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gerontocrat

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Water Resource Management
« on: January 19, 2019, 09:16:43 PM »
The only thread specifically about water is in "Consequences- Water Wars".
A thread about how humankind is, or is not managing water resources seems a good idea. 
Time will tell.

an example....
This study gives a really good look at the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of desalination and possibilities for the future. It also shows that we are talking big numbers.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KZxjEYk01HEdmDhsLmF4RzV5UXu-mwBd/view
The state of desalination and brine production: A global outlook

Apart from the problem of brine production (salt and other ooh-nasty trace elements being concentrated and dumped in the ocean (shown by the study to be underestimated), the study also shows that at the moment the cost limits the use of the fresh water produced to domestic and industrial use in relatively high income countries.

There is a BBC article based on this study at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46863146 . It finishes on an optimistic note - we will see.
 
Concerns over increase in toxic brine from desalination plants
Quote
"There is an urgent need to make desalination technologies more affordable and extend them to low-income and lower-middle income countries. At the same time, though, we have to address potentially severe downsides of desalination - the harm of brine and chemical pollution to the marine environment and human health," said Dr Vladimir Smakhtin, a co-author of the paper from the UN University.

"The good news is that efforts have been made in recent years and, with continuing technology refinement and improving economic affordability, we see a positive and promising outlook."
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etienne

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2019, 10:55:56 AM »
Water is not only an issue when thinking about desalination pollution. Glaciers are melting and once melting is over the water situation becomes critical.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-23944385

Archimid

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2019, 02:52:43 PM »
The ultimate survival tool. Water out of thin air:

How Zero Mass is using solar panels to pull drinkable water directly from the air

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/28/16690042/zero-mass-solar-panel-harvesting-clean-drinking-water-next-level

Quote
Because that’s what Zero Mass does: harvest drinking water out of thin air, using a combination of materials science, solar power, and predictive data. The goal is to use this technology to go from a position of “water scarcity to water abundance,” said founder and chief executive Cody Friesen, regardless of whether you’re in an area where access to clean water is a serious problem, or living in a place where bottled water is often half-drunk and discarded.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

Sigmetnow

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2019, 03:41:36 PM »
The ice stupas of Ladakh: solving water crisis in the high desert of Himalaya
Quote
But addressing the water shortages that threatened life in his mountainous home had started to feel like an intractable problem until he saw the chunk of ice: still hanging, improbably, beneath the bridge, long after the shards around it had melted.

In that moment, he says, “I understood that it was not the warmth of the sun that was melting the ice on the ground. It was direct sunlight.”

What Wangchuck saw reflected in the ice that day was realised four years ago, when he unveiled his first “ice stupa”, an artificial glacier that towered surreally over the otherwise arid landscape, and for which in December he received a prestigious £80,000 innovation prize. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/22/the-ice-stupas-of-ladakh-solving-water-crisis-in-the-high-desert-of-himalaya

Image: How the ice pyramids or artificial glaciers work: gravity pressure forces water up through a pipe to form ice stupas that store water for the crop growing season.
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gerontocrat

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2019, 03:53:05 PM »
It was World Water Day on 22nd March
To mark this UNICEF issued a report...

Yet another instance where collateral damage far outweighs bullets and bombs.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1035171
More children killed by unsafe water, than bullets, says UNICEF chief
Quote
UNICEF’s 16-nation study into how water supplies effect children caught up in emergencies, also shows that children under-five are on average more than 20 times more likely to die from illnesses linked to unsafe water and bad sanitation, than from conflict.

“The odds are already stacked against children living through prolonged conflicts – with many unable to reach a safe water source,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “The reality is that there are more children who die from lack of access to safe water than by bullets."

According to the report, every year, 85,700 children under-15 die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene facilities (WASH), compared with 30,900 from conflict.

Some 72,000 under-fives die annually from similar illnesses linked to WASH-access problems, compared to 3,400 from war-related violence.

UNICEF studied data from Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

It compared World Health Organization (WHO) mortality estimates for “collective violence” and “diarrhoeal disease”.

On average, mortality estimates were higher for diarrhoeal disease than violence in under 15-year-olds – except in Libya, Iraq and Syria.

Under-fives were more likely to die from diarrhoeal disease in all countries except Libya and Syria, the UN report found.

The UNICEF report is at ...
https://weshare.unicef.org/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2AMZIF3HHUU0&POPUPPN=1&POPUPIID=2AMZIF3JFETA&PN=1&IID=2AMZIF3JFETA

N.B. UN stuff often attacked by hackers. Make sure your virus wall is OK before downloading.

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"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

morganism

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #5 on: June 01, 2019, 11:20:06 PM »
A Rose Inspires Smart Way to Collect and Purify Water

Solar thermal desalination and purification by steam, no electricity required.

https://news.utexas.edu/2019/05/29/a-rose-inspires-smart-way-to-collect-and-purify-water/


https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.201900720

“We were searching for more efficient ways to apply the solar-steaming technique for water production by using black filtered paper coated with a special type of polymer, known as polypyrrole,” Fan said.

Polypyrrole is a material known for its photothermal properties, meaning it’s particularly good at converting solar light into thermal heat.

The device removes any contamination from heavy metals and bacteria, and it removes salt from seawater, producing clean water that meets drinking standard requirements set by the World Health Organization.
Kalingrad, the new permanent home of the Olympic Village

morganism

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #6 on: June 01, 2019, 11:54:16 PM »
add:

nanoparticles in water also create steam on exposure to sunlight

Solar Vapor Generation Enabled by Nanoparticles

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn304948h

"Solar illumination of broadly absorbing metal or carbon nanoparticles dispersed in a liquid produces vapor without the requirement of heating the fluid volume. When particles are dispersed in water at ambient temperature, energy is directed primarily to vaporization of water into steam, with a much smaller fraction resulting in heating of the fluid. Sunlight-illuminated particles can also drive H2O–ethanol distillation, yielding fractions significantly richer in ethanol content than simple thermal distillation."
Kalingrad, the new permanent home of the Olympic Village

bligh8

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #7 on: July 10, 2019, 12:05:45 PM »
https://www.wired.com/story/desalination-is-booming-as-cities-run-out-of-water/
Desalination Is Booming as Cities Run out of Water

"Some 30 miles north of San Diego, along the Pacific Coast, sits the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, the largest effort to turn salt water into fresh water in North America.
Each day 100 million gallons of seawater are pushed through semi-permeable membranes to create 50 million gallons of water that is piped to municipal users. Carlsbad, which became fully operational in 2015, creates about 10 percent of the fresh water the 3.1 million people in the region use, at about twice the cost of the other main source of water."

"A second plant, similar to Carlsbad, is being built in Huntington, California with the same 50-million-gallon-a-day capability. Currently there are 11 desalination plants in California, and 10 more are proposed.'

"Meanwhile, the cost of desalinated water has been coming down as the technology evolves and the cost of other sources increases. In the last three decades, the cost of desalination has dropped by more than half.
A boom in desal, though, doesn’t mean that everywhere with access to the sea has found a new source of fresh water. Circumstances play a large role. “As populations increase and existing surface water supplies are being tapped out or groundwater is depleted or polluted, then the problems are acute and there are choices to be made” about desal, said Michael Kiparsky of the Wheeler Water Institute at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “There are places around the world where desal makes economic sense, where there is high pressure on the water resources plus a lot of available energy resources,” such as the Middle East.

more within the article

DrTskoul

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #8 on: July 10, 2019, 12:37:36 PM »
add:

nanoparticles in water also create steam on exposure to sunlight

Solar Vapor Generation Enabled by Nanoparticles

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn304948h

"Solar illumination of broadly absorbing metal or carbon nanoparticles dispersed in a liquid produces vapor without the requirement of heating the fluid volume. When particles are dispersed in water at ambient temperature, energy is directed primarily to vaporization of water into steam, with a much smaller fraction resulting in heating of the fluid. Sunlight-illuminated particles can also drive H2O–ethanol distillation, yielding fractions significantly richer in ethanol content than simple thermal distillation."

