Phoenix Arizona Fresh Water Supply vs Mars City Fresh Water Supply

tahanson43206 · 2022-12-26 10:54:17

It is quite common to see artificial creeks in urban settings, in the US and probably elsewhere in the world.

Water is moved by electric motors from a pool of low elevation to a pool of higher elevation, and the water then makes its way gurgling along through as many channels as the system designer has imagination and funds to provide.

On a larger scale, the Colorado River is just such a display, with the sole difference being size and use of solar power to move water from low elevation to high.

The future residents of Mars will most certainly build indoor versions of these artificial water ways, but they won't use solar power to operate them.

Instead, these systems will be powered by nuclear power, and plenty of it.

The entire Colorado River basis could be supplied by the exact same mechanism.

I'd be interested in seeing the numbers that the architect would be using to estimate the size of needed components for a Colorado River fresh water supply.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-12-29 10:46:53

Seems the Throughout 2022, Lake Mead made national headlines due to its rapidly declining water levels. The reservoir across Nevada and Arizona is formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River.

Water troubles are still persisting in the parts of America even when funds have been made available to resolve the issues.

Map: Where US cities are running out of clean water; The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, is one of many in the US right now.

Reports of the water shed is increasing
Arizona dam sees highest water level in 5 years, relieving farmers

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-01 19:02:18

As a close out for 2022, our contact in Phoenix has decided not to try to participate in the decision making process for water for Arizona.

I can certainly understand. This is a large state, and one person can feel unable to influence the course of events. On the other hand, there are plenty of individuals who have chosen paths in life that will bring them into the process. I'll report any news that may come from this source, but suspect that none of the ideas suggested by the NewMars forum will make their way into the mix.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-04 10:58:54

For SpaceNut ... the connection of this post to Phoenix is tenuous... I'll start it here because it was (apparently) published in Phoenix... it is not about water directly, but instead addresses much larger concerns, which ** do ** ultimately impact supplies of water.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/welcome-warm … 30258.html

Most NewMars members do not have timne to read long articles.

For those few who do, this article ** should ** prove rewarding.

It addresses the interests and concerns of members like Calliban, because it supports increased energy supply.

It addresses the interests and concerns of the Cato Institute, because it address capitalism and population increase.

AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Welcome to a new year on a warming planet, now with 8 billion people
Joan Meiners, Arizona Republic
Wed, January 4, 2023 at 9:00 AM EST
Hands Across the River Coalition, Inc., along with other environmental and human rights groups, came to protest a border wall construction occurring across San Pedro River international crossing between U.S. and Mexico. Scientists and advocates worry that structure across the riverbed will block migrating animals and lead to dangerous flooding during the monsoon. The San Pedro is one of the last undammed rivers in the Southwests, and its headwaters begin just south of the border in Mexico.
More
We start 2023 sharing the planet with 8 billion other people.
The United Nations' global population counter clicked passed this estimated milestone in mid-November. In the context of climate change, what that means is that roughly 8 billion humans now aspire to own a smart phone, a tablet, a television, an automobile, a house connected to power and more. Approximately 27,000 first-time internet users come online every hour, according to a 2016 analysis by Our World in Data. And the number of global airline flights, a major contributor to the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is on track to surpass pre-pandemic levels this year.
Meanwhile, manufacturing of screens and the transition to renewable energy sources is limited by processes in minerals mining, the grid is not yet outfitted to fully support electric utilities or transportation and concern about fossil fuel reliance grows each day. With this backdrop, the idea of more and more people seeking to increase their quality of life, as we all do, by tapping into a fixed set of global resources may feel overwhelming.
Global population over human history shows a dramatic recent increase that mirrors the "hockey stick" shape of rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
Global population over human history shows a dramatic recent increase that mirrors the "hockey stick" shape of rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
This topic seems to have already been on your minds. Looking over emails from readers regarding our weekly climate series, a theme emerged: Despite 2022's political, technological and social progress to address warming trends and the challenges in those areas that remain, what many of you are thinking most about is overpopulation.

