geologic
Old Pharmer
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Wait a minute, that's not fair. :/
Blame--So I guess these "experts" are simply taking the total amount of water used on a daily basis and dividing it by the population, right?
The People...
Wait a minute, that's not fair. :/
Blame--So I guess these "experts" are simply taking the total amount of water used on a daily basis and dividing it by the population, right?
Interesting that you put that up as I was just having this discussion this morning w/ a few of my techs and I even said "If I had to venture a guess as to the largest consumers of water, I'd go with the rice growers."...But I'm hearing now that it may be the almond growers? I've flown over the central valley after the rice fields have been flooded and it practically looks like an inland sea....vast expanses of water covering the fields of the northern central valley.I was recently researching this topic and found that the worst abusers are the rice industry and the livestock...specifically cattle pasture....and as much as people all over want to blame Fracking and Nestles...combined they use about .04% of the water in Cali ....yes .04%
So I guess these "experts" are simply taking the total amount of water used on a daily basis and dividing it by the population, right?
Take a look at this paper, too.I was recently researching this topic and found that the worst abusers are the rice industry and the livestock...specifically cattle pasture....and as much as people all over want to blame Fracking and Nestles...combined they use about .04% of the water in Cali ....yes .04%
See the mention of "federal" there? ;) If I recall, we have like one naturally running river left in the entire state. Therefore, I consider them all tapped if they're controlled. So yeah, maybe we do have different definitions of 'tapped.' I didn't know we were using that brackish water in the delta for farming. What I do know is that the feds have told all ag they're not getting any federally controlled water.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SacramentoāSan_Joaquin_River_Delta#Ecology
"The survival of the Delta smelt has been one of the largest environmental controversies in California, as environmental measures enacted to protect its population have often reduced the amount of water available for federal water projects that depend on water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta"
you and I have slightly different definitions of "tapped"
I didn't know we were using that brackish water in the delta for farming.
Good lookn out @geologic The amount of power required is an issue all in and of itself. Plus as someone mentioned earlier in this thread the cost to build and maintain desalinization plants is currently cost inhibitive. Then there are disposal challenges of the highly desalinate water as a by product of the process.What power source is being used to run desalinization plants--
these days???...
Technically.....we could just TAP into the Pacific. Back when I was in Uncle Sams Misguided Children.....they had RO units that could do 600 gph.
http://www.meco.com/meco-military/products/rowpu-600gph
and with that 600 gall a day 2400 gallons ran to waste. It typically takes 4 gall of unprocessed water to produce 1 gall of filtered water. I used to use a RO setup until I found out how much waste was associated with the process. So out to the junk pile went my RO unit. That is an obscene amount of waste. IMHOI wonder if RO would remove the Fukushima Flu...
The units we operated in the Marine Corps could deal with radioactive contaminated water.I wonder if RO would remove the Fukushima Flu...
600 gallons per hour....not day. And if you were using one of those ROWPU units on the Pacific.....the waste would go back into the pacific.and with that 600 gall a day 2400 gallons ran to waste. It typically takes 4 gall of unprocessed water to produce 1 gall of filtered water. I used to use a RO setup until I found out how much waste was associated with the process. So out to the junk pile went my RO unit. That is an obscene amount of waste. IMHO