Another booger eatin’ moh-ron.
As surely as the hot, dry Santa Ana winds bring blue skies to the coast and wildfires to the hills, severe California droughts bring calls to build desalination plants up and down the seashore.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
All that ocean water, begging to be converted to fresh and pumped into our pipelines, would solve our water supply problems instantly and permanently, boosters say. In the coming months, the drumbeat will only get louder. That’s not only because the current drought is the longest and most severe in memory, but because a $1-billion desalination project scheduled to start operating in Carlsbad this fall will be attracting lots of attention. The plant, the largest of its kind in the U.S., is designed to provide San Diego County with about 50 million desalinated gallons a day, about 7% of its water needs.
It’s a good start.
“A lot of people are watching what’s going to happen in Carlsbad,” says Peter MacLaggan, the executive overseeing the project for its developer, privately held Poseidon Water. “They’re going to base their future decisions on the success of this project.”
That could be a mistake. MacLaggan himself doesn’t expect desalination to be “a major component in our lifetime” of the state’s overall water supply, although Poseidon has proposed to build a second desalination plant, in Huntington Beach. That plant is still awaiting approval from the California Coastal Commission.
So what’s wrong with desalinization plants? They work in Saudi Arabia. There’s this desert there. Why not California?
Enthusiasm for desalination tends to overlook its high costs, which stem in part from its enormous energy demand and weighty environmental footprint. The modern process, known as reverse osmosis, involves forcing seawater at high pressure through a membrane that screens out the salt, leaving behind a heavily brackish residue.
In Southern California, which has become more dependent on fossil-fueled electric generation since the shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, Carlsbad
Why did they shut it down? Did it reach the end of it’s operational life or was it the anti-nuke whackos?
arguably will be moderating the effects of climate change on the region while also contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions that help cause it. (MacLaggan says Poseidon will buy carbon credits and restore local wetlands to offset the plant’s environmental impact.)
Buy carbon credits? JHFC! More global warming climate change BS. Every where you turn you see idiocy abound and since this is Californai, the land of fruits and nuts, there’s even more idiocy than usual.
“There are definite advantages to seawater desalination,” says Heather Cooley, water program director at the Oakland-based environmental think tank Pacific Institute. “It’s a reliable supply, independent of weather conditions like drought. But it’s still among the most expensive water supply options.”
So, do you want water or not? There’s the ocean. Take the salt out of it. Of course, if you didn’t have environmental whackos destroying dams and providing fresh water to support bait fish up in the Bay area you would have more water. Here’s what I have to say about these endangered species. If they can only survive in one small area of the planet they deserve to be extinct. They are at an evolutionary dead end. Do you booger eatin’ moh-rons know how many species have gone extinct in the history of this planet? More than exist now and they weren’t killed off by man. They reached an evolutionary dead end like the smelt in the Sacramento River Delta. Quit wasting fresh water trying to save them. Of course another thing you could do is cut the population by shipping all of the illegal immigrants back to where they came from. That would save a shitload of water right there.
Let’s take a look at the hard realities. As big industrial facilities, desalination plants can’t be plunked down just anywhere on the coast without destroying the qualities that attract people to the shoreline. Yet the plants need to be close to customers, with room for pumps, pipelines, inflows and outfalls.
Poseidon rejected three locations before settling on the Carlsbad site, which is next to NRG Energy’s Encina Power Station. That allowed the new plant to share the seawater-cooled power station’s water lines, which reduced its cost and its impact on marine life. Even so, according to a 2012 state appeals court ruling, the plant had to install extra equipment to reduce its marine impact in periods when Encina isn’t running; if the power plant shuts down permanently, the desalination plant may have to submit a new environmental impact report.
OMFG! More environmental stupidity! Yannow what? You fucktards deserve to die of thirst. I hope the drought goes on another ten years.
I can’t read anymore of this drivel. The majority of California’s water problems are caused by envirotards and liberals progressives rat bastard commies. Build dams. Create more reservoirs instead of eliminating them. You don’t like fossil fuel power? Build nuke plants. Quit wasting fresh water to save a bait fish. Cut your population by deporting all of the illegals. Build desalinization plants. Bam! Problem solved. Need money to do this? Don’t waste money building a bullet train from nowhere to nowhere.
Sounds like the only acceptable solution is the perfect one.
(Which any engineer can tell you doesn’t exist.)
“As surely as the hot, dry Santa Ana winds bring blue skies to the CA coast ”
I used to live one block from the ocean in Long Beach CA and For the last 9 years have lived in the central Sierra Nevadas. The very hot desert winds would blow in the early fall. It was hot and smoggy because the S A’s would cancel out the onshore cool clean airflow and bring the smog to the coast. The lousy inland air would be awful, but, the daily early morning cloud cover was replaced by the “blue skies”. The blue skies appeared anyway even without the SA’s by noon..everyday.
I wish you were the governor of this state, then I would not be so embassed about living here. I have been echoing these sentiments you just expressed for years around here…I am dismissed as a grouchy old cripple…so we have that in common…thanks for the read!
The anti-nuke whack jobs? Yep, here is a good starting point for y’all’s to brush up on them dumbfucks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_influence_on_the_peace_movement
And, every time y’all hear the word “sustainable” or, “sustainability” go here: https://twitter.com/AnnBarnhardt/status/590251471339397120
The eco-assholes are going totally insane.
