Phoenix Arizona Fresh Water Supply vs Mars City Fresh Water Supply

SpaceNut · 2022-05-27 14:05:36

So the issue is the level of water in the air to draw from still leaves you with a large energy use to release it from its collecting gel.

So allow for the air at night to be absorbed by the gel and the days concentrated energy to drive it out of the gel seems to be the lowest of both worlds.

SpaceNut · 2022-05-28 16:09:27

As noted there seems to be a varying gel materials to make use of.

other sources that might be plausible

SpaceNut · 2022-05-28 20:21:11

I got thinking about the electrolysis video I posted that was used to feed fuel to a power generator and wondered how much water was used for a given level of power being created. Then I wondered about how much water was falling in a power generation plant to make the power we used again to compare those 2 levels of water that would be used.
If power generators used less water to create the same level of power we would gain a level of water for other uses if we made a commercial product that was safe and not all that expensive to own.

tahanson43206 · 2022-06-01 17:20:35

The article at the link below attempts to forecast changes in agriculture, if climate change continues on course.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/climate-chan … 43464.html

Yahoo News
Climate change could spell the end for Midwestern corn, study finds
Ben Adler·Senior Editor
Wed, June 1, 2022, 5:17 PM
The midwestern Corn Belt — which roughly covers parts of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas — will be “unsuitable” for cultivating corn by 2100 if climate change continues on its current trajectory, a new study finds.
“The future climate conditions … will significantly reshape biophysical suitability across the Central and Eastern U.S., causing a near collapse of corn cultivation in the Midwestern U.S. by 2100,” the study, published in Environmental Research Letters, concludes.
Using climate and soil data, Emory University environmental studies professor Emily Burchfield modeled where crops would be successfully grown in a warmer future. Burchfield found that under scenarios with high or moderate greenhouse gas emissions, the climatic conditions necessary to grow corn, soy, alfalfa and wheat will all shift notably northward, “with the Corn Belt becoming unsuitable to the cultivation of corn by 2100.”
Cornstalk residue in a strip-tilled Nebraska farm field in 2021. (Lukas Fricke/Handout via Reuters)
Burchfield’s paper suggests that changes to the way crops are grown will be necessary to continue corn farming in the United States.
“These projections may be pessimistic because they don’t account for all of the ways that technology may help farmers adapt and rise to the challenge,” Burchfield said in a press release from Emory.
In fact, Midwestern farmers have already been successfully adapting to climate change. Due to a variety of technological advances, U.S. farmers today harvest more than five times as much corn per acre as farmers did 100 years ago. Some of these changes, according to a 2018 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have been helpful to combating rising temperatures. For example, because plants have a cooling effect on their local environment, planting closer together has reduced the effects of global warming on corn crops. Farmers also have adjusted to higher temperatures by planting crops earlier in the season and cross-breeding more with more heat-tolerant Mexican varieties of corn.
As a result, and in part because of the usual annual variation in weather, many in the Midwestern corn industry haven’t necessarily experienced any harmful impacts from climate change yet, although some note that rainfall patterns have been fairly extreme in recent years. Some U.S. farmers stopped planting corn after punishing droughts in 2007 and 2012.
Corn crop with brown, dead leaves.
Corn crop toward end of season, with brown, dead leaves. (Edwin Remsburg/VW Pics via Getty Images)
“It’s hard to gauge what actually is the trend,” Taylor Moreland, owner of Moreland Seed & Soil in Centralia, Mo., told Yahoo News. “In 2012, that was a horrible drought, Midwest-wide, that was a terrible drought and there were massive losses across most farms. 2013 was kind of a drought as well. And then ’14 was awesome, ’15 was extremely wet, to the point where a lot of corn couldn’t get planted at all because if the ground is wet you can’t plant ... ’16 was another great year, ’17 was a great year, ’18 was a great year. And then, really, the past three years have been all so wet, where you typically want to plant corn in April and most farmers around here haven’t been able to plant all their corn yet this year at all, because it’s been so wet.”
But Moreland, who grew up on a farm in Missouri, pointed out that the Midwest has always seen wide fluctuations in weather.
“The weather patterns do tend to change,” he said. “If you track back before I was doing this, we had droughts, we had wet years, we had hot years. I remember my grandpa talking about this, how there were a couple years in a row where they’d have crops burn up and the family would be broke.”
To the extent that farming is given up altogether in some areas, that could actually help mitigate climate change, as former farms could, in theory, become valuable sinks for absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — but only if the land is allowed to lie fallow without being redeveloped for half a century or more, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances.
A field of pistachios on a California farm. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
While the current Corn Belt could lose its titular crop, places like northern Minnesota and parts of Canada could become well suited to growing corn for the first time.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that droughts, temperature extremes and more prevalent pests will decrease agricultural yields. The IPCC calls for swift, massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to avert catastrophic climate change and the widespread famine that could result.
Burchfield said that American farms will be more resilient against climate change if they switch from monoculture — a single commodity crop planted in rows — to farms that integrate more diverse crops.
“Relying on technology alone is a really risky way to approach the problem,” Burchfield said. “If we continue to push against biophysical realities, we will eventually reach ecological collapse.”

I bring this into the NewMars discussion in part because the Salt Lake Pipeline topic is considering how sea water might be introduced into the interior of the United States as a source of fresh water separated from the other components of sea water. The scenario of corn country suffering drought was not part of the original concept, which was intended to address the current difficulties of Utah in particular, and all Southwestern US States.

However, the corn country article shows that the pipeline might as well stretch East to present day corn country.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-01 19:46:41

https://www.yahoo.com/news/harris-unvei … 22396.html

This is the first indication I have seen that anyone in US national leadership is aware of water as a national concern.

I note the occasion was a meeting of global entities to discuss the subject.

LA Times
Harris unveils White House plan to tackle water scarcity as national security priority
Courtney Subramanian, Ian James
Wed, June 1, 2022, 1:36 PM
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 01: Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on the Global Water Security Action Plan, flanked by (L to R) Alice Albright, CEO Millennium Challenge Corporation, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power and Country Team Lead for Timor-Leste, Millennium Challenge Corporation Sonia Shahrigian, during an event in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus on Wednesday, June 1, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
"Many of our most fundamental national security interests depend on water security," said Vice President Kamala Harris as she unveiled the Global Water Security Action Plan on Wednesday. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday unveiled a first-ever White House plan to tackle water security as a foreign policy priority in light of ever tightening global water supplies.
The plan pledges U.S. leadership in leading efforts to ensure there is enough water to support food supplies and healthcare systems. Under the initiative, the U.S. government will also spearhead ways to defuse potential disputes over access to water, Harris said.
Conflicts over water are becoming more common across the globe as supplies come under increasing pressure from climate change, urbanization and population growth. Research has shown that global warming is intensifying the water cycle, leading to more severe droughts and floods.
"Water insecurity makes our world less stable," Harris said at the White House, noting water scarcity makes it more difficult for communities to produce food, protect public health and drive economic growth. "Many of our most fundamental national security interests depend on water security."
According to the United Nations, about 2 billion people live in countries where water supplies are under high stress.
In many farming regions around the world, from India to California, groundwater is being depleted by heavy pumping, leaving declining water reserves in aquifers. Many areas of the world also lack adequate water infrastructure, with an estimated 2.2 billion people living without access to safe drinking water supplies.
The latest White House plan builds on other Democratic-led investments in water infrastructure in the U.S., including the $1-trillion bipartisan infrastructure law that included $63 billion in provisions to eliminate lead pipes, improve drinking water and support drought resilience.
As a "daughter of California," Harris recalled her own experience growing up amid an extreme drought and watching the Oakland Hills landscape "turning from green to brown."
"I remember how unsettling it was to imagine how our access to a resource so basic and essential as water, how that could become so uncertain," she said. "It is a reality that more and more people in our nation are, however, experiencing and understanding this issue every day."
She noted about 90 million Americans are living under drought conditions, with the start of summer still weeks away. By 2030, Harris added, almost half the world's population will struggle to meet their water needs.
Conflicts over water are on the rise internationally. The Pacific Institute, a think tank in Oakland, has been tracking water-related conflicts annually around the world and has found a dramatic increase in violence over water resources. Droughts in India and Iran over the past few years, for example, have led to more conflicts over access to water. And water infrastructure has been targeted or damaged during fighting in Iraq, Yemen and other countries.
Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, pointed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an example, with attacks on the country's water supply leaving nearly 11 million Ukrainians without access to safe drinking water.
Limited water supplies have also become a growing challenge across the Western United States. Scientists have found that since 2000 the Western U.S. has endured its driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years.
"Water scarcity is a global problem and it must be met with a global solution," Harris said. "So today we make clear the United States will be a leader in the solution."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-01 20:49:00