This concern is so common that, halfway through writing this story, I noticed that environmental writer Jonathan Thompson recently wrote a similar response to his readers in High Country News highlighting key stats on how the crisis is largely created by rich people specifically. Overpopulation also got airtime on the first "60 Minutes" broadcast of 2023, with famed Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, who was one of the first to raise the alarm about climate change and is also credited with "inciting a worldwide fear of population," talking about how an unsustainable number of humans is driving the ongoing extinction crisis (a major problem since we can't survive on a planet of only humans).
One Republic reader was so distressed that he took the time to print and mail graphs to our newsroom meant to illuminate the similarities between curves charting both the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the global population over time. Both show the classic "hockey stick" shape that tracks slow, steady, mostly-horizontal increases across early human history (the straight, longer part of the hockey stick the player holds), followed by rapid, exponential, nearly-vertical increases in recent decades (the sharp bend leading to the part of the hockey stick that delivers the devastating puck acceleration).
The "hockey stick" graphical shape shows the global concentration of carbon dioxide, a gas known to trap heat in the atmosphere, rising rapidly in recent decades, largely due to humans burning fossil fuels for energy.
The "hockey stick" graphical shape shows the global concentration of carbon dioxide, a gas known to trap heat in the atmosphere, rising rapidly in recent decades, largely due to humans burning fossil fuels for energy.
But while the two curves are undeniably similar, the problem is arguably more of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. Did greenhouse gas emissions rise to dangerous levels strictly because we allowed global population to get out of control, in some kind of equation where more people inexorably equals more energy? Or, amid population growth typical of a flourishing species, have we increasingly indulged in excessively energy-rich ways of life?
As far as the exact human causes of the ways we're seeing nature respond to warming temperatures and how best to respond to ensure our own survival, in this case, there are some other ideas.
Manfred Laubichler is a professor of Theoretical Biology and the History of Biology as well as the director of the School of Complex Adaptive Systems and the Global Biosocial Complexity Initiative at Arizona State University. Those titles are a mouthful, but his work boils down to thinking about the what the evolutionary history of both nature and knowledge might teach us about possible life hacks moving forward. In even simpler terms, he studies our biological past for tips on how to live our best future.
The Arizona Republic reached him in Berlin, where he spent time between semesters working with collaborators at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, to discuss his views on how population is not the problem and might even be a solution to the climate crisis, with more brains giving rise to more ideas on how to adapt. The conversation, including some controversial concepts he explained in more depth than we could include, has been necessarily edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been getting emails from people telling me that whatever I'm writing regarding climate change doesn't matter because the real problem is overpopulation. And while I recognize that overpopulation is certainly a parameter here, it's not something that can just be fixed in any kind of ethical way. So, I thought it might be interesting for my readers to hear from you about what else overpopulation might mean for us as a global society coping with a dangerously warming climate.
M.L.: As you said, yes, population is a major contributing factor (to climate change). It is not one that can be solved overnight. And the absolute numbers are actually only a very small part of the story. What we did in our work is to try to take that deep history approach and say, “When did this dynamic that we are currently experiencing really start?”
You have to go back several thousand years, to the early Neolithic. We had enough people that had enough experience about their environment that they extracted the knowledge necessary to start agriculture. Once that happened, then we see what we call the "Anthropocene engine" beginning to run. And that is basically a positive feedback loop between population size, knowledge generation and energy use. So it’s when enough people produce more and more knowledge that allows them to extract more energy which supports more people, and you see how this is going and going and going.
This is more or less an inevitable process if our species behaves like any other biological species, using whatever it’s got to increase its numbers. For a long time, we were limited in our growth potential because we experienced regulatory feedback from the environment. But our species is unique because we extracted knowledge that allowed us to basically emancipate ourselves from a lot of those regulatory controls as part of what you can call the process of civilization. And now we have created a mess.
Human limits of modern agriculture:Climate change could push produce prices higher, slowing the fight for food justice
At the same time, we have enough knowledge that we actually know what to do. What we have not figured out is how to implement that knowledge as a society because, in many ways, what we have to do is create regulatory structures as a civilization, meaning rules for a different type of economic system or application of technologies that are more circular and non-extractive.
So that's where the target is. And at ASU, that is exactly the focus of the Global Futures Laboratory: to understand and then implement solutions for “how do we actually shape the world of societies to do something differently?”
What would that look like, to evolve as an intelligent civilization to live smarter instead of just bigger?
Ten thousand years ago, every human on this planet had an average daily energy use of about 90 watts. Today, everyone uses about 11,000 watts. That's a more than 104-fold increase. So we are no longer just a biological species. We are this socio-technological species. The biological part of what we need to survive is a very small part of our daily energy use.
Even if we would reduce our numbers, our infrastructure won't go away. A lot of our energy use actually goes to maintaining and expanding our technological infrastructure in a way that makes the relationship between population size and environmental footprint more complicated. So controlling populations right now doesn't really help us. Because what you're saying is you want to go back and use less energy, which nobody wants to do.
We need to redesign and transform our infrastructure to make it less of a burden on the environment. Right now we have a linear extractive mode of production: We mine something, then we turn it into some products and then we throw them away. If you would close those material flows, we would eliminate a lot of the negative footprint on the environment. It's a question of applying a different set of behaviors.
Climate seriesThe latest from Joan Meiners at azcentral, a column on climate change that publishes weekly
For sure. If we could recycle more, use less, be more efficient, that would be great. But those redesigns cost money. And, under capitalism, people tend to think that we should let economics dictate our decisions. So I know you're not a behavioral scientist, but how do we bridge that gap?
The solution is not about challenging the existence of markets and competition. It is about having real markets and real competition, because our current system operates under the assumption that the profits get privatized and the costs get basically externalized to the society at large.
If companies can produce whatever they want but are responsible for the lifecycle of their products, that's a simple regulation that would change the economics and make modes of production that incorporate a circular system much more competitive. And I would say many people actually are very willing to support that, if they would be given the option. But that only gets us so far, because they do not really have fair alternatives to purchase products that (align with these) values because those are currently not competitive in this marketplace that does not reflect the true (environmental) costs of products.
COP27 Global Climate Conference:Who should pay for climate change? Finance a focus of climate talks at home and abroad
The global fossil fuel industry is corrupt and subsidized, to a degree that is more costly than what it would take to transition to renewable energy sources. But this is not something that individual consumers or citizens can easily influence. What we really would need to have is some global regulation that allows everybody to benefit from what those companies have to offer without being exploited and subjugated to whatever else they're doing.
This is something that I see can happen. But (with the slow pace of progress at COP meetings, for example) I don't know on what timescale it can happen, or what it would take for those necessary transformations to actually materialize. And the problem is time is what we don't have. We are running out of time.
Ok so if capitalism can work within environmental bounds as long as companies are responsible for the lifecycle of their products, do we do that on the front end by pricing items according to their true environmental cost and improving how we factor cleanup expenses into permitting? Or is the idea to expand company operations where if Apple wants to make new iPhones that only last two years, for example, then they need to be responsible for retrieving all the old iPhones and recycling those materials back into circulation?
Well, I think what we need is both. There's a saying in evolutionary biology that you cannot put up a sign "Closed for reconstruction." Every step in an evolutionary transformation has to work and I think the same applies to our economy. We can't shut everything down and start from scratch because we need to continue to function on a day-to-day basis. So we have to find strategies of transition that actually work.
The question is, what are the right kind of incentives? If you try to prescribe all of that upfront, that might not work. But if the framework is that companies (gradually) adapt to whatever the rules are, then the ones that are successful will be the ones that survive. Others that can't adapt will go out of business. That will be the transition phase. But we need fair playing fields for the market to work, and values that impose almost a Hippocratic oath in business: Your products are not allowed to do harm and if you sell a product that ruins the environment, you get sued.
Migrants leave Ulapa, Chiapas state, late Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. The migrant caravan heading north in southern Mexico has so far been allowed to walk unimpeded, a change from the Mexican government's reaction to other attempted mass migrations. (AP Photo/Isabel Mateos)
Migrants leave Ulapa, Chiapas state, late Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. The migrant caravan heading north in southern Mexico has so far been allowed to walk unimpeded, a change from the Mexican government's reaction to other attempted mass migrations. (AP Photo/Isabel Mateos)
I think you'd get a lot of people who would say that anything made from plastic, for example, is harmful, which could create a different kind of harm if it limits production of things like medical devices. How do we navigate those kinds of considerations?
That's a good point but, as I said, we don't lack knowledge. Certain types of plastics are clearly necessary. In other areas, plastic is just convenient, for packaging and things. We do know that there are alternatives which are currently not cost effective, including some new innovations where you have versions of plastic that are biodegradable.
If you imposed regulations that say that anything that ends up in a landfill or pollutes the environment must fulfill certain beneficial functions and the impacts are priced into your product, but you have to use materials that are biodegradable for everything else, you can close that cycle. So we don't have to over-regulate, we just need the right kind of smart regulations, because for many of the downstream consequences, I think market mechanisms are quite effective. They have been effective in building up our current society and our current range of products. And they can be effective if we change the regulatory parameters.
It'll be an interesting year of complex considerations ahead. To end our conversation back on the idea of overpopulation, is there a number you think really is unsustainable, if 8 billion isn't it?
We know that we are currently in what's called the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene, where everything is growing exponentially, and that is clearly not sustainable. The models of population growth are such that we will plateau at between 9 and 10 billion people globally over the next few decades.
The question is the following: how can we influence the shape of this curve? We know exactly what we have to do to bend that population curve down faster. And that is very simple: Educate women globally, to slow reproduction.
Joan Meiners is the Climate News and Storytelling Reporter at The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Before becoming a journalist, she completed a doctorate in Ecology. Follow Joan on Twitter at @beecycles or email her at joan.meiners@arizonarepublic.com.
Support climate coverage and local journalism by subscribing to azcentral.com at this link.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: With 8 billion people, is overpopulation fueling climate change?

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-11 12:14:29

This post is about the Salton Sea

We do not have a topic for Salton Sea, although Void has taken an interest in the accidental lake caused by human error decades ago.

An engineer has been working the problem, and recently updated his vision to include not one, but TWO Elon Musk tunnels from the Pacific Ocean to the Salton Sea. Interestingly, he addresses social concerns by proposing use of the Federal Camp Pendleton property for an inlet to the Pacific.

https://www.mapquest.com/us/california/ … -283594204

The map at the link above shows that Camp Pendleton does front the Pacific Ocean ...

I'm pretty sure that a tunnel has to be permitted by each state under which it travels.

A solution that might work in California is to pump sea water up to one of the existing canals which are no longer welcome because they drain lakes that are dropping in water level.

in any case, here is the latest article by the engineer ...