So the steam does not condense back on to the liquid and escapes as vapor without heat interaction.... yeah... best if they apply it as solar film evaporator where there is a direct escape route !! However a solar frensel trough steam is much better ( higher temperature therefore higher pressure)

kassy

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #9 on: July 10, 2019, 06:35:18 PM »
Another winning technology (this is a quote from the article bligh8 posted) :

Quote
There are ecological impacts as well. It takes two gallons of sea water to make a gallon of fresh water, which means the gallon left behind is briny. It is disposed of by returning it to the ocean and—if not done properly by diffusing it over large areas—can deplete the ocean of oxygen and have negative impacts on sea life.

A study by the UN Institute for Water, Environment and Health published earlier this year contends that the problem of brine waste has been underestimated by 50 percent and that, when mixed with the chemicals meant to keep systems from fouling, the brine is toxic and causes serious pollution.

Another problem comes from the sucking in of sea water for processing. When a fish or other large organism gets stuck on the intake screen, it dies or is injured; in addition, fish larvae, eggs and plankton get sucked into the system and are killed.
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bligh8

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #10 on: July 11, 2019, 03:37:19 AM »
Kassy

The brine is a big problem with these de-sal plants.  I had one on "Horizon" my sailing vessel, it produced 1 to 2.3 fresh to brine.  Luckily I plumbed it in correctly with the brine exiting the vessel while cycling.  I quit using it not because it was energy intensive (it was) but because of the noise the clunk...clunk...clunk. It interfered with the natural backdrop of the vessels noise the wind and water.

I guess in some areas of the planet there are just no other sources of clean water.

bligh

vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #11 on: July 22, 2019, 05:35:00 PM »
More Basra Water Crises Unless Iraq Govt Fxes 'Failures': HRW
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/22/iraq-water-crisis-basra
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-basra-crises-iraq-govt-failures.html

Nearly 120,000 people were hospitalised last summer after drinking polluted water, in a mass health crisis that sparked deadly protests against the dire state of public services.

In a damning report, HRW found the generally poor state of water quality was likely compounded by algae that rapidly spread last year in the Shatt al-Arab waterway that runs through Basra and provides it with its primary water source.

It indicated that the algae, pollution and high salination could together have sparked the mass health crisis.

HRW slammed Iraqi officials as "short-sighted", saying they had not properly communicated with citizens about the emergency at the time, nor released the results of probes in the year since or dealt with underlying causes.

"What our research brought out very clearly is that the crisis in Basra has not ended," said Belkis Wille, HRW's senior Iraq researcher.

She told AFP that officials had an obligation to communicate to all Iraqi citizens about the state of their drinking water.

... The report relies on dozens of interviews with residents of Basra, experts and government officials as well as analysis of satellite imagery.

Those images revealed evidence of oil spills and algal bloom in the Shatt el-Arab and other waterways that contaminated the water which, when consumed, could cause abdominal pain, fever, vomiting and bloody diarrhoea.

Besides the direct health impact, the water crisis forced families to flee Basra in search of potable water, buy expensive bottled water or keep their children at home if there was no plumbing in schools.

With increasingly scarce water, climate change, pollution and poor water usage, "Basra will suffer from acute water crises in coming years in the absence of strategic solutions", HRW warned.


... Jaafar Sabah, a farmer from Abu al-Khasib, a poor town to the southeast of Basra, told Human Rights Watch:

Quote
Each year I was getting 50 percent of the yield of the year before, and then in 2018, almost nothing survived. In 2018, the salinity level in the water was so high that I could grab the salt from the water with my own hands. I am dying of thirst and so are my children. There were four cases of poisoning in my family. I have no money and I cannot take them to the hospital. Where do I get the money from?


https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/07/22/basra-thirsty/iraqs-failure-manage-water-crisis


Satellite imagery shows what appears to be a likely oil spill into the Shatt al-Arab near the Nahr Bin Umar oil and gas field, a site run by the Basra Oil Company (BOC), a governmental oil company, about 25 kilometers upstream from Basra city. The spill apparently lasted for at least 10 days. Satellite image date July 15, 2018. © Planet Labs 2019.
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

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vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #12 on: August 22, 2019, 06:04:20 PM »
Too-Cheap-to-Notice Water is Coming to an End, and Water Utilities Must Warn Consumers
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-08-too-cheap-to-notice-consumers.html

Too-cheap-to-notice water and sewer bills are disappearing, and water utilities will need to educate consumers on the true cost of their product much like electricity utilities did in the 1970s, according to new research coauthored by a Rutgers University–Camden finance scholar.

The article—"Electricity in the 1970s, Water in the 2020s," which appears in The Electricity Journal—encourages water utilities to invest in the research necessary to provide consumers with data on water rates and usage.

"America's water utility industry is in a capacity crisis due to a history of inadequate investment that will last for years," explains coauthor Richard Michelfelder, a clinical associate professor of finance at Rutgers University–Camden. "The industry has no choice but to invest in large capacity additions in order to meet our surging national demand for water which, in turn, will result in substantial rate increases for the consumer."

When that happens, "rate shock" will set in, followed by a public demand for utilities to justify rates by customer class and conduct a load study that is used to allocate accelerating water (and wastewater treatment) costs by customer class (such as residential or commercial) to determine who should pay for the rapidly rising expenses.

"The processes currently in place to justify cost allocations simply aren't going to be acceptable when the dollars at stake surge," says Michelfelder. "In such a situation, it wouldn't be surprising for a utility to be obliged to conduct a load study to gauge the impact of the rate shock. And the utility will be required to pick up the cost of that study."
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

nanning

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #13 on: September 16, 2019, 10:15:54 AM »
  'I don't know how we come back from this': Australia's big dry sucks life from once-proud towns

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/14/i-dont-know-how-we-come-back-from-this-australias-big-dry-sucks-life-from-once-proud-towns
  by Anne Davies, Ben Smee and Lorena Allam


 Quotes:
Australia is experiencing one of its most severe droughts on record, resulting in desperate water shortages across large parts of New South Wales and southern Queensland. Dams in some parts of western NSW have all but dried up, with rainfall levels through the winter in the lowest 10% of historical records in some areas.

The crisis in the far west of the state became unavoidable after the mass fish kills along the lower Darling River last summer, but now much bigger towns closer to the coast, including Dubbo, are also running out of water.

Residents of three distinct areas talked to Guardian Australia about the state of their towns under extreme stress from water shortages, expressing anxiety about their future but also determination to keep communities alive.


“Ah, but it will be all right. We’ve got through this before.”

Macdonald says he was called “a communist” by a local Warwick identity for suggesting the weather patterns had changed and that October thunderstorms were no longer a regular occurrence.

“I’d be too frightened to talk about [climate change] in this town,” he says. “It doesn’t get through to people at all. Not one bit.”



Warwick is on track to run out of water within months. Roadside signs heading into town remind residents of the new restrictions: 100 litres per person, per day.
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wili

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #14 on: September 16, 2019, 02:42:12 PM »
Thanks for this.

More proof that, for some people, no amount of evidence, even 'evidence' that destroys their lives and their towns, will convince some people to discard a cherished ideology.

If devastating droughts don't change their minds, I really doubt a Blue Ocean Event will.
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #15 on: September 20, 2019, 09:13:34 PM »
Water May Be Scarce for New Power Plants in Asia
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-scarce-power-asia.html

Climate change and over-tapped waterways could leave developing parts of Asia without enough water to cool power plants in the near future, new research indicates.

The study found that existing and planned power plants that burn coal for energy could be vulnerable.


That is already a problem for some power plants in the United States, and this study suggests, it is likely to be an even greater problem in developing parts of Asia—Mongolia, Southeast Asia and parts of India and China—where more than 400 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plant capacity are planned for operation by 2030. (By comparison: The largest coal-fired power plant in Ohio has the capacity to produce about 2,600 megawatts of electricity; the new plants planned for developing Asia are the equivalent of more than 150 similar facilities.)

That increasing power production will itself be part of the problem, the researchers found, creating greater demand for water at the same time that climate change significantly limits the supply.

The researchers analyzed databases of existing and planned coal-fired power plants, and combined that information with high-resolution hydrological maps to evaluate the possible strain on water supplies throughout the region. Then they applied different climate scenarios—increases in global temperature of 1.5, 2 and 3 degrees Celsius (2.7—4.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, increases set out as milestones in the Paris Agreement, a 2016 international accord to address climate change.

The researchers then considered different cooling systems and potential use of post-combustion CO2 capture equipment, and the water that might be needed to run them.