Yahoo's customer monitor software appears to have noticed I've been interested in water and Phoenix....

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/glo … 00333.html

GlobeNewswire
Global Water Resources Declares Monthly Dividend
Global Water Resources, Inc.
Tue, May 31, 2022, 8:31 AM
Global Water Resources, Inc.
PHOENIX, May 31, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Water Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ: GWRS), (TSX: GWR), a pure-play water resource management company, has declared, under its dividend policy, a monthly cash dividend in the amount of $0.02458 per common share (an annualized amount of $0.29496 per share). The dividend will be payable on June 30, 2022, to holders of record at the close of business on June 16, 2022.
About Global Water Resources
Global Water Resources, Inc. is a leading water resource management company that owns and operates 25 systems which provide water, wastewater, and recycled water services. The company’s service areas are located primarily in growth corridors around metropolitan Phoenix. Global Water recycles over 1 billion gallons of water annually.
The company has been recognized for its highly effective implementation of Total Water Management (TWM). TWM is an integrated approach to managing the entire water cycle that involves owning and operating water, wastewater and recycled water utilities within the same geographic area in order to maximize the beneficial use of recycled water. It enables smart water management programs such as remote metering infrastructure and other advanced technologies, rate designs, and incentives that result in real conservation. TWM helps protect water supplies in water-scarce areas experiencing population growth. To learn more, visit www.gwresources.com.
Company Contact:
Michael Liebman
CFO and SVP
Tel (480) 999-5104
mike.liebman@gwresources.com
Investor Relations Contact:
Ron Both or Justin Lumley
CMA
Tel (949) 432-7566
Email contact
Media & ESG Contact:
Tim Randall
CMA
Tel (949) 432-7572
Email Contact

I hadn't been thinking about commercial enterprise in the mix, but apparently it is a decent sized business.

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SpaceNut · 2022-06-02 21:24:06

The growth corridor of pheonix hum... so highways or interstate traffic?
I followed the link and its a treatment plant for a cities sewage system. The water is removed from the large open tanks in the foreground and further processed to be recycled.
I noticed the sludge separation tanks with airation and in the upper part of the image is the fields where its turned into fertilized soils to be sold off later.

The void link for water iron settling note airation to cause the iron to fall out of suspension which I have heard of in the area being part of the home owner systems in the area. They say that even there systems have failed over time so its going to be a process to determine all of what I will need for a total home system.

tahanson43206 · 2022-06-07 10:18:53

For SpaceNut re #207

You keep reporting that systems fail over time. But ** all ** systems fair over time, and they fail ** sooner ** if they are not maintained.

It would seem prudent to plan for failure. However, am a rueful graduate of the school of hard knocks, in the specific subcategory of home ownership.

Somehow, in all my experiences before settling into my second home, I had not picked up on the need to allocate the equivalent of the mortgage for maintenance of a home, if the plan is to live there a long time. The normal (common) practice is to live in a property just to the point it is falling apart, and then let a flipper restore the property so the next owner pays all the maintenance costs up front. That scenario does not work if the home owner stays in the property.

Thus, I have seen ** every ** subsystem in the property fail right on time. The furnace was replaced twice. The water heater was replaced twice. The roof needs constant attention.

None of this was in my mind when I moved in, and if anyone tried to advise me all those years ago, I missed it.

Now, I understand that a new home owner needs to be socking away savings in anticipation of normal maintenance costs that are inevitable.

We are in the Phoenix water topic, and I am here to drop off a report on the success of Native Americans in recovering their water rights after literally centuries of exploitation by invaders from Europe.

Looking forward, I think it is prudent to plan for maintenance of systems built to supply fresh water to inland citizens, as we (humans) shift from depending upon the whims of Ma Nature to take provisioning of fresh water into our own hands.

In the case of ground water in New Hampshire in particular, any new systems constructed to free the fresh water from the free riding atoms and molecules should include planning for maintenance in perpetuity.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-07 10:21:14

The article at the link below is about the (surprising to me) success of Native Americans at winning back water rights from non-Native invaders from Europe.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/win- … 20969.html

Bloomberg
How to Win Battles Over Water in the Parched American West
Tyler Kelley
Tue, June 7, 2022, 6:00 AM
(Bloomberg) -- For at least 60 years there were no salmon in the Umatilla River. The water that the fish needed was being drawn off by the US government and used to irrigate 45,000 acres of former desert. But the Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla tribes, who lived beside the river, had not forgotten the fish that had sustained them for centuries. They wanted them back. A 1988 act of Congress returned some water to the river. Then, in 2004, the three tribes (legally organized as the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation) hired Joe Ely to help them get the rest.

Ely, 64, is one of a handful of professional Indian water rights consultants and the only one who is himself an American Indian. “I’m going to try to obtain as much water as I can,” Ely tells his clients. “You’re going to have to deal with the conflict.” Ely learned all about conflict when he won water for his tribe, the Pyramid Lake Paiutes of Nevada. His brothers would act as bodyguards, escorting him from meetings. Now he works for other tribal nations trying to settle their water rights. “Settle” often means wresting water from White irrigators, but it also means satisfying enough stakeholders—states, cities, farmers, industry—that the majority sign on to the deal voluntarily, or under the threat of litigation.

