[HN Gopher] Cities turn to 'extreme' water recycling
___________________________________________________________________
Cities turn to 'extreme' water recycling
Author : CoBE10
Score : 158 points
Date : 2023-06-20 10:05 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| jmyeet wrote:
| Don't let this and other articles fool you: there is absolutely
| no shortage of water in Californian cities. Every year an
| absolute mountain of snow drops on the Rockies and melts in the
| spring. But it gets diverted through an arcane series of water
| rights, grandfathered deals and outright corruption.
|
| Meet the Resnicks [1], who are agricultural billionaires and
| control a huge chunk of California's water supply.
|
| This is why you should get mad whenever you see California invest
| in desalination [2]. Would you ever use desalination to grow
| oranges or almonds or alfalfa? No, it's way too expensive. But
| when you build desalination plants in a place like California
| what you're really doing is further subsidizing inefficient uses
| of water for agriculture when you could totally solve the problem
| by simply growing less water-intensive crops and/or letting some
| arid land, well, stay arid.
|
| [1]: https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-
| du...
|
| [2]: https://water.ca.gov/News/News-
| Releases/2023/April-23/Califo...
| linuxftw wrote:
| For just about any commercial or residential building, the only
| suitable (IMO) use for graywater would be toilets, and it's not
| particularly suitable for toilets with a tank, so that rules out
| just about all residential.
|
| The article also uses the term 'purified' which is non-specific.
| All sorts of things end up in water: soaps, detergents, drain-o,
| medications, you name it. You can't just distill it, some
| chemicals are volatile. You can't just filter it, some
| contaminants will pass through.
|
| On a city-wide scale, it only introduces more problems. Having
| pressurized gray water would require an entire new set of lines,
| and hopefully the people installing them don't accidentally
| connect the lines to the wrong distribution (it will happen
| inevitably).
|
| So yes, it's a feel-good story, but it's nonsense. No way to
| capture the economies of scale, and the water isn't suitable for
| most uses.
| adrr wrote:
| My city has a grey water system that is used for landscaping
| irrigation. We also do toilet to tap and inject treated sewage
| back into the groundwater.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > hopefully the people installing them don't accidentally
| connect the lines to the wrong distribution (it will happen
| inevitably).
|
| They can already make that mistake. And they can do that with
| electricity too. If you employ idiots, there is no way to be
| safe.
|
| > No way to capture the economies of scale
|
| Does this sentence mean anything?
|
| Does a water reservoir "capture economies of scale" in a way
| that purifying wastewater of aan entire city doesnt? Does
| building a giant canal to readistribute water?
| cs702 wrote:
| The full title of the OP is: " _Beyond the Yuck Factor_ : Cities
| Turn to 'Extreme' Water Recycling" (emphasis mine).
|
| I can't help but think of "extreme-recycled" water as a socially
| acceptable version of Soylent Green, produced from liquid instead
| of solid waste.[a]
|
| More seriously, I think recycling waste-water is a _great idea_.
| If we, human beings, continue to change our natural environment
| as rapidly as in the recent past, many prominent climate models
| predict that traditional forms of food and water production will
| likely become untenable due to extreme weather events like
| heatwaves and fires. If those climate models are right, we 'll
| have no choice but to resort to creative forms of recycling to
| provide everyone with enough food and water.
|
| ---
|
| [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
| DarkNova6 wrote:
| I come from a country which specializes in water reprocessing,
| but doing so diligently is an expansive endeavour. Especially
| where private companies are doing this, the incentive is to
| keep costs low and just be above barely-legal (and maybe not
| even that).
|
| There is a myriad of drugs, pesticides and chemicals which are
| known to be inside the water system in the us. Your neighbour
| is depressed? Good for you. You might get some anti-depressants
| yourself (no, the body does not break down drugs completely,
| they are mostly escaping with the wastewater).
|
| But hey, maybe I am just paranoid.
|
| Good watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FccVv5NsIY
| jorvi wrote:
| Currently almost all countries sell water earmarked for
| industrial use at absurdly reduced prices, when compared to
| consumer prices.
|
| Jack up the rate so both pay the same, and introduce a huge
| pollution / cleaning penalty for companies that don't emit
| virtually fully (talking something like 99.999% here) cleaned
| wastewater.
|
| It's slowly happening in Europe, but we're decades to late
| with it. Even in The Netherlands and Belgium we've allowed
| companies to dump a continuous stream of PFAS-production
| polluted water straight into a river. Clown world :)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It gets worse; Microsoft datacenters have been allowed to
| use up huge amounts of drinking water for cooling; it gets
| treated to avoid clogging up the lines, heated up, then
| just dumped back in the river.
|
| It's shameful and wasteful, and our country will run out of
| fresh water in my lifetime; I even heard one that says the
| aquifers will be running out within ten years. And they
| just used it for cooling.
|
| Likewise, there's heavy investments in offshore wind parks,
| but companies like Microsoft just come in (with government
| subsidies) and buy up the whole capacity. It was supposed
| to replace, not supplement, existing power generation
| options.
| chollida1 wrote:
| > It's shameful and wasteful, and our country will run
| out of fresh water in my lifetime; I even heard one that
| says the aquifers will be running out within ten years.
|
| This doesn't seem to track.
|
| They take water out of the river and put the same amount
| back in as its a closed system in a pipe. How can they be
| responsible for lower water levels if they are net zero
| in usage?
|
| Send me a link that backs up your claim that they are
| depleting the water table so I can fix the holes in my
| knowledge
| chromatin wrote:
| > It gets worse; Microsoft datacenters have been allowed
| to use up huge amounts of drinking water for cooling; it
| gets treated to avoid clogging up the lines, heated up,
| then just dumped back in the river.
|
| > It's shameful and wasteful
|
| What you've described does not sound shameful OR
| wasteful?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's not so much fun if you're a fish.
| prottog wrote:
| Not so much fun for a fish, but that's the way the cookie
| crumbles, I suppose. Existence itself carries a cost to
| those around the being that exists; should it be feasible
| for a datacenter and fish to coexist it ought to be done,
| but were I to pick one over the other, I'm afraid the
| fish has to go.
| pjc50 wrote:
| All sorts of things can be tracked through wastewater;
| cocaine use, COVID prevalence, that kind of thing.
|
| As always "if done correctly" carries a bit of an asterisk.
| kossTKR wrote:
| That's interesting and quite worrying isn't it?
|
| Makes sense that with such a huge global pop and increasing
| usage of medicines and pesticides the global water supply
| will eventually turn into a toxic sludge.
|
| Anti depressants have just been found deep underwater in
| Antarctica so it seems all fish are swimming in a soup of
| blood thinners and psycho-active medication.
|
| I wonder when the ocean ecosystem will collapse from this and
| when humans will turn "weird", if they haven't already done
| that. Imagine constantly being medicated with 1000
| medications from the moment you are in the womb.
|
| I hope many of these things are so trace that it's almost
| homeopathic, ie. doesn't have an effect - can anyone confirm
| or deny this?
| DarkNova6 wrote:
| >> I wonder when the ocean ecosystem will collapse from
| this and when humans will turn "weird", if they haven't
| already done that
|
| Indeed. At least in the case of fish it turned out that
| plastic pollution starts to affect the hormonal balance
| males starting from the 3rd generation.
|
| Makes you think about the ever lowering sperm-count in
| males across the board.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Tangentially, there have been numerous studies linking trace
| levels of naturally occurring lithium to lower rates of
| mental health problems and suicide.
|
| Maybe we'll find out that the reduction in violence we've
| seen since the 90s is partially due to SSRIs in the water.
| Might not be helping obesity rates either.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Not really, as far as water is concerned.
|
| One of the less well publicized great advances of the past
| decade is that we have essentially solved desalinization.
|
| Recent advances in the reverse osmosis process mean that
| capital costs for desalinization capacity have been driven low
| enough that they can be economically powered by off-peak
| intermittent power, essentially using reservoirs of fresh water
| as a grid battery of sorts. The cost of solar and wind in the
| places that need fresh water are low enough that this can
| economically replace natural fresh water even in middle-income
| countries.
|
| Large-scale buildouts are ongoing. We will not need "extreme
| water recycling" to provide anyone with sufficient water.
|
| Not that it's a bad idea anyway, because it's good for the
| environment to recycle the other stuff that you pull out of the
| wastewater stream.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I think that's still very power-hungry and only makes sense
| in rich, dry countries like Saudi Arabia. My dream is for the
| weekend to get on board with nuclear desalination (either
| fixed as part of a land-baded power plant or ship-based).
| pjc50 wrote:
| > can be economically powered by off-peak intermittent power,
|
| The problem with anything designed to run "off peak" is that
| you have to pay the capital cost the whole time, even while
| it's not operating.
|
| Do you have some examples you can cite? There's a lot of
| stuff that _can_ be done but isn 't yet at scale.
| the8472 wrote:
| In the end someone has to pay that cost anyway. Overbuild
| your intermittent sources (and then throttle them when
| there's oversupply), invest in baseload power (e.g.
| nuclear), keep using fossil fuels (and pay the
| environmental/health cost), build storage or curb demand
| (the case you mention).
| Ekaros wrote:
| Question really then becomes how much does it cost to over
| provision for 100% or 200%. Allowing to run 12h or 8h for
| the needed daily capacity.
|
| There is certain fixed costs for facility and then adding
| capacity increases on top of that. But question is really
| by how much? 10-50% for 200% or 300% capacity might be
| acceptable if that sum is saved in energy costs.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Normally 200% capacity cost quite close to 200% of the
| capital investment.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not necessarily depending on utilization factor and
| available buffer capacity.
| enkid wrote:
| Do you have a link so I can read more? I haven't heard
| anything about the advances in desalinization.
| Veserv wrote:
| Israel desalination plant profitably offering a fixed price
| of 1.45 NIS per cubic meter. At current exchange rates that
| is around 0.40$ per cubic meter (1000L).
|
| https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/desalination_260520
|
| Freshwater withdrawals in the US (which includes all
| agricultural use including exported crops and animal feed)
| is around 1550 cubic meters per year.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/water-withdrawals-per-
| cap...
|
| So, even if we replaced all freshwater use in the US with
| desalinated water at current prices it would only incur a
| additional cost of ~600$ per capita per year. If our water
| use were more similar to peer countrys such as Germany (410
| m^3), France (475 m^3), Australia (724 m^3), or Japan (640
| m^3) the per capita costs would only be ~150$-250$ per
| year.
| cs702 wrote:
| _> One of the less well publicized great advances of the past
| decade is that we have essentially solved desalinization._
|
| Can you link to any sources backing your claim?
| Y_Y wrote:
| ocean water mostly
| hotpotamus wrote:
| What sorts of advances? Anecdotally, I've developed a bit of
| an interest in hydroponics (the progress of LED lighting
| makes growing niche vegetables indoors interesting to me) and
| I was pricing out RO systems which seemed much cheaper than I
| remember.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Where I live 'hydroponics' + 'LED' + 'niche vegetables' =>
| Marijuana Plantation...