Quote
... "The numbers showed that there simply would not be enough water to cool all the power plants, but there is also a lot of local variability"

Open Access: Yaoping Wang et al, Vulnerability of existing and planned coal-fired power plants in Developing Asia to changes in climate and water resources, Energy & Environmental Science (2019).
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #16 on: September 24, 2019, 05:34:24 PM »
Zimbabwe's Capital Runs Dry as Taps Cut Off for 2 Million People
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-zimbabwe-capital-2m-people.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-water/zimbabwe-capital-city-shuts-main-water-plant-shortages-loom-idUSKBN1W82PH



The more than 2 million residents of Zimbabwe's capital and surrounding towns are now without water after authorities shut down the city's main treatment plant, raising new fears about disease after a recent cholera outbreak while the economy crumbles further.

Officials in Harare have struggled to raise foreign currency to import water treatment chemicals; about $2.7 million is needed per month. Meanwhile, water levels in polluted dams are dropping because of drought.

"Everyone living in Harare is affected, they don't have water," City Council spokesman Michael Chideme said Tuesday, as residents turned to options such as bottled water or wells.

Chideme called it a dangerous situation because of the risk of water-borne diseases. "Maybe the situation will be resolved by tomorrow but we are not sure," he said.

The capital now frequently records cases of diseases such as typhoid due to water shortages and dilapidated sewer infrastructure. Some residents are forced to get water from shallow, unsafe wells and defecate in the open.

The Associated Press earlier this month watched some residents pump water then wait a half-hour for enough water to seep into the well to pump again.



------------------------

Elsewhere ...

Gas Shortages Paralyze Haiti, Triggering Protests Against Failing Economy and Dysfunctional Politics
http://theconversation.com/gas-shortages-paralyze-haiti-triggering-protests-against-failing-economy-and-dysfunctional-politics-116337

... In Haiti’s Cap Haitian region and rural northeast, the humanitarian situation is dire. For over a year, a severe drought has left people with hardly any access to water. Crops have shriveled and the Dominican Republic just closed its border with Haiti, so food that once came from there is in short supply.

... Haiti’s financial struggles are also, in large part, the result of an ill-conceived economic system that has failed to meet Haiti’s needs for over a century.

Ever since the American military occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, its economic and social policies have been designed to attract foreign investment. The plan, which was crafted in the 1910s and 1920s by the U.S. military government, was to “develop” this rural Caribbean country by making it an appealing operating environment for U.S. firms.

In practice, that meant keeping Haitian wages, corporate taxes and tariffs low. In exchange, the theory went, foreign investment would bring infrastructure development and jobs, benefiting all Haitians.

American agro-corporations began profitably cultivating cash crops like coffee, bananas and sugar in Haiti in the early 20th century.

In 1926, American businessmen backed by the American military government seized more than 12,000 acres of fertile land from Haitian peasants in the Cap Haitian region to grow sisal, a fibrous plant used in weaving. To make room for this massive industrial operation, thousands of families were evicted from their land.

The intensive cultivation of just one crop over two decades so depleted the soil that food production across Cap Haitian was threatened.

This process of exploitation followed by scarcity and environmental degradation has repeated itself for decades.

Chasing low-wage labor and free trade, U.S. corporations and military agencies have established sugar cane plantations, rubber plantations and textile factories in Haiti for the past 100 years, with similarly disappointing results for workers and the environment. ...
« Last Edit: September 24, 2019, 05:46:06 PM by vox_mundi »
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #17 on: November 13, 2019, 12:28:04 AM »
Half of Piedmont Drinking Wells May Exceed North Carolina's Hexavalent Chromium Standards
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-piedmont-wells-nc-hexavalent-chromium.html



A new study which combines measurements from nearly 1,400 drinking water wells across North Carolina estimates that more than half of the wells in the state's central region contain levels of cancer-causing hexavalent chromium in excess of state safety standards.

Only a single North Carolina well in the study violated the maximum contaminant level for total chromium set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of 100 micrograms per liter. But the NC Department of Health and Human Service's much lower health advisory level—0.07 micrograms per liter—is set to protect against a one-in-one-million risk of cancer over a 70-year life span. That level of hexavalent chromium was exceeded by 470 of the 865 wells for which the contaminant was measured.

"There is a huge gap between 100 and 0.07 micrograms per liter," said Rachel Coyte, a doctoral student in Vengosh's lab who was lead author on the study. "If you follow the EPA guidance, we have no problem. But if you look at the NC health recommendations, there is a significant population exposed to hexavalent chromium concentrations at or exceeding a one-in-one-million lifetime risk of cancer. Why is this gap not being addressed?"



Statewide, nearly 4 million people rely on groundwater as their primary source of drinking water. "The areas where we see the largest number of groundwater users, like Wake and Mecklenburg Counties, coincide with some of the highest probabilities for the occurrence of hexavalent chromium above the health advisory level," Coyte said.

Rachel M. Coyte et al, Occurrence and distribution of hexavalent chromium in groundwater from North Carolina, USA, Science of The Total Environment (2019)
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #18 on: January 17, 2020, 06:55:02 PM »
‘It Tastes Like Clay’: Residents of Rio Alarmed by Murky, Smelly Tap water
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/16/brazil-rio-de-janeiro-tap-water-pollution

Just weeks before hosting its world famous carnival – and with summer temperatures soaring past 40C (104F) – Rio de Janeiro is on edge as residents across the city complain of murky and foul-smelling tap water.

Scores of neighbourhoods in the city of 6.7 million people, as well as six nearby towns, have been affected by the crisis, which has dragged on for nearly two weeks.

Social media feeds have been flooded with photos and videos of clay-coloured water, while supplies of bottled water have run low.

The city’s publicly-owned water company has said the strange taste was caused by an organic compound called geosmin (which is found naturally in soil), and insisted the water was safe to drink.

But residents have complained of falling sick after drinking the water, and environmentalists blamed the crisis on polluted rivers, a lack of basic sanitation and decades of mismanagement.



The water crisis in Rio de Janeiro is totally connected to the environmental collapse we are experiencing. The rush to buy drinking water to the point of running out of stock in some stores is a preview of what we can experience in the not-so-distant future.

https://twitter.com/milensbatista/status/1216020403958829057?s=20

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Main Water Sources that Supply Rio de Janeiro are Polluted, Expert warning
https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2020/01/09/principais-mananciais-de-agua-que-abastecem-o-rio-de-janeiro-estao-poluidos-alerta-especialista.ghtml

"If the raw water is more and more polluted, it will reach a point that you will not be able to treat," said Uerj's sanitary engineer. Aerial images show the problem.

There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

gerontocrat

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #19 on: January 17, 2020, 08:33:39 PM »
Meanwhile in the UK, home to world-class(?) Water Companies.....

Note that London & the SE do have a permanently looming water resource problem.

Hackney Council criticise Thames Water over repeated floods

Quote
Thames Water has been criticised by Hackney Council after burst water pipes have repeatedly flooded north London. A 36-inch (91cm) mains pipe burst in Finsbury Park in October 2019, damaging 177 homes and leaving thousands without water.

It was the third major flood in the area in three years.

"It is extremely lucky no-one was killed or seriously injured," said councillor Sharon Patrick, living in Hackney scrutiny commission chair.

Following the Lea Bridge flood in 2018 Thames Water ignored offers to co-operate with the council in training for future emergencies, the Local Democracy Reporter Service reported.

https://weownit.org.uk/company/thames-water
Quote
Thames Water is owned by a series of investment companies, many of them sovereign wealth funds or pension funds owned and run by foreign governments. Thames Water's 2017 annual report in fact shows that the company is over 50% owned by foreign states through pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.

UK's biggest water provider, supplying water and sewerage services to 15 million people in London and the Thames Valley and serve over one quarter of the UK's population. Thames Water has been criticised for financialising one of Britain's key utilities, prioritising shareholder dividends and operating with a high level of debt. A Financial Times investigation revealed that Thames Water paid no corporation tax between 2011-15.

They also lose 677.2 million litres of water per day through old and leaky pipes - more than any other water company!

Shareholders benefit from this scandal to the tune of £392 million in profits between 2013-2017.