As a conservative, an evangelical Christian, and an arch pragmatist, Ely is an outlier in Indian country. Although “water keepers” protesting the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Reservation in 2016 received tremendous sympathy and attention, their goal, Ely points out, was negation. “Anybody can stop something,” he says. “It’s easy to stop something. It’s hard to start it and then keep it moving and get it done.” Of the hardline idealism that prevailed at Standing Rock, he says, “it sells well in Indian country, and people clap their hands, but it gets nothing done.” Ely gets things done.
A decades-long, climate change-fueled mega-drought is parching the American West. Last summer the US government declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time in history. Although the situation in the Colorado basin is painful, it is settled; water users know where they stand. In many river basins, however, this is not the case, especially when rivers run through American Indian reservations. Of 325 reservations in the US, only 38 have settled their water rights. No one knows how much water the remaining tribes are entitled to, but it’s a lot.
Ely was on the Umatilla reservation in eastern Oregon in March for a meeting with Westland Irrigation District, the last major holdout in the Confederated Tribes’ settlement. As one of the tribes’ negotiators, Ely was trying to obtain Westland’s storage rights in a reservoir called McKay. Of four major irrigation districts in the basin, three had already closed, or would soon close, deals with the tribes, which had a lot to offer them. Westland, the fourth, was different, mostly because the tribes didn’t have much to offer it.
The night before their big meeting with Westland, Ely is dining at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Pendleton, Ore., with the other members of the Confederated Tribes’ water rights negotiating team: Dan Hester, the tribes’ attorney; Eric Quaempts, their natural resources director; and Kat Brigham, tribal chairwoman. Like Brigham and Quaempts, Ely’s tribe are inland fishermen who had lost their fish. At Pyramid Lake, the cui-ui (a kind of sucker fish) are coming back, thanks to the settlement Ely brokered when he was tribal chairman in the 1980s, but no one is permitted to catch them because cui-ui is an endangered species. Tribal members can eat only dead fish government scientists have harvested. “If you’re fishermen, you want to fish,” Ely says over a plate of chicken. Getting handed a dead fish isn’t the same thing.
Brigham remembers big family gatherings on tributaries of the Umatilla where, she says, “We used to catch enough fish to bring it home and eat for dinner.” But, from when Brigham was a young woman until she was a grandmother, the fish were gone. “It’s heartbreaking,” she says.
“Kat and Eric and I can remember it, but our kids can’t, and they should be able to. And our grandkids can’t, and they should be able to,” says Ely. There are some salmon in the Umatilla now, but not in abundance—not fish you can eat, which is what the tribes’ settlement aims to achieve.
According to Washat, the traditional religion of the Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla tribes, after the people were created, four things offered themselves for sustenance: fish, big game, roots, and berries. The natural world promised to take care of the people, and the people promised to take care of it. If they failed to reciprocate, the planet would become off kilter and eventually destroy itself in a ball of fire. During traditional meals, these “first foods” are bracketed with a serving of water, since nothing can survive without water.
Quaempts grew up with the first foods, but it wasn’t until he was an adult working for the tribe’s Department of Natural Resources that he realized they could also serve as a practical guide to restoring the landscape. A river that supports salmon is ecologically healthy, as is a floodplain that supports elk; foothills that support Xaws (biscuitroot); and mountains full of huckleberries.
When settlers came West, Quaempts explains, “they want to create order: straight lines, square lines, fences, irrigation ditches,” but there already was an order that just didn’t fit their value system. The water settlement is an attempt to assert the tribes’ values while not harming the European ones, which—having dominated the landscape for a century—are very difficult to undo. Overturning “long-term injustices” takes time, says Quaempts.
“We’re losing our culture, our tradition, because some of these tributaries have no salmon,” says Brigham.
The primacy of indigenous water rights is a direct result of the forced removal of American Indians to often barren Western lands or, more frequently, the restriction of those who were already there to small patches of their former homelands. After the federal government defeated and subjugated them, it made American Indians wards of the state. In 1908 the US sued a man named Henry Winters on behalf of the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. It argued that, because Winters was irrigating land he owned upstream from the reservation, there wasn’t enough water left in the Milk River for the tribes’ crops and livestock. In Winters v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the tribes had seniority, because the 1888 statute creating their reservation predated Winters’ claim and implicitly reserved a right to water.
The case set a precedent. Since reservations were often the first claims made on Western land, the Winters decision gave many tribes the most senior water rights of all. These rights do not expire if they aren’t used, as is the case with most state-granted water rights held by settlers. Yet these “Winters rights” remain theoretical until a tribe either sues to quantify them or settles with other water users in the basin.
American Indian nations are as different from one another as nations on any other continent, and some have refused to quantify their water rights. Traditionalists don’t want to put a number on something that used to be entirely theirs. But few tribes can afford to extract and utilize their water without a settlement, and unquantified rights are difficult to defend in court. The Klamath Tribes of southern Oregon almost had a settlement in 2015 but it fell apart. Now everyone is suing everyone else. Irrigators’ water supplies are being turned off, the fish are still dying, and no one is happy. Contrast this with the recent $1.9 billion settlement dealing with water rights on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana, or the 1985 settlement that gave the Assiniboine and Sioux of the Fort Peck Reservation in northeast Montana rights to twice as much water as Los Angeles uses in a year.
As is often the case, much of the water claimed by the Umatilla tribes is being used by irrigators—farmers whose crops aren’t watered by rain. Early versions of the settlement were simple: Give the irrigators a different water source; switch them from the Umatilla River to the Columbia, only 10 miles away. This works for the three districts that lie between the Umatilla and Columbia rivers, but piping a lot of water to Westland, on the other side of the Umatilla, was too expensive. The tribes have given up on Westland’s river rights, and Ely is trying instead to acquire their right to water stored in McKay Reservoir on a tributary of the Umatilla. He is offering a smaller Columbia River pipeline in trade. Is that a fair deal?
Curtis Engbretson, Westland’s new general manager, hasn’t decided yet. Engbretson oversees a vast network of ditches that feed hundreds of center pivots, self-driving spray rigs that make the irrigated West—when seen from above—into a grid of green circles. Farmers around here grow food that Americans eat every day, such as watermelons, onions, and potatoes, as well as grass seed, sod, and cattle. In mid-March, most of Westland’s 14,700 acres were green with sprouts or brown with planting. Each acre can generate about $5,000, making Westland worth perhaps $73.5 million annually. All this revenue is generated by water that once flowed down the Umatilla River.
When he was first getting to know Ely, Engbretson said to him, “Just give us all of our water from the Columbia and we’ll sign right now.” Ely laughed and said he couldn’t do that, but if Westland wanted to fight for it, the tribe could sue and shut the river down. Engbretson was taken aback. For months the two sides butted heads, he says, but lately the posturing has fallen away and both sides say they’re making progress. “In a Zoom meeting, some people act tougher than others. Some talk the talk, and some stand off and don’t want to say anything, but in person you’re face to face. You can’t shut your screen off and hide your face and act tough,” says Engbretson, who met the tribal negotiating team in person for the first time in March.
“They want to protect their fish, which we understand,” he says, “but they’re also understanding that we still have an obligation to deliver water.” It’s hard for farmers to fathom why anyone would take water that could grow millions of dollars-worth of food and just let it flow out to sea. A common refrain around the district is “fish are ruining irrigation,” says Engbretson, but people are slowly learning that the tribes are “not trying to take your water, they just want to have the equal rights you have.”
Average annual rainfall here is eight to 10 inches. Six months can pass without a drop, and crops start to die after three days without water. In two of the past 10 years, Engbretson’s district has had to stop providing water early because the river was low and it had used up its reservoir rights. Irrigating until October instead of August can be the difference between planting potatoes and planting wheat, between turning a profit and breaking even. The tribes have agreed to use those two dry years—some of the driest ever recorded, comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl—as a benchmark for the settlement. Under a worst-case scenario, farmers hope to still get three-quarters of a season, but the tribes’ in-stream rights would have priority. In extremis, the fish would win.
Whatever is given or taken, lost or won in these negotiations, will be permanent. “Once we settle,” explains Quaempts, “we’re waiving our claims to any more water rights in the Umatilla basin forever. We’ll never come back and seek more water.” Even once they’ve agreed on terms, the challenge for the irrigation districts and the tribes will be to sell the deal to their constituents. The tribes will have to explain why they don’t have rights to the entire Umatilla River or all of McKay Reservoir. Engbretson will have to explain why the Columbia River pipeline isn’t bigger, and why he gave away as much of McKay as he did. The managers of the other irrigation districts will have to explain why they traded water rights from the early 1900s on the Umatilla for ones from the 1990s on the Columbia. (Answer: Columbia River water is much more abundant.)
When it comes to the changing climate, “everybody’s worried,” says Ely.
Scott Oviatt measures snowpack in the Oregon mountains for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which issues quarterly water supply forecasts that farmers rely on. “It’s really tough to make assumptions and try to plan infrastructure—or plan anything,” he says. The NRCS bases its forecasts on the previous 30 years of snow and rainfall data, but now, “we just can’t find those simple relationships anymore.” The past can no longer be used to predict the future. It’s not just drought: Warmer temperatures turn snow to rain, leading to more flooding and extreme rainfall at unusual times. The only thing water managers can do is plan for the high highs and the low lows.
Variability aside, “What if you had climate change and no water right?” asks Quaempts. “If things do change, you’re better off with a water right.” And the settlement isn’t just about fish, it also provides ample water for municipal, industrial, and residential uses, as well as irrigation—ideally enough to power the reservation’s economy for the next century.
Ely isn’t worried about droughts, mega- or otherwise. “There’s enough water,” he says. “There’s not enough cheap water.” The federal government built dams and delivery systems to store and move water a century ago, and it could build more if it wanted to. “In the West, we fight over cheap water,” he says.
Nevada’s Pyramid Lake was the victim of one such cheap water project. In 1905 the United States Reclamation Service began diverting a portion of the Truckee River away from the lake and out into the desert. The Reclamation Service included Paiute lands in the irrigation project, but disregarded the ecology of the lake. Like the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea, Pyramid Lake is a hydrological dead end. Cui-ui and Lahontan cutthroat trout evolved, similar to salmon, to live in the salty waters of the lake and spawn in the fresh waters of the Truckee River. Once the diversion began, the lake level fell by 80 feet, and both fish—onetime Paiute food staples—neared extinction.
In the mid-1980s, Ely, his wife Lu, and their two sons moved back to the Pyramid Lake reservation. Ely had been working as a cowboy in a place called Paradise Valley, but he couldn’t make a living buckarooing on the reservation and took on work for the tribe writing a Paiute language dictionary. Within two years, Ely, then a 27-year-old high school dropout, had become tribal chairman and was facing down some of the most powerful politicians in the West in a fight for the tribe’s water.
Ely’s tribe suffered a resounding initial defeat in the Supreme Court, which ruled that, because of a prior decree, the Paiutes had no in-stream water rights. Ely regrouped to pursue an Endangered Species Act suit on behalf of the cui-ui. That case went to the Supreme Court, too, but the Paiutes won: Stampede Reservoir was supposed to provide Reno and Sparks with a water supply in times of drought, but suddenly it was set aside for fish. The cities couldn’t grow without Stampede, so they called Ely in hopes of settling, as did Sierra Pacific Power. With the help of then-Senator Harry Reid (D.-Nev.), Ely forged a $65 million settlement that brought the Truckee River and the cui-ui back to Pyramid Lake.
And the irrigators? “We hammered them,” says Ely. As he tells it, the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District walked out of negotiations.
“That’s a Harry Reid lie!” fumes Ernie Schank, 72, who participated in the negotiations as a member of the irrigation district’s board, and later became its president. He insists that the district was shut out of the talks. Schank’s Mormon forbearers and thousands of others came here because water had been guaranteed, he says, but when it approved Ely’s settlement, the government broke that promise. Schank’s irrigation district lost a third of its water. Passing Kelly green alfalfa fields watered with last year’s Sierra Nevada snowpack, Schank drives his big white pickup past farmland that, stripped of its water rights, had reverted to gray desert spotted with alkali weed. “It turns your stomach,” he says. In 1994, Schank told an oral historian that, “Personally, I cannot understand how a sucker fish can take precedence over human beings, families.”
Shortly after his victory at Pyramid Lake, Ely was termlimited as chairman. He moved to Arizona to work for Stetson Engineers, the company that had provided the science for the Paiute case. Ely went on to win water rights for the Duck Valley Shoshone. He’s now working on settlements for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, the Osage Nation, and the Round Valley Indian Tribes.
Three days after the March meeting with Westland, Eric Quaempts took some elk burgers out of the freezer, then walked up Meacham Creek. It was springlike and overcast, though snow still lay in the high hollows of the Blue Mountains. After $2 million and twelve years, the creek looked remarkably natural. The tribes had completely remade it, excavating a new bed for the stream, turning a creek that had been straightened by the railroad back into the meandering brook it had been in the 1930s.
Quaempts, who lives a few dozen feet from the creek in the house of his father and grandfather, doesn’t like the word “sustainability” beloved by Anglo-environmentalists. He prefers “reciprocity.” As in the Washat creation story, the tribes want relationships that work both ways: A healthy landscape gives, providing food. Their 1855 treaty is one of only 17 in the Pacific Northwest that codifies a right to “hunt, fish, and gather” on land beyond their reservation boundaries. The Umatilla tribes have claims in eight river basins, says Brigham. They are already monitoring huckleberries on federal land, and recently built a fish hatchery off the reservation on the Walla Walla River.
Only one other tribe has, to date, secured a legal right to off-reservation water for their fishery, but Quaempts calls the Walla Walla “ripe for litigation.” It is over-appropriated, without reservoirs, and there’s no Columbia River to bail out the irrigators. With conflict inevitable, the Confederated Tribes are in a good position to claim water and send it down the river for the fish. Without water, Quaempts says, everything the tribes are working on—restoring the ecology, their traditions, the first foods—“it just falls apart.”
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-07 17:35:38

