4/29 Drought Monitor - Getting Seriously Fugly Out There

[hatrack]

The Plains

Bands of 2-4 inches of rain fell across parts of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas this week, but the western portions of Nebraska and Kansas largely missed out on the precipitation. The precipitation from this week's slow-moving upper low replenished topsoil moisture, but subsoil moisture was slow to respond, limiting any improvement. USDA observations improved only slightly, with 53% of Nebraska and 67% of Kansas topsoil still rated short or very short of moisture as of April 27. D0 was pulled back in South Dakota, a D0 hole was added to south central Nebraska, D1 was contracted in eastern Nebraska, and D2 was pulled back in south central Nebraska and north central Kansas. But deterioration occurred in the Nebraska panhandle, where D0 expanded, and in western and southern Kansas, where D2-D3 expanded.

EDIT

The West

Widespread 2+ inches of precipitation fell along coastal Washington and Oregon, with locally 5+ inches of precipitation. Along the Sierra in California, in the northern Rockies, and in parts of northern Nevada and Utah, 1-3 inches of precipitation was reported. Half an inch to 2 inches of precipitation occurred over the Colorado Rockies, and 0.5-1.0 inch was reported in other parts of the West. But the precipitation was largely hit or miss, with other areas receiving only a few tenths of an inch, and much of southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico getting no precipitation. Improvement in the drought depiction occurred in the Northwest, where D0-D2 was pulled back in northeast Washington and parts of Oregon, but D3 expanded in parts of southwest and southeast Oregon. D2-D4 expanded across parts of New Mexico to reflect both short-term precipitation deficits as well as lingering long-term deficits, some stretching over the course of 4 years. D0-D3 expanded in northeast Colorado to reflect dryness at the 30 day to 6 month timescales. D2 was added to Duchesne Co. in northeast Utah and D1-D2 expanded in southeast Utah and southwest Colorado to reflect dryness at 120 days. In the Four Corners area, the town of Monticello, Utah has major water supply problems. With their reservoir at a critically low level, groundwater wells were drilled for supplemental supply. Even with conservation, they have at most one season of water supply. If snowpack is low again next year, they will have very little water available for municipal supply.

EDIT

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

[Demeter]

1. Thanks for keeping track

it's not as if we could expect the MSM to take care of such trifles....

[marions ghost]

2. Ban Fracking for starters

California Drought Emergency Sparks Call To Ban Fracking And Protect Water

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/13/3282341/california-drought-fracking-ban/

CA needs water for agriculture and people.

[nationalize the fed]

3. Can anyone please explain why California doesn't

get busy on Solar Desalination?

There must be a good reason.

If that state can pipe in water from the north, and from the Colorado River, why can it not desalinate water from the coast and pipe that inland?

[truebrit71]

4. The only argument I have heard (and i've been asking that question since the mid-80's) is...

..."it's too expensive.."

Well sure, it might be expensive, but as opposed to the alternative of dying of thirst, at what point does it become economically viable?

IIRC several Arab countries use this technology right now...

[nationalize the fed]

5. it IS "too expensive"!

When all the money in the US goes towards bombing and invading other countries and/or paying interest on the debt-something few people even think about.

All the water CA could ever dream of needing- is right off their coast.

And yet nothing is done about it, except bitching and moaning.

It's sad to see the US go from a Can Do nation- To the moon in a decade no less- to a Can't do Anything except enrich banksters and drop drone bombs on Arabs.

Very sad.

[nationalize the fed]

6. Well lookie here! Carlsbad Desalination plant

encouraging

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/californias-plans-for-biggest-desalination-plant-are-a-go.html

Edit: http://carlsbaddesal.com/

Edit 2:

and one in Australia
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/new-australian-desalination-plant-will-use-100-renewable-energy.html

Both articles are from 2009- I'm going to try to find out what has happened since then and why it's not operating

[HooptieWagon]

7. Tampa Bay Water...

operates a desal plant. It went several years behind schedule in building, cost several times over projected, requires far more maintainence than projected, and produces about 15% of the fresh water projected. Granted, this was 15-20 year old technology. I'm all in favor of desal, but it might not be ready for prime time yet.

[hunter]

8. Yeah, powered by fossil fuels.

Let's not trade one horror for another.

There's a lot of very good work being done with wastewater recycling. Urban sewage could be turned back into potable water and then be pumped back uphill when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

But this is expensive water; too expensive for most farming.