In 2018, Thames Water's highest paid director received £851,000 in salary, bonuses and other perks.
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

kassy

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #20 on: January 17, 2020, 09:04:13 PM »
One of those examples of legalized theft which should piss people of.
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

TerryM

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #21 on: January 18, 2020, 09:34:01 PM »
^^
Ramen!!


Terry

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #22 on: January 19, 2020, 05:10:47 AM »
   ‘It tastes like clay’: residents of Rio alarmed by murky, smelly tap water

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/16/brazil-rio-de-janeiro-tap-water-pollution
  by Dom Phillips


  Excerpts:
Just weeks before hosting its world famous carnival – and with summer temperatures soaring past 40C (104F) – Rio de Janeiro is on edge as residents across the city complain of murky and foul-smelling tap water.

Scores of neighbourhoods in the city of 6.7 million people, as well as six nearby towns, have been affected by the crisis, which has dragged on for nearly two weeks.

Social media feeds have been flooded with photos and videos of clay-coloured water, while supplies of bottled water have run low.

The city’s publicly-owned water company has said the strange taste was caused by an organic compound called geosmin (which is found naturally in soil), and insisted the water was safe to drink.

But residents have complained of falling sick after drinking the water, and environmentalists blamed the crisis on polluted rivers, a lack of basic sanitation and decades of mismanagement.


Emily dos Santos, 20, who works for an arts NGO, fell sick after drinking filtered tap water. “I had a fever and diarrhoea; I vomited a lot for three days,” she said. “The doctor said it was bacteria in the water – and that lots of other people had come in with the same symptoms.

Cleaning up the city’s water and sewage was supposed to be part of its legacy for hosting the 2016 Olympics, but never happened.


Cellphone technician Kamilla dos Santos, 28, who lives in Rio’s north zone, was sick for five days. “You can’t drink the water; it tastes awful – like clay – and it has a terrible smell,” she said.

And the three rivers that supply the Guandu treatment centre, he said, are essentially “sewage gullies”.

The crisis was “the sum of all the mistakes made in the last 50 years”, he said, noting that favelas lacking basic sanitation have grown up on rivers and blaming “uncontrolled urban expansion and lack of investment in basic sanitation”.
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #23 on: January 20, 2021, 04:23:47 AM »
Engineers Create 'Smart' Aerogel That Turns Air Into Drinking Water
https://phys.org/news/2021-01-smart-aerogel-air.html

Some say future wars will be fought over water, and a billion people around the world are already struggling to find enough water to live. Now, researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have created a substance that extracts water from air without any external power source.

To extract water from air, a team led by Professor Ho Ghim Wei from the NUS Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering created a type of aerogel, a solid material that weighs almost nothing. Under the microscope, it looks like a sponge, but it does not have to be squeezed to release the water it absorbs from the air. It also does not need a battery. In a humid environment, one kilogram of it will produce 17 liters of water a day.



The aerogel autonomously gathers water molecules from the air, condenses them into a liquid and releases the water. When there is sunshine, the structure can further boost the water release by transitioning to a complete water-hating state. And it is very good at that. 95 percent of the water vapor that goes into the aerogel comes out as water. In laboratory tests, the aerogel gave water non-stop for months.

The researchers tested the water, and found that it met World Health Organization's standards for drinking water.

"Given that atmospheric water is continuously replenished by the global hydrological cycle, our invention offers a promising solution for achieving sustainable freshwater production in a variety of climatic conditions, at minimal energy cost," said Professor Ho



G. Yilmaz et al. Autonomous atmospheric water seeping MOF matrix, Science Advances (2020).
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/42/eabc8605
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

Bruce Steele

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #24 on: January 20, 2021, 07:46:47 AM »
Vox , If enough of this gel were placed high on a mountain you could produce energy from hydropower.
Close to a perpetual motion machine.
Harvest of water vapor will of course leave someone’s air drier downstream/ downwind. For an environment like Coastal Southern Calif. nighttime fog may turn into a water resource but a lowered air moisture content might prove detrimental to native flora. That is I don’t believe in free lunches.
 Our Southern Calif. water season has delivered less than two inches so far this year although some rains are forecast for the weekend. If we can change fog into water it will be a large temptation to do so no matter the consequences to native plant life and dependent fauna.

interstitial

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #25 on: January 20, 2021, 08:10:07 AM »
Certain plants are supposed to be pretty good at doing the same thing. I don't know how they compare but plants sound like a better idea.

vox_mundi

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There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

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vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #27 on: January 23, 2021, 10:58:23 AM »
Irrigation Schemes In Sub-Saharan Africa Consistently Falling Short of Their Promises
https://phys.org/news/2021-01-irrigation-schemes-sub-saharan-africa-falling.html

Large-scale irrigation infrastructure projects are back on the development agenda in sub-Saharan Africa after a near 30-year hiatus, despite projects having had disappointing results, with social and environmental side effects outweighing benefits. Such projects are planned in response to water scarcity pressures and are seen as a solution to intensify agricultural production, support rural economic development and enhance resilience to climate change.

New research, published in Nature Sustainability, from a University of Manchester-led consortium quantified the performance of 79 African irrigation schemes. They did this by comparing planning documents to satellite-derived land cover maps to give the percentage of irrigation delivered and those that had stopped working. The found schemes are consistently underperforming and there have been no trends in project.

The schemes delivered a median of 16% of the proposed area. Sixteen out of 79 were completely broken. 20 schemes delivered over 80% of the proposed area.

The University of Manchester led team argues that it is the political and management frameworks underpinning African irrigation development leading to the underperformance. The financial viability of schemes are limited by low value crops that are promoted for increased grain production and national food security. Secondly, proposals are unrealistic to start with: planning is afflicted with optimism bias and political requirements for on-paper profitable projects. And finally, schemes are managed by centralized bureaucracies, lacking technical expertise, local knowledge or financial resources to ensure long-term maintenance.

... "Irrigation schemes have been constructed in sub-Saharan Africa for nearly 100 years, our research shows planners have consistently over-promised how much land can be developed and failed to achieve this. Future plans should be mindful of issues faced by previous schemes to avoid repeating the same mistakes."

Thomas P. Higginbottom et al. Performance of large-scale irrigation projects in sub-Saharan Africa, Nature Sustainability (2021)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00670-7
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

Sigmetnow

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #28 on: February 09, 2021, 12:46:44 AM »
Florida, U.S.
Hacker increased chemical level at Oldsmar's city water system, sheriff says
Thanks to a vigilant operator and several redundancies, officials say the heightened level of sodium hydroxide never caused a public threat.
https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/pinellascounty/pinellas-oldsmar-water-system-computer-intrustion/67-512b2bab-9f94-44d7-841e-5169fdb0a0bd
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #29 on: March 03, 2021, 06:23:06 PM »
Humans Control Majority of Freshwater Ebb and Flow On Earth, Study Finds
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-humans-ups-downs-freshwater-storage.html


Proportion of seasonal surface water storage variability associated with reservoirs by hydrologic basin from Oct 2018 to July 2020. Darker colors represent higher influence of human-managed reservoirs on surface water storage and lighter colors represent less influence.

Humans have made a remarkable impact on the planet, from clearing forests for agriculture and urbanization to altering the chemistry of the atmosphere with fossil fuels. Now, a new study in the journal Nature reveals for the first time the extent of human impact on the global water cycle.

The study used NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat-2) to assemble the largest ever dataset of seasonal water levels in more than 227,000 lakes, ponds and reservoirs worldwide. The data reveal that even though human-managed reservoirs comprise only a small percentage of all water bodies, they account for 57% of the total seasonal water storage changes globally.

"We tend to think of the water cycle as a purely natural system: Rain and snowmelt run into rivers, which run to the ocean where evaporation starts the whole cycle again," said Sarah Cooley, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University who launched the research project while a graduate student at Brown University. "But humans are actually intervening substantially in that cycle. Our work demonstrates that humans are responsible for a majority of the seasonal surface water storage variability on Earth."

From October 2018 to July 2020, the satellite measured water levels in 227,386 bodies of water, ranging in size from the American Great Lakes to ponds with areas less than one tenth of a square mile. Each water body was observed at different times of year to track changes in water levels. The researchers cross-referenced the water bodies they observed with a database of reservoirs worldwide to identify which water bodies were human-controlled and which were natural.