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ru … 25512.html

AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Rural Arizona is facing a water crisis. Yet for 3 years, lawmakers have sat on their hands
Travis Lingenfelter, Patrice Horstman and Donna Michaels
Mon, June 6, 2022, 1:09 PM
About 80% of Arizona lacks groundwater protections guaranteed to the state's more urban areas.
Three long years. That’s how long residents in our three counties – Mohave, Coconino and Yavapai – have been urging the state Legislature to pass bills finally giving rural Arizonans the authority to control our water futures.
And yet, folks in Phoenix have sat on their hands, letting whoever can drill the deepest well win while watching homeowners’ wells go dry and our rivers decline.
We are fed up waiting for the Legislature to act against unfettered groundwater pumping in rural Arizona.
All three of our county boards of supervisors unanimously passed resolutions in recent weeks calling for the governor and state lawmakers to take action on advancing rural management of groundwater.
80% of Arizona has no water certainty
Residents in Cochise County have gone even farther, gathering signatures to put new groundwater management districts on the ballot before local voters in November.
Rep. Regina Cobb’s legislation, House Bill 2661, would enable our rural communities to manage groundwater through a new, opt-in program called Rural Management Areas.
Nearly 3 out of 4 voters solidly support the Rural Management Area proposal, across rural and urban geographies and political party affiliations, according to a January poll.
Urban areas like Phoenix and Tucson are able to manage this precious underground resource as a result of the 1980 Groundwater Management Act, which created critical guardrails to protect groundwater in those areas. Those urban communities have greatly benefited from the increased certainty that comes with a predictable water supply.
But that legislation left out 80% of the state’s geography and about 1.5 million people who now desperately need that same level of certainty.
Groundwater is many areas' sole water source
Without protections in our rural communities, large new wells and ceaseless pumping are permitted with virtually no parameters, even if the pumping dries up the drinking water well of a neighboring homeowner who may have lived in the region for generations.
In Mohave County, groundwater is the primary drinking water supply for Kingman and other communities, yet we are powerless to protect it from water speculators and exploitation.
In Coconino County, groundwater feeds creeks and springs in Grand Canyon National Park, which generates $1 billion in direct economic output every year, and is the primary drinking water supply for park visitors and nearly all nearby communities.
In Yavapai County, groundwater supports iconic Arizona streams such as the Verde River. Many experts agree it is at great risk without recharging its life-giving aquifer, which is also a primary drinking water supply.
Groundwater is the only source of water for many people in rural Arizona but it is drying up quickly as a result of free-for-all groundwater pumping, in turn robbing rural Arizonans of our economic stability and our basic right to self-determination.
We need tools to conserve the water we have
With no control over our water, we have no control over our future. Without the ability to protect and manage our most precious resource, our rural communities, our rural way of life, even the entire state, are at grave risk.
The Rural Management Area legislation will address this risk by taking a balanced approach, enabling local communities to decide which tools they want to apply to manage groundwater and ensure water certainty.
The state Legislature is currently intensely debating another water bill, a priority for Gov. Doug Ducey, to create an Arizona Water Authority (AWA) to finance water projects. The AWA has its merits and deserves fair consideration.
Critical debate: How do we ensure the AWA actually finds us more water?
However, the most prudent approach for rural Arizona is to conserve the water we do have, and we need rural management area legislation to do that.
As state leaders review the AWA, we urge them not to ignore rural Arizona. Rural management area legislation should go hand in hand with the AWA. Groundwater protection must be the foundation for increased water investment.
Please, governor and lawmakers: Act now
We cannot allow the Legislature to continue ignoring the growing water insecurity of rural Arizona – it is irresponsible and unsustainable.
As fellow elected officials, we implore our state legislators to seize this opportunity to put greater Arizona on the right course so we can conserve our precious and dwindling water supplies.
Without water we cannot grow. Without justice and self-determination we will not thrive.
Governor Ducey, Speaker Rusty Bowers, President Karen Fann, members of the Legislature: We are counting on you to deliver for us.
Please act now to pass legislation that gives us the tools to conserve and protect our dwindling precious water resources. Our future depends on it.
Travis Lingenfelter, Patrice Horstman and Donna Michaels serve on the county board of supervisors in Mohave, Coconino and Yavapai counties, respectively. Reach them at linget@mohave.gov, phorstman@coconino.az.us and web.bos.district3@yavapai.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Rural Arizona needs Legislature's help to stop a water crisis
Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting