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Dwarf Romaine Lettuce and many other leafy greens,
| Carolina Reapers, Habanadas, and hopefully other capsicum
| varieties if it goes well. Wasabi would be really
| interesting but seems pretty tricky.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Wasabi would be quite an achievement, if you manage that
| you should definitely post it!
| prottog wrote:
| The Clarkson's Farm bit on growing wasabi was funny. It
| did make it sound like a very finicky plant to grow.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Admittedly I've never heard "niche vegetables" before,
| though I'm willing to bet that yeah, they ain't _just_
| growing some carrots.
| DrThunder wrote:
| Shouldn't the climate aware thing be to move people out of these
| cities that have no business being in area that's so water
| scarce?
|
| It irks me that all of these climate initiatives involve forcing
| people to buy expensive EV's, solare panels, give up this/ give
| up that. But, when it comes to the elitists in SF the solution is
| to just do whatever it takes to allow them to live in a dried up
| state that has scarce water resources.
|
| No, you can move. Time to practice what you preach.
| hosh wrote:
| I don't know why this author frames it this way.
|
| Recycling greywater is an old technology. People in Tuscon
| pioneered municipal laws to allow this, which then spread across
| Arizona.
|
| Blackwater treatment comes in many forms -- your septic tank with
| a leach field is an example.
|
| The Earthship folks out in Taos, NM have designs that recycles
| residential water at least five times for years.
|
| There are permaculture sites that have been doing this, and
| advocating for this for years.
|
| There are commercial sites recycling greywater here in Arizona. A
| major outlet mall here in Phoenix. Intel's fab in metro Phoenix
| (there's even a slide deck!). The new TSMC fab in Phoenix will
| use similar methods.
|
| It's not as if a startup invented all of this. These can all be
| accomplished with fairly low tech. It isn't even an "extreme"
| decentralization. If people want to get into "extreme"
| decentralization, there are also: onsite composting, onsite food
| production (such as perennial food forests), integrated pest
| management, etc.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yeah, it's very strange framing of what are actually fairly
| mundane, non-extreme techniques.
| hosh wrote:
| I can only speculate that there are still just enough startup
| techies in San Francisco to keep the echo chamber going.
| Maybe it helps with getting VC funding?
| majormajor wrote:
| "When Dallas flushes the toilet, Houston opens the tap."
|
| I've heard snarky sayings like that for decades. Yeah, old
| news.
|
| But some older US cities that wore historically a lot more
| wasteful never really paid attention, and now think it's new.
|
| https://www.khou.com/article/news/houston-will-be-drinking-d...
| syngrog66 wrote:
| in broadstrokes, we need agriculture, and to eat, drink and wash
| our bodies and clothing
|
| we dont need green lawns, golf courses, swimming pools and car
| washes. we have lots of "low hanging fruit" if desired to
| drastically reduce watwr use in the coming years
| prottog wrote:
| > we dont need green lawns, golf courses, swimming pools and
| car washes.
|
| Sure, we don't "need" anything nice. But few people want to
| live at a subsistence farming level.
|
| San Francisco (about which the article was written) averages
| over 20" of rain a year, and with its mild climate, lawns and
| golf courses shouldn't be a problem.
|
| We need agriculture, yes, but we don't need it to be in the
| places that it is in at the moment. 30% of all lettuce grown in
| the US is from Yuma County, AZ[0], which gets low single-digits
| inches of rain a year. It's farcical, but on its own it
| wouldn't be a problem as long as the water they do get is from
| a sustainable source (i.e. not tapping into aquifers that take
| millennia to fill). It would be much better to grow thirsty
| crops like that east of the Mississippi, where precipitation is
| plentiful.
|
| [0]: https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/blog/post/?id=2699
| freedude wrote:
| "We need agriculture, yes, but we don't need it to be in the
| places that it is in at the moment."
|
| Have you moved to these locations and grown lettuce? Are you
| speaking from experience? If not, I can assure you the
| climate is significantly different East of the Mississippi
| than it is in Yuma. Because of this the growing methods and
| associated costs dramatically change the profit margins,
| which are already very slim. i.e. it becomes unprofitable
| very quickly because "green" energy has increased overall
| energy costs.
| dghughes wrote:
| >Eventually it's hoped that buildings will be completely self-
| sufficient, or "water neutral," using the same water over and
| over, potable and nonpotable, in a closed loop.
|
| I can't see that working have they not heard of evaporation? It
| would work but need a top up. It's a good idea to save water but
| it may need some fine-tuning for technical reasons and for
| acceptance by people.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| It also rains every now and then.
| hinkley wrote:
| Sometimes not for months.
| fredrikholm wrote:
| Even more reason not to pipe the little water we have right
| into the ocean.
| hinkley wrote:
| It's not drinking water though. Or at least not ours.
|
| It's "Dilution is the solution to pollution." We are
| dumping borderline water and hoping the people downstream
| don't sue because it's X% of the flow.
| baud147258 wrote:
| Maybe that'd be an easier goal to achieve with some form of dry
| toilets
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Fwiw, urine is a natural fertilizer. Yet we piss it away,
| literally. And as far as I know, human waste and animal (i.e.,
| dog) waste are compostable; as is coffee grains, and other
| kitchen scraps.
|
| Such plenty and availability could be an advantage for urban
| farming. Perhaps every many-story building could devote a floor
| or two to such "recycling"? Given how much excess commercial
| space there is it's not that crazy of an idea. That is the floors
| for recycling would find a place in the market's excess.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Milwaukee harvests sewage sludge into Milorganite fertilizer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite
| yardie wrote:
| Urine is full of phosphates that are good for plants. Up to a
| point my neighborhood has a lot of dead trees and bushes from
| dog walkers burning (chemically) them.
|
| Human and animal waste is compostable but only at industrial
| scale. They have to brought to a high temperature to kill
| bacteria and then aerobic bacteria has to be introduced to
| begin the process. This is not something your backyard
| composter can do. It's why only allow pant matter. Composting
| animal waste is so much harder.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I have a "hotbin" composter that maintains around 60c and
| have had success composting animal manure for decorative
| plants. However, I wouldn't use it for the vegetable garden,
| personally.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Aren't there toilets that turn human waste into compost?
| Isn't that the ideal goal of the Gates' Foundation challenge?
| stOneskull wrote:
| yeah, straw in a container under the toilet works. the
| straw absorbs it up. then you can use it on fruit trees.
|
| humanure.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| there is a reason it is a 'challenge'. they'll kind of do
| that, but not without specialized treatments, lots of dirt,
| and lots of worms. and those critters may not work in all
| climates.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I was looking into composting toilets for a while when I
| was day dreaming about a camper van build. Based on what I
| saw, the systems which use peat moss are very effective at
| composting human waste and virtually eliminating all the
| smells. The key to these systems is to separate solid
| matter from the liquid which is where the "sewage" smells
| tends to come from. A number of the systems I looked at
| used urine diversion to keep the solids more dry and speed
| up composting.
| mahogany wrote:
| > Human and animal waste is compostable but only at
| industrial scale.
|
| Not true! Plenty of people use composting toilets, for
| example people without plumbing (e.g. off grid houses) or
| homesteaders that embrace a re-use philosophy. You can do it
| at home - it's not that hard and it doesn't even smell if
| done right. Completely safe to use for trees and decorative
| plants if you keep it separate, but some people mix all their
| compost together and use it for everything. (If you want do
| the latter, you should probably read a little bit of compost
| literature first.)
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Phosphates are already won and reused from grey water in The
| Netherlands: https://www.nieuweoogst.nl/nieuws/2021/02/24/ruim-
| baan-voor-...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I know our wastewater is processed; I'm sure they extract the
| useful parts of the sewage already, else it'd be a waste of
| good resources.
| meindnoch wrote:
| _imagine the smell_
| vincnetas wrote:
| There are more stinky chemical processes that our industry
| does, this does not mean that you have to go and smell them.
| I see no problem here if the smell is properly contained.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| The only thing that irks me about water recycling is the
| seemingly discriminatory nature of the implementation. This is
| only from my experience in my area of Southern California where
| it's been talked about for years, and implemented in certain
| areas. Those implemented areas have consistently been lower-
| income, which never made sense to me. I would think the higher-
| income areas use more water because of lush landscaping (any view
| of zip codes on Google Earth will show this) and swimming pools
| (or other recreational use). Also, any changes (like re-piping or
| whatever) is probably easier in higher-income areas, as the
| neighborhoods tend to be newer, with more room for construction
| work.
|
| It just feels discriminatory, like, "Let the poors have the dirty
| water."
| hanniabu wrote:
| I wouldn't trust the US to recycle water. I don't even trust the
| water as it is. The country is too profit-driven, too quick to
| loosen regulation, and too bad at enforcing regulation.
|
| People pour all types of chemicals down the
| drain....pharmaceuticals, solvents, paint, oil, and whatever
| other liquid they have to dispose. There's no way that's cost
| efficient to properly filter out and certain things there's no
| safe levels so even trace amounts shouldn't be allowed.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Does water recycling accentuate issues with stuff like
| concentrating PFAS, microplastics etc?
|
| I guess it depends on how thorough the filtration is, whether
| reverse osmosis is used.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| they detect microplastics in the rain; they evaporate.
|
| recycling won't do much to help remote or add, it's already
| there
| hanniabu wrote:
| detectable does not mean containing the same concentration
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| Bangalore does this and more. We pump our sewage, after secondary
| treatment, to nearby towns' lakes which are parched. Farmers, in
| that region, love this water as it is full of organic material
| which is great for farming. LOL! Of course, there can be issues
| like heavy metals etc which we do not care about at all!
|
| Read about this here: https://www.newindianexpress.com/good-
| news/2022/jun/05/how-k... and
| https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-infrastructure/u...