While countries like the U.S. and Canada gauge reservoir levels and make that information publicly available, many countries don't publish such data. And very few non-reservoir lakes and ponds are gauged at all. So there was no way to do this analysis without the precise satellite observations, the researchers said.

The study found that while natural lakes and ponds varied seasonally by an average of .22 meters, human-managed reservoirs varied by .86 meters. Added together, the much larger variation in reservoirs compared to natural lakes means that reservoirs account for 57% of the total variation. In some places, however, human influence was even stronger than that. For example, in arid regions like the Middle East, American West, India and Southern Africa, variability attributed to human control surges to 90% and above.

In a separate study published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, the research team was able to use ICESat-2 data to shed light on how reservoir water is being used. The study showed that in places like the Middle East, reservoir levels tend to be lower in summer and higher in the winter. That suggests that water is being released in the dry season for irrigation and drinking water. In contrast, the trend in places like Scandinavia was the opposite. There, water is released in the winter to make hydroelectric power for heating.



Human alteration of global surface water storage variability, Nature (2021).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03262-3
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

Freegrass

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #30 on: February 22, 2024, 01:40:43 AM »
Reforestation in Ethiopia without planting a single tree. I love this.

When factual science is in conflict with our beliefs or traditions, we cuddle up in our own delusional fantasy where everything starts making sense again.

vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #31 on: March 04, 2024, 04:50:46 PM »
New Analysis Shows That the Global Freshwater Cycle Has Shifted Far Beyond Pre-industrial Conditions
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-analysis-global-freshwater-shifted-pre.html

A new analysis of freshwater resources across the globe shows that the updated planetary boundary for freshwater change was surpassed by the mid-twentieth century. In other words, for the past century, humans have been pushing the Earth's freshwater system far beyond the stable conditions that prevailed before industrialization.

This is the first time that global water cycle change has been assessed over such a long timescale with an appropriate reference baseline. The findings, published in Nature Water, show that human pressures, such as dam construction, large-scale irrigation and global warming, have altered freshwater resources to such an extent that their capacity to regulate vital ecological and climatic processes is at risk.



The international research team calculated monthly streamflow and soil moisture at a spatial resolution of roughly 50 x 50 kilometers using data from hydrological models that combine all major human impacts on the freshwater cycle. As a baseline, they determined the conditions during the pre-industrial period (1661–1860). They then compared the industrial period (1861–2005) against this baseline.

Their analysis revealed an increase in the frequency of exceptionally dry or wet conditions—deviations in streamflow and soil moisture. Dry and wet deviations have consistently occurred over substantially larger areas since the early 20th century than during the pre-industrial period. Overall, the global land area experiencing deviations has nearly doubled compared with pre-industrial conditions.

Because the analysis was done at a high spatial and temporal resolution, the researchers could explore geographical differences in the deviations. Exceptionally dry streamflow and soil moisture conditions became more frequent in many tropical and subtropical regions, while many boreal and temperate regions saw an increase in exceptionally wet conditions, especially in terms of soil moisture. These patterns match changes seen in water availability due to climate change.



Notable shifts beyond pre-industrial streamflow and soil moisture conditions transgress the planetary boundary for freshwater change, Nature Water, (2024)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-024-00208-7
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

kiwichick16

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #32 on: March 09, 2024, 09:51:55 PM »

vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #33 on: March 28, 2024, 04:05:50 PM »
Future of 1 Billion People In South Asia Hinges On Water Pact, Says New Analysis
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-future-billion-people-south-asia.html

Better collaboration is urgently needed to mitigate the impacts of climate change on three key river basins in South Asia—the Brahmaputra, Indus and Ganges—according to new analysis.

The three rivers provide food and water security to nearly a billion people in some of Asia's most vulnerable communities, as well as underpinning industry and industrial policies in one of the most densely populous and geopolitically sensitive zones in the world.

In a series of reports, scientists call for joint action to tackle what they see as a lack of planning, research, cooperation and data sharing in these basins, highlighting growing pressures on water resources in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region from population growth and rising temperatures.

The reports, released by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development and the Australian Water Partnership on March 20 in Kathmandu, stress that collaboration among riparian countries (nations along bodies of water) is vital for sustainable energy strategies, water security, and disaster resilience.

They warn that the current approaches raise the risk of destabilization and crisis.

Hemant Ojha et al, Elevating River Basin Governance and Cooperation in the HKH region: Summary Report I, Yarlung-Tsangpo-Siang-Brahmaputra-Jamuna River Basin, (2024)
https://lib.icimod.org/record/36436

Noah Kaiser et al, Elevating river basin governance and cooperation in the HKH region: Summary report II, Ganges River Basin, (2024)
https://lib.icimod.org/record/36435

Russell Rollason et al, Elevating river basin governance and cooperation in the HKH region: Summary report III, Indus River Basin, (2024)
https://lib.icimod.org/record/36434

--------------------------------------------------------------

Study Finds Decline In the Stability of Water Yield In Watersheds
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-decline-stability-yield-watersheds.html

Extreme climatic events such as droughts, heat waves, and cold spells not only modify hydro-meteorological conditions but also alter the underlying characteristics (e.g., wildfires due to droughts changing the vegetation cover). Intense human activities, such as river channel modifications, afforestation, deforestation, industrialization, and urbanization, further amplify the variability of watershed system components.

These changes directly or indirectly impact the hydrological processes of the watershed system. The water yield of the watershed system may experience persistent disturbances by enhanced extreme climate events and human activities under global warming, challenging both system components and system balance. ... Therefore, the stability of the water yield in the watershed system is the capacity to restore its original state or transition to a new state under the effect of disturbances (i.e., climate or underlying characteristics change).

Yu Yan et al, Stability of water yield in watersheds, Science China Earth Sciences (2024)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11430-023-1206-4
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

morganism

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #34 on: April 10, 2024, 12:00:21 AM »
A Water Wrongdoer’s Revenge

A California lawmaker wants to dismantle the Clean Water Act protections that he was fined for violating.


After being sanctioned by federal regulators for plowing up protected wetlands on his California farm, a U.S. lawmaker is now spearheading an effort to roll back federal water protections — including the very same provisions that he once paid penalties for violating.

If the scheme is successful, environmental groups say industrial polluters could more freely contaminate wetlands, rivers, and other waters, harming both the nation’s water resources and the communities depending on them. It could also benefit the lawmaker spearheading the attack, since he still owns the farm where he was found to be destroying wetlands.

In 2017, before he was a lawmaker, Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) was fined $1.1 million by federal regulators for disturbing wetlands and streams on a 500-acre plot of land owned by his business, Duarte Nursery. The settlement ended a long and public legal battle between Duarte and environmental authorities over violations of the Clean Water Act, the landmark 1972 legislation that protects the nation’s rivers, wetlands, and other bodies of water.

That same year, Duarte Nursery paid an outside firm $30,000 to lobby on “issues relating to the Clean Water Act,” according to federal disclosures.

Since taking office last year, Duarte, who sits on a key House committee that oversees water policy, has become a vocal supporter of efforts to roll back clean water standards and other environmental protections, including a 2023 attempt by Republican lawmakers to redefine what bodies of water are federally protected.

(snip)
But Duarte’s latest effort — a bill he has spearheaded called the “Creating Confidence in Clean Water Permitting Act,” which passed the House of Representatives on March 21 — goes further and deals directly with the provisions he and his company fought in court for years.

And since Duarte has remained a co-owner of Duarte Nursery, he could potentially benefit from the rollbacks. In May 2023, Duarte reported earning a salary of $783,000 from the company.

The proposal, part of a January package of conservative bills that take aim at the Clean Water Act, specifically weakens oversight of so-called dredge-and-fill permits — the same type of permit that Duarte was sanctioned over by regulators in 2017. The effort follows the devastating decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Sackett v. EPA last year, which decimated longstanding protections for the country’s wetlands.
(more)

https://www.levernews.com/a-water-wrongdoers-revenge/
Kalingrad, the new permanent home of the Olympic Village

morganism

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #35 on: April 14, 2024, 11:25:10 PM »
Missouri could crack down on water exports to drought-weary West

Missouri lawmakers say water has almost always been plentiful in their state, giving no reason to think twice about a concept known as riparian rights — the idea that, if you own the land, you have broad freedoms to use its water.