This is now, and will continue to be, a slow motion train wreck.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-08 15:12:15

https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-almost-n … 07450.html

This writer seems to have a better handle on the water situation than a lot of folks.

AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Why is almost no one planning for a future without the Colorado River?
Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic
Wed, June 8, 2022, 12:00 PM
A dead fish sits on cracked earth above the water level on Lake Mead, on Monday, May 9, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev.
You’d think that, given how dangerously low Lake Mead is getting, we’d have a good idea of what life might look like without that water.
Yet almost no one is modeling for a future without Colorado River water – or even a future in which we are asked to live on markedly less of it.
Ironically, the deeper the lake plunges, the more reluctant water managers seem to be about fleshing out the worst-case scenario.
That’s a mistake.
Reclamation is focused on the near term
There is virtually no chance that Lake Mead or the upstream Lake Powell that feeds it could hit “dead pool” – the point where water levels are so low that none flows downstream – in the federal Bureau of Reclamation’s most recent five-year forecast.
But the forecast also suggests that both lakes could hit what’s called “minimum power pool” – the point at which all hydropower generation stops – by 2026.
We’ve taken unprecedented, emergency actions to keep the power on at Lake Powell, because if we don’t, the alternative means taking the risky step of flowing a ton of water through smaller pipes that weren’t designed to handle it, particularly for an extended period.
But those actions are just a temporary prop.
We are still facing a nearly 1 in 4 chance of Lake Powell returning to “minimum power pool” by 2024 – a risk that remains steady through 2026, the latest year for which Reclamation has forecast.
Even though the rules for operating the reservoirs expire in 2026, and we should be knee-deep in negotiations for how we manage Lake Mead and Lake Powell for the next 20 years, Reclamation’s modeling remains focused on the short term.
“Reclamation is very concerned about the ongoing drought, the possibility of continuing low-runoff conditions, and the implications for the Colorado River Basin system,” Lower Basin spokesperson Patti Aaron said via email, “but at this time we are focused on near-term actions and not exploring modeling of specific long-term future scenarios.
“Additionally, we are not making assumptions about how Reclamation or our partners and stakeholders may respond to low system conditions beyond current policies … .”
Southern Nevada is one of the few to go there
Problem is, few other stakeholders are making those assumptions, either.
Southern Nevada Water Authority may be the only major Colorado River user to have done this sort of modeling and publicly share the results.
The authority, which relies heavily on Lake Mead to sustain the Las Vegas area, modeled how a Colorado River that produces 11 million acre-feet of water annually might impact its long-term supplies. That’s on the low end of what the river has flowed in recent years, and far less than the 15 million acre-feet assigned to states decades ago.
The analysis is part of its annual water resource plan and wasn’t meant to determine how dwindling runoff might impact other users or the wider river. But it predicts that Lake Mead will continue to plummet through 2025 and dip into “dead pool” territory multiple times over the next 50 years.
The water authority used those assumptions to model how its water supplies might fare under various use scenarios, which also helped to inform its plans to curb outdoor use, particularly through turf removal. It concluded that existing water supplies should be sufficient if users meet a lower demand target, but that it would need additional supplies if they don’t.
All signs point to significantly less water
It’s a pity that more Colorado River users aren’t doing similar work.
The last 20 years suggest that Lake Mead and Lake Powell will be unlikely to refill once they drain. We’ve had more than twice the number of years where the Colorado River flowed less than 10 million acre-feet since 2000 than we did in the last century, according to data presented by climate researcher Brad Udall.
Most scientists also agree that the Colorado River basin is only going to get hotter and drier.
Consumptive use would have to fall markedly and permanently, and the trend lines on runoff would probably have to reverse (and stay that way for years) to begin building back the storage we’ve lost in the nation’s largest reservoirs.
By how much? Good question.
No one appears to have modeled that specifically, though a recent analysis from the Future of the Colorado River suggested that to stabilize the lakes, the Lower Basin states, including Arizona, would need to make even deeper, permanent cuts while the Upper Basin states would need to give up their long-promised dream of growing use.
We need to know what's at stake
Modeling is tough work. There is a lot of uncertainty. Even the most revered experts are unsure exactly where we’re headed, though a new study from the Los Alamos Federal Laboratory suggests that Colorado could lose half or more of its snowpack by 2080.
There also are touchy politics involved.
Few major users like publicly talking about the possibility of little to no Colorado River water because they fear it will be perceived as a tacit embrace of that future, as if modeling for an 11 million acre-foot river (or less) means they’re ready to throw out decades of water law and appropriations.
We need to get over that.
All signs point to major trouble for Lake Mead and Lake Powell, and it’s high time to help everyone understand what’s at stake.
Reach Allhands at joanna.allhands@arizonarepublic.com. On Twitter: @joannaallhands.
If you love this content (or love to hate it – hey, I won't judge), why not subscribe to get more?
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why is almost no one planning for a future without Lake Mead?

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SpaceNut · 2022-06-08 20:40:49

The first thing for the water is to stop using it to produce power but that is easier said than done with no one wanting to use nuclear and carbon based is causing the effect to which is driving the drought in the first place. That leaves bringing in solar to the public and not just to the power companies as the means to get off from using water to generate the power we are using. Pumping any water from any source runs into this very problem at its starting point to bringing it to a site via pipelines whether its processed or not.

tahanson43206 · 2022-06-08 21:06:04

For SpaceNut re #212

Your post certainly puts a finger right on the critical point in the mess of competing needs in the American Southwest.