Problems like this are becoming more and more common. Politically we need to find a way to gracefully retreat from environments that have become hostile, something other than the wealthy fleeing with all the money, or finding impossibly expensive solutions for their walled communities as they abandon the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

[NickB79]

9. Piping it inland often takes a lot of energy going uphill

Whereas the pipes coming from the mountains down to the valleys only require gravity to operate.

That, and the amount of water required for farming in a warm, semi-desert area like California is astonishingly high.

Finally, desalination plants in the past have run into problems with what to do with all the excess salt left over. Simply dumping it back into the ocean where the desalination plant operates can have very harmful effects on the local sealife for miles around.

[nationalize the fed]

10. Desalination is not rocket science

Yeah, powered by fossil fuels

Except it doesn't have to be. California has a lot of sun.

Solar desalination

Solar desalination is a technique to desalinate water using solar energy. There are two basic methods of achieving desalination using this technique; direct and indirect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_desalination

Australia can build renewable energy powered desalination plants- they aren't trying to drone bomb and invade multiple other countries though, so that might have something to do with it

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/new-australian-desalination-plant-will-use-100-renewable-energy.html

desalination plants in the past have run into problems with what to do with all the excess salt left over. Simply dumping it back into the ocean where the desalination plant operates can have very harmful effects on the local sealife for miles around.

Sea Salt is a commodity. It also has many non-dietary uses

Other countries can desalinate water and have for years.

Existing facilities and facilities under construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Existing_facilities_and_facilities_under_construction

Estimates vary widely between 15,000-20,000 desalination plants producing more than 20,000 m3/day around the world .

Algeria

Believed to have at least 15 desalination plants in operation
Arzew IWPP Power & Desalination Plant, Arzew
Cap Djinet Seawater Reverse Osmosis(SWRO) 100,000 m3/d[72]
Tlemcen Souk Tleta 200,000 m3/day
Tlemcen Hounaine 200,000 m3/day
Beni Saf 200,000 m3/day
Tenes 200,000 m3/day
Fouka 120,000 m3/day
Skikda 100,000 m3/day
Hamma Seawater Desalination Plant 200,000 m3/day built by GE
Mostaganem, once considered the largest in Africa
Magtaa Reverse Osmosis (RO) Desalination Plant, Oran, Algeria

Aruba

The island of Aruba has a large (world’s largest at the time of its inauguration) desalination plant, with a total installed capacity of 11.1e6 US gallons (42,000 m3) per day.

Australia
Main article: Seawater desalination in Australia

In Australia many desalination plants are utilizing wind farms to produce enough energy to operate nearby desalination plants. For example, the Kurnell Desalination Plant, with a capacity of producing 250 million liters (ML) of drinking water per day, supplies 15% of Sydney’s water needs via RO technology and is powered using “100 percent renewable energy” from the 140 MW Capital Wind Farm.

The Garden Island plant, currently planned for commissioning in 2014, will be powered by wave energy, using Carnegie Wave Energy's CETO system. This system uses submerged buoys to pressurise water offshore, which is piped onshore to either drive turbines for electricity generation or as in this case, to directly desalinate seawater. The Garden Island project is a commercial scale demonstration project, which follows a pilot project off the coast of Fremantle, Western Australia

List of desalination plants in Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_desalination_plants_in_Australia

Sydney Desalination plant- Desalination plant of the year



Gold Coast Desalination Plant 125 megalitres



Perth Seawater Desalination Plant 130 megalitres
Wonthaggi Desalination Plant 410 megalitres



7 more operating now, more planned


Bahrain

Completed in 2000, the Al Hidd Desalination Plant on Muharraq island employed a multistage flash process, and produces 272,760 m3 (9,632,000 cu ft) per day. The Al Hidd distillate forwarding station provides 410 million liters of distillate water storage in a series of 45-million-liter steel tanks. A 135-million-liters/day forwarding pumping station sends flows to the Hidd, Muharraq, Hoora, Sanabis, and Seef blending stations, and which has an option for gravity supply for low flows to blending pumps and pumps which forward to Janusan, Budiya and Saar.

Upon completion of the third construction phase, the Durrat Al Bahrain seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant was planned to have a capacity of 36,000 cubic meters of potable water per day to serve the irrigation needs of the Durrat Al Bahrain development.[81] The Bahrain-based utility company, Energy Central Co contracted to design, build and operate the plant.