But that could change under a bill advancing quickly in a state legislature that is normally sharply divided. The measure would largely forbid the export of water across state lines without a permit, even though there is no evidence that is happening on any large scale.

Just the specter of water scarcity is inspiring bipartisan support. Besides persistent drought in parts of the state and plummeting Mississippi River levels in recent months and years, lawmakers are wary of the West, and the chance that thirsty communities facing dwindling water supplies will look east for lakes and rivers to tap.

“They’re not being real responsible,” state Rep. Jamie Burger (R), one of the bill’s lead sponsors, said of states like California and Arizona. “We feel like we need to be responsible in Missouri and protect what we have.”

If passed, the new limits would be the latest domino to fall as climate change makes droughts more frequent and intense across huge swaths of the United States, and threatens to exhaust water supplies in some parts of the West within the foreseeable future. States including Oklahoma, Iowa and Nebraska already have similar safeguards on water exports in place, while a compact among Great Lakes states has largely banned exports beyond the limits of their watershed since 2008.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/13/midwest-drought-water/

“Each year, dozens of proposals, ranging from serious to laughable, are made to export large volumes of water from water-rich states to water-poor ones,” Charles Miller, then of the Missouri Confluence Waterkeeper, testified last year at a hearing on a similar bill in the Missouri legislature that did not advance. “Most of these are costly and ill-considered, but without statutory authority to conserve our state’s water resources, Missouri would have no way to stop them.”

The measure under consideration — which received preliminary approval in the Missouri House of Representatives on Wednesday — would allow water exports only under permits lasting three years or less, and only when state natural resources officials deem that Missourians have enough water for their own “beneficial uses.” It would allow some ongoing water exports into neighboring states to continue and would give the state authority to impose conditions on any plans to send Missouri water flowing more widely.

Iowa has repeatedly rejected one company’s plan to export groundwater west. In Nebraska, efforts to tighten limits on exports remain contentious.
Kalingrad, the new permanent home of the Olympic Village

Freegrass

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #36 on: April 15, 2024, 10:26:57 AM »
Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water
MIT engineers and collaborators developed a solar-powered device that avoids salt-clogging issues of other designs.

https://news.mit.edu/2023/desalination-system-could-produce-freshwater-cheaper-0927

Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun.

In a paper appearing today in the journal Joule, the team outlines the design for a new solar desalination system that takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight.

The configuration of the device allows water to circulate in swirling eddies, in a manner similar to the much larger “thermohaline” circulation of the ocean. This circulation, combined with the sun’s heat, drives water to evaporate, leaving salt behind. The resulting water vapor can then be condensed and collected as pure, drinkable water. In the meantime, the leftover salt continues to circulate through and out of the device, rather than accumulating and clogging the system.

The new system has a higher water-production rate and a higher salt-rejection rate than all other passive solar desalination concepts currently being tested.

The researchers estimate that if the system is scaled up to the size of a small suitcase, it could produce about 4 to 6 liters of drinking water per hour and last several years before requiring replacement parts. At this scale and performance, the system could produce drinking water at a rate and price that is cheaper than tap water.

“For the first time, it is possible for water, produced by sunlight, to be even cheaper than tap water,” says Lenan Zhang, a research scientist in MIT’s Device Research Laboratory.

The team envisions a scaled-up device could passively produce enough drinking water to meet the daily requirements of a small family. The system could also supply off-grid, coastal communities where seawater is easily accessible.

Zhang’s study co-authors include MIT graduate student Yang Zhong and Evelyn Wang, the Ford Professor of Engineering, along with Jintong Gao, Jinfang You, Zhanyu Ye, Ruzhu Wang, and Zhenyuan Xu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

A powerful convection

The team’s new system improves on their previous design — a similar concept of multiple layers, called stages. Each stage contained an evaporator and a condenser that used heat from the sun to passively separate salt from incoming water. That design, which the team tested on the roof of an MIT building, efficiently converted the sun’s energy to evaporate water, which was then condensed into drinkable water. But the salt that was left over quickly accumulated as crystals that clogged the system after a few days. In a real-world setting, a user would have to place stages on a frequent basis, which would significantly increase the system’s overall cost.

In a follow-up effort, they devised a solution with a similar layered configuration, this time with an added feature that helped to circulate the incoming water as well as any leftover salt. While this design prevented salt from settling and accumulating on the device, it desalinated water at a relatively low rate.

In the latest iteration, the team believes it has landed on a design that achieves both a high water-production rate, and high salt rejection, meaning that the system can quickly and reliably produce drinking water for an extended period. The key to their new design is a combination of their two previous concepts: a multistage system of evaporators and condensers, that is also configured to boost the circulation of water — and salt — within each stage.

“We introduce now an even more powerful convection, that is similar to what we typically see in the ocean, at kilometer-long scales,” Xu says.

The small circulations generated in the team’s new system is similar to the “thermohaline” convection in the ocean — a phenomenon that drives the movement of water around the world, based on differences in sea temperature (“thermo”) and salinity (“haline”).

“When seawater is exposed to air, sunlight drives water to evaporate. Once water leaves the surface, salt remains. And the higher the salt concentration, the denser the liquid, and this heavier water wants to flow downward,” Zhang explains. “By mimicking this kilometer-wide phenomena in small box, we can take advantage of this feature to reject salt.”

Tapping out

The heart of the team’s new design is a single stage that resembles a thin box, topped with a dark material that efficiently absorbs the heat of the sun. Inside, the box is separated into a top and bottom section. Water can flow through the top half, where the ceiling is lined with an evaporator layer that uses the sun’s heat to warm up and evaporate any water in direct contact. The water vapor is then funneled to the bottom half of the box, where a condensing layer air-cools the vapor into salt-free, drinkable liquid. The researchers set the entire box at a tilt within a larger, empty vessel, then attached a tube from the top half of the box down through the bottom of the vessel, and floated the vessel in saltwater.

In this configuration, water can naturally push up through the tube and into the box, where the tilt of the box, combined with the thermal energy from the sun, induces the water to swirl as it flows through. The small eddies help to bring water in contact with the upper evaporating layer while keeping salt circulating, rather than settling and clogging.

The team built several prototypes, with one, three, and 10 stages, and tested their performance in water of varying salinity, including natural seawater and water that was seven times saltier.

From these tests, the researchers calculated that if each stage were scaled up to a square meter, it would produce up to 5 liters of drinking water per hour, and that the system could desalinate water without accumulating salt for several years. Given this extended lifetime, and the fact that the system is entirely passive, requiring no electricity to run, the team estimates that the overall cost of running the system would be cheaper than what it costs to produce tap water in the United States.

“We show that this device is capable of achieving a long lifetime,” Zhong says. “That means that, for the first time, it is possible for drinking water produced by sunlight to be cheaper than tap water. This opens up the possibility for solar desalination to address real-world problems.”

“This is a very innovative approach that effectively mitigates key challenges in the field of desalination,” says Guihua Yu, who develops sustainable water and energy storage systems at the University of Texas at Austin, and was not involved in the research. “The design is particularly beneficial for regions struggling with high-salinity water. Its modular design makes it highly suitable for household water production, allowing for scalability and adaptability to meet individual needs.”

Funding for the research at Shanghai Jiao Tong University was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China.
When factual science is in conflict with our beliefs or traditions, we cuddle up in our own delusional fantasy where everything starts making sense again.

Freegrass

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #37 on: April 15, 2024, 10:27:36 AM »
Increasing freshwater supply to sustainably address global water security at scale

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24314-2

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morganism

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #38 on: April 15, 2024, 11:03:44 PM »
You can just put gold nano particles in the water, put it in the sun, and it will boil off/distill freshwater too.

The recirculation scheme looks like the new part of that. Now if you separated out all the metals in the brines....
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morganism

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #39 on: April 16, 2024, 11:55:12 PM »
‘Water is more valuable than oil’: the corporation cashing in on America’s drought

In an unprecedented deal, a private company purchased land in a tiny Arizona town – and sold its water rights to a suburb 200 miles away. Local residents fear the agreement has ‘opened Pandora’s box’

One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves.

Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, if you count the weekenders who come to boat and hunt. Dusty shrublands run into sleepy residential streets, which run into neat fields of cotton and alfalfa.