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| _In 2015, San Francisco required all new buildings of more than
| 100,000 square feet to have on-site recycling systems._
|
| That is great news for all the ISO certified labs out there that
| need to perform the daily water quality checks.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Where I love there is a fresh water lake where we get our water
| from and the sewer is cleaned and put back into it.
|
| I want some kind of "time buffer" and mass buffer between sewer
| and drinking if it happens to malfunction abit ...
| lucidguppy wrote:
| This stuff is good - but it's penny wise.
|
| Agriculture is outright wasteful of water. California agriculture
| consumes 80% of the state's water.
|
| https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agric...
|
| Its an environmental equivalent of Amdahl's law - spending so
| much effort to make a small portion of the water use efficient
| when we can work far less to make agriculture more efficient. Of
| course its all because of lobbying.
| abeppu wrote:
| ... should we pump treated graywater out of cities to be used
| in agriculture, so agriculture's footprint of "first use" water
| decreases, and then actively encourage residential use to
| generate more gray water?
|
| "Better go take a 30 minute shower so I can justify that
| almond-milk beverage I had yesterday!"
| mc32 wrote:
| You need to ensure no noticeable amounts of pathogens remain
| else they'll be present in sme of the crops which then sicken
| people who eat them.
| abeppu wrote:
| Apparently reusing waste water for agriculture already a
| thing, but there are standards about the average
| concentration of coliform bacteria per unit volume for
| different classes of reused water, and for multiple classes
| the standard matches one used for drinking water (2.2
| MPN/100mL).
|
| https://www.epa.gov/waterreuse/california-treated-
| municipal-...
| silverlake wrote:
| Here's a nice chart showing water usage of the Colorado River.
| 55% to grow crops to feed livestock. Only 12% for residential
| use. There is no water crisis. Water is mispriced and,
| therefore, poorly allocated.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/22/climate/color...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >There is no water crisis. Water is mispriced and, therefore,
| poorly allocated.
|
| The reality is slightly different than this. Water has
| already been allocated. The current price to reallocate is
| high, and residential users don't want to pay to purchase
| more allocation from a current owners.
| viraptor wrote:
| This seems to imply a choice is being made between one or the
| other. These are systems used in major cities. Agriculture can
| be handled concurrently in other places.
| freedude wrote:
| Yes, they have setup a false dichotomy in their arguments and
| have limited themselves to only two options. It is a real
| problem with most discussions today.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| why not just allow the price of water to accurately be
| reflected in the prices that farmers pay for water? if they
| paid more for water, they'd use it more wisely and more
| varieties would get planted that use less water, more efficient
| irrgation would become financially viable. you can't expect
| farmers to take financial losses by saving water. however, if
| you make it in their financial intereset to save water, it'll
| automatically get done.
| colechristensen wrote:
| No there are some farmers that essentially need to just go
| out of business because their profit comes exclusively from
| badly priced water.
|
| There are a lot of big reforms that need to happen, but
| they're big, often involving several states, international
| treaties, and long standing expectations.
|
| It's not a "why don't you just" situation but a complex
| system of varied interests that have to renegotiate.
|
| The core problem is that people, voters, need to understand
| the complexities. "Saving water is good, let's do that" is
| hard enough to agree on right now... balancing the needs of
| many is very very difficult with a poorly informed and
| motivated electorate.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Fun story. When driving through the agricultural valley between
| SF and LA, you used to see giant billboards on endless
| oarchards saying "Stop the DEMOCRAT drought" or "Stop the
| POLITICIAN CAUSED drought" both with the slogan "Is growing
| FOOD a WASTE of WATER?" Like, did people buy that?
|
| It's not a waste, but it's also not your food, it's sold for
| profit. Farms in CA literally ship water out of the state in
| calorie form for profit. I'm glad they do, living in MN, but I
| hope they can sustain it.
| freedude wrote:
| That profit pays for your infrastructure in CA. All of the
| trucking road taxes paves your roads, builds bridges, etc...
| spaced-out wrote:
| No it doesn't, agriculture makes up less than 3% of
| California's economy and is heavily subsidized (read -
| money is taken from other industries are given to farmers
| by the government). It's tech companies, tourism, and the
| entertainment industry that pay for most of the
| infrastructure in California.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I'm sure it does bring money, that's kind of the point of
| profit and taxes, but I think they are saying the drought
| is caused by government as a way to (I suppose) innoculate
| the locals and workers against water related regulations
| which would reduce their profits.
|
| Or maybe they believe it, who knows.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I'm not glad California is exporting alfalfa or almonds.
| They're just wasting water on crops that should be grown
| elsewhere.
|
| Many other things _should_ be grown in California, but you
| know, be smart about it.
| hparadiz wrote:
| Or we could build more reservoirs and not even worry about
| water usage at a fraction of the cost.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Not your cusecs, not your calories (or does carbs work
| better?)
| CobaltFire wrote:
| You still do. I live there and the signs are everywhere, and
| in completely bad faith. The corps putting the signs up
| (those are all corp farms) know exactly what they are doing.
| hosh wrote:
| There are a lot of patterns similar to this idea of recycling
| water that is usable for agriculture.
|
| The main thing with agriculture is managing ground water onsite
| with rainwater harvesting. By that, I specifically do not mean
| holding it in tanks. I'm talking about things like on-contour
| swales to slow down water so some of it recharges groundwater,
| or use of percolation ponds upland from the crop area.
|
| These work in arid climates. You have to use a different set of
| patterns for wet places that can receive too much water. Many
| of the patterns can be found in how beavers instinctually
| manage water.
| murderberry wrote:
| It's pretty complex, though. If a farmer pumps water out of the
| aquifer directly underneath, irrigates crops, and most of the
| water (minus evaporation and crop biomass) is returned to the
| aquifer in a matter of days... is it fair to say the farmer
| wasted it? Modern irrigation systems easily have an efficiency
| of 80-90%.
|
| Some irrigated farms in the Central Valley will be withdrawing
| from aqueducts, but part of the reason why the valley is dry is
| because we built these aqueducts, harming agricultural land for
| the benefit of SoCal cities, with the promise that the farmers
| would be able to use that water. So not sure it's fair for us
| to claim the moral high ground.
|
| Much of the California water crisis is manufactured too.
| There's no shortage of freshwater for the foreseeable future,
| but we're not building new dams, aqueducts, etc, essentially
| relying on the infrastructure built in the 1960s and before,
| for a population only fraction of what we have right now.
| Climate change plays a role, but the bulk of the pain is self-
| inflicted and has little to do with growing rice or watering
| our lawns.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _and most of the water (minus evaporation and crop biomass)
| is returned to the aquifer in a matter of days..._
|
| Citation needed.
|
| Counter-citation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence
| gregw134 wrote:
| California grows 550k acres of rice, which is very water
| intensive:
|
| https://rice.ucanr.edu/About_California_Rice/
| briffle wrote:
| A few years ago [0], 60k homes in sacremento, the states
| capital, still had no water meters.
|
| Its only been 2 years since they started actually controlling
| the pumping of groundwater, and that fight took well over a
| decade. [1]
|
| [0] https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article4215302.html
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019483661/without-enough-
| wat...
| majormajor wrote:
| I linked this in another subthread but I think it's worth
| reposting here because "penny wise" is an extreme disservice.
| "Blame someone else" by itself is unlikely to solve problems
| quickly, and there's time-proven alternatives too.
|
| Also I don't want to know how much we'd have to spend to buy
| out even a quarter of the farms in the Central Valley.
|
| https://www.khou.com/article/news/houston-will-be-drinking-d...
|
| "We re handling right now about 135-140 million gallons [of raw
| sewage] per day, said Bill Tatum, manager of TRA Central
| Regional Wastewater System."
|
| "This city needs almost a half billion gallons of water a day
| during the peak usage of the summer months, said Alvin Wright,
| spokesman for the City of Houston Public Works and Engineering
| Department."
|
| That's a pretty big dent in the overall demand - though,
| amusingly, somewhat at risk because the cities in north Texas
| are going to start using more of their own sewage themselves.
|
| Between things like this and capturing more storm runoff
| there's a ton for California cities to do to make them _less
| dependent_ on other geographical areas and phenomenons beyond
| just "make people farm less." And especially if the climate
| patterns shift, closing the loop is just as important as
| getting rid of upstream consumers.
|
| Water's a reusable resource, why are we still in the habit of
| polluting it and not cleaning up after ourselves?
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| I think Israel does a really good job of maximally water
| efficient agriculture. There's a lot of practical techniques we
| could learn from them.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| This is such a wasted opportunity, not just for the US, but
| across the Middle East. I guess Jordan is availing themselves
| to some degree, though, but it's also out of necessity, due
| to the refugees living there.
|
| My understanding is that prior to the Iranian revolution,
| there were Israeli experts working in Iran on drip irrigation
| methods. Of course, they had to get out pretty quickly.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Yeah, but at least agriculture provides some value. About 10%
| of California water is consumed to water landscaping, a total
| waste and loss. Every part of the state has native plants that
| are beautiful, and perfectly suited as water-free landscaping.
|
| The most egregious examples are the desert areas that are made
| to look "tropical." Many of the desert cities require water
| waste by law- you can be fined for, e.g. not having a bright
| green lawn. Many of the residents don't even know they live in
| a desert. It seems crazy to talk about limiting water to
| agriculture when this is still going on.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It has been said before and it can be said again. The
| fundamental problem is that agricultural users own much of the
| water.
|
| Urban areas, faced with the choice between purchasing those
| rights to increase their allocation, or spending on increasing
| urban efficiency, have largely chosen the latter because it is
| cheaper.
| Vvector wrote:
| It's cheaper for Farmers to lobby the politicians than to
| convert to drip irrigation.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the way forward includes amplifying positive improvements -
| my understanding here in California is that many farms of
| varying descriptions absolutely did move to drip irrigation,
| and continue to do so in large numbers
| whazor wrote:
| Agriculture in the current state is wasteful of water, but it
| doesn't have to be that way. Ban or limit fertilizer and make
| the farmers use real nature that can store rain water much
| better.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| This is a place where government needs to step in for this to
| work. They need to pay farmers rebates for doing this stuff:
| storing water in the landscape, recharging aquifers, limiting
| fertilizer discharge (pollution), improving soil quality,
| limiting erosion.
|
| There's no individual incentive to do those things, at least
| on a year-to-year basis which is how people make decisions.
| You think about this year, within the boundaries of your own
| property.
|
| But the benefits are largely for the region, not the
| individual.
|
| So, it need to be done by government, or it won't be done at
| all (at scale).
|
| Of course some small individual farms will do (and are doing)
| it on principle because it's the right thing to do. But we
| can't rely on ethics to drive behavior at the economic level.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Absolutely true. Without agriculture, there would be plenty of
| water for residential uses. Of course without agriculture we'd
| all starve to death, so banning farming is no solution.
|
| But one thing we can and should do immediately is stop
| (effectively) exporting huge amounts of water from Arizona to
| Saudi Arabia for free. That's very low-hanging fruit.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizon...
| tcfhgj wrote:
| One could also move to a plant based diet, saves the majority
| of agriculture
| myshpa wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
|
| If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce
| global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares
| scruple wrote:
| Of course, but also literally no one would starve to death if
| we stopped growing Almonds in the Central Valley.
| rasz wrote:
| Can you recommend some recipes for alfalfa? Im fine with nuts
| so feel free to throw some almonds into the mix.
| tnel77 wrote:
| I don't think anyone wants to outright ban farming in these
| drier states. I think most people are looking to reduce water
| consumption by eliminating the production of water hungry
| crops. Surely there are crops that can be grow in dry
| climates that use less water than almonds.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Somehow I am not entirely certain that we would all starve
| without some of the water intensive agricultural staples in
| US ( corn, almonds come to mind ). I do agree with SA point.
| myshpa wrote:
| Just 13% of corn is consumed by people. Most of it is used
| as animal feed.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| An interesting question. Used to be Iowa produced enough
| corn to feed two United States (if we were content to eat
| only corn). Probably overkill.