There must not be many humans able to see into the future further than a month or two.

The NewMars forum stands out for the demonstrated ability of it's members to imagine a variety of futures, from the dystopian preferred by some, to the overly optimistic where I spend a lot of my time.

We are in the Phoenix topic ...

The local, on site representative with whom I've been corresponding has apparently given up on the idea of trying to make a difference. I can certainly understand that decision. A great mass of people has to be good and ready to deal with change as massive as what is already here, let alone what is coming down the pike.

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SpaceNut · 2022-06-08 21:15:58

I just goggle pipeline construction and costs which are in the billions and the greater the size and length just pushes it even further up in costs.

edit for the Texas pipeline

2,700-foot Texas tunnel to provide 350 million more gallons of water a day

$2.3 billion, 150-mile Integrated Pipeline Project will provide two of the state’s largest water suppliers up to an additional 350 million gallons of water a day for their customers.

This is a 50 ft section of 108" diameter (9 ft) steel pipe line inception to its completion, this pipeline took 15 years to complete.

An acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover an acre of land with one foot of water. It is about 325,851 gallons which is about how much an average family of 4 uses in a year. Which is 223 gallons a person for each day.

350 million gallons of water a day is the need for Phoenix / 223 gallons means we are supplying water for 1,569,506 customers.

Volume of a cylinder formula: V = π r2 h. Cylinder Volume = 3.14159265 x radius 2 x height

8 ft is 2.7432 meters and after 1 meter we are at 8.6 cubic meters of water volume based on its diameter.

The diameter is what makes or breaks the flow rate requirement for the days need.

tahanson43206 · 2022-06-09 06:23:17

For SpaceNut re #214

Thanks for starting the research on pipeline construction costs ...

While oil pipelines are likely the most common, there is at least one example of a water pipeline that can be used for evaluation. This forum contains a post with mention of a Texas pipeline recently put into service to balance fresh water between two regions. That pipeline was reported to be 150 miles long.

The Interstate 80 run would be 300 miles, and it would include a 4000 foot climb over the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Costs would presumably be less if the pipeline is above ground, but then there is the question of how to deal with cold temperatures in winter.

Another factor in expense is size of the pipe. The Texas water pipeline might be a good model for that.

The benefit of delivery of water to the interior of the United States is for ever. The disadvantage of lack of water can be (and already is) measured in billions of US dollars.

Measuring something in dollars is translating effort needed to achieve a result. Humans have been doing projects that count into the billions of USD for many years, so there is nothing new or surprising about another one.

We are in the Phoenix topic.

Clearly the people of Phoenix need water now, and they will need more later.

Ma Nature is NOT going to be coming around with free water any time soon.

Collecting rain water in a cistern is not an option for millions of people in the American Southwest or around the world.

The only solution is to buckle up and accept the need to do some actual hands-on work.

There was a time in this country when it was possible for leadership to rise among the citizens, so that as many as were needed could be enlisted to carry out whatever labors were required. Those days may well be gone. The United States may well be in rapid decline. There are plenty of indications that is the case. Vladimir Putin has been doing his level best to bring that about for decades.

However, I remain hopeful that there are enough Americans left to face the challenges of the current age, ** and ** that a miracle might occur, so that the few who are left will face those challenges.

The answer will be visible in the next few years.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-09 09:37:25

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/des … 00730.html

Following up on a recent post by kbd512 .... the ** best ** outcome would be for the Capitalist system to respond to the current global challenges.

Here is a sign that at least ** one ** segment of industry is seeing improved prospects for the years ahead.

PR Newswire
Desalination Market for Water Infrastructure Pumps Expands
Tue, June 7, 2022, 1:10 PM
CLEVELAND, June 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Desalination systems are expected to be an increasingly important component of global water supply going forward, and sales of pumps to support these systems are projected to post strong growth through 2026, finds a new Freedonia Group analysis.
Freedonia Group logo
In recent history, the desalination market for water infrastructure pumps has been primarily driven by Middle East countries, where oil wealth has allowed for high levels of investment in advanced systems to provide water to the arid region. However, desalination plants are increasingly being constructed worldwide, driven by both improving technology and concerns that climate change could contribute to increased issues with water scarcity. Going forward, the biggest potential for growth will occur in South Asia, most notably India, where the supply of potable water remains a concern.
Utilities Infrastructure Projects to Fuel Global Water Infrastructure Pumps Demand Through 2026
While the global water infrastructure pumps market contracted in 2020, losses were not as severe as in many other industries, due to the high levels of repair and replacement demand driving sales in the market and the critical need to maintain water utilities systems.
The industry posted a strong rebound in 2021 despite ongoing pandemic impacts, and continued recovery is expected going forward. Supply chain issues – including shortages of raw materials and electronic components – prevented many pumps producers from fully meeting new orders taken in 2021. While revenues from many of these sales could be realized in 2022, supply chain disruptions continue to pose an issue and could lead to further delays in deliveries.
Through 2026, global demand for pumps in the water infrastructure market is forecast to increase 3.4% per year to $13.5 billion, driven by ongoing investment in utilities infrastructure in industrializing countries. Recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will also contribute to rising spending on new water utilities projects in higher-income countries.
Want to Learn More?
Now available from The Freedonia Group, Global Water Infrastructure Pumps provides historical data (2011, 2016, 2019, 2020, and 2021) and forecasts for 2022, 2026, and 2031 for water infrastructure pump demand by product in current US dollars (including inflation).
Pump demand is segmented into:
centrifugal
positive displacement (rotary, reciprocating, diaphragm)
specialty and other pumps, which includes pumps with designs that are uniquely specialized for specific applications, such as domestic water system pumps, turbine, drilling mud pumps, sump pumps, beverage service pumps, microfluidic laboratory pumps, and others
associated drivers, parts, and accessories
About the Freedonia Group - The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com, is the premier international industrial research company, providing our clients with product analyses, market forecasts, industry trends, and market share information. From one-person consulting firms to global conglomerates, our analysts provide companies with unbiased, reliable industry market research and analysis to help them make important business decisions. With over 100 studies published annually, we support over 90% of the industrial Fortune 500 companies. Find off-the-shelf studies at https://www.freedoniagroup.com/ or contact us for custom research: +1 440.842.2400.
Press Contact:
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+1 440.842.2400
cgangloff@freedoniagroup.com

Cision
View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/desalination-market-for-water-infrastructure-pumps-expands-301563196.html
SOURCE The Freedonia Group

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SpaceNut · 2022-06-09 20:35:37

Edit calculations up dated in post 214 for Texas size pipe line information.
I noticed that the per person amount is higher than what I have see in the other topic.
So its important to determine the diameter of the 1 or more pipe lines that give the end results required.

tahanson43206 · 2022-06-09 20:47:24

For SpaceNut re #217 and update to #214

Thanks for doing the follow up research! The Texas example seems remarkably well matched to the Phoenix need.

The difference is (of course) that in Texas, the line is moving fresh water around. The Arizona line would be moving sea water around, so some heavy duty cleanup is needed.

