As many of you are likely aware, the Colorado River watershed is heavily overused by population and agriculture, resulting in significant YoY drops in the height of reservoirs in Lakes Powell and Mead. This brings the issue of water insecurity for people, reduced production and increased prices for certain Western US agriculture (see alfalfa and almond production in California), and potentially the inability for people to live in certain areas and subsequent resettling of those people.
In the wake of all this water-consumptive activity that is outstripping the inherent geological supply, what do you think the future holds for water security in America, particularly the most heavily impacted areas in the Western United States? Keenly interested in the forum’s thoughts.
California politics is the problem. The NIMBY brigade refuses to allow for desal plants that could then supply water to those reservoirs and directly to consumers. They've even talked about building a water pipeline from British Columbia or Alberta, but nope. NIMBY strikes again. It's also the same kind of people who swear by global warming causing sea level rise, which ironically would mean more water for desalination to fix their issues. Good time to reuse a metaphor I've said before; it's like freaking out about a gunshot going off and finally looking down to realize it's because you shot yourself in the foot and refusing to understand or accept what happened.
Thanks so much for your response. As much as I like the sound of what you’re saying, desalination plants are not a practical solution to the water situation in California. California uses over 80 million acre feet of water a year, but a typical desalination plant can only process about 5 million gallons a day. It would take hundreds, if not thousands, of these plants to make up for the shortfall in the Colorado River aquifer system. California has 12, and they’re wildly expensive. Overruling California desalination NIMBYs isn’t a silver bullet on this one, deeper cuts and changes are needed. Cheers
That's why they proposed the idea of building that pipeline from up north as well that could provide enough water to feed the Coloardo river at the source, along with some additional desal plants. But along with those ideas that California shot down, there's a lot of tension brewing between the rest of the states along the river and then...California (shocker). Not to mention Mexico is getting pretty agitated with what California is doing to the river too since it ultimately winds up meeting the sea in their country and they need some water too.
Getting Cali to cut back on their water usage to return any kind of sustainability is the real challenge, and given that state's track record I'm not feeling too confident in that actually happening while they try to preach those same ideas to the rest of the states along the river that don't even use their full allocation of water.
Yeah, you have to meet most of it with actual freshwater, which a Canadian pipeline could do. Will still be very expensive in any case.
Forgot the spiteful Canadians in BC also said no. And Canada killed the idea of us piping water in from the Great Lakes too.
Also forgot another key idea that could help with the situation; grey water solutions. Israel recycles roughly 90% of their water, why can't California (at least in the cities)? And the whole endangered fish shutting down pumping operations and depriving people of water thing? And people wonder why we see stories of Uhaul saying there's simply no trucks left in California because everyone's rented them all to move out of there and none coming in.
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