|
| Corn has commercial uses too. In fact it's largely used for
| that - sugar, starch, protein, roughage are used in all
| sorts of processes. Touch nearly anything near you right
| now, corn was involved in it's manufacture.
|
| Hard to say what impact cutting back on corn would have. A
| big one.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| 1.4% of the 97MM~ acres of corn planted go to human
| consumption (figures a few years old). Big fractions go
| to biofuel and animal feed, a slightly smaller fraction
| to industrial feedstocks.
|
| Edit: in the US
| wincy wrote:
| Are they growing corn in places that have water problems?
| I thought corn was largely grown in places that don't
| need much irrigation, or at least isn't having problems
| with its water table.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| True. Here in Iowa we water our corn like god intended -
| the water falls from the sky.
| conradev wrote:
| The US government currently pays farmers to grow some
| corn for fuel, as well.
|
| One fun factor is that corn is drought sensitive (esp
| during certain stages of growth) and only about a fifth
| of our corn is irrigated or something like that. As
| climate change heats up, we may experience more crop
| loss.
| Kalium wrote:
| > Of course without agriculture we'd all starve to death, so
| banning farming is no solution.
|
| You're absolutely right.
|
| Yet, much like the "No Farms No Food" bumper-sticker slogan,
| there's some rhetorical sleight of hand going on here. Those
| stickers are correct in a general sense, but the slogan is
| rarely deployed in a general sense. It's generally used to
| defend uneconomical farming in environmentally questionable
| places.
|
| Similarly, you're completely correct in every single way that
| we need agriculture and banning it is not a solution.
| However, there's perhaps a substantial difference between
| banning all agriculture everywhere and matching the
| agriculture in a location to the resources available to
| support it. If there's inadequate water or sun to grow crops
| that need lots of both, perhaps that location is not the best
| for those crops.
|
| Agriculture is essential for human survival. It's possible
| that growing almonds in areas with sharply limited and poorly
| managed water is less than essential for human survival.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Isn't this a trivial economic problem? Efficient allocation
| of scarce resources is one of the strengths of capitalism.
| If almond farming isn't viable in California due to water
| being scarce they should naturally just get priced out of
| the market, right? Why isn't this problem solving itself?
| omegaworks wrote:
| >If there's inadequate water or sun to grow crops that need
| lots of both, perhaps that location is not the best for
| those crops.
|
| "omg lets just move the farms to where the water is"
|
| like you're not talking about growing plants rooted in the
| literal ground, some that must be cultivated over multiple
| years to yield quality product.
|
| like we're not all going to be chasing water on a hotter
| planet with a chaotic climate.
| bequanna wrote:
| Contrary to what the alarmists are saying, the world's
| breadbaskets aren't going to turn into barren Mad Max
| hellscapes in the next decade.
|
| In fact, if warming occurs, the US and Canada stand to
| net gain arable land and have increased growing seasons.
|
| Of course the counter to that will always be "... but
| we're going to have like SO much climate chaos!" which
| has become the perfect scary, vague and ultimately
| unprovable argument.
| omegaworks wrote:
| We're already seeing climate-related migration, loss and
| disaster. These things are quantifiable in dollars and
| lives.
|
| That certain regions are expected to "win" does not fully
| grasp the impact on our overall economic stability, the
| systems that keep necessities like food cheap and
| accessible. Whether you like it or not, the food market
| is global[1].
|
| "Climate chaos" is not hyperbole.
|
| 1. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/global-wheat-
| prices-jump-...
| bequanna wrote:
| Where exactly is this "climate-related migration, loss
| and disaster" happening?
|
| Calling a flood, hurricane or even several years long
| drought a "climate related disaster" doesn't count. These
| events have occurred since time immemorial.
|
| Every weather measurement deviation from average is not
| some "disaster" that can be blamed on evil corporations
| and people driving SUVs.
| Kalium wrote:
| Does it sound silly if I say things like "Maybe let's not
| grow rice in Texas using water from the Colorado"? Or
| maybe "Hey, let's emphasize the farms where the water
| already is instead of ones where the water isn't"?
|
| I'm talking about _businesses_ , yes. Many of which will,
| as you say, need multiple years to start up elsewhere. I
| freely and readily acknowledge that this will probably be
| a difficult process for those businesses. Fortunately,
| food supply chains are now globe-spanning and de-
| emphasizing agriculture in drought-prone parts of the US
| is very unlikely to result in food shortages, much less
| famine.
|
| We could start more gently by having them pay a fair
| price for the natural resources they require and are thus
| not available for everything else that needs water.
| omegaworks wrote:
| It's precisely the costs of moving those food supply
| chains that is at hand here. Our entire system of private
| landownership and water rights assigns value to a plot
| and enables investment. To minimize or dismiss these as
| irrelevant undermines the foundations those industries
| are built upon.
|
| If anything, the last few years have shed light on is
| just how fragile global supply chains are. The war in
| Ukraine has impacted wheat prices globally.
|
| > de-emphasizing agriculture in drought-prone parts of
| the US is very unlikely to result in food shortages, much
| less famine
|
| There's a reason food security is considered a national
| security issue[1].
|
| 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/202
| 2/10/1...
| singleshot_ wrote:
| One amazing thing about America is that there's a ton of
| resistance to the government coordinating where certain
| things should be grown (e.g. grandparent poster) but an
| extremely high tolerance for the government coordinating
| where certain things should be grown (e.g. crop
| subsidies) even though I just said the same thing twice.
| It's all in the framing, I guess.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| nielsbot wrote:
| I've heard almonds need a lot of water, but I think the
| biggest culprit is exported alfalfa.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorad
| o...
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I'd be a lot more sympathetic if California was growing
| Pecans rather than almonds.
|
| Almonds simply aren't good.
| mcdonje wrote:
| The article says only 20% of that alfalfa is exported.
| So, the biggest culprit would be alfalfa used
| domestically.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I've heard that about almonds, too (that they consume A
| LOT of water), and even worse: California farms pivoted
| to growing almonds, not because they're essential food,
| but because they sell a lot in China, and they're highly
| profitable. Furthermore, California farms have used the
| drought as an excuse to raise prices on almonds (that
| they ship to the Chinese market) and increase profits
| even more, even though their price of water hasn't
| changed. This has created a circle of increased water
| consumption, driven by profits, not the desire to feed
| the people.
|
| I'm definitely not an expert here. Please correct me if
| this is all BS.
| myshpa wrote:
| > not because they're essential food
|
| They are essential, ask any vegan :)
|
| > but because they sell a lot in China
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almonds_in_California
|
| "Farmers exported $4.5 billion worth to foreign countries
| in 2016, about 22% of the state's total agricultural
| exports. The majority of these exports went to the
| European Union [37%], China [8%] and India [15%]. While
| the EU is the largest consumer, the latter two countries
| are expanding markets ...". Canada, Japan and UAE have 6%
| each.
|
| > created a circle of increased water consumption
|
| https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-
| river-wa...
|
| 1_049_555 million gallons ... beef, dairy
|
| __125_218 million_gallons ... soy, rice, almonds,
| potatoes
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/color
| ado...
|
| "Agriculture - mainly alfalfa - consumes 80% of the
| Colorado River's dwindling water supply ... One out of
| every three farmed acres in the valley is dedicated to
| growing alfalfa ... used as food for livestock."
|
| "In 2021, nearly 20% of alfalfa produced in the west was
| shipped abroad."
|
| https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-
| river-wa...
|
| "The Colorado River is going dry ... to feed cows."
|
| "That means altering the demand side of the water supply-
| demand equation and shifting diets globally to foods that
| use less H2O, which ultimately means less meat and dairy,
| as well as fewer water-intensive tree nuts like almonds,
| pistachios, and cashews (nut milks, however, require much
| less water to produce than cow's milk)."
|
| https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/the-other-side-
| of-...
|
| "1 kilogram of almonds produces less than 1 kilogram of
| carbon emissions. (For comparison, the Environmental
| Working Group estimated that beef causes more than 20
| kilograms of CO2-eq emissions, cheese more than 10, and
| beans and vegetables around 2.)"
|
| https://foodrevolution.org/blog/almonds-sustainability/
|
| The authors compared the nutrition content of 42
| different California food crops. They also ranked the
| economic value of 44 food crops. They concluded that for
| the water needed to produce them, almonds ranked among
| the most valuable foods grown in California for their
| dietary and economic benefits.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/environmental-
| footprint-m...
|
| Cow milk is still 2x more water intensive than almods,
| needs 16x more land, produces 4x more CO2 and 6x more
| euthropication.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Interesting lack of discussion around animal agriculture
| in these comments. Closest convo we get is about alfalfa
| for horse food.
|
| Hmm, wouldn't want to address the elephant in the room
| though.
| jarebear6expepj wrote:
| Luckily horses do not _need_ alfalfa. Farmers love
| growing alfalfa because if you give it sun and water in
| the right setting you can get damn near 14 cuts off a
| field of it in one year. This by comparison puts a grass
| hay field or even a nice neutral horse feed, Timothy
| grass, to shame. Alfalfa is a nutrient dense power bar
| that is given to horses kept in boxes. I would argue a
| happy horse would have a range of grassland to graze on,
| vs compressed cubes or squares of dense, sugary alfalfa
| that is replacing a normal ration.
|
| tldr: alfalfa is an unnatural food for unnaturally kept
| horses
|
| source: have horses on range land.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Agreed. We have several packs of wild horses near where I
| live in the mountains of New Mexico--so many that some
| people find them a nuisance. They thrive quite nicely on
| whatever they can find, and they certainly don't find
| alfalfa.
|
| (Aside: Anybody who wants free horses to break (not to
| turn into dog food), let me know.)
| hosh wrote:
| First, feed lots are a blight. Feed lots are not the only
| way to raise livestock.
|
| Second, there is very much a way to manage water while
| ranching -- the main thing is to have the herds help you
| maintain healthy soil (which retains and regulates
| surface water), rather than destroying it like in feed
| lots. You make sure you can move them to a different
| section of the land.
|
| Third, livestock and crops can co-exist onsite, and there
| are mutually beneficial processes between the two. Most
| farmers and ranchers do one or the other. Combined with
| notill and letting limited grazing on fallow land, what
| would be toxic runoffs from manure turns into adding
| fertilizer back into fallow lands.
|
| Fourth, price of meat should reflect the added cost.
| People keep using feedlots because they want meat
| factories and cheap meat.
|
| Solutions already exist.
| slt2021 wrote:
| this solution is not scalable for "high density" animal
| farms. Which makes it economically infeasible.
| hosh wrote:
| The "high density" animal farms are the feed lots I was
| talking about, the very ones I'm calling a blight. I also
| address this in my fourth point -- price of meat would
| need to reflect not using feed lots.
|
| It's only not a solution because people want cheap meat.
