Post: #26

Quote:In a few countries the water has been privatized and the new owners are raising rates, I remember seeing in a documentary. There are a couple of French companies that have been acquiring left and right.

Yep. As Croatia keeps going downhill, the push to "privatize" (nice term for "sell to foreigners for pennies") water sources and infrastructure grows stronger by the day. The last attempt was stopped after a stern warning from our Catholic Church (thanks guys - this agnostic sincerely appreciates your work), but another one is already being prepared.

Mind you, we are talking about a small country whose population size is only 126th in the world, but whose overall water reserves are 67th, that produces as much electricity from hydropower as the 20 times larger UK does and covers 50% of its electricity needs from it, and whose water sources are considered to be one of the freshest and cleanest in the entire world. Being able to drink straight from the tap is slowly becoming a luxury around the world, but it's something that everyone here takes for granted.

I give our ownership of water sources 10 more years, tops. Then it will be time to pony up and start buying our own water from the French...

Post: #27

Here there is a huge backlash against Nestle using underground water from land they own to bottle their products. Nestle used to be able to do this for free until media types started talking about it and mass amounts of people on social media complaining it isn't fair, so the government passed a law charging them something dirt cheap like 2 $ for every couple million litters. This actually works in Nestle's favour as the government is commercializing and putting a price on water, thus making the case a lot easier for a bunch of companies and the government itself to start selling.

Post: #28

(08-12-2015 11:42 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  I give our ownership of water sources 10 more years, tops. Then it will be time to pony up and start buying our own water from the French...

If it makes you feel any better, the government in the province of B.C. in Canada signed a deal allowing Nestlé to pay a mere $2.25 for every million litres of water they extract (source), who then bottle it and sell a few litres for $2.25. Pretty nice markup there.

Yeah, it doesn't make me feel better, either.

Post: #29

The search to find different ways to preserve or transport water reminded me of a great book I read about 10+ years ago in Thailand, called Mr. Nice, about a guy named Howard Marks that was a big time drug smuggler and all around entrepreneur.

One of his businesses which he used for money laundering was a water transportation business using giant tanker ship/s, I believe selling water to the dryer African nations. Makes me wonder if this is a financially viable option, though I'd imagine not for the volume that would be needed in a place like CA. I wonder if this kind of thing goes on still and on what scale.

Post: #30

I heard they looked into the chemical impact of those balls over time and determined it was ok. Of course, sometimes they misjudge these things.

With water being so precious, it reminds me when Portland dumped millions of gallons of water because some stupid kid took a piss in the reservoir. But I guess up in the NW they are not having a drought like LA.

Post: #31

(08-12-2015 09:35 PM)Natural Born Gyalist Wrote:  Desalination is very energy intensive process it also produces huge amounts of an environmentally hazardous by product: brine.

The brine is not a huge issue, you can always concentrate it up with an evaporator and dispose of it as dry disposal or just simply put it back in the ocean. The biggest issue is the energy consumption and setting up the infrastructure, for a coastal city this is not a issue but let's say the city is about 250km away and above sea level then transportation becomes an issue. If a reverse osmosis process is going to be setup then the biggest issue is the RO units plugging of and break through (when the filter gets damaged and is essentially is doing nothing) also the high cost of membrane filters themselves.

With the Evaporation method essentially you are boiling water and then you condense the steam and you have clean water. Only issue with this method is you need a heat source so steam from a boiler, fossil fuels to burn in the boiler, evaporators, compressors and pumps. There are some plants that are tied to a Nuclear Power plant and you can use them as Cogeneration plant (One energy source 2 bi-products clean water and electricity) . Steam being created by the reactor then passing through a turbine creating electricity. After passing through the turbine the steam can be used to heat incoming sea water with a heat exchanger. It's a neat process by using the waste heat from the turbine you can create clean water.

Post: #32

I'm not an environmental nor pool cover scientist but my guess would be the following.

Re: black balls. I think the most important aspect is keeping light out, not heat. Heating up the top 2' of the reservoir slightly more would be inconsequential compared to letting a fraction more light deep into the water column.

Re: balls vs cubes. At first glance cubes makes sense since they will form a tighter closed structure with no gaps. But think of the following:

- In the pictures they show people releasing bags of balls down the side of the reservoir. How would you do that with cubes? Likely you would need some vehicular equipment to help install the balls at additional cost.
- Wind. What happens when it gets windy and millions of cubes get blown up on the banks of the reservoir. You'll need an expensive bulldozer brought in to push them all back. With balls they just roll back in and self correct.
- plastic balls are everywhere. Can you say the same for plastic cubes ? Maybe plastics manufacturers simply don't have the ability/capacity to make 96 million large plastic cubes without modifying their facility and doubling or trippling the cost over balls.

Post: #33

Spheres are more robust than cubes. Spheres don't have corners. We've all noticed the way that corners of things get worn away quicker (and a hole means water and other crud will get in). They also have the most crush resistance (less damaged in transit etc). They can also be rolled down a hill like in the photo, lowing the 'installation' costs. They are also probably easier to manufacture without defects. They also probably are available cheaper, due to more 'plastic ball factories' than 'plastic cube factories'.