The Desert Sun
Pacific sea water via tunnel would enable a lithium recovery economic development zone
John Treichler
Wed, January 11, 2023 at 8:00 AM EST
Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer's documentation of Lake Mead water decline over time. Reference: https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/08/la … and-trend/
Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer's documentation of Lake Mead water decline over time. Reference: https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/08/la … and-trend/
The above chart depicts the striking water decline at Lake Mead. Dr. Spencer’s analysis concluded that increased usage of Colorado River water, plus La Niña, contribute to the declining level of Lake Mead. Even if La Niña moderates to greater precipitation, increased industrial and city demand for water will result in the continuing decline of Lake Mead. (Trendlines and notes are mine.)
Following my column last month proposing a tunnel from the Pacific to provide replacement seawater for the Salton Sea, I received an email from Desert Sun reader Jeff Geraci who had calculated the net evaporation loss from the Salton Sea and concluded that one tunnel from the Pacific would not suffice. He was correct.
I sourced one of the proposals submitted to the UC Santa Cruz Concept Evaluation Group utilizing Elon Musk’s boring machines to tunnel to the Pacific. Per those calculations, one of Musk’s 12 foot diameter tunnels would provide approximately 460,000 acre-feet of salt water per year. Insufficient to compensate for evaporation: Two are needed to slowly increase the Salton Sea level.
Let’s change perspective here. There are other high priority customers for new water: A new lithium economic development zone in Imperial Valley, new business, agriculture and cities too. Without a stable long-term source of treated water, lithium is on pause. Venture capital will not risk it.
According to a Dec. 1, 2022 report by the Lithium Valley Commission reporting to the California Energy Commission, “IID (Imperial Irrigation District) has about 20,400 AFY (acre-feet of water per year) available for contracting to new nonagricultural development, including industrial use. This water comes from IID's interim water supply policy. IID is looking at ways to conserve additional water for industrial use."
The continued fallowing of agricultural land to reallocate Colorado water to new industry is not a viable long-term strategy. Look again at Dr. Spencer’s chart above. In 10 years, the well is approaching dry for industry and agriculture alike. If an economic development zone is to be created around lithium recovery, then a long-term water supply other than the Colorado River is a key component and needs to be included in the commission’s final report.
Build-out of the above-mentioned economic development zone could include the subject tunnel from the Pacific and treatment facilities as part of the infrastructure. Desalination and thermal distillation of the seawater for said economic zone would release the 20,400 AFY from the IID back to the farming community. The potential for electrical generation at the tunnel outlet is a plus.
Venture capital might be inclined to build the necessary desalination/distillation plants to provide treated water to commercial customers or supplement city supplies, if they believe the new water will be there. “If you build it, they will come.”
What if the California Energy Commission and the California Water Resources Board engaged the Coastal Commission to jointly and proactively (quickly) locate a suitable Pacific inlet location to enable this new water source? (Insert laughter here.)
Alternatively, one proposal to the UCSC Evaluation Group suggested the tunnel inlet at Camp Pendleton. Underground tunnel: No environmental concerns. Lithium is a national security asset. All federal. Hmmm.
With one last glance at Dr. Spencer’s long-term chart of Lake Mead water levels: The meter is running.
John Treichler is a retired aerospace engineer based in Banning. His email is jrtreichler@earthlink.net
.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Pacific seawater via tunnel would help enable lithium zone; desalinate

(th)

SpaceNut · 2023-01-11 19:58:29

The main problem that I still see is that we get to much rain in other places and are not able to redirect it to places that will need it. Currently we have mud slides and rivers just running about everywhere in California and yet it was so dry before that that wildfires caused so much damage to the forests such that the ground is not capable to soak up that rain and bring it to the aquifer so that wells and lakes have streams that feed them.
I did see and article about how it was suggested that man had caused the Salton Sea to form.

Void · 2023-01-12 10:30:03

The Salton Sea has existed many times from what I understand. The last instance though was an irrigation canal that got out of control.

The Colorado River usually is higher than the Salton Sea area. But I am going to guess that from time to time it breaks through its alluvial deposits and fills the basin.

Article: https://www.california.com/what-happene … en%20basin.

A logical thing to have done would be to simply route the Colorado River though the Salton Sink and fill it up and have the output drain through Mexico. It was questionable that fresh water was routed to the Coastal areas of California.

But, sure, the ports were valuable. And the farms and resorts, homes in the below sea level basin are of value now.

It is not my problem, and maybe it was the best choice. At the time, I don't think logical planning was occurring, just short-term financial pressures.

Had they simply filled the basin, the big "Sea" would have been wonderful seacoast, and the salts would have been flushed into the oceans, over a gradual period and not have been a big problem. Sensibly, Arizona should have been extended to the east coast of the Salton Sea then.

But we should not expect a top game to occur in life, not very often.

(th) talked about the tunnels. Well, that would be equivalent to simply drawing water out of the Gulf of California, and then pumping brine out into the Gulf of California. Good chances that the Mexicans would balk on that, and maybe they should. I have mentioned this before, but either with Mexican Cooperation or with the two tunnels, that is what would be occurring.

With the Tunnels, you could run a turbine, as sea water came in through the one tunnel, and you could use solar power to pump brine out during the day. This is a backward water battery. You borrow energy when you flow sea water into the Salton Sea, and you pay it back with solar. And I think that that location is about as prime as it can be for solar energy.

If you really wanted to get futuristic, you could treat the Salton Sea as a Solar Salt Pond, placing sea water on top and discouraging the mixing of the lower and upper waters. So, you might have to do something to prevent the wind from mixing the waters. I am not sure of that.

https://www.briangwilliams.us/solar-ene … smissivity.

But now, the Salton Sea would be a giant solar power plant, and could pump brine out if itself at a suitable rate.

This again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_pon … th%20depth.

Efficiency
The energy obtained is in the form of low-grade heat of 70 to 80 °C compared to an assumed 20 °C ambient temperature. According to the second law of thermodynamics (see Carnot-cycle), the maximum theoretical efficiency of a cycle that uses heat from a high temperature reservoir at 80 °C and has a lower temperature of 20 °C is 1−(273+20)/(273+80)=17%. By comparison, a power plant's heat engine delivering high-grade heat at 800 °C would have a maximum theoretical limit of 73% for converting heat into useful work (and thus would be forced to divest as little as 27% in waste heat to the cold temperature reservoir at 20 °C). The low efficiency of solar ponds is usually justified with the argument that the 'collector', being just a plastic-lined pond, might potentially result in a large-scale system that is of lower overall levelised energy cost than a solar concentrating system.

So, you could run a power plant off of the lake. And you could easily distill water out of it as well.

The water you might flow into and out of the lake would preferably be the top layer. But the bottom layer being hot all you would need to do is to use a vacuum system to force distill fresh water. The top layer might support some kind of fish that does not go deep, but stays near the top. Not sure on that. Generally, fish cannot breed in water more than 2 times as salty as the sea, but perhaps they could be stocked.

So, that might be in reach technologically at this time. But lack of logic, stone age traits, and politics, will likely kill it in the nursery.

It's too bad. It would be nice to find out if it is possible to make desert lakes and have them double as power supplies. I am not sure that they could. The Valleys in Nevada and Utah are very elevated. May require orbital energy assistance as well, but that is next century, if ever.