Anything proposed that’s doesn’t fit into their “We must live like our Neanderthal ancestors” is deemed as destructive and an ecological disaster.
My solution?
Kill ’em all and let their decomposing bodies nurture the soil! That’ll promote good and plentiful food production not to speak of ridding the planet of Liberal Democrat supporters.
I have an idea. We build a desalination plant using private funds. We can then sell the water to the city for a cheap price at first. When the enviros start whining, we can stop selling to the city and announce we will sell to individuals only to make them happy, and jack up the prices as demand goes up.
@Deathknyte ~
That sounds like a good idea on the surface, but the amount of money you would need to bribe the Coastal Commission into granting your permits would eat up all your profits.
The Coastal Commission is pretty tough here.
Also, Denny’s suggestion that we need more reservoirs is not very helpful when we don’t have enough water to fill them. We aren’t getting enough snow pack and rainfall to fill the reservoirs we already have….and that’s before they even start draining them for the salmon and for agriculture. Also, water use to protect the fish is miniscule to the amount of water used for agriculture. I wouldn’t be too worried about the fish.
The fact remains that California did eliminate some reservoirs to create free flowing streams for salmon. Californians are their own worst enemies. My sister left Redwood City as soon as she retired and for what they got for their dinky little house they were able to buy in South Carolina a 3700 sq ft house, new furniture, a new BMW z4, a home entertainment system, a plasma TV and still have money left over.
how far inland is considered “coastal” horizontal drilling works for more than just oil.
which admittedly would drive the costs way up but how much would you pay for a drink when your dying of thirst?
George Carlin had an incredible routine on saving the planet, especially endangered species. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
Anybody who can use logic understands that the whole global warming fiasco was never anything other than a scam. Too bad so many of those who swallowed it hook, line and sinker, were so emotionally invested that instead of steppin’ back and lookin’ at the whole situation, slid right down the slippery slope that leads to the trumped up “climate change” hysteria. I’ve actually walked folks through the de-bunking of the original global warming scenario, just to have ’em turn right around and tell me that “carbon” is bad because it causes global warming, right after they’ve admitted that the warming trend was all bunk.
When it becomes a religion, facts are irrelevant. Same thing applies when applied to bait fish, “endangered” snails and nuclear power.
Funny, high cost with low output does not seem to matter when the enviroturds ate pushing windmills and solar panels
If they were serious people they would go nuclear.
Go nuke?
But nukes are so dangerous!
They won’t accept the possible disaster of a nuke to avoid the certain catastrophe of climate change.
This leads me to believe that the purpose of the whole global warming BS is control of the population.
Either that or the ultimate goal is to destroy the economy so the leftist elite can install a communist government.
And the “progressives” pushing for change are just useful idiots.
All that needs to be done is force that liberal dick-head judge who
ordered the valves up north to be cut to 50% to reverse his order.
Maybe a march with torches and pitchforks will do. There is no
friggin’ water shortage in California!
Decades and untold billions were spent early the 20th century to
build reservoirs and why-a-ducks to deliver water to Southern
California. We also have pumping stations on the Colorado
River and Lake Mead in Arizona. Yes, we have frequent droughts,
but we have no fucking water shortage in this state!
This makes me want to roast some enviro-kooks on a spit.
Yesterday on the way out of Best Buy with a new ATX power
supply, I encountered a few Greenpeace dorks. This brain
dead chick said “Save the rain forest.” I just laughed and
thought to myself that in addition to being the new home of
communism, the guys in the movement are probably only
getting laid because they recruit the stupidest women to
their cause.
PS it is interesting to note that millions of acre feet are being
dumped into the San Francisco bay to help the Salmon and
not one of the liberal elites in the bay area is doing without
water or being forced to conserve because that have all the
water they need!
Look up William Mulholland on Wikipedia. He turned the
near desert that was the L.A. basin into an oasis.
For Gore and the AGW drones, an inconvenient truth: global warming is restoring the Sahara Desert . Global cooling created dry air which resulted in less rainfall. Naturally this created vast expanses of desert where once stood fertile ground. As weather warms, water evaporation commences and produces more rainfall leading to such restoration. Not only does this dispel the notion that global warming is the greatest threat to America, and one “threat” that Obama is actual willing to combat (surprise, he is still making enemies of forces that are our benefactors), it also once again proves weather is cyclical. The oceans aren’t rising, but the trees sure are!
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/26/climate-change-is-making-deserts-greener.html
I’ve been in the water supply and treatment business for 39 years. Yes, desalination can be done, but it is a poor solution both economically and environmentally. The waste stream that will go back to the ocean is highly concentrated. The bad effects will be localized but are real. The operating cost is atrocious.
CA just needs to stop worrying about freaking 2″ bait fish and impound the fresh water they have. Build a bunch of dams, put in hydroelectric and manage the resource intelligently instead of worrying about what species of fish survives. Stock the new lakes with lake trout, hybrid stripers, walleye, smallmouth bass, etc. and pretty soon folks will forget all about obscure species of bait fish and salmon. Lake trout are pretty close to the same goddam thing anyway.