| And just to be clear, I'm not advocating for all plant-
| based, vegan diet or using vat-grown meat. I think a
| clearer assessment of what we actually need to thrive,
| nutritionally speaking, would be of benefit.
| slt2021 wrote:
| You are referring to Grass-fed premium meat?
|
| This is already available only to rich people at gourmet
| grocery shops for $13/lb for ground beef, and $30 for 12
| oz for a steak
|
| If you are advocating to remove the cheaper options of
| meat, and leaving only grass-fed and premium meats
| available on the market - I am not sure this is a good
| approach.
|
| This is very elitist approach that could come from
| coastal elite only
| hosh wrote:
| No, I am not referring to grass-fed premium meat. The
| kind of ranching practice I am thinking of goes beyond
| just raising cows in a pasture.
|
| I also don't live on the coast. I'm not sure where you
| got that idea from. I don't know if you can call me an
| elite.
|
| A friend of mine looking into the Carnivore Diet plans
| out hunting trips, where taking down big game, plus some
| smaller game and a share in livestock (such as chickens)
| would feed the whole family for a year.
|
| He's using the protein for fitness and bodybuilding. And
| yes, he can totally afford taking time off and having the
| fitness, skill, and equipment to hunt. There is a
| virtuous cycle where fitness enables the physical
| capability to go hunt, which feeds back to fitness.
| That's not a lifestyle that is accessible to everyone,
| either by personal interest or capital to get started.
|
| But, the unanswered question is still: how much meat does
| a family really need? There's been a meat inflation going
| on since the 80s. We don't really think about the
| McDonald's Quarter Pounder as a big burger anymore, and
| yet, when it was introduced, it was considered huge. Now
| it is supplanted by the Double Quarter Pounder.
|
| How much _quality_ meat do you really need? You need less
| of those grass-fed gourmet meat to stay fit. Poorer
| quality meat, such as ones from McDonald 's, has net-
| negative nutritional value. You get this illusion of
| eating a lot of meat, for cheap, but what you actually
| get out of it is poorer health.
|
| How much of the craving for large volumes of meat is
| coming from you, or coming from the gut bacteria that
| depends on that volume of meat and signals your brain to
| seek it out?
|
| How much is the meat factory industry incentivized to
| keep the meat flowing?
|
| So I state it again -- I think clearly assessing what we
| actually need to thrive, nutritionally speaking, would be
| beneficial.
| slt2021 wrote:
| need vs want. I think in America want is what dictates
| consumer choices. Anything that doesnt play well with
| _want_ will not fly in the US imo.
|
| although I agree with your overall argument
| 8note wrote:
| The animals are a range. So.ething like ranching may be
| assigned a ton of water, but it's not like the rain will
| stop falling on forest because there's no cows there, and
| the only water being taken out at the end is the weight
| of the cows.
|
| If you're missing river and aquifer water, you want to
| tackle the users of river and aquifer water
| fredrikholm wrote:
| > the only water being taken out at the end is the weight
| of the cows
|
| And the water needed to produce all of their food, which
| is way more calories than they end up giving back.
|
| And their daily water need, which comes out as urine,
| which pollutes the nearby environment.
|
| > If you're missing river and aquifer water, you want to
| tackle the users of river and aquifer water
|
| Exactly. If that is farmers growing crops to feed
| livestock, tackle that.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| And no one would ever question the precious Californian
| wine industry
| foobiekr wrote:
| Let's say we eliminated all agricultural use of animals
| tomorrow. All that would accomplish is one-time shift the
| point on the continuum that the earth and society can
| support.
|
| The real problem, and the real elephant that no one wants
| to address, is the human population size.
| depr wrote:
| People have been addressing it for a long time, it's
| called family planning, look it up.
| [deleted]
| munificent wrote:
| We are addressing that. Human population is predicted to
| plateau in 2080 and begin to decline after that:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| > The real problem, and the real elephant that no one
| wants to address, is the human population size.
|
| Usually nobody engages this because it's a boring
| conservative talking point. Do I consume too much? No,
| it's the world that's overpopulated. And they usually
| have drastic authoritarian solutions that have no chance
| of being enacted. But go ahead, you have the floor, what
| are your proposals?
| vGPU wrote:
| Great, let's start with the highest fertility countries!
|
| Well, might want to look those up before you continue
| down this line of thought.
| vixen99 wrote:
| As a special case it's worth noting that some 20 European
| countries are experiencing depopulation at a rate of
| around 10-20%. Countries with a significant welfare &
| national pension system cannot survive long term
| depopulation if there are not enough taxes coming in to
| pay for it.
| mcbutterbunz wrote:
| Ive also heard that almonds need a lot of water but how
| true is it? From what I've read:
|
| 1 almond requires 1 gallon of water 1 egg requires 50
| gallons of water 1 8oz steak requires 900 gallons of
| water
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It makes sense to cut wine before we cut almonds. Alcohol
| is a poison after all and almonds are nutritious and
| calorie dense.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| All the rhetoric around California being the source of all
| food is made using Californian agriculture BY VALUE, not by
| caloric capacity. So of course, all the very expensive
| crops grown in California seem important by that metric,
| but they are only important to the value of land in
| california and the wealth of a few individuals who own
| those farms.
|
| In reality, middle America probably grows an entire
| magnitude more food calories than california, and most of
| that is inefficiently turned into beef, or ethanol for
| cars. America does not need to be worried about starving.
| We literally throw away like a quarter of the food we
| purchase, and for incredibly stupid reasons like people
| swallowing the "Best By" dates as gospel and refusing to
| eat food with a bruise. This doesn't even consider the
| massive amount of farmland that we used to use in plenty of
| rural states across the nation that just aren't as
| profitable as the factory farms that own the markets
| nowadays. My state used to produce mountains of potatoes
| for the entire country but got outcompeted by Idaho and now
| is stuck growing niche crops and small batches of broccoli
| for local consumption.
| thadk wrote:
| Sorry, "best by" dates are the strongest indicator I have
| that I'm not going to get a migraine after eating pantry
| food. If any given food was equal, the more I push beyond
| the dates, the more severe they get.
|
| They're not perfect, but to my body, also clearly not
| meaningless.
|
| Consider that food producers are logically often already
| under ample pressure to set those dates in reasonable
| thresholds on both sides by their reputations and their
| own supply chain lags.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Migraines from food after the use by date sounds like a
| strong psychosomatic effect. If you'd say upset stomach
| or diarrhea ok, but I'm not sure how it would trigger a
| migraine except psychologically.
|
| I'm not saying this to be dismissive. These effects can
| be incredibly strong, I could not eat pork cutlets for
| years after I had an extremely strong migraine when I ate
| one. After my body associated the smell and taste with it
| and noped out every time I got close to one.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| njovin wrote:
| While we're at it, stop subsidizing water that's used for
| exports. If a corporation wants to grow crops in California
| and sell them overseas, they shouldn't be getting cheaper
| water than US residents.
| mrpopo wrote:
| Why subsidize water for agriculture at all. The USA is
| already the country spending the least on food in the world
| [0]. And the obesity crisis isn't shouting "well thought
| out agricultural plans" to me.
|
| [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-consumer-
| expendi...
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Agriculture subsidies and obesity are orthogonal problems
| in my view.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| They're very much correlated, even though obviously they
| don't explain anywhere close to all of the obesity
| problem. A significant amount of food advertising is due
| to needing to find ways to sell the tremendous surplus of
| some crops, milk, etc. that the US produces due to these
| subsidies. Food advertising is known to be effective and
| is a contributor to obesity.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I don't think mcdonalds advertises because they have a
| stockpile of corn and nothing to do with it. Food vendors
| advertise because more purchases mean more profit. The
| government subsidizes the corn producers basically
| whether or not they actually sell anything. The entire
| purpose is to keep them on standby if we ever somehow
| become completely cut off from the rest of the world.
|
| I'm pretty sure mcdonalds and frito lays would still be
| advertising even if their input resources quadrupled in
| price.
|
| Everything is made with corn syrup because it is cheap,
| because it is an easy use for corn. If we made it easier
| to turn into other products like beef feed and ethanol,
| or less profitable to use corn syrup like with a tax,
| then there would be less corn syrup in food, but anything
| that doesn't provide an easy use for the oversupply will
| not work, because it just doesn't meet the desire of the
| US government to keep an obscene oversupply of corn in
| the market.
| slt2021 wrote:
| Government doesn't need oversupply.
|
| It is just historically rural regions in the US farmed
| corn, and it was enough for the US and little bit of
| export.
|
| But over time agriculture effectiveness has significantly
| improved due to: fertilizer technology (CF Industries),
| agricultural equipment (John Deere), seeds technology
| (Monsanto Bayer Dow Chemical), food processing.
|
| Thanks to that, the yield has significantly improved and
| amount of corn produced has increased dramatically, even
| without increasing land
|
| Think of Moore's Law, but applied to food instead of
| microtransistors
| slt2021 wrote:
| the reason why bread in the US is sweet, when compared to
| Europe is high fructose corn syrup.
|
| US corn farmers are producing so much corn with
| subsidies, that they dont know what to do with it.
|
| From here you get more subsidies for ethanol gasoline
| (ethanol extracted from food - corn), and more subsidies
| for processed food - HFCS being added generously into
| everything!
|
| Without corn overproduction, the sugar consumption would
| be much smaller in the US and diabetes problem would not
| be as severe as it is
| mrguyorama wrote:
| California's water apportionment is stupid as hell, and a
| perfect example of how 100 year old rules hamstring
| california in every way, and the "liberal" politicians
| there do not care to change it.
|
| The way it works is that you have a set quantity of water
| rights, and even in a drought, your entire water right is
| fulfilled before the next person in line. This means that
| the farms on the bottom of the totem pole, which is ordered
| by seniority and 100 year old connections to grifters, not
| actual need or value or anything possibly meritocratic,
| gets whatever they can.
|
| In fact, a huge publicized fight about water rights in
| california was only so the last group in line, a shitty
| farming company and group of companies in the literal
| desert, spent millions screaming about "We are letting all
| the water into the ocean to protect some dumb smelt" ended
| up with those smelt, which were the food source to lots of
| valuable fishing communities in the bay area, dying off and
| going completely extinct, and that farming community hasn't
| actually gotten anymore water because their original
| apportionment was not being fulfilled before, because it's
| a drought and they are last in line. This was a HUGE
| talking point all over fox news and it was stupid and
| meaningless.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aux22FHTFXQ
| crobertsbmw wrote:
| Id vote to take it a step further and charge agriculture
| market prices for water regardless of where they sell their
| crop. Seems like that would largely solve the issue
| altogether.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I've been long in favor of this and didn't understand why
| we don't do this, since it's a no-brainer. Then I learned
| that farmers don't get their water from the faucet. The
| water comes from their own wells, creeks running over
| their property etc. They have water rights that in many
| cases have been in place for 100+ years. Touching those
| and attacking their livelihood through such big moves
| would likely lead to more upheaval than any politician is
| comfortable with.