But maybe places elsewhere. You might maintain lakes like that in wetter places, provided you used distillation to extract excess water from the brine mixes. That might work if a nearby city needed the water. It might be worth it then.

But yes, you have to prevent the wind from mixing the water.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2023-01-12 11:00:23)

SpaceNut · 2023-01-12 18:47:27

We have done the Salton Sea in a few other topics and not just this one. As you have put forth somehow, we need to change the method of getting sea water to these inland saltwater locations.

SpaceNut · 2023-01-15 16:58:46

These ‘hydropanels’ attach to homes just like solar panels — and they create hundreds of gallons of fresh drinking water

https://www.source.co/residential/

The high-tech panels use the sun to extract moisture from the air, providing safe drinking water for many of the places around the world that need it most.
The technology is fairly straightforward. Fans on each panel draw in ambient air and push it through a water-absorbing material, trapping the vapor from the air. The vapor is then condensed into a liquid using energy from the sun, after which it’s collected in a reservoir. The water is then mineralized with magnesium and calcium to maintain quality and achieve a better taste.
While condensing air into water is not a new idea, the energy used to do it — all coming from the sun — makes these panels more sustainable than other, traditional methods.
Each panel, coming in at $2,000 each, produces about 1.3 gallons of water a day and can operate completely independently of other existing infrastructure, meaning the hydropanels can provide safe drinking water virtually anywhere.
This problem is only expected to get worse as a result of warming temperatures and population growth. UNICEF estimates that by 2025, 50% of the world’s population could lack access to drinkable water.
In water-stressed areas, bottled water is often a solution for safe drinking water. But with over 80% of plastic water bottles ending up in landfills, this can exacerbate our planet’s plastic waste problem. A single SOURCE hydropanel, however, eliminates the need for 54,000 single-use plastic bottles over its 15-year lifespan.
And it’s already working across the world. SOURCE claims its hydropanels are being used in 50 countries, providing water to some of the areas that need it most.

SpaceNut · 2023-01-16 20:01:05

There has been quite a bit of problems when it comes to having not enough and now to much water as the state of california has been having isues with for about a month it seems with California death toll reaches 20 as atmospheric rivers finally fade to which there has been much flooding.

But with more than two months to go in the rainy season, officials are urging Californians to continue conserving water as the U.S. Drought Monitor still puts almost the entire state under moderate or severe drought conditions. Reservoir levels were still below average for this time of year, officials said.
Moreover, the atmospheric rivers largely failed to reach the Colorado River basin, a critical source of southern California's water.
"If you rely on the Colorado River basin as a part of your water supply, then there will be continuing drought problems due to the extreme drought in that part of the world," Michael Anderson, California's state climatologist, told reporters.
The Colorado's two major reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, were at 28.5% and 22.6% of capacity, respectively, and still below levels from this time a year ago according to Water-Data.com.

With this comes the afterthought of Storms force California to look harder at capturing rainfall to ease drought

After the driest three years in the state's modern history, California suddenly has a different problem on its hands: too much water.
An ongoing series of storms drenching the state has forced officials to take measures unfathomable just a month ago, like releasing excess water from reservoirs and pumping surging river flows into storage.
It’s also renewing interest in how to better capture rainfall for dry times — an idea long popular in agricultural areas,

brought this up as total US state pipeline and reservoir issue.

Of course, the struggle goes on for many and now Skipped Showers, Paper Plates: An Arizona Suburb's Water Is Cut Off

Earlier this month, the community’s longtime water supplier, the neighboring city of Scottsdale, turned off the tap for Rio Verde Foothills, blaming a grinding drought that is threatening the future of the West. Scottsdale said it had to focus on conserving water for its own residents, and could no longer sell water to roughly 500 to 700 homes — or around 1,000 people.

Of course, there are other tricks to lowering the amount of water a family does require and paper plates are just the start.

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-18 10:24:19

https://interestingengineering.com/inno … gy-at-home

The article at the link above comes to us from our Phoenix contact. He attended a recent Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, and visited a booth offered by the company described in the article.

I note that the square footage of clean air provided is comparable to the manufactured home reported by RobertDyck in another topic.

Pioneering air-to-water technology harvests high-quality drinking water at home
This air-to-water dispenser makes up to 10 liters of alkaline water per day.
Ayesha Gulzar
Created: Jan 09, 2023 10:25 AM EST
INNOVATION
At CES 2023 in Las Vegas this week, a US-based startup, Kara Water, demonstrated a water dispenser to harvest high-quality drinking water at home. The atmospheric water generator (AWG) produces antioxidant, anti-bacterial, ionized, and mineral-rich water straight from the air around you.
The winner of Consumer's Electronic Show (CES) 2023 honoree, Kara Pure is more than just a water dispenser; it combines the air purifier, dehumidifier, water filter, and dispenser into a single sleek stainless-steel tower that is a constant source of pure drinking water.

SEE ALSO
The revolutionary water creation process
Water exists in the driest of environments but needs optimal conditions to be released for use. Water harvesting endeavors date back decades involving energy-intensive, restrictive, and costly approaches like dew-point simulation and pressurization.
Kara Pure pulls the moisture in the air through a powerful desiccant, a substance with a high affinity for water. Although air is a relatively cleaner harvesting platform compared to soil, water obtained from it requires purification and sterilization, nonetheless. Kara pure follows a rigorous multistage filtration process involving heating, carbon filtering, and periodic UV-C sterilization to remove harmful airborne impurities and maintain purity and crispness over time.
A sustainable solution for fresh drinking water
"Our groundwater is contaminated or depleted, and we need to find a new way to provide drinking water to the people around the world," says CEO and co-founder Cory Soodeen, who grew up in a town where drinking water had high levels of contamination coercing the residents to purchase bottled water.
Kara Pure is a one-size-fits-all solution that reduces contaminated groundwater dependence and obliterates plastic waste by producing almost 300 liters of fresh, clean water monthly.
The water produced is fortified by a built-in ionizer that isolates the alkaline part resulting in 9.2+ pH alkaline spring-like water. It then infuses it with seven essential minerals; zinc, calcium, magnesium, lithium, selenium, strontium, and metasilicic acid, promoting healthy skin, hydration, and calmness.
Periodic sterilization every four hours ensures a continuous supply of bacteria and contamination-free water.
Its dehumidification feature reduces mold build-up by removing excess aerial water. It also monitors humidity levels, avoiding excessive dehumidification and maintaining it at a comfortable 25 percent.
Once moisture has been separated, the air is released back into the room following purification. Kara Pure boasts a 250-300 square ft. purification area making heavy metal and other impurity-free air a significant by-product.
A new hope
Kara Water has transformed an idea conceived in laboratories for years into an accessible home appliance. As the world continues to face water scarcity and rising levels of plastic waste, an all-rounder like Kara Pure takes center stage in innovative engineering and conscious efforts to battle the ravages of climate change. It infuses us with hope and excites us for what great minds of the world deliver next.
HOME
INNOVATION

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Void · 2023-01-19 11:04:14

I like the idea of it. In locations which are dry and have lots of solar energy potential it makes sense.

Done.

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-19 11:05:52

Our Phoenix contact is watching the local media, and found this report about water panels at a location in Phoenix...

Phoenix which is putting up hydropaneling on outside walls of homes

Google came up with this list of snippets ...

