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posted by martyb on Sunday June 14 2015, @08:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the …and-hope-for-rain dept.

The State of California took an unprecedented move today [June 14] by uniformly restricting water supplies across the entire state. Farms will be most affected, although food prices aren't anticipated to rise in any hurry: imports from out of state continue apace. It's notable that this is a problem Silicon Valley hasn't been helping to solve.

Will this move force some much-needed modernization upon the infrastructure supporting the state's 38 million residents? Or will things continue to be corn, corn, corn for the time being?


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:50PM (#196255)

    Southern Ca charges more in sewer fees than water use. My typical water district bill is $100, that's $12 for water and the rest is sewer fees and tax.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:56PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:56PM (#196259)

    Even in civilized areas, most costs are like that.

    Pumping in a little chlorine for sanitation and some mind control fluoride (just kidding?) is dirt cheap compared to the Fing around the sewage treatment plant has to go thru before they dump into the river.

    Takes a lot of electricity to run a sewage treatment plant, and labor, too.

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday June 14 2015, @11:16PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Sunday June 14 2015, @11:16PM (#196278)

      some mind control fluoride (just kidding?)

      That's preposterous. Everyone knows that the fluoride is to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids!

      For mind control, they use their liberal agents in Hollywood to sneak communist messaging into children's television programming.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @11:33PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @11:33PM (#196285)

        It's actually there to make people gay and subservient to obummer.

      • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday June 15 2015, @01:14AM

        by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Monday June 15 2015, @01:14AM (#196310)

        For mind control, they use their liberal agents in Hollywood to sneak communist messaging into children's television programming.

        Shit, so that's how I became a Communist then?

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday June 15 2015, @11:46AM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 15 2015, @11:46AM (#196440)

          Do you remember the standup routine this comes from? All I remember of it is the next step is something like "And thats why they contaminated weed with flouride" or something similar. Like most standup its only funny if you're drunk or high.

    • (Score: 2) by RedGreen on Monday June 15 2015, @04:42PM

      by RedGreen (888) on Monday June 15 2015, @04:42PM (#196576)

      "Takes a lot of electricity to run a sewage treatment plant, and labor, too."

      Meh not really depends on the design. We finally got one round here 5-10 years ago it is a multi-pond design that does it naturally with the raw sewage treated for the un-natural products to be removed then once that is done it flows naturally from one pond to the other with the various natural process purifying the water without any other intervention than gravity and the bacteria/plants taking care of the food for them in that. I have driven by it many times there is never anyone around as far as I have seen other than when it was constructed. I would think most of the power involved is the pumping from the lower spots to get it to the high point so it can flow by gravity to the plant which is at lower elevation than most/all of the place where I live since it is just above sea level. All that electric cost was already being spent anyways to get it there to go into the ocean in raw form so other than the cost of the plant itself it was already being spent. Like I say depends on the design chosen.

      --
      "I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
      • (Score: 2) by RedGreen on Monday June 15 2015, @04:49PM

        by RedGreen (888) on Monday June 15 2015, @04:49PM (#196581)

        And I would add since the wind farm is right next to it the electricity that powers it is all natural as well it is a rare day I don't see them turbines moving around here.

        --
        "I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 15 2015, @05:20PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 15 2015, @05:20PM (#196592)

        Hmm I suppose there are two strategies to getting enough O2 in there to keep it aerobic and react everything, one is pump tons of compressed air and use all manner of sprayers and stuff like our city does and the other is to use a really freaking big pond, as obviously an entire great lake's worth of fish poop directly into the great lakes without any real problem. I would imagine it depends on land costs too. And labor costs, something full of pumps takes more labor than a giant pond.

        I have occasionally wondered as a non-navigable river community why they don't put in dams or water wheels to run the sewer plant. There must be some way to optimize the plant energy consumption to match whatever power can be extracted from the river.

        Another interesting idea is can you just dump sewage into a pool all night long and run a sewage plant using nothing other than a huge solar array during the day?

        Finally I wonder how they run the thing in the middle of winter when its -20F without anything freezing up. If the river ever froze, I think they'd be in substantial trouble, but in 40 years I've never heard anything like that.