Chile

Copiapó Desalination Plant

China

China operates the Beijing Desalination Plant in Tianjin, a combination desalination and coal-fired power plant designed to alleviate Tianjin's critical water shortage. Though the facility has the capacity to produce 200,000 cubic meters of potable water per day, it has never operated at more than one-quarter capacity due to difficulties with local utility companies and an inadequate local infrastructure.[84]

Cyprus

A plant operates in Cyprus near the town of Larnaca.[85] The Dhekelia Desalination Plant uses the reverse osmosis system.[86]

Egypt

Dahab RO Desalination Plants Dahab 3,600 m3/day completed 1999
Hurgada and Sharm El-Sheikh Power and Desalination Plants
Oyoun Moussa Power and Desalination
Zaafarana Power and Desalination

Gibraltar

Fresh water in Gibraltar is supplied by a number of reverse osmosis and multistage flash desalination plants.[87] A demonstration forward osmosis desalination plant also operates there.[88]

Grand Cayman

West Bay, West Bay, Grand Cayman[89]
Abel Castillo Water Works, Governor's Harbour, Grand Cayman[90]
Britannia, Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman[91]

Hong Kong

The HK Water Supplies Department had pilot desalination plants in Tuen Mun and Ap Lei Chau using reverse osmosis technology. The production cost was at HK$7.8 to HK$8.4 /m3.[92][93] In 2011, the government announced a feasibility study whether to build a desalination plant in Tseung Kwan O.[94] Hong Kong used to have a desalination plant in Lok On Pai.[95]

India

The largest desalination plant in South Asia is the Minjur Desalination Plant near Chennai in India, which produces 36.5 million cubic meters of water per year.



A second plant at Nemmeli, Chennai is expected to reach full capacity of 100 million litres of sea-water per day in March 2013.[98]

Iran

An assumption is that around 400,000 m3/d of historic and newly installed capacity is operational in Iran.[99] In terms of technology, Iran’s existing desalination plants use a mix of thermal processes and RO. MSF is the most widely used thermal technology although MED and vapour compression (VC) also feature.

Israel

Israel Desalination Enterprises’ Sorek Desalination Plant in Palmachim provides up to 26,000 m³ of potable water per hour (2.300 m³ p.a.). At full capacity, it is the largest desalination plant of its kind in the world. Once unthinkable, given Israels history of drought and lack of available fresh water resource, with desalination, Israel can now actually produce a surplus of fresh water

http://www.water-technology.net/projects/sorek-desalination-plant/


The Hadera seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant in Israel is the largest of its kind in the world.[102][103] The project was developed as a build–operate–transfer by a consortium of two Israeli companies: Shikun and Binui, and IDE Technologies.

Malta

Ghar Lapsi II 50,000 m3/day

Oman

A pilot seawater greenhouse was built in 2004 near Muscat, in collaboration with Sultan Qaboos University, providing a sustainable horticultural sector on the Batinah coast.[112]
Ghubrah Power & Desalination Plant, Muscat
Sohar Power & Desalination Plant, Sohar
Sur R.O. Desalination Plant 80,000 m3/day 2009[113]
Qarn Alam 1000 m3/day
Wilayat Diba 2000 m3/day

There are at least two forward osmosis plants operating in Oman
Al Najdah 200 m3/day (built by Modern Water)[114]
Al Khaluf[115]

Saudi Arabia

The Saline Water Conversion Corporation of Saudi Arabia provides 50% of the municipal water in the Kingdom, operates a number of desalination plants, and has contracted $1.892 billion[116] to a Japanese-South Korean consortium to build a new facility capable of producing a billion liters per day, opening at the end of 2013. They currently operate 32 plants in the Kingdom;[117] one example at Shoaiba cost $1.06 billion and produces 450 million liters per day.[118]
Corniche RO Plant (Crop) (operated by SAWACO)
Jubail 800,000 m3/day[119]
North Obhor Plant (operated by SAWACO)
Rabigh 7,000 m3/day (operated by wetico)
planned for completion 2018 Rabigh II 600,000 m3/day (under construction Saline Water Conversion Corporation)[120]
Shuaibah III 150,000 m3/day (operated by Doosan)
South Jeddah Corniche Plant (SOJECO) (operated by SAWACO)
Yanbu Multi Effect Distillation (MED), Saudi Arabia 68,190 m3/day

Spain

Lanzarote is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands. It is the driest of the islands, of volcanic origin and has limited water supplies. A private, commercial desalination plant was installed in 1964. This served the whole island and enabled the tourism industry. In 1974, the venture was injected with investments from local and municipal governments and a larger infrastructure was put in place. In 1989, the Lanzarote Island Waters Consortium (INALSA)[121] was formed.

