewhat less.

axiolite• 4 years ago

Maybe we don’t “need” to use that much (whatever “need” is supposed to mean)

He's talking minimal human survival. Though that depends on temperatures, body weight and activity level:

http://www.aircav.net/survival/asch13/fig13-2.gif

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f2/e1/22/f2e122972c93b1f2a67e...

vondur• 4 years ago

California is a great place to grow fruits and vegetables. Very stable weather and long growing seasons. Of course the issue is the lack of water. California provides a large amount of produce for the entire country.

variant• 4 years ago

Tons of the water is used for fish too.

Agriculture does seem kind of important...

NegativeLatency• 4 years ago

Related, for anyone who hasn’t read it Cadillac Desert is a fascinating read about water in the west.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert

Kyragem• 4 years ago

and every year we have less and less snow on our sierras so don't bank on this.

jeffbee4• 4 years ago

When I ran the numbers on having 100 million urban Californians, large-scale desalination seemed like a no-brainer. It really does not cost all that much and it can be entirely powered during daytime solar energy surpluses, since intermittent water production is no problem at all. If there is some equity-justice-words objection that is easily covered by a universal basic rebate. Nobody should be using more than about 50 gallons/person/day anyway. Utility-scale drinking water costs a fraction of a penny. Even the punitive rates being charged for wastefulness during the drought, which only kick in at a ridiculous 1600 gallons/day, is only 0.7¢/gal. There's no reason that desalinated water at utility scales should add more than $5/month to a household expenses and to the extent that is a problem, just subsidize it with a free first 3000 gallons per month per meter or whatever.

California environmentalism has been finely crafted by its boomer/hippie inventors as a way to stop everything, but that needs to shift into a mindset of building the large-scale projects we are going to need to face climate change: a huge amount of solar and wind, numerous desalination stations, many storage projects since we are losing the snowpack, etc.

pstuart• 4 years ago

This can be further augmented by rethinking water capture to replenish aquifers, e.g., https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...

bolangi• 4 years ago

Historically desalinization has been an extremely inefficient way to produce drinking water -- energy intensive while discharing a large fraction of the input water. I doubt the fundamental economics of desalinization have changed.

icegreentea2• 4 years ago

The cost estimates (at the end customer) are all right there in the article. $5 of month on the top side, and estimated to be something like 3x the price of importing drinking water.

Gibbon1• 4 years ago

I once found a table that lasted the energy requirements for Los Angeles water sources. A lot of sources have minimal energy needs. But something like 10% require about 50% of the energy needed for desalinization.

There is a lot of inane nimby stuff mixed in with reasonable concerns. For instance owners of hobby horse ranches in the San Gabriels suing to stop the California's high speed rail's plans to run a tunnel 1000+ feet under their property. Opposition to desalinization is like that.

Fatnino• 4 years ago

We should be running desal on the salt ponds in San Francisco Bay. The water currently being intentionally lost to evaporation will instead be captured and the salt will be extracted faster. Seems like a win win.

gedy• 4 years ago

Concerns included flood risks based on updated projections of sea-level rise, the location in an industrial area “with a history of contamination problems” and higher costs for water that would probably mean “significant burdens” for low-income communities, which they said would raise environmental justice issues.

Please. The objections are largely the usual NIMBY types and concerns.

google234123• 4 years ago

Farms in California already get a disproportionate and growing amount of water. How about they do better?

chrisbrandow• 4 years ago

I’m sure I’m naive, but (eventual) cheap solar plus desalination seems like a great way supplement the obvious water shortfalls headed our way.

I find the opposition to be shortsighted. I feel like we are rapidly approaching the point where we should be beginning the work on the last resorts while also continuing to work on the other options like recycling, etc.

Especially given today’s article in latimes about parts of socal requiring max of 85 gallons daily. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-30/can-you-...

AndrewDucker• 4 years ago

The problem with desalination is that you don't extract all of the water, you extract half of it, leaving a bunch of very salty water to be dumped back into the ocean, causing dead zones.

ncmncm4• 4 years ago

Piping the brine farther out to sea, with leaky pipe, mitigates that.

A better solution is direct solar thermal desalination, and flushing at night. Brine might also be drained to the Salton Sea.

ncmncm4• 4 years ago

Until all of fossil fuel demand is displaced, solar will not be cheap enough for desalination. After that point, it will be reasonable, but we are years away from that. We should make farmers not hosting dual-use solar on their fields subsidize farmers who do.

(Dual-use generates power, and also increased ag yield, reduced water loss, and more PV efficiency.)

closedloop129• 4 years ago

To my surprise the cost of desalination is quite low. It's nowhere near the price of bottled water.

$2,710 per acre-foot is $2 per cubic meter or $0,01 per gallon.

But it's not profitable for regular crops:

Crops need about 700mm of water [1], so 0.7m, which is $1.4 per square meter.

Maize/corn can be sold for $0.13 per square meter [2]. However, other crops like lavender can be sold for $5 per square meter.

The price of desalination must be energy bound. Does this mean that in coastal deserts, when renewable energy brings energy prices down to 1/10, it starts being profitable to grow regular crops with desalinated water?

[1] http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/content/water-requirement-differ... [2] https://entrepreneur-360.com/most-profitable-crops-9945

credit_guy2• 4 years ago

CAPEX for desal plants is not negligible. The San Diego plant cost $1 BN for a daily output of 50 mil gallons. If you intend to amortize the plant in 20 years, it comes at 0.27 cents/galon. So even if you get free energy, you are far from your target of 0.1 cents per gallon.

By the way, thanks for running the numbers. I checked them, amd they are correct, with the small observation that recently the pricd of corn has gone up more than twice.

mrep2• 4 years ago

You are off my 2 orders of magnitude:

$1,000,000,000 / (50,000,000 gallons * 365 days per year * 20 years) = $0.00273972602 per gallon.

Decision looms for controversial Poseidon desalination plant

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