Water scarcity is not a problem just for the developing world. In California, legislators are currently proposing a US$ 7.5 billion emergency water plan to their voters; and U.S. federal officials last year warned residents of Arizona and Nevada that they could face cuts in Colorado River water deliveries in 2016.
Irrigation techniques, industrial and residential habits combined with climate change lie at the root of the problem. But despite what appears to be an insurmountable problem, according to researchers from McGill and Utrecht University it is possible to turn the situation around and significantly reduce water scarcity in just over 35 years.
[Pay Walled Paper]: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n9/full/ngeo2241.html?WT.ec_id=NGEO-201409
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:13PM
Reducing Water Scarcity through open source water treatment device: Twibright Distillcooker [twibright.com]
Karel Kulhavy, Twibright Labs [twibright.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:25PM
The summary should have explained in a few sentences the basic idea of how they want to turn the situation around.
The litmus test for a good summary: Imagine that all links go dead. Will the summary still be useful?
Actually, their measures can be summarized as follows:
Nothing surprising, here.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:54PM
Reading the article, I was impressed by how unrealistic this recipe for abundant water is.
Conserving water in agriculture is possible in the US, but even here it's problematic. In the arid Southwest, big farmers make their money on volume. A substantial infrastructure cost to change irrigation systems could wipe out their margins. Moreover, they have a lot of political clout. I'm not well informed on the issue but I speculate they are already getting their water subsidized by the taxpayers. They want the cheap water to continue so those costs are going to be socialized.
Limiting population growth seems (to me) likely to happen as public health and incomes improve around the world. Limiting the population to 8.5 billion by 2050 is laughable, though. Projections I've heard are in the 10-11 billion range. So that one ain't gonna happen.
Building reservoirs and the like sounds good until you realize that the places with the fastest-growing populations are also the poorest countries. They don't have the resources. You'll have growing populations under increasing pressure with depressed economies (due to lack of water and other resources). Those are conditions that have historically produced Marxist rebels, drug cartels, and terrorists. Maybe, possibly, international development aid can make a dent in the problem of underdeveloped reservoirs.
Desalination sounds to me like the same deal -- the countries that need it most are the ones who can't afford to build or operate the desalination plants. This does not surprise me: they're poor because they lack water and they lack water because they're poor.
Overall, this was a rather bleak outlook because the gap between what needs to get done, and what is feasible, is so big.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:49PM
Frankly the best option I've seen so far are those water collectors being tested in Africa. Sorry I can't produce a link as my Bing Fu does sucketh but they are really quite amazing, they basically pull moisture from the air and were quite cheap with no moving parts to wear out, looking like this weird wicker contraption. Even in desert areas they were getting something like 25 gallons a day per collector which is certainly easy and cheaper than having to ship water to these pooor villages. Maybe somebody with better search skills can Bing it for me? It was similar to this one [greenafricadirectory.org] only in a spire/tower shape with IIRC clear plastic in the middle and again IIRC they have gotten the cost down to around 5k per unit.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @04:04PM
There are a number of airwell solutions, based on various environmental conditions, but they all depend on a favourable environment and they all can make substantial downstream differences on the environment, depending on scale.
Basically, they all play with relative humidity, ambient temperature and surfaces which gather and concentrate water in some form. If you have a reliable sea fog, that works nicely (as in Namibia's coast, various islands), or if you have high absolute but low relative humidity in the heat of the day but you have cold nights when you can reliably bleed off a lot of heat in a cold environment so as to provide a cold surface for condensation.
Ultimately, rather like wind farms, this sort of water farm can only be packed so densely to work. Beyond a certain level they interfere with each other, reducing yield. Now, 25 gallons might be great for keeping a family supplied, but you'll need a bunch of those for even a small herd of cattle, and you'll need to be a real smartypants about how you handle your water if you want to use it for any kind of plant growth. It'll barely support an ambitious herb garden in an otherwise dry environment, and in the big picture you'd need to be doing seriously efficient greenhouse farming with massive water recycling to get very much in the way of food produced.
But hey, maybe there's a business opportunity in making solar furnaces for glass manufacture for greenhouses for agriculture in arid third world countries, and running a whole series of technical colleges to teach people everything they need to know to actually make it work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @03:49PM
Big farmers make money on volume because they're in a commodity market with razor-thin margins. Yes, a substantial infrastructure cost can absolutely wipe them out - and even the ones who might be able to finance it might not be able to absorb rising unit costs of water. They have political clout mostly because a large farm is essentially economically important, for financial turnover, for food products, for employment. They don't actually command a lot of votes. Their significance lies in the fact that politicians realise that if they are gone, it will create major and painful disruption.
