Drilling underground to quench California’s thirst

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From Friday's PBS Newshour:

California is facing its worst drought in generations -- bad news for the state where nearly half of the nation's fruits and vegetables are grown. With water from rivers and reservoirs in short supply, attention has turned to how to manage the state's groundwater. How much can be safely pumped from underground? Special correspondent Spencer Michaels reports on the competing concerns.

Read transcript.

[silverweb]

1. Why?

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Why drill for deeper groundwater? There are unknown repercussions involved with destabilizing the earth's crust, as we're just beginning to find out with our fracking adventures.

Why aren't we building water pipelines instead of oil pipelines, bringing fresh water from solar desalination plants along our coastline?

Water, water everywhere... but we're just too fucking cheap and lazy to invest in processing/transporting it for use, the way we so eagerly do for oil and gas.

This should be a major national security/public infrastructure investment priority.

[NYC_SKP]

3. No tunnels, no desal plants. Just use less fucking water.

Water already uses close to 20% of the state's energy.

Outlaw lawns and home carwashing, mandate grey water systems in new construction.

No more projects.

No no no.

[silverweb]

4. That won't cut it.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Sounds a whole lot to me like the TeaGOPer recipe for budget disaster:

"No new taxes on corporations or the filthy rich! Just cut, cut, cut spending on everything but the military (and subsidies/tax cuts for corporations and the filthy rich). Everyone else, you get 'austerity' -- if we let you have anything at all."

Yes, we need to conserve water and mandate widespread use of gray water systems, but it won't be nearly enough. We need a new influx of this resource (increased revenue), not just conservation (austerity measures). We already know how this works from recent experience. Newly patented "Perforene" (graphene) water filters are a timely breakthrough and should help immensely.

Using less of a diminishing resource and letting our drought-struck parts of the country just dehydrate completely is not the answer. Our planet's surface is mostly water, just mixed with salt and plenty of minerals (that could be extracted). If we put anywhere near the resources and effort into "refining" sea water and piping it throughout the state that we put into doing the same for oil/gas, we'd have plenty to spare (and pipe to other dry states).

Conserve -- yes!

Use gray water -- absolutely!

But we also have an imperative to develop what's readily available all along our nearly 800 miles of coastline and not destabilize the land beneath our feet by extracting more volume -- whether that be oil, gas, or water.

[NYC_SKP]

6. If you like a healthy coastline, you shouldn't support desal

Because it will just bring in more people.

I live in little beach community that ha virtually no growth due largely to lack of water.

The entire state and planet should have zero growth

[silverweb]

9. Missing the point.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]The point of massive desalination is not to keep all the water on the coast, but to create a network of pipelines that will take that fresh water throughout the country.

Fresh water needs to be distributed in much the same way that oil and gas are currently distributed. What little outpost anywhere in the nation lacks a gas station -- and why should any little outpost anywhere in the country lack a reliable supply of clean, fresh water?

Yes, zero population growth is an important goal... if Nature, who we have so badly abused, doesn't accomplish massive population reduction for us first.

Meanwhile, if we make the effort to desal and distribute the abundance of water available on the planet's surface, we could restore our lakes, rivers, streams, and water tables instead of contaminating them; regrow deforested areas; let the water soak into and nurture the land again; and help the planet recover from our abuse.

We could leave a better earth for our descendants than the one we see declining now. I just hope they are much wiser than we have been.

[Plucketeer]

7. Everyone would dismiss it -

the idea of a national water grid. But if we can put men on the moon and rovers (that WAY outlast their planned demise!) how impractical would a national grid be??? Folks in the midwest and east are awash in precipitation - why not pump it to where it's wanted? Jobs? just IMAGINE thje jopbs such would instigate!

[silverweb]

8. Exactly.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I think the days of dismissing ideas like this are coming to a close -- much sooner than most people may think.

Fresh clean water will so obviously be more precious than oil or gas, anyone who dismisses the idea of regional/national pipelines will be considered irrational.

And yes, it will take a lot of planning and labor, so many long-term jobs will be created.

[ffr]

2. Using history to educate - water is the new gold.

'Better get it while you can. Drill! Baby, drill! Farmers know better how to manage water than bureaucrats.'

This seems to be a familiar concept with humans. Be the last one to use up or get the last of some natural resource. If you pacify yourself thinking there's plenty of water below the surface and it'll never run out, go look at Tulare Lake, once the largest fresh water lake west of the Mississippi. Can't find the once mighty Tulare Lake, you say? Brilliant! You're wearing it or were wearing it and have since discarded what it was you were wearing. It's now cotton fields and a small protected wet land area called the Tulare Basin.

The conversion of this water system to a lake-and-slough wetland to agriculture began in the mid-1800s when European settlers began to build canals and diversion structures to irrigate their crops. This early irrigation infrastructure upstream from Tulare Lake slowly cut off the lake from its source waters, shrinking the lake's footprint. By 1899 - less than 50 years after irrigation was initiated - Tulare Lake went dry for the first time in history. - Tulare Basin Wildlife Partners

[silverweb]

5. Agree.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]We must begin treating fresh water like the precious necessity it is; however, not by extracting more volume and destabilizing what's beneath our feet, but by purifying what's already all over our planet's surface, readily available for "refining" and transport.