Drinking Water from Thin Air with SOURCE® Hydropanelshttps://www.youtube.com › watch
6:15
Check out SOURCE installed on a home in downtown Phoenix, Arizona in a recent episode of Ask This Old House. SOURCE is a Hydropanel, ...
YouTube · SOURCE · Jan 5, 2018
5 key moments in this video
Out of thin air: can hydropanels bring water to parched ...https://www.theguardian.com › environment › oct › hy...
Oct 5, 2021 — Some skeptics say the technology at present is too inefficient and expensive to be a practical solution to water scarcity.
People also ask
How long do hydropanels last?
Do hydropanels work in Arizona?
What is a hydro panel?
How much water does a source hydropanel produce?
How does source hydropanel work?
Feedback
Questions About Water and Our Hydropanels | Source.cohttps://www.source.co › faqs
See FAQs for SOURCE Water Hydropanels, including how our Hydropanel technology works to provide mineralized drinking water, costs, installation, and more.

Solar-Powered SOURCE Hydropanels Can Produce Up To 5 ...https://www.forbes.com › sites › jeffkart › 2022/01/13
Jan 13, 2022 — First, the hydropanel takes in ambient air via fans and collects water ... a church in Florence, South Carolina; more than 500 homes in the ...
Missing: Phoenix outside walls
GEN F ASSEMBLY MANUAL - Hydropoint
https://hydropoint.com.au › uploads › 2020/02
PDF
purposes of this document, zenith is the angle setting of panels relative to ... SOURCE Hydropanel water flow systems are designed to work in a networked ...
46 pages
SOURCE Global Raises $130 Million Series D - citybiz
https://www.citybiz.co › News
Jul 20, 2022 — Other significant participants in the financing are Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund, Fifth Wall, Blackrock, WIND Ventures, Duke Energy, ...
Drinking water, pulled from vapor in the air, helping ... - KGWhttps://www.kgw.com › news › local › technology › cle...
Oct 6, 2021 — The hydropanel sucks in passing water vapor, solar heat purifies it ... Source hydropanels producing drinking water outside of homes on the ...

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kbd512 · 2023-01-19 12:47:08

I can't speak to what Arizona will be like in the future, but if California gets any more water they're going to be living in boats rather than houses.

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-19 16:04:26

Our Phoenix contact came back with a web site where NewMars members can obtain more information:

https://www.source.co/

The company claims to have set up water extraction systems in 50 countries. That implies (to me at least) they have patient investors with deep pockets to get them going despite the massive startup costs and ongoing expenses.

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tahanson43206 · 2023-01-20 12:47:54

https://www.yahoo.com/news/arizona-face … 49296.html

This is a fairly balanced presentation of the challenges, opportunities and difficulties.

Arizona Faces an Existential Dilemma: Import Water or End Its Housing Boom
Ciara Nugent
Fri, January 20, 2023 at 11:09 AM EST
Arizona real estate Tuscon
The northeastern edge of the Tucson Mountains populated by two enormous subdivisions, Continental Ranch and Continental Reserve, part of Marana, Pima County, Arizona. Credit - Wild Horizon/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
This month, a suburb of Scottsdale, Ariz., found itself in the nightmare scenario for all communities living in the U.S.’ drought-stricken southwest: the water got shut off. Rio Verde, a master-planned community of some 600 homes, sprang up in the 1970s without its own piped water supply. For decades, it had relied on water trucked in from the city. But 20 years into a severe region-wide drought, Scottsdale says it must now conserve its water, which it gets from the Colorado River via a canal, for its own residents. Rio Verde residents are now skipping showers and driving miles in search of drinking water. On Jan. 12, the community filed a high-profile lawsuit against Scottsdale.
The drama in Rio Verde encapsulates, in miniature, an existential question facing the whole of Arizona: in an era where climate change is shrinking the water supply, should the desert state keep building homes that depend on water from elsewhere?

The answer, given Rio Verde’s current plight, may seem obvious. But that is precisely the question that authorities and developers in Arizona are mulling as they look to sustain one of the nation’s biggest population booms. Since 2000, as the Colorado River has dried up, Arizona has become increasingly reliant on pumping groundwater, which today provides 41% of the state’s needs. Meanwhile some cities, like Tucson, have gone to great lengths to cut back on the amount of water used per resident. Yet at the same time, Arizona is enthusiastically welcoming tens of thousands of new residents—lured by cheap housing and endless sunshine—each year. In 2022, four of the ten fastest-growing counties in the U.S. were in Arizona, according to census data, with Maricopa County, where Rio Verde is located, at number eight on the list. (As well as families, other thirsty new arrivals to the state include tech companies, whose data centers require millions of gallons of water to keep servers from overheating.)
The Colorado River is seen receding at the Glen Canyon Dam on October 23, 2022 in Page, Arizona.Joshua Lott—The Washington Post/Getty Images
The boom can no longer survive on groundwater. On Jan. 9, Arizona’s new Democratic governor Katie Hobbs released a report, withheld from the public by her predecessor Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, which shows that a large area west of the White Tank Mountains, to the west of Phoenix, hasn’t got enough groundwater to sustain all the homes—enough for 800,000 people—that developers want to build there. To get approval, Arizona’s Water Resources director told local media, major projects will need to “find other water supplies or other solutions.”
With the state’s river water already spoken for, those “other” supplies, experts say, would likely mean imported water. Pie-in-the-sky projects to bring in water from outside Arizona, such as a 1,000 mile pipeline from the Mississippi River, have bounced around the state legislature for years. As climate change deepens the state’s water crisis, though, one drastic idea has gained traction. In December, Arizona’s newly expanded state water finance board voted to advance a proposed $5 billion desalination plant in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez—potentially the world’s largest—which would pump water north via a 200 mile pipeline. IDE, the Israeli company behind the proposal, says it is now submitting for federal environmental review.
Bring the water
Moving water from water-rich areas to dry ones is nothing new. Canal systems that did just that were crucial to the U.S.’ westward expansion in the 1800s. In Arizona, more than 80% of the population relies on a man-made channel that diverts water from the Colorado River on the state’s western edge to population centers further east. But today, intensifying droughts and population explosions are pushing southwestern leaders to consider huge projects that would bring water from ever further away. In Utah, where migration is driving never-before-seen growth, a legislative committee has floated the idea of building a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to refill the parched Great Salt Lake. Nevada, which has been growing rapidly for half a century, regularly discusses similar ideas.
Home builders and agribusiness groups see in such proposals the promise of an infinite, “drought-proof” water supply that could sustain the southwest’s growth for decades to come. But critics see a different future, one where imported water fuels environmental destruction and soaring utility prices for consumers, and where U.S. states become dependent on good relations with a foreign country for their survival.
Margaret Wilder, a human and environmental geography professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Geography, Development & Environment, warns that large-scale desalination projects could be used by the real estate industry to justify “much more unsustainable development in the desert in future.”
The prospect of slowing Arizona’s population growth “is the 800 pound gorilla in the room that no water authority wants to talk about, because it’s politically untenable to do so,” Wilder says. As a result, she adds, “desalination is being presented as an inevitable fate for Arizona.”
Importing problems
Environmentalists say the IDE desalination project would harm the planet on several fronts. First, where the water is desalinated on the Mexican coast, the waste salt would likely need to be deposited back into the Sea of Cortez, threatening an area so rich in wildlife that Jacques Cousteau called it “the world’s aquarium.” Second, the project’s pipeline would cut through land home to Mexican people and wildlife, and, on the Arizona side of the border, the Organ Pipe National Monument. Third, the desalination process is hugely energy intensive, and its large-scale use can generate significant greenhouse gas emissions—which are the source of the climactic changes limiting the region’s water supply in the first place.
John Hornewer sets alarms on his phone in two minute intervals, after which he puts a quarter in the fill station, as he fills up his 6000 gallon tanker to haul water from Apache Junction to Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, U.S. on January 7, 2023.<span class="copyright">The Washington Post/Getty Images</span>
John Hornewer sets alarms on his phone in two minute intervals, after which he puts a quarter in the fill station, as he fills up his 6000 gallon tanker to haul water from Apache Junction to Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, U.S. on January 7, 2023.The Washington Post/Getty Images
“We as Arizonans can’t just keep taking water from somewhere else without considering how it impacts the people and places we’re taking it from,” says Cary Meiser, conservation chairman of the Yuma Audubon Society and coordinator of the Sierra Club’s Colorado River Task Force.
Even ignoring those environmental risks, the cost for Arizona residents could be great. At the moment, cities in the state typically pay about $50–$150 for one acre-foot of water—or 326,000 gallons, enough to cover an acre of land in a foot of water. That’s roughly the amount used each year by an average family of three in Phoenix, according to the state’s director of water resources. IDE’s director estimates their desalinated water would cost roughly $2,200 to $3,300 per acre foot. The final price for consumers would be determined, and possibly subsidized, by local governments. But it could become unaffordable for low-income families to live in parts of the state that are reliant on imported water.
A dry path ahead
That cost problem means that, even if desalination provides a bountiful supply of water for Arizona, it likely won’t save the state’s real estate market, says Jesse Keenan, associate professor of sustainable real estate at Tulane University. The industry’s recent success, he says, relies on “a fiction of limitless cheap housing,” sustained by the government’s ability to provide water cheaply. If that can no longer be done everywhere, the cost of properties with stable water connections will spike. And, since people who have to spend more on utility bills have less to spend on mortgage bills, banks may stop lending on homes in regions reliant on expensive imported water. “We’ve reached the limit of the public sector’s capacity to conquer nature with infrastructure,” Keenan says. “Now’s the moment where the private sector will bring discipline.”
Environmentalists are advocating discipline in Arizona’s relationship with water, too. They want the government to focus on cutting water demand rather than expanding supply. That would mean measures to control or limit real estate development, as well as encouraging further water-saving measures by existing consumers, pushing farms to swap out water-intensive crops like alfalfa, and better regulating groundwater use.
Hobbs’s governorship may mark a turning point. She has promised to create a council to oversee the modernization of groundwater rules, and their implementation. Her office says the body will also seek to close loopholes that have allowed developers to skirt a 1980 law requiring proof of a 100-year water supply for projects with more than six homes. (Rio Verde’s developer, for example, parceled its homes into groups of five or less.)
The governor will face pushback from the Republican-led state legislature, which has repeatedly rejected proposals involving stringent limits on groundwater use in rural areas.
But as more water disputes like Rio Verde’s crop up, Wilder is hopeful that Arizonans will understand the risks of never-ending expansion into the desert. “I’m not an advocate of pulling up the bridge behind us, but we need to slow this train down,” she says. “We need to start asking questions when people present us with these unproblematic, carefree solutions to the water problem.”

