California nervously clears (dry) throat, contemplates desalinization plants.

Amazing how a thirst can concentrate the mind, no?

Every time drought strikes California, the people of this state cannot help noticing the substantial reservoir of untapped water lapping at their shores — 187 quintillion gallons of it, more or less, shimmering so invitingly in the sun.

Now, for the first time, a major California metropolis is on the verge of turning the Pacific Ocean into an everyday source of drinking water. A $1 billion desalination plant to supply booming San Diego County is under construction here and due to open as early as November, providing a major test of whether California cities will be able to resort to the ocean to solve their water woes.

The Greenies hate the concept, of course.  But, given that the Greenies don’t happen to have a magic Bottle of Endless Water at hand, that may not really matter too much. If California gets dry enough, the situation will resolve itself. Whether the deep ecologists like it, or not.

9 thoughts on “California nervously clears (dry) throat, contemplates desalinization plants.”

  1. Ask a silly question, but:

    Philosophically, I understand that the answer to “What’s wrong with desalinization plants?” will be “Gaia H8er racist!!!”

    As long as you aren’t dumped the filtered salt back into the ocean and changing the local water chemistry, what exactly is the real problem, if any?

    1. The only attempt at a logical argument I’ve heard is that it’s a bad idea to build a nuclear reactor in a place prone to earthquakes.

      But mostly, I think they dislike the concept of energy itself. There’s a guy I know from high school, who was going on and on about a waste treatment plant in Canada, that would generate methane [I think] from solid organic waste. Which isn’t a bad thing, but his expectations were that most of the other power plants for the city could be shut down. My comment that I doubted that I, er, created enough such waste to run my fridge, much less my whole household, was met with silence.

      1. Ummm.. desalination is not power generation, but .. y’know, given the attention span and cognitive damage or your typical greenie, I fully expect to hear *exactly* this.
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        Mew
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        p.s. If you really want to do methane-for-power, ya gotta look at building a multi-hectacre greenhouse, growing alfalfa, and – this is the important part – raising livestock in it, and using the glass to trap the methane.

    2. I would think, with sea salt being more commonly used recently as a food flavoring, that there just might be a market for the stuff.

      But since the government would likely be involved in the desalinization plants, they’d probably wind up paying someone to haul the salt away.

      1. Many of the “impurities” (other than, duh, salt) can be sold on the commercial market – if separated out.
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        Mew

  2. Well, note that this is in San Diego, not LA or SF. We occasionally have radical notions that the other major coastal cities in CA don’t approve of, like having consequential elections after the primaries.

      1. It’s very helpful to have a lot of Marines tasked with keeping LA out of San Diego …

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