When you read lines like "California’s extensive network of canals and aqueducts is the lifeblood of the state, providing clean water to populous cities and expansive farms that wouldn’t otherwise have it." you have to ask how we ended up with these canal systems, what the tradeoffs are in a landscape setup this way rather than one where water infiltrates the ground and stays hydrated, and who owns water rights in California.
(note: I'm not trying to totally bash the solar panel project nor some of the key figures involved who've done great work like Dustin Mulvaney, but do think we should think about how we ended up here)
Most desalination plants (at least the ones that are economically viable) focus on brackish groundwater, not ocean water. This contributes to the problem GP is pointing out. California already does more desalination than any US state other than Florida.
But there's a million environmental restoration projects we could be doing right now to increase the water holding capacities of our environments that are simply not being sufficiently funded. The science is pretty well done on most of these strategies while desalination of ocean water is still mostly an experimental technology that is not economically viable.
I don't know if you're doing it on purpose but Minjur is one of the most controversial sites in the desalination debate because of how much its bankrupting the government to fund it for such little water back. It's funded because of political necessity in SPITE of economic viability.
We just literally don't have the technology yet. It takes an immense amount of electricity/energy to desalinate ocean water which is way more saline than brackish water. The other half of the cost is in the very high rate of corrosion of equipment.
I'm not against desalination of oceanwater. I absolutely support funding more research into it. I'm just explaining the current state of technology. It just doesn't currently exist.
Have you considered adding this information to the Wikipedia article?
You seem to have advanced knowledge that is contrary to ~everyone else. It would be helpful if you would simply state 2 numbers. First, what you think it costs, and second, what you think an economically viable cost would be.
Sure do! But people die in a few days without potable water, crops are usually more drought resistant.
And yes, I do get the point that if you suggested we build $6B desalination plants to grow lettuce people would balk and say, "That's not worth the money!". We should use less water on crops.
People also die in a few weeks without access to agriculture. We could be growing less water hungry crops and raising drought resistant livestock, though.
It's bad but one thing not often pointed out in this conversation is that about 50% of water used in irrigation for agriculture returns as groundwater. In most other cases, used water ends up in sewers or evaporating
That and investing in better rainwater management -- those muddy torrents of water that pour into ocean would be much better if slowed down upstream and allowed to percolate into the aquifers.
I thought this was a pretty awesome video to provide the lore on how water got to Southern California. Growing up in Pasadena I heard the name Mulholland and Eaton (as in canyon) all the time but never realized they were so instrumental in the founding of the city and all the wild shenanigans that went into getting the water from up north to LA.
In searching YouTube history for it, I see I also stumbled across this project too: Why Aqueduct Solar Solves 2 MASSIVE Problems https://youtu.be/EVBacmPfQ6E (about 9 minutes in it gets into the engineering challenges mentioned else comment about wind loads and such).
Living in Pasadena/Glendale, dad living in Palmdale where we would spend weekends... I would pass by that famous section along the 5/210 split often. Was always fun to see the lights on and the roaring water coming down.
What I'm trying to gesture at isnt engineering prowess though but better questions around how California changed over the past 100ish years and the issues around land-use change and relationship to water. See things like what Yasha Levine has done such as:
- Pistachio Wars film - https://pistachiowars.com which talks about the changes in water use and canal development
The PE video gets into that history from the start...
On November 5, 1913, tens of thousands of people climbed these hills to watch the first water arrive. When the gates finally opened, water trickled through, but that trickle quickly became a torrent. The project’s chief engineer, William Mulholland, leaned over to the mayor and shouted the line that’s been repeated ever since: “There it is, Mr. Mayor. Take it!”
That moment was profound for a lot of reasons, depending on where you live and how you feel about water rights. LA didn’t become LA by living within the limits of its local resources. Its meteoric growth into the metropolis we know was enabled by an early and extraordinary decision to reach far beyond its own watershed and pull a whole new river into town. Today, roughly a third of LA’s water comes from the Eastern Sierra through the Los Angeles Aqueduct system. That share swings with snowpack, drought, and environmental constraints, but this one piece of infrastructure helped turn a water-limited town into a world city. It’s one of the most impressive and controversial engineering projects in American history.
And then t'wards the end:
But it many ways, it was not only unscrupulous, but also short-sighted. Residents of the Owens Valley watched ranchland and farmland dry up as the water that had shaped their home was rerouted south. Native communities saw their homeland transformed with access to gathering areas disrupted, places made unrecognizable, and cultural ties strained by changes they didn’t choose. Wind picked up alkaline dust from dried lakebeds. Habitats were disrupted, and the birds that depended on these waters and wetlands lost part of what made this migration corridor work. It’s easy to see why the aqueduct remains controversial, and why what we sometimes dismiss as “red tape” around major infrastructure is often completely justified due diligence. As engineers, and really, as humans, we have to try and account for costs that don’t show up on a balance sheet, but can come back later as decades of lawsuits, mitigation, and restoration.
There's some engineering in there (I don't recall this one having any garage models though). It's mostly about the relationship of politics to the engineering project.
>you have to ask how we ended up with these canal systems, what the tradeoffs are in a landscape setup this way rather than one where water infiltrates the ground and stays hydrated
Good questions I guess but what more specifically are you saying would happen if we delete the canals? What does "the water infiltrates the ground and stays hydrated" mean?
Presumably deleting the canals means water will still be relatively scarce and the distribution will simply by different and not controlled by the state.
I think they're trying to point out how little effort is put into environmental restoration that would allow our environment to hold more water instead of having most of our rainwater wash out into sewers. Some of the loss in the environment's ability to hold water is due to large infrastructure projects in the first place. We are heavily draining the landscape and its causing us to lose critical topsoils (some of which took thousands of years to make).
Compared to 200 years ago, water moves around much more but California overall has MUCH less water.
Build Soil has some interesting threads on this:
- https://bsky.app/profile/buildsoil.bsky.social/post/3lmeddjd...
- https://bsky.app/profile/buildsoil.bsky.social/post/3mkzybkk...
(note: I'm not trying to totally bash the solar panel project nor some of the key figures involved who've done great work like Dustin Mulvaney, but do think we should think about how we ended up here)