The Texas pipeline is probably NOT a good model for the Great Salt lake, although the actual need for refilling and then topping off the lake is not clear. I assume they'd need at least a year at the Texas pipeline rate to restore the Great Salt Lake to historical levels, and then less to keep it at the filled level

However ** that ** means the excess sea water not needed for the lake could be (and surely ** would ** be) diverted to satisfy other needs.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-11 16:32:15

Here's an example of a collaboration between public entities ....

https://www.yahoo.com/news/drought-proo … 00304.html

The Brownsville Herald, Texas
Drought proof: Desalination plant ensures water supply
Steve Clark, The Brownsville Herald, Texas
Sat, June 11, 2022, 4:48 PM
Jun. 11—When the Rio Grande's flow and accompanying water levels at Amistad and Falcon lakes became alarmingly low for a span of years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Brownsville Public Utility Board decided to do something.
The result was the Southmost Regional Water Authority brackish water desalination plant, completed in 2004 and expanded twice, the most recent expansion — the addition of a microfiltration system on top of the original reverse osmosis (RO) system — completed in 2015.
The SRWA desal plant, which has capacity of 10 million gallons per day (MGD) but is designed to double that capacity, makes Brownsville and the surrounding area essentially drought proof, according to BPUB General Manager and CEO John Bruciak.
Brackish water is a combination of saltwater and freshwater. In this case it's pumped from 20 wells drilled into the Rio Grande Alluvium, part of the vast Gulf Coast Aquifer. The wells, between roughly 250 and 300 feet deep, all are located west of Rancho Viejo since the water in that part of the aquifer is less salty, and as a result much less expensive to desalinate, than the aquifer water closer to the SRWA plant.
SRWA was formed by the state legislature in 1981 as a water reclamation and conservation district but remained dormant until 2000, when BPUB revived it for construction of the desal plant, which is a partnership. BPUB owns 92.9 percent, Valley Municipal Utility District No. 2 (Rancho Viejo) 2.5 percent, the city of Los Fresnos 2.28 percent, the Brownsville Navigation District 2.1 percent, and the Town of Indian Lake 0.20 percent.
"We were going to do it ourselves, really, because of the (low river) conditions," Bruciak said. "We said, well, we've got this authority, let's see if there's interest from the other entities, and there was a lot of interest. So it's worked out real well."
It would have been more expensive for the other partners to build their own desal plants rather than piggybacking on BPUB's large-scale facility, he said. Each partner buys its share of desalinated water, which is the quality of bottled water, and then resells it to customers.
"It's a regional approach," Bruciak said. "The state likes regional plants. They don't like five plants. They like one plant."
SRWA applied for funding through the Texas Water Development Board for the microfiltration pre-treatment system that was completed in 2015. There are currently seven desal plants in the Valley, though not with the capacity of BPUB's, he said.
The drought that precipitated construction of the SRWA plant was bad enough that the Rio Grande stopped flowing past the Brownsville weir BPUB uses to draw water for its No. 1 and No. 2 surface treatment plants. Matamoros was left high and dry as well, and upstream Mexico was holding onto its water rather than releasing it into the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo as required by international treaty.
Judy K. Adams, BPUB area manager, said that in the late 1990s conservation capacity for the U.S. share of Amistad and Falcon reservoirs together fell below 20 percent, and pointed to a PowerPoint graph showing current lake levels.
"You can see that we're starting to see a similar trend," she said. "Right now we're at 29.9 percent."
Brownsville's water conservation and drought contingency plan calls for voluntary water conservation measure when reservoir levels drop below 51 percent, while restrictions on landscape irrigation kick in at 25 percent, Adams said.
"If we drop to below 15 percent ... we have the ability to apply surcharges to people who use over a certain allocated amount," she said.
The fourth and final stage, dubbed a "water shortage emergency," triggers water rationing. The desal plant and BPUB's two surface water treatment plants have a combined capacity of 49.3 MGD, with an average flow of 20.4 MGD, with the desal plant accounts for 31 percent of the total, Adams said.
Bruciak said that if the river ran dry again and there wasn't enough water to supply all of Brownsville, rationing would be triggered but the city would still have a supply of water thanks to the desal plant.
Also, the aquifer isn't expected to run dry anytime soon. According to a 2018 geological estimate, the Rio Grande Alluvium contains more than 132 million acre-feet of groundwater and by 2068 will have only 0.04 percent less than that. The entire state of Texas uses only 16 million acre-feet of water per year, and the state's total lake storage capacity is less than 31.3 million acre-feet. An acre-foot is the volume of water it takes to cover one acre to a depth of 12 inches.
"I'd feel a little more comfortable if we were at 20 MGD at this plant," Bruciak said. "I think that's where we're heading pretty soon."
Still, based on current capacity and demand, doubling the plant's capacity can wait a bit longer, though SRWA has dedicated space when the time comes, he said.
"We can do it quick too," Bruciak said. "Just put some wells in and add the (filtration) membranes and maybe another ground storage tank. ... Two years from now, if there's been no more rain in Falcon and Amistad, I imagine it'll be built. We could at that point be shipping water up the Valley."
BPUB still has pipeline right-of-way in four counties originally intended for natural gas pipeline to feed the Brownsville Tenaska power plant, which was never built, he noted.
"That right-of-way was acquired and we can also put water (pipeline) in there," Bruciak said. "We already have that, so you could hit Raymondville, McAllen and Edinburg with water from here."
Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting.

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SpaceNut · 2022-06-11 17:28:13

I hope this is not an intrusion but I have been searching for the amount of water that is used to create power and whether if you used the water to make hydrogen that you would use less water to create the power which is needed.

I am hoping that kbd512 or calliban does stop by to think about this question and its answer.

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/fi … plants.pdf
Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants Electricity’s thirst for a Precious resource

https://www3.epa.gov/region1/npdes/merr … R-1501.pdf

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/33905.pdf
Consumptive Water Use for U.S. Power Production

https://greet.es.anl.gov/files/water-hydro
“Analysis of Water Consumption Associated with Hydroelectric Power Generation in the United States”

Since we know the output of a fuel cell is water we can still use it more than once.

edit
in response clarification.

I am looking at if water was broken down to use to generate power in a generator or fuel cell as to whether or not the amount would be a savings of water for the same levels of power required for the customer as the exhaust is water that can be reclaimed for drinking.

tahanson43206 · 2022-06-11 19:01:57

For SpaceNut re #220

Your post is interesting and I hope it inspires a reply or two!

Out of curiosity ... in phrasing your question, were you comparing the cost of making gasoline, diesel or another carbon fuel, to the cost of making hydrogen?

The fuel cell vehicles that would use hydrogen are quite different (of course) from the piston engine vehicles that consume hydrocarbons.

For the comparison to line up so you have apples to apples, it seems to me that all the costs associated with a solution should be included.

We are in the Phoenix water topic ... I found an article about how a way of funding large projects in Texas might work.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-11 19:02:04

https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-texa … 38785.html

The article at the link above provides a glimpse of how public/private partnerships may work in Texas.