Post: #34

(08-13-2015 12:54 AM)S_tourist Wrote:  

(08-12-2015 09:35 PM)Natural Born Gyalist Wrote:  Desalination is very energy intensive process it also produces huge amounts of an environmentally hazardous by product: brine.

The brine is not a huge issue, you can always concentrate it up with an evaporator and dispose of it as dry disposal or just simply put it back in the ocean. The biggest issue is the energy consumption and setting up the infrastructure, for a coastal city this is not a issue but let's say the city is about 250km away and above sea level then transportation becomes an issue. If a reverse osmosis process is going to be setup then the biggest issue is the RO units plugging of and break through (when the filter gets damaged and is essentially is doing nothing) also the high cost of membrane filters themselves.

With the Evaporation method essentially you are boiling water and then you condense the steam and you have clean water. Only issue with this method is you need a heat source so steam from a boiler, fossil fuels to burn in the boiler, evaporators, compressors and pumps. There are some plants that are tied to a Nuclear Power plant and you can use them as Cogeneration plant (One energy source 2 bi-products clean water and electricity) . Steam being created by the reactor then passing through a turbine creating electricity. After passing through the turbine the steam can be used to heat incoming sea water with a heat exchanger. It's a neat process by using the waste heat from the turbine you can create clean water.

I'd be curious to see how much lithium could be extracted from a brine created in this method.

Post: #35

I could start another thread but since this is about LA and water, this might be an ok place to park this.

Below is a quote that I thought was pretty key.

Quote:Latest forecast suggests 'Godzilla El Niño' may be coming to California

In California, officials have cautioned the public against imagining that El Niño will suddenly end the state’s chronic water challenges.

In fact, it would take an astonishing 2.5 to three times the average annual precipitation to make up for the rain and snow lost in the central Sierra mountain range over the last four years of drought, said Kevin Werner, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's expert on climate in the western United States.

That amount far exceeds what happened in 1983, the wettest year on record for that region, when the area got 1.9 times the average annual precipitation, Werner said.

"A single El Niño year is very unlikely to erase four years of drought," Werner said.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me...story.html

Below is a partial quote starting from the top and going to about the middle. There are some charts and pics I didn't include.

What is crazy is that because of the drought, a lot of things that would help absorb or deflect the rain has been damaged by the drought.

So this is going to cause massive flooding, etc.

Quote:
The strengthening El Niño in the Pacific Ocean has the potential to become one of the most powerful on record, as warming ocean waters surge toward the Americas, setting up a pattern that could bring once-in-a-generation storms this winter to drought-parched California.

The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that all computer models are predicting a strong El Niño to peak in the late fall or early winter. A host of observations have led scientists to conclude that “collectively, these atmospheric and oceanic features reflect a significant and strengthening El Niño.”

“This definitely has the potential of being the Godzilla El Niño,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

Patzert said El Niño’s signal in the ocean “right now is stronger than it was in 1997,” the summer in which the most powerful El Niño on record developed.

“Everything now is going to the right way for El Niño,” Patzert said. “If this lives up to its potential, this thing can bring a lot of floods, mudslides and mayhem.”

“This could be among the strongest El Niños in the historical record dating back to 1950,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center.

After the summer 1997 El Niño muscled up, the following winter gave Southern California double its annual rainfall and dumped double the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, an essential source of precipitation for the state’s water supply, Patzert said.

A strong El Niño can shift a subtropical jet stream that normally pours rain over the jungles of southern Mexico and Central America toward California and the southern United States.

But so much rain all at once has proved devastating to California in the past. In early 1998, storms brought widespread flooding and mudslides, causing 17 deaths and more than half a billion dollars in damage in California. Downtown L.A. got nearly a year's worth of rain in February 1998.

During the second largest El Niño on record, in the winter of 1982-83, damage was particularly severe along the coast, especially when powerful storms arrived as high tide surged onto the coast. "Particularly at the end of January 1983, we had some very strong storm wave effects along the coast, and a lot of the vulnerable structures were lost that winter," said Dan Cayan, climate researcher with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the U.S. Geological Survey.

"Many locations along the California coast recorded their highest sea levels during that winter," he said.

The effects of this muscular El Niño – nicknamed “Bruce Lee” by one blogger for the National Weather Service – are already being felt worldwide. While a strong El Niño can bring heavy winter rains to California and the southern United States, it can also bring dry weather elsewhere in the world.

Already, El Niño is being blamed for drought conditions in parts of the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia, as occurred in 1997-98.

Drought is also persistent in Central America. Water levels are now so low in the waterways that make up the Panama Canal that officials recently announced limits on traffic through the passageway that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

El Niño also influenced the heavy rainstorms that effectively ended drought conditions in Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma, and has brought floods and mudslides to Chile.

There are a couple of reasons why scientists say El Niño is gaining strength.

First, ocean temperatures west of Peru are continuing to climb, reaching their highest level so far this year. The temperatures in a benchmark location in that area of the Pacific Ocean were 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit above the average as of Aug. 5. That’s slightly higher than it was on Aug. 6, 1997, when it was 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.