| waterhouse wrote:
| Well, then why not buy that water from the farmers at a
| market price?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| That's an interesting idea. I wonder how that would work
| for things like not taking water out of the aquifer. I
| guess a rate could be negotiated.
| kajaktum wrote:
| Is there enough forces trying to solve this issue? Isn't
| there a void here for the market to intervene? Why hasn't it?
| AFAIK agriculture is quite inefficient.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Because "the market" doesn't actually fix shit, even if
| water rights were anything like a market system in
| california. The ONLY thing a market does is incentivize
| people to increase profits, period. Unless you can tie
| proper better water management DIRECTLY to increased
| profits, with ZERO ALTERNATIVE WAY TO DECREASE WATER COST,
| the market will do ANYTHING other than reduce water usage.
| For example, if it's cheaper to lobby the government of
| california to force citizens to use less water, then that's
| exactly what will be done. Which is what HAS been done for
| at least a decade.
|
| "The market" isn't magic, despite what your Economics 101
| youtube channel of choice says.
| echelon wrote:
| > Of course without agriculture we'd all starve to death, so
| banning farming is no solution.
|
| Gradually shift agricultural activity to states that do not
| experience drought. There's plenty of arable land in the US.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Not for growing the fruit trees that california grows. The
| imperial and central valleys are legitimately some of the
| best land in the world for agriculture productivity, which
| of course is why there's so much agriculture going on
| there.
| civilitty wrote:
| California's land is so arable specifically because
| there's less rain to wash out soluble minerals from the
| soil.
|
| It's a catch 22: the more wet a place is, the less
| micronutrients there are available due to constant run
| off. As it turns out, historically it has been easier to
| bring water to a region than to replenish micronutrients
| in the soil to support industrial farming.
| lanstin wrote:
| our (San Jose CA) plums this year are rather bland, due
| to the excellent rainy season. i just hope the
| pomegranates are tart enough, they were so enjoyable the
| last two years.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Not without water it isn't
| Retric wrote:
| > Of course without agriculture we'd all starve to death, so
| banning farming is no solution.
|
| Banning farming in California isn't the same as banning
| farming globally. Across much of the US not only is water
| plentiful crops get enough rainfall to not actually need
| irrigation.
|
| And of course banning CA farming is hardly needed, even a 5%
| drop would free up plenty of water. Cities would be much
| better off simply buying farmland with water rights and
| leaving it fallow than implementing severe water conservation
| methods.
| ericmay wrote:
| _and_ it has great positive externalities!
|
| If California is growing a little less stuff that I'm
| buying in Ohio, Ohio farmers can start selling it at a
| profitable price point. Then we're not transporting as much
| across the country, not draining California of water,
| employing more Ohio farmers, and diversifying our food
| supply chains.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| We probably SHOULD ban all farming in California, simply
| to improve the conditions of rural communities that used
| to farm but can't profitably compete anymore. We could
| use a revival of some blue collar communities, and the
| only losers would be agribusiness in california, to which
| I say, don't create a farming company in the desert
| maybe.
| ericmay wrote:
| I'm open-minded here but why would we ban _all_ farming
| in California? My understanding is that farming can be
| done economically and environmentally friendly, it 's
| just moreso the scale that is the problem. I'd like to
| see more independent farmers throughout California and
| the country as a whole if possible.
| [deleted]
| hparadiz wrote:
| Current reservoir capacity lasts 3 years during a drought
| at normal water usage. Agriculture uses 92% of all the
| water. There's absolutely no need to "ban farming". Lmao.
| It would be vastly cheaper to build a few more reservoirs
| and increase our capacity by 2x or 3x.
| Retric wrote:
| Capacity behind dams doesn't create new water, and in
| fact cases evaporation thus reducing average available
| water in the long term. It's a pointless expense unless
| there's regular surplus water to refill them.
|
| The issue isn't that farming is using 92% of all water,
| the issue is farming is extracting water from aquifers
| faster than it can replenish. This reduces not only the
| amount stored but also the amount that ends up in streams
| and rivers.
| eliseumds wrote:
| I recently drove more than 1000 miles from Sao Paulo (Brazil)
| towards the south and many cities looked dry, completely
| covered with soybean plantations, and they're growing quickly
| [1]. Brazil basically exports a shitton of water in the form
| of meat. We have 36 million hectares dedicated to soybeans
| alone, that's Germany's total area. I wonder how long this is
| going to last.
|
| [1] https://agenciadenoticias.ibge.gov.br/agencia-
| noticias/2012-...
| mcdonje wrote:
| IIRC, most of Brazil's soy exports are feeding pigs in
| China.
| kodah wrote:
| Mostly horses would be without alfalfa and there would be
| less avocados and almonds. I think these are the main
| offenders iirc.
| [deleted]
| angmarsbane wrote:
| I think dates are pretty bad in Southern California too.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Almond trees get a bad rep. They use about the same water
| as many other trees. And we plant trees by the millions
| because, trees are a good idea. Oxygen and so forth.
|
| The problem with almonds isn't so much that the trees
| require water (like anything else). It's that they're
| inevitably planted where water is a particular problem.
| Like, needing to pump and deplete groundwater.
| tenpies wrote:
| To be honest, the other problems are that almonds are
| more of a luxury food, rather than a major staple food
| item.
|
| You could feed many more people with higher yielding
| trees, like apples or even citruses. But then again, the
| almond is such an integral part of the upper middle class
| suburbia which makes up so much of California that we
| literally have expression around it: https://www.urbandic
| tionary.com/define.php?term=almond%20mom
| [deleted]
| redeeman wrote:
| > more of a luxury food
|
| I'd like your assistance in classifying other items, such
| as
|
| 1: upholstered furniture 2: refridgerator 3: wheat mixed
| with water, non-baked 4: bread
| ajmurmann wrote:
| While you get a lot of downvotes, I think your comment
| does a good job showing why we ideally would price water
| at market price and let consumers decide what's luxury,
| what isn't and what it's worth to them. That said,
| pricing water at market price for agriculture is almost
| impossible due to existing water rights.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| On top of that, the water in per calorie out is not
| great.
|
| IIUC, it takes more water to produce a single almond (~7
| calories) than an orange (~45 calories).
| freedude wrote:
| You are hyper focusing on one metric which is short-
| sighted.
|
| Almonds are a great source of protein. Oranges are
| negligible by comparison.
|
| Almonds are a good source of vitamin E. Oranges contain
| none by comparison.
|
| Almonds are high in healthy monounsaturated fats. Oranges
| contain none by comparison.
|
| So now compare water per the above metrics and see where
| Almonds stand.
|
| Almonds and Oranges are both unique and valuable in their
| own way.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Ok, how do almonds compare to other protein rich crops
| like peanuts? I'll tell you, not well: https://www.nation
| alpeanutboard.org/content/1126/images/Wate...
|
| A ag product should be priced to reflect their
| 'externalities', and that includes things like water use,
| but perhaps we should be subsidizing healthy stuff like
| produce over field corn and soybeans
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| What's unhealthy about soybeans?
| myshpa wrote:
| Nothing, beans are ok, one of best sources of protein for
| plant-based diets.
|
| Biggest problem with soy is that 77% is consumed by
| animal agriculture, which is causing much harm in the
| world (deforestation, pesticides/herbicides, runoff,
| biodiversity loss, co2 emissions, ...).
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/soy
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Then grow soy. Almonds might be better than oranges in
| this regard but soy is better than almonds, and better
| for the environment to grow.
| freedude wrote:
| It's not better for you. In Males it produces unhealthy
| levels of Estrogens and it is already overly prominent in
| food.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| This is common social media bro science but show me the
| human outcome data that corroborates this.
| jandrese wrote:
| As I understand that was meat industry propaganda that
| found a new life on the internet. Early veggie burgers
| were made out of soybeans so the industry made up the
| "soy turns you into a woman" meme to discourage people
| from switching. Then it got picked up by conspiracy nuts
| and got amplified way past the original market.
| kibwen wrote:
| This is a silly meme. Plants contain phytoestrogen, which
| is not the same thing as estrogen. Ingestion of
| phytoestrogen actually seems to reduce the body's own
| natural estrogen production, which has the effect of
| reducing _female_ fertility. Eating soy does not turn men
| into women, despite what insecure dudes on the internet
| may have told you. (Amusingly, despite all the hand-
| wringing about soy, I have never seen a similar campaign
| to decry milk, which actually does contain estrogen
| (although inert)).
| skyyler wrote:
| Also, if soy did feminise the human body, transfeminine
| people would recommend eating nothing but soy to each
| other.
| thaeli wrote:
| We do that, but we're joking.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I have always struggled to square this reality with the
| common recommendation from oncologists for women at high
| risk of breast cancer to eat less soy. Would a reduction
| in the bodies estrogen production increase the risk of
| breast cancer?
| skyyler wrote:
| Do you have sources for that?
| triceratops wrote:
| Two of the most ripped and jacked dudes I know are
| vegetarian or vegan. If you can't bulk on soy you should
| try lifting more bro.
| soperj wrote:
| Also, I don't think it's calories that we're really short
| on.
| uoaei wrote:
| They're also too prohibitively expensive to be a
| consistent source of nutrition for the majority of the
| world's population. It wouldn't matter a bit to you how
| many vitamins almonds contain if they never enter your
| body.
| nightski wrote:
| Where is your source? Last time I looked an almond took
| roughly the same amount of water to grow as a tomato on a
| per calorie basis.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| A roma tomato is ~11 calories. Plants yield ~30 on
| average. They grow for ~75 days and need 1 gallon per 5
| days = 1/2 gallon per ~11 calories.
|
| Almonds are closer to 1 gallon per ~6 calories - or
| almost 4 times worse.
|
| It's almost as if there's reason almonds are expensive
| and tomatoes and oranges and lemons and limes aren't.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Also, almonds require transporting billions of bees
| around the countryside in order to pollinate them - which
| is not good for the bees.
| uoaei wrote:
| We're not interested in accounting in units of
| water/tree, but water/foodstuff, where the denominator
| could be nuts, calories, or else some generalized
| nutrition index.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Well, I am pretty sure there's an upside to planting a
| tree. Especially in this age of deforestation. The water
| equation is pretty normal for almonds.
|
| Its true, planting them in deserts (the central valley of
| california) is a bad idea. I only point out that there's
| nothing particularly bad about an almond tree vis-a-vis
| any other tree. Planted elsewhere, there would likely be
| no issue.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >I only point out that there's nothing particularly bad
| about an almond tree vis-a-vis any other tree.
|
| Except the context is very important here. California is
| routinely struggling with water availability. Planting
| trees, of any kind, in a Californian desert in this
| environment and climate is stupid and self defeating, no
| matter how much profit it brings into some farming
| company's hands, and there's not really a reason to
| defend that. Plenty of places in the US have enough water
| to support massive tree planting efforts, and also
| cheaper labor than California and fewer environmental
| regulations to work through. There's zero reason to plant
| a tree in a Californian desert.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Never defended that by the way. Just defending the poor
| mis-maligned almond.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| > Of course without agriculture we'd all starve to death
|
| Can't we just farm in places with abundant natural sources of
| water and transport it to places without? Or transport the
| water.