Yes, they do get breaks on the price of access to water. It's part of an explicit policy to boost US agricultural production to ensure national food autonomy, which has also morphed into the option of supporting people outside the country - basically, geopolitics by food. Maybe that should change. But it's important to understand it in context.
I've seen some pretty credible figures based on slowing population growth already observed which pegs it at around 9 billion. 8.5 isn't completely outlandish.
I think one aspect which you're missing is how much thirst and starvation can motivate people. "We cooperate or we die of thirst." It makes a compelling pitch. In fact quite specifically you can build a functional but unsophisticated reservoir with little more than rock, clay and sweat. Many things are possible in the third world - they just aren't necessarily possible with 3D-printed concrete forms built into interlocking hydropower projects complete with extended fish ladders and rotating museum exhibits.
Desalination mostly runs into power restrictions, which is why it's expensive and Saudi Arabia does it so much compared to other countries.
But sure, water, resource wars, general human crappy attitudes, do be on the lookout for those things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @05:14PM
So if the state subsidized the water, why can't it subsidize the water-saving technology? Especially given that afterwards they'll save on water subsidies even if they keep the rate the same.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @06:09PM
Of course the state can.
That doesn't imply that the state should (any more than it should provide subsidies for water use). In fact, it's politically pretty toxic in large areas of urban and suburban settlement, which is where the majority of votes reside.
It's very popular to complain about subsidies going to Big Agriculture, which is going to use GMO Crops to give us all Brain Cancer which makes us susceptible to the Republicrat Orbital Mind Control Lasers. Or something like that. The arguments change every week or so. Sometimes it's about the endangered furry creatures, sometimes it's about toxins in the food supply, sometimes it's about not giving a subsidy to a large corporation, but it hardly matters. Subsidies to agriculture (big or small) are about as popular as herpes.
So the politically more feasible option would be to drop water subsidies and let farmers go bust - of course, then the politicians who did that will be looking for new jobs once the people in the urban and suburban areas wake up to the fact that those policies drove away jobs, drove away money, and made their food more expensive. It's tough to be a locavore in a desert.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:27PM
There should be no grass lawns in Arizona and much of SoCal. Period. Make a rock garden, do a nice zen-style raked sand thing, but if you don't have rain you don't get grass.
You want a grass lawn? Move to a place that has lots of water, like Portland OR.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:32PM
What about artificial turf?
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:57PM
Classy!
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @09:22PM
artificial turf?
You smirk, but a short while back when the city of Santa Ana widened Bristol Street, they replaced the grass with astroturf. [harris-assoc.com]
Go back 4 years and you might remember that guy in Orange County who got in a pissing match with the gov't of the city of Orange when he xeriscaped his front lawn. [google.com]
Eventually, he lost that case.
The let's-use-extravagant-amounts-of-water folks are looking really stupid these day.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:42AM
In my neighbourhood back in the 1970's, some houses had concrete lawns, painted green. Actually looked OK.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:11PM
Oddly enough, there are plants that survive in the arid climates of SoCal and other arid/desert regions. Just do an image search for "arid garden". But you will still have the ignorant Hank Hill types that think a lush, green, well groomed lawn is the hallmark of an American man. Even if they live in the middle of a desert. I live in NY and I still think watering a lawn is a waste of water.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:42PM
I planted a lawn in my area that is drought resistant even though we get a decent amount of rain usually. It grows slowly and I only have to mow every 2-3 weeks. During the last drought in my area I was the only one with a lawn that was not dead. I have not watered it once in 3 years. Though some of my neighbors seem to think dog urine is good for my yard.
I may toss down a bag of fertilizer every other year if I felt it was too yellow last year. This year was the first time I had done it in 4 years.
I picked the same grass they use on golf courses in hotter areas. Its decently tough and is easy to take care of. Some golf courses do waste water. But others try to eke out every dime they can. By planting drought resistant grasses you can have a decent looking lawn and not waste water and money. The only complaint people have of it is 'it turns yellow in the winter'. So what... everything else is brown and I am not mowing when it is cold out.
