An Australian startup is “growing” water for California

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/an-australian-startup-is-growing-water-for-drought-parched-california/

by prostoalex • 4 years ago

58 57 4 years ago

tpmx• 4 years ago

We clearly need more journalists with at least some kind of basic education in natural science.

Yeah, it'd be more accurate to say they're "reclaiming" water in tomatoes that would otherwise be lost during the production process. Basically, they're capturing and purifying that water.

But to be fair the reporter is citing the company's CEO...

"We like to say that, in simple terms, we grow water," said Terry Paule, co-founder and CEO of Australia-based Botanical Water Technologies.

cowpig• 4 years ago

I don't think the fact that the CEO of a company made a claim is sufficient justification for putting that claim in the title of a news article, especially without a "CEO claims" qualification of some kind.

rr888• 4 years ago

I think the issue is we all need to pay for journalism via subscriptions rather than rely on ads that requires clickbait titles to attract views.

japhib• 4 years ago

Obviously they're not "growing" water. That's just the marketing spin that the company puts on it, which the journalists are using for the title. The author isn't stupid, like you seem to be assuming ... ? They're just using a name that is more likely to get attention. An article named "company reclaims water from turning tomatoes into ketchup" is a LOT less likely to get attention.

deathgripsss• 4 years ago

I thought the criticism was that the amount of water generated using this is negligible for the current crisis.

yawnxyz• 4 years ago

Similarly, maybe the HN headline needs to be changed to "reclaims water from ketchup production"?

jefftk3• 4 years ago

Summary: some produce contains a lot of water, and is normally processed into something with much less water. Like tomatoes into ketchup. This company captures and sells that water.

Doesn't look like enough water to be relevant. It takes ~100x as much water to grow a tomato as ends up in the final tomato. [1]

[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7d92/40efa5321ba0e2a8596894...

Namari• 4 years ago

they're talking about 250 million gallons over 90 days

boredumb2• 4 years ago

Capturing inefficiencies in processes is a good thing and one of the biggest benefits of capitalism, unless you are proposing we stop growing tomatoes or making ketchup?

SQueeeeeL• 4 years ago

A comment praising capitalism on a thread about the California water crisis (where multiple massive hedge funds have been investing heavily into incredibly water intensive crops like almonds because they earn the most immediate returns despite long-term ability to not die of thirst) is the most hacker news moment of the day, I swear

jefftk3• 4 years ago

I'm saying that it's unlikely that extracting water from tomatoes is going to change the water picture in areas where tomatoes are grown, since this only reduces their water usage by ~1%.

Either water is so abundant that it's not worth capturing the water released from tomato processing, or it's so rare that it's not worth growing tomatoes.

yjftsjthsd-h• 4 years ago

It takes ~100x as much water to grow a tomato as ends up in the final tomato.

Is that a problem? If it takes 100 times as much water to grow as ends up in the final tomato, then that implies that the other 99 parts went back into the local environment, doesn't it? I would have naively assumed that the local ecology was really only upset when people export water containing products across the country

Cerium• 4 years ago

Export is one issue, but pumping from an aquifer and then rejecting into the atmosphere is another.

thehappypm• 4 years ago

Nope, most of the water just evaporates. Plants are great at moving water from the soil to the air.

whyenot• 4 years ago

It's about 921 acre feet. Not a huge amount, but it would be significant for a town like Coalinga that is on the brink of running out of drinking water.

blululu4• 4 years ago

They are growing cotton and cattle less than 10 miles from Coalinga. There is already plenty of water to be had.

danans2• 4 years ago

We could dramatically reduce water requirements of crops like tomatoes with hydroponics, but the reality is that farmland and water are too cheap to make more resource efficient methods economical.

openthc• 4 years ago

A grow-house is not cheap; harvesting labor is cheap. Once we've got better harveting bots GH/HP/V-Grow will make a lot more sense.

gnicholas• 4 years ago

Your last sentence is true, but somewhat irrelevant IMO. That is, even if it takes 1,000x as much water to grow a tomato as ends up in the final tomato, that's all a sunk cost. That water was going to be used either way in order to make ketchup.

The question is: can we recapture some of the water that would have otherwise been wasted in the tomato processing/ketchup producing step?

If we can, and as long as doing so doesn't take undue resources (electricity, etc.), then it makes sense to capture the water, right?

jefftk3• 4 years ago

If we can, and as long as doing so doesn't take undue resources (electricity, etc.), then it makes sense to capture the water, right?

Whether it's worth capturing depends on how much water is worth. At 100x it's very hard to have a water price low enough that growing tomatoes is cost effective but high enough that it's worth putting in this kind of effort to recapture 1% of the water from their production.

(Part of the problem here of course is that agricultural water is rarely traditionally "priced")

Gys• 4 years ago

Reminds me of a short comic in which the main character invents an instant water powder. He sees himself helping many people and becoming very successful. In the end it turns out the powder needs to be solved in water :-)

lazyeye• 4 years ago

Bill Maher on Californias water problem

https://youtu.be/glz-Pm6HUG0

moviewise• 4 years ago

The country of Israel has desalination plants to help with its water needs.

If California had a functional government, seasonal drought wouldn't be an issue. https://www.gov.il/en/departments/general/project-water-desa...

"In order to comply with the desalination plan set out by the cabinet, 5 desalination plants were constructed over the years, in Ashkelon (2005), Palmachim (2007), Hadera (2009), Sorek (2013) and Ashdod (2015), with total production capabilities of some 585 million m3."

celestialcheese2• 4 years ago

California is building desal plants, Look at the one built in Carlsbad, CA that went online in 2015.

The problem is price. From the wiki[1]:

"The cost of water from the plant will be $100 to $200 more per acre-foot than recycled water (approximately 0.045 cents per gallon), $1,000 to $1,100 more than reservoir water (approx. 0.32 cents per gallon), but $100 to $200 less than importing water from outside the county. As of April 2015, San Diego County imported 90% of its water."

Considering SD imports so much water, this is a big win. But still, this one plant cost nearly $1b to complete, and only provides 7% of the potable water for San Diego County. It's a non-trivial cost to use Desal water vs recycling efforts and loss prevention from reservoirs.

Edit: 1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsba... 2- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/us/san-diego-drinking-wat...

bombcar2• 4 years ago

So for about $10 billion dollars + operating costs (which would be less than importing) San Diego County would be free and clear.

San Diego City budget is $5 billion: https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/fy23ab_v1execut...

San Diego County budget is $7 billion: https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/openbudget/en/hom...

This seems that if they needed to they could do it.

hedora• 4 years ago

The wording of that quote is pathologically bad. I think it is trying to say saying potable desalinated water from the plant is 0.32 cents per gallon, and recycled is 0.045 cents per gallon.

It cites a hit piece from Fox News Radio with equally confusing numbers.

Anyway, the Fox article says it will cost $1000-1400 (or maybe $1500 because they inflate the number as they go) per acre foot. At $1500, that's 0.46 cents per gallon, which is about 10-15x more than people currently pay to flood irrigate fields. Flood irrigation is notoriously wasteful.

Anyway, tap water costs about 1 cent per gallon in San Jose. These desalination plants could affordably provide water for residential use.

eliben• 4 years ago

I wonder why the cost is so high, is it mainly electricity?

Parts of California produce more solar power than can be used at that time during parts of the day - could that extra electricity be used for desalination?

boxmonster• 4 years ago

California either needs to grow less water intensive crops or build desalinization plants. Recovering water from tomatoes and grapes won't put a dent in the problem.

An Australian startup is “growing” water for California

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