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SpaceNut · 2023-01-20 18:21:04

To follow up on the post 359 and yours in 363/365

I would need 10 of these units of course spending 20,000 to meet my current water usage for a day. I am wondering if the well was misted or evaporated near to the unit if it could produce more water.

tahanson43206 · 2023-01-20 18:32:02

For SpaceNut .... Thanks for your observations in post #367

Your existing well is capable of providing more than enough fresh, clean potable water for your home.

The issue seems to be (at least as I understand it) that existing solutions you've tried are unreliable and too expensive.

You ** should ** be able to supply a mist of well water to these devices, and if I understand their capability correctly, they can deliver acceptable water using sunlight as a power source.

Please keep us posted on your studies/research of water supply solutions.

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SpaceNut · 2023-01-22 19:20:39

A part of this seasonal rain and snow fall condition is the La Niña shows signs of ending. Is El Niño next?

Of course that makes for another issue with the excess as Why more water could make fixing the Colorado River even more difficult

With the excess that California has been seeing it's time to think storage.

How Arizona, California and other states are trying to generate a whole new water supply

Which means caverns underground and these are big. Through there is another option in Batteries get hyped, but pumped hydro provides the vast majority of long-term energy storage essential for renewable power – here’s how it works] f83ca1ca6fef65798656ea696c03cd74

SpaceNut · 2023-01-27 23:25:36

As the Colorado River Shrinks, Washington Prepares to Spread the Pain

The seven states that rely on water from the shrinking Colorado River are unlikely to agree to voluntarily make deep reductions in their water use, negotiators say, which would force the federal government to impose cuts for the first time in the water supply for 40 million Americans.
The Interior Department had asked the states to voluntarily come up with a plan by Jan. 31 to collectively cut the amount of water they draw from the Colorado. The demand for those cuts, on a scale without parallel in U.S. history, was prompted by precipitous declines in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which provide water and electricity for Arizona, Nevada and Southern California. Drought, climate change and population growth have caused water levels in the lakes to plummet.
Negotiators say the odds of a voluntary agreement appear slim. It would be the second time in six months that the Colorado River states, which also include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, have missed a deadline for consensus on cuts sought by the Biden administration to avoid a catastrophic failure of the river system.
Without a deal, the Interior Department, which manages flows on the river, must impose the cuts. That would break from the century-long tradition of states determining how to share the river’s water. And it would all but ensure that the administration’s increasingly urgent efforts to save the Colorado get caught up in lengthy legal challenges.
The rules that determine who gets water from the Colorado River, and how much, were always based, to a degree, on magical thinking.
In 1922, states along the river negotiated the Colorado River Compact, which apportioned the water among two groups of states. The so-called upper basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) would get 7.5 million acre-feet a year. The lower basin (Arizona, California and Nevada) got a total of 8.5 million acre-feet. A later treaty guaranteed Mexico, where the river reaches the sea, 1.5 million acre-feet.
(An acre-foot of water is enough water to cover an acre of land in a foot of water. That’s roughly as much water as two typical households use in a year.)
But the premise that the river’s flow would average 17.5 million acre-feet each year turned out to be faulty. Over the past century, the river’s actual flow has averaged less than 15 million acre-feet each year.
For decades, that gap was obscured by the fact that some of the river’s users, including Arizona and some Native American tribes, lacked the canals and other infrastructure to employ their full allotment. But as that infrastructure increased, so did the demand on the river.
Then, the drought hit. From 2000 through 2022, the river’s annual flow averaged just over 12 million acre-feet. In each of the past three years, the total flow was less than 10 million.
The Bureau of Reclamation, an office within the Interior Department that manages the river system, has sought to offset that water loss by getting states to reduce their consumption. In 2003, it pushed California, which had been exceeding its annual allotment, the largest in the basin, to abide by that limit. In 2007, and again in 2019, the department negotiated still deeper reductions among the states.
It wasn’t enough. Last summer, the water level in Lake Mead sank to 1,040 feet above sea level, its lowest ever.
If the water level falls below 950 feet, the Hoover Dam will no longer be able to generate hydroelectric power. At 895 feet, no water would be able to pass the dam at all — a condition called “deadpool.”
In June, the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Camille C. Touton, gave the states 60 days to come up with a plan to reduce their use of Colorado River water by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet — about 20% to 40% of the river’s entire flow.
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming argue they are unable to significantly reduce their share of water. Those states get their water primarily from stream flow, rather than from giant reservoirs like in the lower basin states. As the drought reduces that flow, the amount of water they use has already declined to about half their allotment, officials said.
“Clearly, the lion’s share of what needs to be done has to be done by the lower basin states,” said Estevan López, the negotiator for New Mexico who led the Bureau of Reclamation during the Obama administration.
Nor can much of the solution come from Nevada, which is allotted just 300,000 acre-feet from the Colorado. Even if the state’s water deliveries were stopped entirely, rendering Las Vegas effectively uninhabitable, the government would get barely closer to its goal.
And Nevada has already imposed some of the basin’s most aggressive water-conservation strategies, according to John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The state has even outlawed some types of lawns.
“We’re using two-thirds of our allocation,” Entsminger said in an interview. “You can’t take blood from a stone.”
Farms Versus Subdivisions
That leaves California and Arizona, which have rights to 4.4 million and 2.8 million acre-feet from the Colorado — typically the largest and third-largest allotments among the seven states. Negotiators from both sides seem convinced of one thing: The other state ought to come up with more cuts.
In California, the largest user of Colorado River water is the Imperial Irrigation District, which has rights to 3.1 million acre-feet — as much as Arizona and Nevada put together. That water lets farmers grow alfalfa, lettuce and broccoli on about 800 square miles of the Imperial Valley, in the southeast corner of California.
California has senior water rights to Arizona, which means that Arizona’s supply should be cut before California is forced to take reductions, according to JB Hamby, vice president of the Imperial Irrigation District and chairman of the Colorado River Board of California, which is negotiating for the state.
Tina Shields, Imperial’s water department manager, put the argument more bluntly. It would be hard to tell the California farmers who rely on the Colorado River to stop growing crops, she said, “so that other folks continue to build subdivisions.”
Still, Hamby conceded that significantly reducing the water supply for large urban populations in Arizona would be “a little tricky.” California has offered to cut its use of Colorado River water by as much as 400,000 acre-feet — up to one-fifth of the cuts that the Biden administration has sought.