If you live in a desert though planting any sort of lawn is a really bad idea. You will never get it to grow without using thousands of gallons of water and spending lots of time making it look good.
Nice side effect is the Canadian geese seem to HATE eating it. Meaning no 9000 piles of poop everywhere. Meaning less weeds.
The thing is most of our water usage is agriculture and major businesses. While the rest of us use 10-15%. They are growing our food and building our toys. It takes copious amounts of water to do so.
As to the article they should have got on that in the 80s. Not now. They have seen it coming since the 1940s.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday September 02 2014, @05:56PM
My lawn is very dry and some parts are dead/brown. I have watered it but only 3 or 4 times this year. What variety of grass did you use? Was it a specific brand/type or was it sod?
I really want to eliminate the frequent watering of my lawn because saving water is important to me. I thought of a rain cistern and using a circulator pump but it gets expensive and then if I keep it outside I have to winterize it. The less contraptions I have to build the better.
(Score: 1) by len_harms on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:07AM
It was specifically amazoy zoysiagrass plugs. It costs about 100-200 bucks per 1/4th acre to plant. My father used a hybrid approach of filling in one part of his yard then 5 years later transplanting plugs to other parts of his yard. In my yard I just spread it evenly and waited. The more plugs you get the faster it will fill in.
I started off with a chunk about 1ft x 1/2ft cutting from my fathers yard (so it was free) that he mailed me. It was overgrowth that was growing out into the street. He was just going to toss it in the grass clipping recycling. It has taken over my 1/2 acre in about 8 years. This is my 4th yard doing this. My father unfortunately got a fungus that killed his. It is starting to recover. One of the others is a parking lot the other I havent checked on in years. I also tried something new with this yard. I bought a couple of bags of seed. It is a bit on the pricy side though compared to plugs.
It is a 'runner' grass so if you have flower beds buy deep guards for it and/or be prepared to go at it fairly heavy handed with a trimmer.
Right about now would be the time to plant it. It would start growing decently in april/may. Dont sweat it if it seems dead. Some of the plugs will die. But most will recover in may/june as it turns yellow in the winter and looks like it is dead. It grows about 3-6 inches a year.
Biggest tip is let it go to seed every year. They say it doesnt go to seed but that is not true. It only goes to seed for about 2 weeks in april/may and easy to miss if you mow it too soon. Your first 1-2 years you will not see it. Let it overgrow for about 3 weeks and let the seed mature. Your yard will look like hell but it helps create new plants and it will grow faster. Also make sure you mulch the grass clippings in. As that creates a very nice base which holds rain water and dew. My fathers yard before he stopped mulching had a about 3-4 inches of black dirt and the a heavy weave of grass. That took me 20 years to get just right. It doesnt look that way anymore as he no longer mulches and the sprays he has had to use to kill the fungus.
Make sure you get the PH right or you will end up with clover. You can not spray for clover with the usual broadleaf killers either as many kill runner grasses too. But it is easy to take care of with a bit of 10/10/10 fertilizer. One of the reasons I fertilized this year... You technically should do it twice a year. I try to do it as little as possible as it washes away. Killing weeds is dead easy as they all turn green before the zoysia an old long screw driver and a bit of tugging gets 99% of them. My yard is nearly weed free after 14 years of fighting them except for the strip where everyone thinks dog urine is best for my yard, that I am going to hit with roundup.
It also does not tolerate shade. So if you have shade trees pick something else or trim the trees way up. Also your first couple of years you will still have to water (as you do now). As you are trying to establish it. But you will find after about year 4 or 5 you dont have to water nearly as much. Oh and sharpen your blades once a year. As zoysia is a fairly though grass on blades.
Oh and be prepared for some work. Plugging suuuuucks. Hire someone. It will be the best 100-200 bucks you ever spend. Trust me.
I know I made it sound hard but it is dead easy to take care of. Uses little water (the reason I like it). Bugs and animals do not like eating it (the reason my dad bought it). Grows half the height of the fescue/blue grasses most people buy. You can go 2 weeks without mowing. 3 is pushing it. I usually do not have to mow until mid may and my last mowing is usually mid oct. I do one more mowing in mid nov to mulch up any dead leaves which makes excellent fertilizer. Once established though it is very nice to walk on.