Austin American-Statesman
Opinion: Texas needs private investment to vastly enhance its water supplies
Ron Simmons and Carlos Rubinstein
Fri, June 10, 2022, 8:00 AM
At a time when Texas continues it’s massive population growth, yet is experiencing declining water supplies and persistent drought, it is apparent that water remains the limiting factor to maintaining and growing our vibrant Texas economy.
Over the decade from 2010 to 2020, Texas added nearly 4 million people. In that same period, water supplies have not kept pace.
According to the public policy think tank Texas 2036 and the state climatologist, the number of 100-degree days has more than doubled over the past 40 years and could nearly double again by 2036.
According to the Office of the Texas Comptroller, “droughts represent continuing challenges to a rapidly growing state with an economy dependent on reliable fresh water supplies for residential, commercial and agricultural use.
Drought-damaged corn fields in Central Texas are shown in this August 4, 2020 photo.
In the absence of new sources or additional conservation, the Texas Water Development Board expects the state’s water supply to fall by 11 percent from 2020 to 2070, from 15.2 million to 13.6 million acre-feet per year.
While SWIFT, a Texas low-interest loan and loan deferral program to aid communities intending to expand water supplies is helpful, and substantial funding via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will soon be available via the State Revolving Funds for water projects, the fact is there is not sufficient public funding available to meet all Texas water needs. The enhancement and resiliencyof our water systems, and other infrastructure projects through public-private partnerships could not be more pressing.
A public-private-partnership, or P3, for water projects is where a public entity (city, county, for example.) enters into a contract with a private funding/developer to construct and deliver a needed project. The private entity assumes construction risks and the obligation to deliver the project on time and on budget. In exchange, the private entity can operate the facility and recover its investment via predictable service rates. Typically, a public entity under a P3 is not required to pay service costs if the project fails to deliver the quantity and quality of water specified in a water purchase agreement.
Only with private investment and innovation can Texas provide the infrastructure necessary to support future population growth and economic development. Public revenue sources alone will not be enough to support the needs of the estimated 51 million individuals residing in Texas in 2070.
According to the 2022 State Water Plan, the estimated capital cost to design, construct, and implement the more than 2,400 recommended water management strategy projects by 2070 is $80 billion in 2018 dollars, without accounting for future inflation. If private and public investment strategies are not implemented, approximately one-quarter of Texas’ population in 2070 would have less than half the municipal water supplies they will require during a drought of record. If Texas does not implement the water supply strategies and projects in the state water plan, a severe drought could cause $110 billion of economic damages in 2020, increasing to $153 billion per year by 2070.
With our state’s growing population, we need to look beyond traditional funding mechanisms and the issuance of public debt to meet demands.
P3s also provide benefits beyond the economic. P3 water projects have shown increased operational efficiency, improved public safety with better planning, and efficiency in project completion. They also provide an avenue to decrease state liability, and attract more private investment in the state. Costs have and will continue to rise in areas such as construction, water development and treatment and supplies in our current economy.
The utilization of private financing, in concert with a public partner, is the most cost-effective solution to these issues facing the state, and it’s imperative. As the Comptroller’s report indicates: “the impact of (water) shortages would echo throughout the state economy, affecting everything from power generation to the cattle business.”
Simmons is chairman of the Invest Texas Council Advisory Board. Rubinstein is the principal member of RSAH2O, LLC – an environmental consulting firm – and former chair of the Texas Water Development Board and commissioner of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Opinion: Texas needs private investment to vastly enhance its water supplies

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-14 17:38:21

https://www.yahoo.com/news/major-water- … 04412.html

The shortages are continuing in the American West ...

“We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating,” Entsminger told the senators.

LA Times
Major water cutbacks loom as shrinking Colorado River nears 'moment of reckoning'
Ian James
Tue, June 14, 2022, 4:55 PM
BOULDER CITY, NEV. - MAY 16, 2022. The Hoover Dam stands in front of Lake Mead, where white surfaces on the lake's rocky edges show how low water levels have dropped due to persistent and worsening drought conditions for more than a decade. With a current level of about 1,055 feet, Lake Mead is at its lowest point in history even as its continues to supply water to more than 20 people in the lower basin of the Colorado River. With little snowmelt and rain flowing into the lake, the historic dam's hydroelectric generating machinery could become obsolete. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Exposed banks of Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam show how low water levels have dropped on the Colorado River-fed reservoir due to persistent and worsening drought. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
As the West endures another year of unrelenting drought worsened by climate change, the Colorado River’s reservoirs have declined so low that major water cuts will be necessary next year to reduce risks of supplies reaching perilously low levels, a top federal water official said Tuesday.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said during a Senate hearing in Washington that federal officials now believe protecting “critical levels” at the country’s largest reservoirs — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — will require much larger reductions in water deliveries.
“A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today,” Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “And the challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history.”
The needed cuts, she said, amount to between 2 million acre-feet and 4 million acre-feet next year.
For comparison, California is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of Colorado River water per year, while Arizona’s allotment is 2.8 million acre-feet.
The push for a new emergency deal to cope with the Colorado River’s shrinking flow comes just seven months after officials from California, Arizona and Nevada signed an agreement to take significantly less water out of Lake Mead, and six weeks after the federal government announced it is holding back a large quantity of water in Lake Powell to reduce risks of the reservoir dropping to a point where Glen Canyon Dam would no longer generate electricity.
Despite those efforts and a previous deal among the states to share in the shortages, the two reservoirs stand at or near record-low levels. Lake Mead near Las Vegas has dropped to 28% of its full capacity, while Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border is now just 27% full.
Touton said it’s critical to achieve the additional cutbacks and her agency is in talks with the seven states that depend on the river to develop a plan for the reductions in the next 60 days. She warned that the Bureau of Reclamation has the authority “act unilaterally to protect the system, and we will protect the system.”
Though Touton didn’t spell out what that could entail, the Interior Department could impose cuts if the states fail to reach an agreement on their own. Touton said her agency is “working with the states and tribes in having this discussion.”
“We need to see the work. We need to see the action,” Touton said, calling for representatives of the states “to stay at the table until the job is done.”
The Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in cities from Denver to Los Angeles and farmlands from the Rocky Mountains to the U.S.-Mexico border. The river has long been over-allocated, and its reservoirs have declined dramatically since 2000 during a severe drought that research shows is being intensified by global warming and that some scientists describe as the long-term "aridification" of the Southwest.
“What has been a slow-motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating, and the moment of reckoning is near,” said John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies the Las Vegas area.
He pointed out that Lake Mead’s water level, now at 1,045 feet above sea level, has continued to decline toward critically low levels. Hoover Dam could still release water down to a level of 895 feet, but below that, water would no longer pass through the dam to supply California, Arizona and Mexico — a level known as “dead pool.”
“We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating,” Entsminger told the senators.
Avoiding “potentially catastrophic conditions,” Entsminger said, will require reductions in use that many water managers previously considered unattainable.
In talking with representatives of other states, Entsminger said, they all recognize the urgency of the situation and are working to increase conservation efforts.
“However, and there's no way around this, cities alone cannot address this crisis,” Entsminger said.
Entsminger pointed out that roughly 80% of the river’s flow is used for agriculture, and most of that for thirsty crops like alfalfa, which is mainly grown for livestock, both in the U.S. and overseas.
“I'm not suggesting that farmers stop farming, but rather that they carefully consider crop selection and make the investments needed to optimize irrigation efficiency,” Entsminger said. “By reducing their use of Colorado River water, agricultural entities are protecting their own interests.”
Last year, the federal government declared a shortage on the Colorado River for the first time, triggering substantial cutbacks in water deliveries to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. Farmers in parts of Arizona have left some fields dry and unplanted, and have turned to more groundwater pumping.
The cuts have yet to limit water supplies for Southern California, but that could change as the reservoirs continue to drop.
The timeline that Touton laid out, to come up with an agreement for water reductions within 60 days, puts the deadline just before the Bureau of Reclamation is scheduled to release its mid-August projections for reservoir levels on the river. Those projections determine the level of the shortage in 2023 and the severity of the required cuts in water deliveries.
“Let's get to the table, and let's figure this out by August,” Touton said. “That's what we're working towards.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-06-14 17:40:11

Earlier in this topic, our members have offered suggestions for water conservation.

It appears from the report in the post above this one, that millions of folks in the Americah Souithwest are about to show what is possible when nature's bounty goes away.

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SpaceNut · 2022-06-14 19:51:24

Here is the other issue that is occurring Montana governor declares disaster as historic floods sweep Yellowstone

27 slides of the 150 year old Yellowstone is shut down temporarily; here are things to know about the park AAUuiYo.img?w=800&h=415&q=60&m=2&f=jpg

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