Seems there is no way to win if the draught continues.

SpaceNut · 2023-01-27 23:37:19

We all may pay to fix Rio Verde Foothills' water problems. That's no solution

The private water company, to its credit, is the only one officially asking to help homeowners whose taps will soon run dry, even though it makes clear in its application that the service makes no financial sense.
EPCOR is proposing to build a standpipe somewhere in or near the Rio Verde Foothills area. It doesn’t have a precise location because it doesn’t yet have a water source.
Confidential negotiations are underway to find that water, the company notes in its application, but most likely, it will need to dig a well.
Presuming that’s how this goes – that EPCOR draws out finite water from the area without replenishing it – it’s anyone’s guess how long it will last.
This part of the aquifer is spotty. Water is not distributed evenly throughout Rio Verde Foothills, and there are already plenty of straws in the ground. Some residents with existing wells have seen them go dry over the last few years.
Not to mention that if EPCOR can find a spot with enough water, it could have problems with arsenic, requiring the water to be treated before it is delivered.
EPCOR estimates it would have to charge residents $20 per 1,000 gallons to use this service, though that could go up or down, depending on the project’s final costs.
That’s significantly more than what they are paying for water now, and significantly more than what the company charged to provide a standpipe for New River residents who were in a similar pickle a few years back.
That’s because EPCOR was able to use existing infrastructure to bail out those homeowners. In this case, it must secure water rights and fund construction.
Twenty bucks per 1,000 gallons equates to roughly $6,500 per acre-foot – which is more than twice the wholesale rate for desalinated water, one of the most expensive water sources out there.

tahanson43206 · 2023-02-07 18:50:47

As a follow up to SpaceNut's post #371, here is another look at the EPCOR offer...

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/edmo … 46641.html

A private water supply company may (may) be able to supply this community.

Edmonton's Epcor could be last hope for Arizona suburb cut off from water supply
Meghan Potkins
Tue, February 7, 2023 at 9:23 AM EST
rio-verde-foothills-gs0206
Residents of an Arizona suburb are collecting rainwater to flush toilets and wash dishes while praying to a higher power for help after being cut off from the neighbouring municipal water supply since the beginning of the year.
Stay ahead of the market
“We have a weekly prayer group where we pray for rain and a water solution,” Rio Verde Foothills resident Karen Nabity said. So far, there’s been some rain, but not much else. “As of right now, we still have no water solution.”
More than 500 homes in the suburb northeast of Scottsdale have been without water after the city followed through on a pledge to stop private water haulers from delivering to customers outside city limits amid an acute water shortage in the Colorado River basin.
The community’s best remaining hope for securing a reliable water supply may now lie with a Canadian utility company, though it will be two to three years before Epcor Utilities Inc.’s subsidiary in the United States is able to resolve the problem.
The headline-grabbing crisis in Rio Verde Foothills has put Edmonton’s municipally owned Epcor into the spotlight at a key moment since it has been rapidly expanding into markets in Arizona and Texas.
“This isn’t Epcor’s first time serving a community that’s been cut off from their municipal supply through water haulers,” Epcor USA president Joe Gysel said, acknowledging the situation in Rio Verde Foothills is much more urgent than the company’s past forays assisting residents in far-flung suburbs north of Phoenix.
Rio Verde Foothills was warned in 2019, and again in 2020 and 2021, that Scottsdale intended to ban commercial water haulers from delivering its water outside city limits, before following through on it.
A bleached ring indicates where water levels used to stand in Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir off of the Colorado River. Levels in the river basin, which supplies the U.S. southwest with water, have fallen significantly after six years of drought.
A bleached ring indicates where water levels used to stand in Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir off of the Colorado River. Levels in the river basin, which supplies the U.S. southwest with water, have fallen significantly after six years of drought.
“Now we’re in a situation where that notice has expired,” he said. “They’ve been cut off since Jan. 1 and now we’re in a bit of a challenge for those people there.”
The unincorporated community in Maricopa County — which doesn’t have a municipal-piped water supply — relies on water drawn from wells or hauled in on trucks. Thanks to a loophole in state law, so-called “wildcat” housing developments such as Rio Verde Foothills have circumvented rules requiring developers to prove 100 years of assured water supply before building.
For decades, private water haulers were allowed to fill up at neighbouring Scottsdale stations, but unprecedented drought conditions in the Colorado River basin prompted the city to implement a strict new drought-management plan.
Even before Scottsdale’s warnings, Nabity and her neighbours were trying to find an alternative supply for Rio Verde Foothills, but their efforts to set up a domestic water improvement district (DWID) faced stiff opposition from neighbours who were suspicious of the proposal to create a new public board with the authority to set water rates.