Nearly a decade ago, Greenstone Resource Partners LLC, a private company backed by global investors, bought almost 500 acres of agricultural land here in Cibola. In a first-of-its-kind deal, the company recently sold the water rights tied to the land to the town of Queen Creek, a suburb of Phoenix, for a $14m gross profit. More than 2,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River that was once used to irrigate farmland is now flowing, through a canal system, to the taps of homes more than 200 miles away.

A Guardian investigation into the unprecedented water transfer, and how it took shape, reveals that Greenstone strategically purchased land and influence to advance the deal. The company was able to do so by exploiting the arcane water policies governing the Colorado River.

Experts expect that such transfers will become more common as thirsty towns across the west seek increasingly scarce water. The climate crisis and chronic overuse have sapped the Colorado River watershed, leaving cities and farmers alike to contend with shortages. Amid a deepening drought and declines in the river’s reservoirs, Greenstone and firms like it have been discreetly acquiring thousands of acres of farmland.

    Here we are in the middle of a drought trying to preserve the Colorado River, and we’re allowing water to be transferred off

Regina Cobb, former state representative

As US states negotiate how they will divide up the river’s dwindling supplies, officials challenging the Greenstone transfer in court fear it will open the floodgates to many more private water sales, allowing investors to profit from scarcity. The purchases have alarmed local residents, who worry that water speculators scavenging agricultural land for valuable water rights will leave rural communities like Cibola in the dust.
(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/16/arizona-colorado-river-water-rights-drought
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Freegrass

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #40 on: April 17, 2024, 02:52:02 AM »
Here's another new technology for fresh water. I've always wondered when we'll get some smart technologies for cheap desalination. It looks like we've got a few candidates now. Cheap desalination would be a game changer.

Unit Specifications

Production capacity: up to 50 m3 (13k US gal)/day/unit
(The production depends on wave height. The optimal quantity of buoys is calculated in order to meet water needs.)

Dimensions: 5 m x 8 m (16 ft x 26 ft)
Weight: 11,000 kg (23,000 lbs)

https://www.onekawater.com/

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Bruce Steele

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #41 on: April 17, 2024, 04:49:12 PM »
Freegrass, Sounds good. Pure promotional info linked. Would be nice to see production per day? Or cost per gallon? It looks like there is a working prototype so why no info?

John_the_Younger

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #42 on: April 17, 2024, 07:21:08 PM »
The problem with large scale desalinization is how to get the water humanely and what to do with the salt. 

From Desalinating seawater sounds easy, but there are cheaper and more sustainable ways to meet people’s water needs
by Gregory Pierce, Co-Director, Luskin Center for Innovation, University of California, Los Angeles
article date: can't find it, but an included map is dated September 2022 and a picture is dated July 27, 2022

Quote
... Fish can be killed when they are trapped against screens that protect desalination plants’ intake valves, and small organisms such as bacteria and plankton can be sucked into the plants and killed when they pass through the treatment system. In May 2022, the California Coastal Commission unanimously rejected a proposed $1.4 billion ocean desalination plant in Huntington Beach, partly because of its potential effect on sea life.

Desalination plants discharge brine and wastewater, which can also kill nearby aquatic life if the process is not done properly. ....
Quote
Better options: Conservation, reuse, storage and trading

Freegrass

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #43 on: April 17, 2024, 08:15:35 PM »
The problem with large scale desalinization is how to get the water humanely and what to do with the salt. 
So I guess you didn't do any research on the technologies I just posted?

Some don't have that problem anymore.
Others try to deal with it.

And what's inhumane about getting water from the ocean?
That's a weird one dude.  :o
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Bruce Steele

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #44 on: April 18, 2024, 01:53:49 AM »
Freegrass, I spent my whole life as a fisherman and know the threat from brine is real but, as you say,
they are working on ways to precipitate calcium out of the brine and then use the concentrate as a source for minerals and metals. They would like to get the magnesium but it difficult because it can precipitate with the calcium. This all sounds great and really great if wave power was enough to power the whole osmosis, calcium precipitation , and recovery of the rest. Sounds mighty complicated and probably very power hungry but if you could make calcium pellets and then drop them out on the shelf they would act as a very long lived carbon sink. Hard to believe fresh water will pay for all this, I mean how much would the fresh water end up costing per liter ?
 
 

morganism

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #45 on: April 23, 2024, 10:41:05 PM »
Arizona groundwater regulation weaknesses exploited by industrial-scale agriculture

ELFRIDA, Ariz. — Elaine Bailey stood at the microphone at the Sunsites Community Center in southeastern Arizona, voice shaking as she described the massive scale of new agricultural development next to her property. The nearby fields have drawn so much water from the surrounding area, she said, that her well has gone dry.

“Here we are, all these good people fighting for our lives, our homes, our everything,” Bailey said. “Because if the water goes, our homes aren’t worth anything. That’s the reality. And I just don’t understand how the state can even allow it.”

“I don’t, either,” replied Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, who visited the small community in February to hear residents’ concerns about the groundwater in Sulphur Springs Valley—home to the Willcox and Douglas groundwater basins.

The Douglas basin has seen agricultural development explode in recent years, despite two major attempts to limit groundwater usage in the region: In 1980, it was designated an Irrigation Non-expansion Area, barring the addition of new irrigated land, and in 2022, it became an Active Management Area, which carries the state’s most stringent level of groundwater regulation.

Yet over the past 15 years, even with these restrictions in effect, at least several thousand acres of dormant farmland have again started siphoning groundwater to sustain new crops, an AZCIR analysis has found. The increase in pumping, at an intensity not previously seen in the basin, is largely under industrial-scale owners that have consolidated the land, and the grandfathered water rights tied to it, into massive operations. The analysis, which matched federal satellite data to local property records, also shows new irrigation occurring on land that had never previously been cultivated.

The resulting groundwater declines have accelerated the most on properties closest to these large-sale farms, which have embraced more water-intensive practices like double cropping, or harvesting multiple crops on the same field throughout the year. The number of acres using this method has grown by more than 600% in the Douglas basin since 2008, AZCIR’s analysis also found.

Residents contend some of these well-financed agricultural players are exploiting loopholes in existing regulations, and that some could be outright violating them. Regardless of the legality of the maneuvers, the industrial farms have expanded, often at the expense of their smaller neighbors. North of Elfrida, Ariz., for instance, where much of the growth has occurred, water levels in some wells have dropped by more than four feet per year—a statistic that drew gasps at the Sunsites Community Center.

It is broadly acknowledged that without current and past regulations, the situation in the Douglas basin would be much worse. But residents’ experiences, backed by mounting data, raise questions about whether existing regulatory tools are effective enough to protect the aquifer in the long term. And as the basin’s groundwater continues to decline, residents’ confidence in the ability of the Arizona Department of Water Resources to protect their sole supply of water dwindles alongside it.

“From what I’ve seen, they have not been able to enforce the law and the regulations that are in place, even as it is,” said Anastasia Rabin, a neighbor of Elaine Bailey’s who has documented and reported the expansion of new fields.

Statewide, the number of basins facing similar groundwater restrictions is growing for the first time in 40 years. Short of meaningful intervention by the Arizona Legislature, however, experts and residents worry the same regulatory shortfalls seen in this Cochise County basin will play out across the state, with well-financed, large-scale agriculture taking advantage of existing policies at the cost of locals who don’t have the resources or government backing to do more.

Mayes, who collected Rabin and Bailey’s contact information to further investigate their claims, blames the Legislature because it has not passed meaningful groundwater regulation in decades.

“This Legislature has failed all of us,” Mayes told residents in February. The room erupted with applause.
(more)

https://azmirror.com/2024/04/23/arizona-groundwater-regulation-weaknesses-exploited-by-industrial-scale-agriculture/
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morganism

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #46 on: May 16, 2024, 11:00:47 AM »
(i thought i had posted this earlier, but is dated today. Solar desalination, and brine harvesting for metals)

 [save highlight]
It’s 2024 and Drought is Optional
Casey Handmer

In the early 20th century, the United States diverted and dammed nearly every major river that runs through the West, ushering in an era of unparalleled dominion of water. Today, California once again struggles with water scarcity — but solar energy could change all that.
(...)