One more thing. If you live in an HOA get them to give you permission first dont assume they will be cool with it. As this stuff is painful to get rid of.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 03 2014, @02:03AM
I agree lawns are mostly a waste of acreage. OK, if you have kids or want to BBQ in your back yard occasionally, it's nicer to have grass than not. When I lived in Japan and spent time in their yards, meaning expanses of sand, it was depressing as hell. But beyond that recreational area, everything ought to be turned over to productive use. My grandparents had a tiny grass lawn and a huge, and I mean huge, garden that fed them year round. They had grown up in the Depression, weathered WWII as young adults, and they took it for granted that you had to always provide for yourself and not trust the "system" to take care of you. Looking around us now, it seems like the fortunes of the general population have not changed all that much. So people who have the space ought to use it for something useful. And if they live in an area that allows keeping livestock, like keeping chickens for eggs or rabbits for meat, they should do that, too.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by schad on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:40PM
We really just need to implement pricing tiers on water consumption and then apply them equally to everybody. It's that last part that's the problem; it would make water very expensive for places like restaurants, and obscenely expensive for farmers. Restaurants would just become more expensive, but farmers would probably leave entirely.
I think the meta-problem is that we Americans want to have our cake and eat it too. We love getting cheap goods from everywhere in the world. But we also love our local producers. We just want our producers to be "competitive in the global market," that is, we want them to be as cheap as everyone else. But that's not always feasible. Our labor and environmental regulations mean that goods manufactured in the US can never be as cheap as those made in China. Our climate means that certain foods can never be grown as easily (and therefore cheaply) in the US as in other regions. Thus we have farmers growing stuff that's really not suitable for the US's climate because they simply can't make money growing anything else. And if you make water, for example, more expensive, you'll just make those crops unprofitable too.
I don't really know what the best solution is. I'm aware of the main options (basically, protectionism or letting those industries vanish from the US) and I find them both unsatisfying. I suppose my hope is that we can sort of muddle along until the "developing" world catches up enough that the "developed" world can actually compete again.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:31PM
This is an insightful remark. I was noticing the same thing about foreign policy the other day. Perhaps it comes from not understanding the issues deeply enough to recognize which is really the lesser evil, so we try to avoid choosing either evil. Perhaps it comes from the inherent difficulty of achieving national consensus on choices that involve substantial sacrifice. Oh wait, I forgot, this is Soylent, I am supposed to demonize politicians, corporations, and the stupid lazy public. It's their fault!
Another way of saying that is that Chinese goods are cheap because we dump all the negative externalities -- pollution, wage slavery -- on China. In the US, we insist on minimizing or offsetting those. Cheap goods are not the only desirable outcome: we also want clean water and good-paying jobs. It is easier to accept the negative externalities when they happen on another continent and we rarely hear about them.
That is what is really meant by comparative advantage [wikipedia.org]. It is not necessarily a bad thing that the US is poor at producing bananas and sugar cane. Instead, think of it as a good thing that we use the land to grow maize and soybeans instead.
The economy is too complex for there to be a single best solution. I am OK with that. The common idea that international trade is a zero-sum game is deeply flawed. It's not only about who has the biggest slice of the market: it's also about the size of the market, which can change -- sometimes quickly.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @05:29PM
You forgot lawyers. And lobbyists.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @02:45AM
I think you're over-doing the tiers. You just need TWO.
First tier: Enough water for ~2X as much as the average (interior) household use, at low prices.
Second tier: MUCH higher prices. More than the cost to develop new sources.
That way, those without the money to burn will just need to shrink their lawn and stay within the lower tier. Those who want to spend the money can have a full lawn, just part of their monthly usage jumping into the higher tier, keeping things reasonable. And those households who are wasting large quantities of water will feel the pinch, but can choose to pay it if they don't want to cut back their usage.
To help people stay in the lower tier, the water company can subsidize ultra-low-flow shower-heads and faucet aerators that'll reduce usage by over half, for next to nothing:
* http://www.amazon.com/Niagara-0.5GPM-Faucet-Aerator-N3205N/dp/B00F6AJ690/ [amazon.com]
* http://www.amazon.com/Niagara-Earth-Massage-1.25GPM-showerhead/dp/B003UQ17O4/ [amazon.com]
It gets a bit more expensive to subsidize, but big water-savings to be had by replacing toilets, too:
* http://www.amazon.com/Niagara-77001WHCO1-Stealth-0.8GPF-Elongated-Toilet/dp/B009MY4K1K/ [amazon.com]
People will be on their own to buy drip lines if they want exterior plants. Those who can't afford it, can just stop watering them and hope the trees are big enough to survive on natural sources.