Community infighting ended with the county’s board of supervisors voting down the proposal last August, leaving residents to languish as the clock ticked down to Jan. 1. Now, Nabity watches the water levels in her tanks descend.
“I haven’t gotten a delivery of water since before Christmas,” she said, adding that she and her husband have perhaps four or five months of water left. “You’re flushing the toilet once a day, you’re using less than a quarter cup of water to wash your hands, that kind of thing. We’ve learned all kinds of ways to make the water go further.”
As local and state lawmakers scramble to come up with an interim option to prevent residents from running out of water, Maricopa County and some homeowners are looking to Epcor’s U.S. subsidiary — now the largest private water utility in Arizona — to step in to provide a long-term solution.
Some Rio Verde Foothills residents haven’t given up on the possibility of setting up a DWID, but Arizona’s unique political culture has predisposed others to take a dim view of quasi-public bodies.
“We believe Epcor is the solution. We don’t need another layer of government between us and our water,” Rio Verde Foothills resident Mark Reeder told a Jan. 23 hearing of the state’s private utility regulator. “I personally have about 1,100 gallons of water left in my water tank right now. That’ll last us till the end of this week, and I have no idea where I’m gonna get more. We need a solution and we need it now.”
Epcor said it’s willing to help and filed an application last October with the Arizona Corporation Commission for approval to provide standpipe water service to residents in Rio Verde Foothills, though the company has warned it could take years to secure the water supplies in an already water-constrained area and to construct the necessary infrastructure. The upshot, the company has warned, is that water rates are bound to increase for homeowners.
“There’s gonna be no gouging, there’s no excessive markups, it’s just the situation they’re in,” Gysel said. “It’s not a big community, so there’s no scale. There’s not a million people (to) amortize all these costs over. This is on a very small population. And those costs have to be recovered.”
EPCOR’s Anthem Water Campus just north of the Phoenix metropolitan area collects and purifies waste water and returns it to the natural water cycle through aquifer recharge and public space irrigation.
Epcor’s U.S. operations provide water services to some of the American Southwest’s most water-challenged areas. It’s also recycling wastewater, and, increasingly, constructing pipelines between water resources and water-scarce areas with high-population growth.
Since breaking into the U.S. market more than a decade ago, the company has focused its attention on acquiring larger, privately-owned water systems in Arizona, with at least five deals since 2016 totalling US$137 million, according to data from Bluefield Research.
“We look at water scarcity a little bit differently than a lot of people would look at it,” Gysel said. “A lot of people look at that as, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s no way we can do it.’ We look at it as an opportunity. We have a lot of expertise in excessive water treatment. Wastewater is a new water, if you think of it that way.”
He said Epcor’s wastewater plants turn out a potable standard and the company recharges the aquifer or uses the water for other purposes including serving commercial, industrial and recreational facilities.
Epcor’s U.S. operations have grown significantly, posting $341 million in revenues in the third quarter of 2022, the company’s highest revenue-generating segment in that period.
“If you look at the U.S., two of the hottest markets that we have going right now, Arizona and Texas, have extremely strong (economic) growth,” Gysel said. “(There’s) a lot of onshoring for (chip fabrication) and other manufacturing that’s being brought back to the U.S. and these are very aggressive states that are attracting a lot of new businesses, which means opportunity for companies like Epcor, which we’re taking advantage of.”
In Rio Verde Foothills, residents are urging the state’s private utility regulator to quickly approve Epcor’s application so the company can begin securing a reliable water supply for the community.
In the meantime, a pitched battle is underway between local and state lawmakers over who is to blame for the suburb’s predicament and who should be responsible for helping hundreds of residents through an acute water crisis that has no clear end in sight.
“It’s truly political and it shouldn’t be,” Nabity said. “We just want water for our homes. We shouldn’t be in this scenario.”
mpotkins@postmedia.com Twitter: @mpotkins

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SpaceNut · 2023-02-13 20:56:08

California is not Pheonix but the concepts are valid to what might be done.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/newsom-signs … 42679.html

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed an executive order on Monday to safeguard his state’s water supplies from the effects of extreme weather.
The order will help expand California’s capacity to capture storm runoff during wet years by accelerating groundwater recharge projects, according to the governor’s office.
While a string of storms earlier this winter resulted in California’s wettest three weeks on record, the Golden State is already experiencing an unseasonably dry February, according to Newsom’s order.
Snowpack levels climbed to 205 percent of their typical amounts on Feb. 1, but this welcome accumulation “has not reduce stresses upon the state’s water resources,” the document warns.
“The state can expect continued swings between extreme wet and extreme dry periods that can present risks of severe flooding and extreme drought in the same year,” Newsom stated in the order.
“California must adapt to a hotter, drier future,” he added.
Such a future means that a greater share of precipitation that falls during wetter months will be absorbed by dry soils, consumed by plants and evaporated into the air, according to the order.
With such uncertainties in mind, the governor emphasized a need to capture and store more storm runoff underground and to recharge aquifers.
While state agencies have already streamlined certain permitting pathways to enable such groundwater recharge, the order provides additional mechanisms to hasten the process.
The document directs state agencies to accelerate the implementation of such projects when feasible, while instructing water officials to collaborate on expediting permitting processes.
Also included in the order are conservation measures that ask officials to evaluate rules on reservoir releases and water diversions — with the goal of enhancing in-stream conditions for wildlife, protecting water pools for salmon and steelhead and improving water quality.
In addition, the order directs state agencies to provide recommendations on California’s drought response by the end of April — including provisions that may no longer be necessary.
“The frequency of hydrologic extremes experienced in the state is indicative of an overarching need to continually reexamine policies to promote resiliency in a changing climate,” the governor added.

SpaceNut · 2023-02-20 21:25:03

I just used the index from the draught topic to locate this topic.

Project would pipe water from Mexico to parched Arizona — if anyone can agree on it

At the core of the project, proposed by Israel-based IDE Technologies, would be a $5 billion desalination plant rooted in the resort city of Puerto Peñasco. While some of the treated water would go to Sea of Cortez coastal towns, most of it would be piped 200 miles north to the Phoenix area.
The project proposal, submitted to WIFA a week prior to the board meeting, outlines an intent to withdraw, desalinate and move water from the Sea of Cortez — with a goal of providing Arizonans with up to 1 million acre-feet annually “for 100 years and more.”
The project’s first phase, which could be online by 2027, would generate up to 300,000 acre-feet of water annually, per the proposal. Only later would the capacity expand to the upper limit of 1 million-acre feet, which would be enough to fulfill the needs of 3 million households.
At the project’s core would be a desalination plant in Puerto Peñasco, about 60 miles southwest of the Arizona border. While this city, as well as Hermosillo, Sonoyta and Nogales, would receive some water, most of it would be piped across the border, according to the plans.
Four pumps located on the Mexican side of the border would bolster the uphill portions of the journey, powered predominantly by solar and battery storage, the consortium explained. This arrangement allows the project to circumvent Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, according to IDE.
Within a Phoenix-area Arizona Water Distribution Facility, an on-site reservoir would be able to store four days of water for customers and include a tie-in to the Central Arizona Project — a 336-mile aqueduct that diverts Colorado River water across the state.
Buyers would adhere to a fixed price structure, while WIFA would place $750 million in a temporary escrow account to demonstrate the state’s long-term commitment, per the proposal.

tahanson43206 · 2023-02-20 22:00:10

For SpaceNut re #374

Thanks for this update on the proposal for a plant for Arizona. It seems unlikely to me that a better offer is likely to occur. I ** did ** notice the additional detail about use of solar power to operate the pumps, and a plan to lift the water in Mexico to avoid the National Monument.

it seems as though the proposal authors are making small gestures to try to accommodate the many objections.

(th)

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