Water Wars: Man Made Drought for Depopulation?

Send the illegals home and voila! instant 30% reduction in domestic
water use. Its' magic
More fun and games from the UN to inflict misery on the people. And
everyone used to laugh at the John Birchers. Darn rightwing whackos!
If it wasn't the darters that needed saving it would be some insect,
whatever excuse they can use to control the flow of essential items. Then
the bastards have the gaul to put fluoride in it and charge you an arm and
a leg for it. Praise the Lord for our "kinder, gentler nation" full
of "compassionate conservatives" and green activists! Who'da thought
those groups would end up working together someday? Politics and
economics make for strange bedfellows.

yeah, green lawns, golfcourses and car washes need to go!

[edit on 30-9-2009 by Asktheanimals]

reply to post by oconnection


Your post actually struck a chord with me. I come from a province that has cordoned off 95% of the land for crown ownership. Looking at it from the perspective of your post there, I can see what you are getting at.

While I agree to disagree, I will at least look into the matter further and try to see your side of the picture. I must thank you for cutting me down a peg there, I was perhaps just a tad too belligerent in my earlier posts, as I dislike Federal control just as much as I dislike the Corporate.

The water wars started in Calif in 1910 with Los Angeles stealing the water from farmer in Owens Valley Calif.
Los Angeles still has not payed for the water. and one day the people in Inyo county will take it back.
en.wikipedia.org...

If a major SitX ever happens the water to Los Angeles will stop as the pipeline WILL be cut.

Oh by the way the system leaks, between the Owen valley intakes and the taps in LA the system looses over 200+ million gallons of water a week and this is a closely guarded secret among the heads of the LADWP, and this does not count the major water main breaks that make it to the news.

There's one thing that surprises me though, why don't some coastal states further pursue active desalination? There's still more than enough ocean to go around in those areas. Is there really a good excuse not to?

Now a lot of people will say "Hey! That's energy intensive and expensive!" But there is a logical counter for this. Institute it as a required coproduction process for any new steam-cycle power plant within so-many-miles of ocean coastline. Any coal fired, oil burning, or nuclear plant that runs boilers or steam generators to turn the turbines can effectively work towards desalination while doing its normal job of making electricity. You may find it surprising just how many gallons per day can be made by pumping waste heat used in the condensing process through a vacuum distiller instead of some otherwise useless cooling tower. (Under ideal conditions, with cool seawater and the steam plant at peak power, we're talking 10's of thousands of gallons per day if not much much more.) And it's not like it's a terribly new technology, I believe this type of technology for multi-stage flash distillation has been in use for freshwater production on steam powered sea-going ships since the late 1800s. So it's not a problem of proof, but of industrial sized scaling. (Yet any engineer capable of solving problems in moving a lot of water that's worth his salt should be able to figure it out.)

Of course compared to a city scale, it may still seem like a limited amount. But consider the uptime a typical powerplant has. Now multiply days of powerplant operation with the average gallons produced per day with the process. Now pump that output back into a reservoir or aquifer. You might actually be putting back a nice chunk of volume during those periods of low water demand, and while not worrying if nature will do the job. (And if nature actually does its job, switch the lineup to standby cooling. And use it as an opportunity to do whatever maintenance is needed on your "rainmaker". It doesn't take a genius.)

There are some places that do this, but why not much more? It's very likely to still be a maintenance intensive process. There will be mineralization that has to be controlled on the seawater feed, and then on the brine discharge side there's going to be some rather high salinity that will need to be diffused so as to not screw up the environment. So these challenges make it a bit more difficult, but not impossible. Yet if there is technological capability and good engineering, this is at least one solution that is well within reach if needed.

I guess money is the only other logical excuse for not doing it, but I feel it's a rather lame one.

reply to post by ANNED


If there are leaks and they are that massive that would be be big news. Is there any way to validate this information?

reply to post by pauljs75


That is an excellent idea Paul! My question is how safe would the water be to drink? If the ocean could be used for drinking water and general use safely we would have a massive resource to use.

I'm just not sure if we are at the point where such drastic measures are needed. We have a good amount of fresh water which we can not use and loads more undiscovered water in California alone.

I was watching something on National Geographic the other night about a town in Iran. This town exists in the middle of a very hot, dry desert yet the whole town is an oasis. Ancient people dug into the the local mountains and found underwater rivers flowing with fresh water. The same canals are in use today.

There are massive amounts of untapped water that we could be put to use. Hopefully if the situation gets bad enough some of the environmental restrictions will be lifted. Still this worries me because essentially I would be put into the hands of the government. Without water the human body can only live a matter of days.

If the tap ever gets shut off (God forbid) we would be in a world of hurt. Once the people run out of there emergency earthquake water (if they have any at all) then what?

Essentially I think a person who is concerned about the whole water situation can do a few things for themselves. You can stock up on water, buy it in bulk. Secondly if you own a large amount of land you can dig a well or buy a rain collection/ dew filtration system. I'd recommend the very best filtration system, triple filtration at the very least.

This is a man made problem ladies and gentleman. This can be fixed by us. I wouldn't sit around and wait for the government to fix anything, take your own measures.

[edit on 1-10-2009 by oconnection]

Originally posted by oconnection
reply to post by ANNED

 

If there are leaks and they are that massive that would be be big news. Is there any way to validate this information?

Most of the leaks are not massive the biggest part of them are 10,000 of thousands of small leaks and ground water leakage in the city storage lakes.

A leak of a few gallons a day in a pipeline times 10,000 is a lot of water.
and there are 100,000 miles of pipe in LA calif.

The only way that the leaks can be proved is to check the intake GPM in the owens valley and all the other sources and all the meter reading in LA.

A few years ago FOIA was sent to LADWP and the city claimed it was imposable to do.

Later the People in Inyo county that sent the FOIA were told LADWP trashed it because they knew that it would make them look very bad.

Just commenting on the title of this thread, in Aus we are in a 'drought' ( the length of which varies from 10 yrs to 40 yrs depending on which authority you ask) but over the last two years it has definitely been compounded by man made actions and govt. decisions.

Our natural aquifers are being pumped out at an astronomical rate, for water to be supplied to an overpopulated area with unregulated use in Sydney, drying out a vast area of mountains and the surrounding farmland that survived from the run-off after rain, now there is no rain run-off and the dairy industry there is dying rapidly.

We have cloud seeding in other areas that DOES NOT induce rain to fall, on the contrary, after the cloud seeding the rain disperses from the region which has supported sheep grazing for over 150 yrs, now the lack of rain fall since the cloud seeding began has resulted in no grass for consumption as it is simply not growing.
Farmers are selling up from generations of being shepherds and the land is no longer viable for any form of production.

That's our dairy and meat and wool industries all on the way out due to two decisions.

The one niggling thought that does come from this is that the mining developers are getting ready to pounce to mine these areas, and there is already a court action going on now against BHP for trying to kick farmers off their land for such purposes, with the land starting out dirt cheap for them to reap billions while the country dies.

The mining companies are major contributers to the political parties, and our 'best interests' are going down the drain.