Beau of the Fifth Column: Let's talk about important news on the Colorado River...

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

[CrispyQ]

1. I don't usually watch many vids, but wow, he put it in great perspective.

Seven states, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, & Wyoming have until 2024 to cut their water usage by the amount that Arizona uses in one year or the Bureau of Reclamation will do it for them.

Holy shit. Things are going to get real much sooner than most people are ready for.

[Nevilledog]

3. Yeah.... I'm in AZ so this is really real for me.

[Chuuku Davis]

2. Don't build cities in a desert

And the west coast needs a lot of desalination plants powered by solar

[Amishman]

4. add nuclear to solar, and I'll agree

Solar is a nice supplemental source of energy, but it can't carry the load by itself.

Part of the issue is the minute to minute and hour to hour variation in output. A lot of work goes into balancing output to demand, and that is for non-renewables where output is fully controlled and predictable.

Powering something as massive and expensive as desalinization plants primarily off solar would be extremely difficult. The output is varied, while the consumption needs completely stable input. Voltage spikes/drops, harmonics, and other power quality issues can be very damaging to equipment. Buffering / balancing on that scale would be near impossible, so solar is limited to being a supplemental source of power with current technology.

[Phoenix61]

5. The are massive solar power plants around the world.

It’s completely doable.

[Amishman]

10. They are working as a supplement to other, more stable sources

For the huge energy need of large scale desalination, it will take more than just adding solar. The higher the percentage of power that comes from solar, the harder it is to keep the grid stable and the power to consumers clean.

[Phoenix61]

14. They are working as a supplement because there are

Other sources available.

Large-scale desalination systems require tens of megawatts to run and provide tens of million gallons of desalinated water per day. Small-scale systems vary in size from tens to hundreds of kilowatts and provide hundreds to thousands of gallons of water per day.

Topaz Solar Farm / Desert Sunlight Solar Farm, US – 550MW

A solar farm 1/10 the size of Topaz would provide enough power to provide millions gallons of water.

[uponit7771]

6. Even SMR with fuel recycling? tia

[Chuuku Davis]

18. I didn't think I could mention nukes on this site.

I keep my home at 70 during the day and 66 at night thanks to my nuclear electricity.

[blogslug]

8. The cities have already been built

People live there.

[maxsolomon]

9. Welp, they better give up Golf and lawns

and start taking Navy Showers.

Don't start thinking about diverting the Columbia down there.

[blogslug]

11. I'm more concerned with protecting the Ogallala Aquifer

[maxsolomon]

12. that's got it's own issues, doesn't it?

being sucked dry by Big Ag and polluted by fracking?

[blogslug]

17. Not so much fracking

At least not in the High Plains region. That natural gas mostly comes from oil production as opposed to the hydraulic fracturing of bedrock. But yeah, huge amounts of water gets used for industrial farming. Also there was that whole deal with the Keystone Pipeline running over the South Dakota portion of the Ogallala.

[jeffreyi]

15. To say nothing of the thirsty ag crops grown in desert regions that are not sustainable...

Alfalfa (for bovine hay), cotton, almonds, etc.,...

[VGNonly]

13. John Wesley Powell

JWP was a topographer, military engineer, explorer and geologist. In 1883 during a irrigation conference said this "Gentleman, you are piling up an heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land". The land described is the Colorado River watershed.

[ripcord]

16. Los Angeles will just try to take water from other areas of the state

Because they believe they deserve it more, I wonder if they can create another man made ecological disaster as bad as the Owens Lake fiasco?