I think we're overdue for grey water systems here in the US, too. Why not capture the water that goes down the sink and shower drains, filter the suspended-solids out, and then use that to flush toilets? That should come close to halving the water usage inside the home again, for just the cost of a barrel, a float, and a very small electric water pump. Retrofitting a house will cost a bit more than designing new construction for grey water, but it is still possible to do so to varying degrees.
Businesses that use large amounts of water will be paying a modest penalty, but it's so cheap right now that only the most water-intensive business will really feel a hit on their bottom-line, and that might be enough to motivate them to save water in similar ways. Most will be happier with their guaranteed supplies, without having to deal with watering/drought restrictions every few years, as new sources will be developed with the extra cash.
Farmers will take a hit, but not nearly as large as you were proposing. They've been required to reduce their runoff before, so some addition efforts to save themselves water are not unheard of. They might even switch to less water-intensive crops in arid regions when the higher water price makes that economical. Or maybe nearby cities will offer them the output of their storm drains, or fully-treated sewer water, for irrigation, for just the cost to develop the delivery infrastructure.
Actually, big industry like Boeing, Caterpillar, GE, and many others are doing just fine. Manufacturing in the US is still growing. Lots of jobs lost to China are likely to come back, thanks to cheaper and more capable robots, and technologies like 3D printers. The US may have higher cost, but increasing fuel prices make the long distance transportation cost quite a bit, too. We might never get textiles back from the 3rd world, but many industries are fair-game. China's lacking domestic energy resources, and increasing wage demands shift the economics in our favor, too. Their bubble will eventually burst, and the world will look very different. GE figured out that domestic production makes economic sense, too:
http://asq.org/qualitynews/qnt/execute/displaySetup?newsID=14519 [asq.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaganar on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:12PM
I'm originally from Portland, OR, so I loosely keep tabs on how it's doing. If you don't water your lawn in the summer it will generally turn brown. There's been an increasing number of droughts over the last few decades. In the decades I lived there almost every year they advertised for water conservation. Farmers were having enough problems with irrigation shortages to cause some economic problems in the state's agriculture sector.
I'm not sure if Portland is lacking enough water infrastructure to meet demand -- after all, there's water in many relatively clean rivers all year -- or if a practical water solution really isn't available. Either way they're having trouble getting water to the people who want it.
Ideally I'd think watering lawn a luxury. Green grass looks nice. It's an ornament made for the eyes, but it's much less than necessary for our survival. Directly reflecting that through billing would be near impossible, though -- having different rates for watering lawn vs. household use. On the other hand, taking a 50-gallon bath twice a day is generally a luxury, too, as it's expensive and consumes a lot of resources. Maybe we just need more aggressive tiers water cost based on water use.
My family owned an apartment building for quite some time. We switched the entire building from having one water meter to having one per unit. We gave the tenants a grace month so that they could see what their water use would be like when they were billed per their water use. It was interesting to see how water use for some people was easily triple or quadruple that of the median -- and for no obvious reason.
Where I live water costs go down as you use more. Maybe in SoCal and Portland, OR it should be going steeply up as you use more. Or maybe it does already?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @03:55PM
I'm originally from Portland, OR, so I loosely keep tabs on how it's doing. If you don't water your lawn in the summer it will generally turn brown. There's been an increasing number of droughts over the last few decades.
I have a kind of macabre fascination with this website: US Drought Monitor. [unl.edu] It is updated once a week, around thursday. I keep hoping they will make a time-lapse version.
Where I live water costs go down as you use more. Maybe in SoCal and Portland, OR it should be going steeply up as you use more. Or maybe it does already?
For most residential rates in Los Angeles county it does.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday September 02 2014, @09:55PM
We gave the tenants a grace month so that they could see what their water use would be like when they were billed per their water use. It was interesting to see how water use for some people was easily triple or quadruple that of the median -- and for no obvious reason.