|
| Places without water tend to have more sun, so we could
| probably work out some kind of energy-for-water trade.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Not everywhere with abundant natural water sources are very
| good for growing crops.
|
| Warm dry places tend to be good because you can grow crops
| there year round and they get a lot of sunlight. That's not
| necessarily the case in places with lots of natural water.
|
| Of course, we do farm in places with lots of water too,
| it's just not the same crops.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| It feels like deleting out of season produce or
| relocating it to the opposite hemisphere is less bad than
| people living in these regions being super water
| constrained in day to day living. Also anecdotally I
| don't see much out of season produce coming from arid
| parts of the US, it's all South America or Mexico already
| anyway AFAICT.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Who is advocating banning farming?
|
| I think the point is that putting effort into reducing the
| water waste associated with farming is higher-impact than
| residential water use.
|
| But we should be putting effort into both.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| If you priced agricultural water at levels comparable to
| residential use, and mandated water conservation efforts
| with similar cost per gallon lost, that would be the same
| thing as banning farming in the California desert.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > that would be the same thing as banning farming in the
| California desert.
|
| Which wouldn't be the worst thing. Recognizing that the
| true cost of farming in the desert makes it uneconomical
| isn't the same as banning farming in general.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Saudi Arabia isn't shipping the water around the world, they
| are growing water-intensive agricultural products in arizona,
| and shipping those products. Which is kind of wild, but less
| wild then how I parsed your comment before noticing what the
| "(effectively)" was doing.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Growing food at a scale large enough to feed hundreds of
| millions of people, and cheaply enough to lift millions out of
| malnutrition, being "wasteful" is certainly a take.
| ayemel wrote:
| You misread (I also did). They are saying wasteful water use
| for agriculture is wasteful, not agriculture itself.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| some commodity crops and some niche groups absolutely are
| wasteful.. excess crops turned to processed, canned food or
| even sugar-fuels have changed farming in the last hundred+
| years. Do not even mention animal practices, since that
| ranges from the mildly terrible to literally hell'ish, also
| big water users.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Growing food at a scale large enough to feed hundreds of
| millions of people
|
| Large scale does not imply efficiency. Soviet union did many
| things large scale
|
| > cheaply enough to lift millions out of malnutrition
|
| Millions were lifted out of poverty. Rhey lifted themaelves
| out of malnoutricioun because now they can afford food.
| abeppu wrote:
| > Highly treated wastewater ... is injected into nearby
| groundwater, to be pumped up and treated to drinking-water
| standards by local utilities.
|
| This seems convoluted; if it's clean enough to go in the ground,
| and ground-water is clean enough to treat and then add to the
| drinking-water supply, is it really just optics to use the local
| aquifer as a buffer, or is there some actual benefit from
| traveling through the ground (maybe different dissolved
| minerals?).
| sp332 wrote:
| Soil is a great filter. There are some contaminants that will
| get through, but the downstream treatment systems can focus on
| those. Here is a recent paper showing that just letting runoff
| filter through a 45cm-thick "rain garden" reduces a certain
| toxic chemical (6PPD-Quinone) by 90%.
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00203
| abeppu wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, that's really interesting -- but do those
| contaminants remain in the soil?
|
| It seems like one of the following should be true:
|
| - the treated wastewater being pumped into the ground has
| been so successfully treated that it doesn't contain more
| harmful contaminants than ground water, and so it could be
| just piped through to the same treatment as ground water,
| saving a pump-into-ground + pump-out-of-ground cycle
|
| - the treated wastewater being pumped into the ground
| contains harmful contaminants at a greater concentration than
| existing ground water, which the soil may mediate before
| being pumped back up for further treatment -- but the
| concentration of these contaminants in the soil will increase
| as a result
| astrodust wrote:
| It's just perception. People don't like drinking processed
| piss.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| All water was once dinosaur piss.
| hanniabu wrote:
| I don't care about human waste, that's easily taken care of.
| I'm concerned with all the chemicals and toxic materials that
| get dumped down the drain.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| >>Eventually it's hoped that buildings will be completely self-
| sufficient, or "water neutral," using the same water over and
| over, potable and nonpotable, in a closed loop.
|
| So a condo/apartment has it's own elevators, solar rooftop, and
| now a hi reliability water recycling system that can support a
| few hundred units.
|
| Sounds financially viable at scale ...
| AHOHA wrote:
| >Sounds financially viable at scale ...
|
| You will still have to pay taxes, fees, condo maintenance fees,
| etc. that are far more financially worse than if you just paid
| for these in the old traditional way.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I don't think you are getting my point ... waste and water
| treatment and power generation are things that go down in
| cost with scale. Trying to get waste treatment and water
| purification and power generation to operate at the scale of
| a few 100s of people isn't viable.
| AHOHA wrote:
| Agreed, I see what you mean.
| jerf wrote:
| Yeah, that was my first thought too. It's a very San
| Francisco solution... expensive and ineffective, if not
| outright counterproductive, but very virtuous looking.
|
| A building being "self-sustaining" from an all-things-
| considered accounting perspective is not a bad goal, but
| there's no reason the "self-sustaining"-ness of a building
| needs to be physically co-located with the building. It's
| not like we anticipate the building taking off into space
| at some point in the future where it will need this
| functionality on its own. It is far more sensible to work
| proper water recycling into all the other fees they're
| paying anyhow.
| daedlanth wrote:
| [dead]
| snarfy wrote:
| I remember reading a statistic saying Phoenix tap water has the
| highest amount of toilet paper particulates in the country.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| resolutebat wrote:
| Singapore has been making and using "NEWater" from wastewater
| (sewage) since 2003. It forms only around 1% of tap water
| supplies, the biggest customers are industrial users like chip
| fabs that need really, really clean water.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater
|
| It's worth noting, though, that Singapore has invested a _lot_
| into potable water tech like this not because it makes financial
| sense in itself (it doesn 't), but because the vast majority of
| Singapore's drinking water is piped in from Malaysia, which thus
| has a literal stranglehold over the country.
| stOneskull wrote:
| if only desalination wasn't so difficult. it'd solve so many
| things.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Well desalination for residential is ok financially in high
| income countries.
|
| It costs 5$ for 1000 gallons and that is the monthly
| consumption of a household
| silisili wrote:
| Is that just the price of the process, or does that price
| include the transport and dumping or otherwise handling the
| waste salts?
| mywittyname wrote:
| Desalination is an ecological disaster at any scale large
| enough to be useful.
|
| That excess salt needs to go somewhere and wherever it
| goes, it will be a problem.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| put all salt making companies out of business, then
| whatever's left just carry it by train and put it in an
| old salt mine
| anthonypasq wrote:
| cant you just bury it in a desert/mountain or something?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Would it have a meaningful impact on the ocean if we
| threw the salt back in?
| gavinsyancey wrote:
| "The ocean" is not a monolith. You have to pump the brine
| back into the ocean in a specific location (i.e. wherever
| the outflow pipe from the desalination plant is). And
| that has meaningful negative local ecological impacts.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I think that's only for coastal areas. Once you include
| pumping costs it gets much more expensive.
| scythe wrote:
| Ironically, the one place that desal pumping would be
| almost free is the Imperial Valley, which is below sea
| level, though across a roughly 80-meter col (7 km
| horizontal) from Laguna de Salada. But they have among
| the oldest Colorado river rights -- to fully 20% of the
| theoretically available flow -- and couldn't afford the
| electricity, requiring some Rube Goldberg finance to make
| the whole scheme work out.
| czbond wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning a rough cost estimate of
| desalination. I've always wanted to know.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| I currently pay PS4.42 per 1000l for a normal mains piped
| water supply (and for the drainage system to take that
| water away again).
|
| 1000 gallons is 4546l, so the cost for desalination is
| PS0.86 for 1000l by your price.
|
| Sounds like desalination is worth it even in soggy England
| (which hasn't been soggy at all until a few days ago).
| recursive wrote:
| $5/month/household sounds like it would work for all but
| the very poorest of countries.
| TylerE wrote:
| For costal regions, sure. Anything further inland?
| Pumping water uphill is incredibly energy intensive.
| peteradio wrote:
| Well gosh put in bottles and truck it then!
| thmsths wrote:
| That would still help those regions too, a lot of coastal
| cities get their water from quite far away, if they can
| become self sufficient through desalination, that's more
| water available for other regions.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| 40% of the world lives within 100km from the sea.
| Havoc wrote:
| Would love to see new builds factoring this in better too.
|
| i.e Grey water.
|
| Flushing toilets with flawless drinking water is insane
| abwizz wrote:
| totally agree
|
| however, using greywater puts additional burden on the
| equipment in terms of maintenace (dirt layering on the walls
| and general externalities of unclean water) hence the economic
| incentives have to change before this will take on.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| On one hand, we don't need potable water to flush a toilet. On
| the other hand, flushing a toilet with dirty water is going to
| leave your house smelling like whatever's in that water.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| You should close the lid before flushing anyway... Stops
| bacteria spraying around
| emmanuel_1234 wrote:
| Hong Kong uses grey water for flushing toilets, and I never
| had a problem. Each building has its own tank (I believe, to
| pump the water and maintain a correct water pressure) that
| needs to be washed every now and then, but that's the same
| with fresh water.
| dirkf wrote:
| In my country it has been mandatory for at least a decade in
| any new construction or significant renovation to collect
| rain water and use it for at least flushing toilets.
|
| It's not that expensive to install at that time and saves a
| lot of potable water. Seems like a no-brainer to me to do
| this everywhere.
| sputter_token wrote:
| In some parts of America, collecting rainwater is illegal.
| freedude wrote:
| This is mostly a myth, but check your local ordinances.
| OR do like the rest of us Freedudes do. Just do it.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Where?
| thsksbd wrote:
| Because, legally, you're stealing water from the basin
| and the basin's down stream users.
|
| You're also not paying for the sewer use if you flush
| with it (since sewer isn't metered)
| bombcar wrote:
| Some municipalities have ways to handle the second (as
| you have homes that are on well water but city sewer).
| Usually it's a flat fee based on occupancy or square
| footage.
| sp332 wrote:
| Restrictions are mainly on commercial and especially
| agricultural use. It's not that bad for residential
| systems. https://www.worldwaterreserve.com/rainwater-
| harvesting/is-it... But in Georgia, you can only use the
| rainwater outdoors. So you can't legally flush your
| toilet with it.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Already graywater is used in places like San Diego for
| watering public greenage, but I can't detect any smell. Even
| if there is some very slight smell, sticking an ordinary
| deodorizer on your toilet bowl might be enough to suppress it
| entirely.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It doesn't have to be dirty / smelly, but it doesn't have to
| be fresh drinking water either. Filtered rain water is fine
| for example, plus bonus low mineral count to keep your pipes
| and toilet cleaner.