A prototype seawater greenhouse was constructed in Tenerife in 1992.[122]
Alicante II 65,000 m3/day (operator Inima)
Tordera 60,000 m3/day
Barcelona 200,000 m3/day (operator Degremont) El Prat, near Barcelona, a desalination plant completed in 2009 was meant to provide water to the Barcelona metropolitan area, especially during the periodic severe droughts that put the available amounts of drinking water under serious stress.
Oropesa 50,000 m3/day (operator TECNICAS REUNIDAS)
Moncofa 60,000 m3/day (operator Inima)
Marina Baja - Mutxamel 50,000 m3/day (operator Degremont)
Torrevieja 240,000 m3/day (operator ACCIONA)
Cartagena Escombreras 63,000 m3/day (operator COBRA | TEDAGUA)
Edam Ibiza + Edam San Antonio 25,000 m3/day (operator Ibiza - Portmany)
Mazarron 36,000 m3/day (operator TEDAGUA)
Bajo Almanzora 65,000 m3/day


South Africa

Mossel Bay 15,000 m3/day[123]
Transnet Saldanha 2,400 m3/day[124]
Knysna 2,000 m3/day[125]
Plettenberg Bay 2,000 m3/day[126]
Bushman’s River Mouth 1,800 m3/day[127]
Lambert’s Bay 1,700 m3/day[128]
Cannon Rocks 750 m3/day[129]

United Arab Emirates

The Jebel Ali desalination plant in Dubai, a dual-purpose facility, uses multistage flash distillation and is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year.

Kalba 15,000 m3/day built for Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority completed 2010(operator CH2MHill)
Khor Fakkan 22,500 m3/day (operator CH2MHill)
Ghalilah RAK 68,000 m3/day (operator AQUATECH)
Hamriyah 90,000 m3/day (operator AQUA Engineering)
Taweelah A1 Power and Desalination Plant has an output 385,000,000 L (85,000,000 imp gal; 102,000,000 US gal) per day of clean water.
Al Zawrah 27,000 m3/day (operator Aqua Engineering)
Layyah I 22,500 m3/day (operator CH2MHill)
Emayil & Saydiat Island ~20,000 m3/day (operator Aqua EPC)
Umm Al Nar Desalination Plant has an output of 394,000,000 L (87,000,000 imp gal; 104,000,000 US gal)/day.
Al Yasat Al Soghrih Island 2M gallons per day (GPD) or 9,000 m3/day
Fujairah F2 is to be completed by July 2010 will have a water production capacity of 492,000,000 L (108,000,000 imp gal; 130,000,000 US gal) per day.
A seawater greenhouse was constructed on Al-Aryam Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates in 2000.

United Kingdom

The first large-scale plant in the United Kingdom, the Thames Water Desalination Plant, was built in Beckton, east London for Thames Water by Acciona Agua.
Jersey[edit]

The desalination plant located near La Rosière, Corbiere, Jersey, is operated by Jersey Water. Built in 1970 in an abandoned quarry, it was the first in the British Isles.

The original plant used a multistage flash (MSF) distillation process, whereby seawater was boiled under vacuum, evaporated and condensed into a freshwater distillate. In 1997, the MSF plant reached the end of its operational life and was replaced with a modern reverse osmosis plant.

Its maximum power demand is 1,750 kW, and the output capacity is 6,000 cubic meters per day. Specific energy consumption is 6.8 kWh/m3.[133]

Trinidad and Tobago

The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago uses desalination to open up more of the island's water supply for drinking purposes. The country's desalination plant, opened in March 2003, is considered to be the first of its kind. It was the largest desalination facility in the Americas, and it processes 28,800,000 US gallons (109,000 m3) of water a day at the price of $2.67 per 1,000 US gallons (3.8 m3).

This plant will be located at Trinidad's Point Lisas Industrial Estate, a park of more than 12 companies in various manufacturing and processing functions, and it will allow for easy access to water for both factories and residents in the country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Existing_facilities_and_facilities_under_construction

America has become the Can't Do nation, unless we're talking about wiretapping the rest of the world or drone bombing children in Yemen