I don't have a title for these types of people but there are people who believe that taking two or three showers per day is necessary to stay clean. One in the morning, one in the afternoon after school or work (optional) and always before bed. They even considered a pair of pants or shirt worn only for a few hours to be dirty and put into the hamper. Even if they just put them on, sat in a chair for an hour, didn't sweat a drop and took them off. So they were taking 2-3 showers per day and washing clothes (we allowed them a small machine in their apt if they bought it themselves.) What a wasteful bunch they were.
Me, I take quick bird bath showers using no soap for a day or two and a proper shower after that or on weekends when I go out. My work clothes are a sort of uniform, black slacks and button down shirt. I wear the same shirt and pants all week long without them smelling. I also wear my casual clothes three or four times before it goes into the hamper.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:14PM
Where I live water costs go down as you use more. Maybe in SoCal and Portland, OR it should be going steeply up as you use more. Or maybe it does already?
Not just SoCal... I'm in the North Bay [ca.gov] -- rates here are now steep (they go up every time we have a drought but never go back down afterward), and climb sharply beyond the first tier of usage. There's also a hefty fine for violating conservation rules, like having ANY water drain to the sidewalk as the result of watering your lawn/plants or washing your car, plus cities doing mandatory rationing also charge similarly if the household fails to meet the stated goal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:46PM
There should be no grass lawns in Arizona and much of SoCal.
There should be no farms there either, unless farmers get their water from surface water only. Almost all water goes to farms. (no, this is not sarcasm).
(Score: 1) by richtopia on Tuesday September 02 2014, @04:25PM
When I moved to Phoenix I was floored by how much water people use. Well, water is pretty cheap considering we live in a desert, so why not waste it.
My solution would be to tax water. However I'm sure that would drive industry away from the desert region as water is critical to many processes. And then people would leave because of no work. While these two things accomplish the conserve water aspect, many people would dislike the shrinking local economy/population.
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:04PM
Reducing Water! Scarcity Possible by 2050!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:02PM
"proposing a US$ 7.5 billion emergency water plan"
Pay $5000 to 1.5 million people to move away? While taxing 15 million people $500 until they move away? I like the idea of an auction. Pay $2K for people to move away until that dries up (LOL bad pun), then $3K, then $4K, etc.
If the problem is too many people live there, and its kind of a rathole to live in anyway, move somewhere better?
Its a very big country and only a very small, bad part of it is having a drought. Its not like we have to evac everyone from the west side of the mississippi, I checked the drought monitor page and only half "the west" is under any drought condition at all, and of that, a large fraction is of the order of "our desert usually gets 2 inches but we only got 1 inch this year" which might technically be a drought but doesn't matter in practice. Basically all thats happening is the center of CA is temporarily low on rain and temporarily high on people, and that's about it. Everything else is fine.
Sucks if you bought housing bubble property at the peak in CA, but what else is new?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:52PM
One place to move -- Buffalo, NY is finally starting to come out of the Rust Belt era. The state is investing big money and there is a big medical research campus being built within city limits.
http://www.zillow.com/buffalo-ny/home-values/ [zillow.com]
>> The median list price per square foot in Buffalo is $52, which is lower than the Buffalo Metro average of $99. The median price of homes currently listed in Buffalo is $69,000 while the median price of homes that sold is $98,015.
Note -- Lake Erie water is low cost, usually tastes OK (except some summer algae) and we are not likely to run out...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @11:08PM
Not until New York gets rid of its idiotic firearms legislation.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @11:24PM
That is all.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:00AM
Right... Take them out of the deserts, and send them up north where there's lots of water. They'll need to cut down a few old-growth forests to make room, they'll spend thousands more every year in heating bills, their kids will all develop 5 different lung infections before they turn 10, but hey, they'll have plenty of water!
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Tuesday September 02 2014, @09:33PM
Obligatory xkcd.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Tuesday September 02 2014, @09:36PM
Something ate my link [xkcd.com].
(Score: 1) by Festering Snot on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:21AM
Actually, I kind of like it better without the link...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @09:59PM
Decades ago, the "Army" Corps of Engineers[1] turned the arroyos in the Los Angeles Basin into big concrete ditches.[2]
Whenever there is a downpour, millions of gallons of water go rushing out to the sea.
There is no effort to capture that.
THAT should be high on the list.
Gray water reuse should be a big thing as well.
I typically use a plastic basin and dump the used water outside.
[1] That's the same bunch of geniuses that build the levees in New Orleans.
[2] There are some ongoing efforts to reclaim those as greenbelts/recreation areas.
-- gewg_