@itsmaibirfday Thank you for this! I am always happy to soak up a bit of positive news.
I'm popping in with some thoughts from what's known as The Inland Empire - just 15 miles from the Pacific Ocean coast of California.
We occasionally get some marine layer/fog, but rainfall here used to be about 10 inches per year, but has steadily fallen to an average of 2-4 inches per year. There is much agriculture in the area.
We sold our house in the city (1 mile from the ocean) and moved 70 miles north and east to a planned suburb in a small town. We have no HOA, so we are free to do whatever we want with our property as long as it's up to code.
The house is very big (2700sf), and has an in ground pool. We are in a canyon that had a wildfire 2 years ago. Luckily our utilities are under ground (in the city they were not). Neighbors report that the electric co. never cut off power, despite evacuation orders.
We've taken steps as possible to help reduce our carbon footprint here and start dealing with the more arid climate (that is getting more desertified yearly) to conserve as much water as possible. Just for those not in SoCal - our monthly water bill tops $300 PER MONTH. In VA it was $30. Electric/gas is about $180 per month.
- We have purchased a solar system + Tesla batteries that will reduce our electric bill to zero and allow us to power our home indefinitely in event of blackout.
- Converted the pool to saline (less chemicals).
- Reduced the time and water flow of the in ground sprinkler system to bare minimum.
- Got a high efficiency dishwasher.
- Plants that need regular watering, like my herbs, are potted, and I hand water them.
- Removed blinds and installed room darkening shades + curtains.
- Replaced water heater with a tankless model.
- Leasing a whole house water softener/filtration system (the water here is from the CO River and is just awful - very hard & polluted).
- New plantings are all desert plants (desert willow, agave, nopal, etc.) that only need regular watering to get established and can then be tapered off.
- We needed a second car again because there's no public transit here, so we got an all electric vehicle (Kia).
Our plans going forward:
- Rip out the front lawn and replace it with xeriscaping (gravel, cacti, succulents, desert trees).
- Get a device that can take water from the pool and filter it to drinking water standards in case of dire emergency. (I forget what they are called.)
- No more new plantings til late Fall, when rainy season gets underway.
- Eventually replace gas dryer and stove with electric models.
More positive news with desalination device from the University of Tokyo! Some quotes:
“There are two main ways to desalinate water currently: thermally, using heat to evaporate seawater so it condenses as pure water, or by reverse osmosis, which uses pressure to force water through a membrane that blocks salt. Both methods require a lot of energy, but our tests suggest fluorous nanochannels require little energy and have other benefits too.”
“It was very exciting to see the results firsthand. The smaller of our test channels perfectly rejected incoming salt molecules, and the larger channels too were still an improvement over other desalination techniques and even cutting-edge carbon nanotube filters,” said Itoh. “The real surprise to me was how fast the process occurred. Our sample worked around several thousand times faster than typical industrial devices, and around 2,400 times faster than experimental carbon nanotube-based desalination devices.”
Welp, I'm part of the problem, now that I live in the Inland Empire. We get all our water from the Colorado River sources.
Driving around the agricultural areas nearby, when one can see watering happening*, I have to say that irrigation has not changed in 100 years. I fail to understand why treated/recycled water cannot be used for irrigation. And despite recent reports, I see no evidence of canals and creeks being covered with solar panels to prevent evaporation.
*Also - why do they run the irrigation in bright sunlight and not in the evening? I think much of it evaporates in our dry heat before it even hits the ground.
Highly recommend the new South Park show "The Streaming Wars" - on Paramount & Comedy Central.
I fail to understand why treated/recycled water cannot be used for irrigation. And despite recent reports, I see no evidence of canals and creeks being covered with solar panels to prevent evaporation.
*Also - why do they run the irrigation in bright sunlight and not in the evening? I think much of it evaporates in our dry heat before it even hits the ground.
I have some secondhand knowledge in this since my husband is a retired wastewater engineer. He worked on many projects involving reclaimed water. The utility here is fairly progressive. For the last few decades, treated water has been piped as irrigation water to new subdivisions and golf courses and also to artificial wetlands. The people who have access to reclaimed irrigation water are very happy with it because it reduces their water bills significantly. But it can be difficult to get funding for infrastructure to pipe it everywhere that it is wanted. As for sending it to farms, they do some of that but it's only available to farms reasonably close to the water treatment plant. So infrastructure is one obstacle. Another is public perception. Some people freak out and think the water is like toxic waste or something. It's not. It doesn't stink and would pass health standards for drinking water but is not chlorinated or fluoridated.
As for irrigation being done in the daytime-- we were travelling in the southwest last month and I saw fields with pivot irrigators being run in the heat of the day. I asked my husband why they would do that since so much of the water evaporates. He replied that when fields are large it takes a long time-- a full day or more-- for the irrigators to make a cycle around the whole field. Meaning if they didn't run them 24/7 the plants would never get enough water. One alternative to this form of irrigation would be drip irrigation, but there can be logistical problems with that depending on what is being grown.
Thanks for the insights.
I also wonder why we can't marshal funds (I think it would be $1 trillion) to build aqueduct infrastructure from where they have too much water and pipe it to the southwest.
If only some billionaires would focus on issues on the ground instead of on penis shaped spaceships to nowhere.
Hi all! I'm new to the forum. It's been great to find an intuitive forum. Glad to see a link that nano plastics can be removed from the water through filtration. That is good news and is a reminder to me to use fewer plastics.
A couple months ago I kept getting a very persistent message that there was a water issue in California. I live in Canada. Afterward I saw in the news that some chemicals had leaked out of the military bases.
One word that I was receiving over and over again was 'fluorine'. The word kept persisting it was flourine Not Flouride... and it turns out fluorine is in the forever chemicals.
I also was getting that some stuff is on the nano level so if there are ways of testing at very very small scales that could be important.
removed link
If there is regular water testing then even if the culprits are not removing or stopping their use of toxins, despite that being highly unethical, at least people will have a choice to push for change, source other water, or relocate from toxic areas.
Welcome to the forum Daydreammoonlight, so nice to have you join us.
Thank you for sharing what you got on fluorine. I am hopeful we be able to remove all forever chemicals that are on the nano level. They can cause so many health problems. I also hope new technology can help in the area.
Regarding your link, new members are not able to post links until after they have made a few posts, it is for security reasons and part of the site software programing. Jeanne will often ask new members to email the link to her and she will try to post the link in the desired thread.
Again, welcome.
@lovendures Thanks for the heads up and the welcome! That is a good system, I'll hold off on the links for now:).
Our governor here in CA is trying to get out ahead of the looming disappearance of current water sources. Lots of good ideas here, I hope they pan out.
@dannyboy I grew up in the little finger of the mitten (I'm in TN now) and am seriously considering moving back before the great climate immigration starts. I love that area and, from the research I've done, it looks like it's predicted to be one of the better places to be for climate change.
Another good idea here in CA - to recharge aquifers and use water from megastorms that would normally just cause damage, for irrigation and drinking water.
This is a really good article about how wells are running dry in California's Central Valley, the Farm /Bread Basket of America.
Groundwater is both the main source of water for many communities and a buffer that California relies on during drought. Normally, these underground reserves account for about 40 percent of the state’s water supply; in dry years, that grows to 60 percent. Of the 3,700 wells on the state’s live groundwater website that track levels over the past decade, nearly half of them are much below normal or at an all-time low.
“What we’re facing is pretty unprecedented,” said Steven Springhorn, an engineering geologist with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Office of California’s Department of Water Resources. “It’s very dry out there.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/14/california-drought-bottled-water/
@lovendures YEP - that's why new ideas are being tried - read the article I linked to.