| Havoc wrote:
| >dirty water
|
| I meant more utility provided grey water. Meaning they still
| clean it up...just not all the way to drink quality. As with
| many things in life getting to those last few % to 100% are
| disproportionate and incrementally expensive/hard. So if you
| can flush toilets with 95% or whatever that's a win
| wil421 wrote:
| In my area, the cost to implement grey water flushing would
| be so high it makes sense to just clean all the water and
| use it for everything.
| Havoc wrote:
| Yeah don't think retrofitting would be feasible anywhere
| tbh. Would require regional pushes to implement probably
| Faaak wrote:
| I collect rainwater and flush my toilet + wash my clothes
| with it. It's not safe to drink, but it doesn't smell of
| anything and is nearly transparent.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| I collect rainwater in water butts outside for watering the
| garden. They stink. What are you doing right that I'm doing
| wrong?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Rainwater quality is a direct consequence of you local
| air pollution.
|
| You may not be doing anything wrong and still get a bad
| result, while somebody else in a different location may
| do a lot of things wrong and still get good results.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| How often do you clean your rainwater collection
| receptacles? I clean mine out regularly.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| I pressure washed them this spring, and bought new ones
| to add to them at the same time. How regularly?
| goodcanadian wrote:
| When I lived in Hawaii, we had rainwater catchment as our
| main/only water supply. We added some bleach to the
| (10000 gallon) catchment tank once per month and ran it
| through filters as it entered the house (the last filter
| was 5um). Officially, it wasn't potable, but we installed
| an additional 0.5um filter on a drinking water tap and
| never had a problem.
| Faaak wrote:
| No direct sunlight + no direct heat.
|
| Of course, if the system is cycled frequently (i.e. the
| water doesn't stagnate for months), then it's even better
| thsksbd wrote:
| Agreed, especially in water limited areas, but there's a reason
| it is used.
|
| potable water has very well defined properties. Its has a low
| salt concentration, pretty well known (and diminishing)
| chloride concentration, and known hardness.
|
| It wont give you any surprises when designing a water system.
|
| Grey water is whatever a human decided to put down certain
| drains. This could be very benign, but end users are...
| special.
|
| Will they out cooking grease down the drain?
|
| Will they pour industrial cleaners?
|
| How about if the end user is an artist who etches glass in the
| attic bathroom and rinse the HF in the sink?
|
| Will they pour "Jimmy"'s, the fish, bowl water and sand?
|
| Is shower water "grey"? How about those fellows (they exist)
| who poop in the shower and squish it down (one of the grossest
| things I learned on the internet)?
|
| And what about "Poochie", the pitbull, who loves to drink from
| the toilet bowl?
|
| What about "Max", the three year old toddler, who loves to wash
| his hands in the toilet bowl?
|
| Grey water should be used, extensively, but it is not a turn-
| key solution, and it certainly is way more expensive to build
| for.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I live in a two-storey terraced house, it seems pretty simple
| to add a buffer tank to gravity feed the toilet cistern from
| the roof gutter. Presumably it's not cost effective or
| countries with nationalised water would be doing that already?
| Maybe they are??
|
| Any good kits for this in the UK?
| viraptor wrote:
| Not from the roof gutter, but check what Australia is doing.
| In new builds, I believe water collection tanks are mandatory
| now. You can use that for the garden, flushing, washing, etc.
| The usual system is described at
| https://www.yourhome.gov.au/water/rainwater but I'm sure
| you'll find many similar ones. Some could be adapted to use
| in the UK at small scale.
| james_pm wrote:
| BC Place stadium in Vancouver, BC implemented a rainwater
| harvesting system on the 11 acre roof that collects and stores
| rainwater for use in cleaning, toilets, field irrigation and
| other non-potable uses. They estimate it saves 950,000L of
| drinking water per year.
| https://www.bcplace.com/blog/2021-04-22/how-bc-place-is-buil...
| paulcole wrote:
| How much pristine drinking water does BC Place use in a year
| (an important fact missing from the article)? If the answer
| is 2.5 million liters then I'm amazed. If the answer is 25
| million liters, I'm much less impressed.
| lnsru wrote:
| It's about amount needed for 40000 inhabitants for whole
| year. It's impressive enough for me.
| paulcole wrote:
| I'm not sure of your math here.
|
| Assuming Google is accurate and the average American is
| similar to the average Canadian.
|
| > The average American uses over 100 gallons of water per
| day
|
| 100 gallons/day * 365 days * 3.78 liters/gallon = 137,930
| liters
|
| Isn't that just 8 or 9 people's drinking water?
|
| If you disagree with that, work backwards from your
| answer.
|
| 950,000 liters saved divided by 40,000 = 23.75 liters per
| year? That seems too low.
| andrewprock wrote:
| The 100 gallon average includes laundry, bathroom, home
| landscaping, golf courses and other things as well. Very
| little of that would be for drinking.
| paulcole wrote:
| Am I still missing something?
|
| 950,000 divided by 40000 = 23.75 liters
|
| I feel like that is an absurdly low amount for a person
| to drink per year.
|
| Also, I don't think the 100 gallon number includes
| industrial use like "golf courses".
|
| > The average American family uses more than 300 gallons
| of water per day at home. Roughly 70 percent of this use
| occurs indoors. In addition, there are other
| miscellaneous uses of water in the house which may be
| very significant, depending on the degree of water
| conservation by the household.
|
| https://water.phila.gov/pool/files/home-water-use-ig5.pdf
| lnsru wrote:
| I failed. It were indeed liters and not cubic meters. 950
| cubic meters are not much.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" To demonstrate its technology, Epic Cleantec, a water
| recycling company, has even brewed a beer called Epic OneWater
| Brew with purified graywater from a 40-story San Francisco
| apartment building."_
|
| I've got to say that this beer would not be high on my list of
| beers to try.
| WJW wrote:
| Pretty much all beer is made with recycled water though, it's
| just that usually the recycling process takes much longer and
| with a detour through the ocean and some clouds. As long as the
| water is chemically identical to what you'd get from a river or
| something like that I don't really care what they make my beers
| out of tbh.
| hinkley wrote:
| Beer is made from distilled water, via solar distillation.
| Some of it is made from water that was then triple filtered.
| Through soil, through miles of stone, and then by the
| brewery.
|
| And then it's boiled, and chemically treated with alcohol.
| rolisz wrote:
| I think that detour through the ocean and the clouds can make
| quite a difference in the outcome...
| viraptor wrote:
| I'm not sure how much difference there is before you hit
| the artificial filtering/cleaning system. The detour
| through the ocean and clouds may turn out to include
| filtering through a decomposing body of a raccoon right
| before you get the water into the production system.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Hence "as long as it's chemically identical" (which it
| absolutely can be)... as in, it really doesn't make a
| difference in the end.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Although, if its main selling point is "made with
| greywater", maybe its just not that great of a drink
| regardless of the water used.
| chpatrick wrote:
| I saw an interview with a brewmaster and he said whether a beer
| is made of spring water or anything else is kind of BS because
| they can make water with whatever properties they want, it's
| not rocket science.
| fastball wrote:
| Distilling/deionizing water is indeed quite trivial.
|
| But I personally know a beer brewer that was "remineralizing"
| water to a certain specification, and at some point they
| stopped because it was far too expensive. So I'm not so sure
| about the claim that people can make water with whatever
| properties they want, at least not in a way that is broadly
| economically viable.
| bjacokes wrote:
| Adjusting water chemistry is extremely prevalent in
| brewing. For example, if you've ever had a hazy IPA, part
| of the softer bitterness comes from high levels of chloride
| in the water. The cost of common brewing salts (gypsum,
| calcium chloride, etc) is a small fraction of a penny per
| beer.
|
| I'm guessing that the beer brewer you spoke with was
| talking about the cost of buying distilled or RO water, as
| opposed to the cost of the water adjustment itself. It's
| probably a lot more economical if you're cleaning and
| reusing graywater, vs. trucking in distilled water, or
| running municipal water through an RO filter and
| essentially paying twice for water treatment.
| jerrysievert wrote:
| water adjustment is quite cheap - I keep "mineral water"
| on tap at home.
|
| it's a mixture of gypsum, calcium carbonate and epsom
| salt, conveniently pre-packaged as Burton salts.
|
| I use 1/4tsp per gallon of distilled water. the expensive
| part is the distilled water (even more-so than the co2
| used to carbonate it).
| wil421 wrote:
| If you can't build your brewery or distillery near natural
| source of mineralized water then you should probably brew
| something else. Re-mineralizing sounds more expensive than
| trucking in water.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Instead of making people use rainwater and inflating building
| costs by building parallel plumbing systems, how about do
| something about agriculture and lawns instead?
|
| SF continues to save pennies by throwing away dollars.
| DrThunder wrote:
| How about people just not live there? Why should the rest of
| the US be required to support well-off individuals in SF that
| want green lawns?
| brianaker wrote:
| I use rainwater for gardening that I store in an underground
| cistern; I would not recommend this to most people. The water is
| only useful during the summer when Seattle receives no rainfall,
| and during the rest of the year the cistern is used to handle
| stormwater surges during the rest of the year. Unless you can
| store water in a tower, you will need a pump. The pump we have
| for our cistern can handle grey water; it can handle a certain
| amount of muck in the water. Even with filtering you will end
| needing to clean your cistern at some interval, and the penalty
| for not doing this? You will burn up the pump.
|
| The Yale article is entirely unrealistic for residential and much
| of what it talks about would only work for some very large
| buildings that don't have any mixed usage ( if you follow the
| links in the article, you will find that the water system
| installed in the one San Fran had a starting cost of $1M dollars,
| which did not include all of the redundant return sanitary
| plumbing ).
|
| The article glosses over the fact that you cannot re-use water in
| your home and that this is not going to change.
|
| Reusing water that was used for washing your clothes?
|
| People put all sorts of stuff into their washing machines and not
| all of it can be cost effectively, or even safely, reused just
| for toilet water.
|
| In one word? "bleach"
|
| Any sort of cleaning is going to involve soaps, detergents,
| etc... none of which you want to pump into a pipe with a smallish
| diameter to feed to a toilet. Environmentally? It is not worth
| the copper nor the electric required for a pump; a pump which
| would need to be designed to handle the grey water. Your
| municipal water is likely to be gravity fed, which is energy
| efficient.
|
| Let's talk about the reality of residential properties.
|
| Home owners are never 100% on top of every maintenance
| requirements and adding systems which will require ongoing
| maintenance and refitting? That is not viable.
|
| Even using rainwater for toilets is not going to be cost
| effective, or reliable. You may believe your rain water is "all
| natural", but that is far from the truth once it hits your roof
| and makes its way to where you believe you are going to store it.
| It will need to be treated/cleaned before it can be use; which
| will then require its own pump that requires electricity.
|
| The Yale article is misleading, at best.
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