The Salton Sea

It is easy to speculate about such grand visions in the abstract, so here I’m going to discuss one specific area. The specific project, which I first outlined on X, can transform Southern California and its relation to water, energy, and industry. This transformation will prepare the state and its neighbors for another miracle century of growth and wealth creation.

Just a couple of hours’ drive east of Los Angeles lie the Coachella and Imperial valleys, home to Palm Springs, some of the most productive agricultural land on Earth, and the Salton Sea, a large brackish lake that formed in 1905. Together with Los Angeles, this area uses over five million acre-feet (MAF) of water from the Colorado River every year, a river whose flow continues to trend downward due to the changing climate.

Today, several canals bring water for irrigation from the lower Colorado into the US side of the Imperial Valley, which extends southwards another 50 miles into Mexico. By (somewhat contentious) treaty, the last 1.5 MAF of the Colorado continues into Mexico, which also has vibrant agricultural activity in the Colorado delta area near Mexicali. The agricultural areas are, broadly speaking, low lying and historically were cyclically flooded — the bed of ancient lakes. The modern Salton Sea formed between 1905 and 1907, when an irrigation mishap diverted the Colorado into the Salton Sink, a geological depression formed by the San Andreas Fault.

This natural sink has hosted lakes before, as the Colorado River sometimes diverted inland. Its most recent incarnation, Lake Cahuilla, which once covered 2,200 square miles, was recorded by some of the earliest European explorers but dried up some time in the 1700s. Today, the Salton Sea’s surface level continues to decline as evaporation exceeds inflows. Its salinity rises as it concentrates and is now too high to support any fish, causing several great die-offs in the early 2010s.

The variable level also causes infrastructure challenges for communities that live around the lake and which first suffered major flooding in the 1950s. More recently, the shore has receded as the lake has shrunk, beaching boats and docks. Most troublingly, the agricultural runoff that maintains the sea is contaminated with salts, pesticides, and many metals that become airborne as the sea evaporates, leading to severe and widespread respiratory problems from the dust in the exposed lake bed. The air quality in the region is among the worst in the nation.

In short, the Salton Sea is a blight, a festering environmental catastrophe, and a source of enduring shame for California, a state that prides itself on environmental sensibility, technology, wealth, and entrepreneurial spirit.

Cursed it may well remain, since — until recently — the cost of desalinating the lake by itself was prohibitive, and there are no convenient sources of water in its catchment through which to regulate its surface level.

Solar-powered desalination is a game changer

This has now changed. Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels are, acre for acre, 100 times more economically productive than farming is. A relatively small desert area adjacent to the fields, once developed for solar, will deliver enough insanely cheap electricity that it can transform the economy of the entire region.

Desalination is the process by which salt is removed from water, turning brackish or seawater into drinkable fresh water. Modern desalination via reverse osmosis filtration is quite energy efficient, at just 1.8 kilowatt-hours/cubic meter.

Why are solar PV panels so cheap? Solar panels are essentially large sheets of glass containing a thin layer of silicon configured so that light will push electrons through in one direction, generating electricity with no emissions, no fuel, no noise, no dust, and no moving parts. Built in factories refined continually for the last 50 years, solar panels have followed a similar cost curve to Moore’s Law for computers: ever greater volumes at ever lower prices — and no end in sight. Last year, the world installed about 437 GW of solar electricity, or roughly one acre of panels every 10 seconds. Earlier this year, panels fell to a record low of just $0.12/watt, and that record is certain to fall before long. In just the last decade, solar has fallen in price by a factor of 10. No other energy source has ever gotten that cheap that fast — and all indications are that both deployment and cost declines are accelerating.

Fresh water production is just one of dozens of industries being upended by cheap solar, but the general rule applies. If it’s possible to use lots of cheap energy to make something, then sooner or later solar will be cheap enough to bring that product to a particular market at scale. For water in the US Southwest, that time is now. Solar can deliver power for about $0.02/kilowatt-hour (kWh), batteries for 24-hour utilization increase this to $0.12/kWh, meaning that the 1.8 kWh required for each cubic meter of water costs only $0.20 — and this is falling about 15% per year.

We must build a solar-powered environmental restoration machine that alleviates intense ecological pressures and guarantees water abundance for the Southwest forever by using reverse osmosis desalination to support the natural flow of the Colorado River.
(more)

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/06/its-2024-and-drought-is-optional
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vox_mundi

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #47 on: May 16, 2024, 04:41:31 PM »
Mixup of Drinking and Irrigation Water Sparks Dangerous Outbreak In Children
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/dangerous-outbreak-in-children-tied-to-mixing-up-irrigation-and-drinking-water/

In 1989, a city in Utah upgraded its drinking water system, putting in a whole new system and repurposing the old one to supply cheap untreated water for irrigating lawns and putting out fires. That meant that the treated water suitable for drinking flowed from new spigots, while untreated water gushed from the old ones. Decades went by with no apparent confusion; residents seemed clear on the two different water sources. But, according to an investigation report published recently by state and county health officials, that local knowledge got diluted as new residents moved into the area. And last summer, the confusion over the conduits led to an outbreak of life-threatening illnesses among young children.

In July and August of 2023, state and local health officials identified 13 children infected with Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7. The children ranged in age from 1 to 15, with a median age of 4. Children are generally at high risk of severe infections with this pathogen, along with older people and those with compromised immune systems. Of the 13 infected children, seven were hospitalized and two developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a life-threatening complication that can lead to kidney failure.

Preliminary genetic analyses of STEC O157:H7 from two of the children suggested that the children's infections were linked to a common source. So, health officials quickly developed a questionnaire to narrow down the potential source. It soon became clear that the irrigation water—aka untreated, pressurized, municipal irrigation water (UPMIW)—was a commonality among the children. Twelve of 13 infected children reported exposure to it in some form: Two said they drank it; five played with UPMIW hoses; three used the water for inflatable water toys; two used it for a water table; and one ran through sprinklers. None reported eating fruits or vegetables from home (noncommercial) gardens irrigated with the UPMIW.

The report on the investigation, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, did not name the city in Utah. But press releases from a county health department identified the affected city as Lehi, about 30 minutes south of Salt Lake City.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7318a1.htm

https://health.utahcounty.gov/2023/08/21/preventing-e-coli/

Further genetic testing of STEC O157:H7 isolates linked all of the children's infections together, as well as to water from five of nine UPMIW exposure sites and samples from the reservoir where the irrigation water is sourced. Microbial source tracking indicated that the contamination could have come from the feces of birds or ruminants.

This is not the first time that irrigation water has been linked to outbreaks. In 2010 and 2015, two other Utah cities reported campylobacteriosis outbreaks linked to cross-connections between UPMIW and drinking water lines.
There are 3 classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus

kassy

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #48 on: May 16, 2024, 04:57:35 PM »
A further quote from the Salton Sea desalination piece morganism posted:

Quote
This is how it works.

A solar-powered RO desalination plant is built in the desert west of Yuma, convenient to existing irrigation canals and the Colorado River. It is fed by a large seawater pipeline that runs down the floodplain across the border to the Gulf of California, and also by a separate spur line that draws from the Salton Sea and runs parallel to the Coachella Canal.

RO desalination splits the incoming ~3% salinity stream into two halves, one fresh and one ~6% salinity. This concentrated brine is fed to adjacent brine processing facilities (ideally in both countries) that exploit the region’s abundant solar and geothermal energy to extract potentially millions of tonnes of lithium, sodium, magnesium, chloride, and other metals found in seawater. The resulting depleted brine is piped back to the ocean where it is thoroughly diluted with raw seawater and discharged.

The fresh water is distributed into the region’s irrigation canals, enabling regulation of the Salton Sea’s level as well as its salinity. This would also preserve more of the Colorado’s natural flow into Mexico. The Coachella Canal passes within a few miles of the Colorado River Aqueduct, so this desalination system could potentially also feed fresh water into the Los Angeles municipal supply.
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

Sigmetnow

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Re: Water Resource Management
« Reply #49 on: May 20, 2024, 02:45:56 PM »
Here's Elon Musk's full talk from yesterday at the World Water Forum in Bali, Indonesia.

Replanting mangrove forests.
Energy is central to solving water problems
The cost of desalinization has dropped, along with the costs of solar and batteries.

➡️ pic.twitter.com/7PT4ypUrgJ  8 minutes
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.