In this podcast I interview Angelina Cook, who has been working tirelessly for many years protecting the waters in Mt Shasta and McCloud area, where she is on the Water Council.
I see that we must use gray-water-infrastructure to rectify past poor human decisions. There may be a point when the gray-water-infrastructure may be abandoned, but I think that is wishful thinking for our near-term.
One gray-water-infrastructure project which comes to mind as an absolute necessity is repairing the water-cycle up from the Gulf of California into the Great Basin. The benefits are huge and the negative results few.
The cost is fundable by fee on Colorado River Water use, and this is logical because the overuse of Colorado River Water is what broke the water-cycle.
The project uses mostly natural processes but has one pipe/pump section.
This is the plan:
1. Dig a gravity-flow ditch from Gulf of California, Baja, MX to Laguna Salada, Baja, MX.
2. Dig a metered, gravity-flow ditch from Laguna Salada to the Salton Sea, CA, USA.
3. Pipe and pump Salton Sea water into the Great Basin. Monitor the amount pumped by watching the surface level of The Great Salt Lake.
4. The saltwater pumped into the Great Basin will circulate within the Great Bassin via natural processes and ultimately depart via atmospheric moisture into the Colorado mountains.
The water that flows to Los Angeles from the Owens Valley is 100% gravity fed. When a mountain got in the way they used closed pipe and created syphons. That is the case there.
In my case, we have a well and 100% of my water is pumped in gray pipes.
There is a lot of water that gets pumped uphill from northern california to southern california. Total energy per year is about 6,000 gigawatt to pump water. https://water.ca.gov/What-We-Do/Power Total usage of power in California is about 260,000 gigawatt. So about 2.3 % of Californias energy usage goes to pumping water around. Annual power generated by California hydropower is about 21,000 gigawatt. https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/renewables_data/hydro/index_cms.php . So about 1/3 of Californias generated hydropower goes to pumping water around California.
While I am all for green-water-infrastructure...
I see that we must use gray-water-infrastructure to rectify past poor human decisions. There may be a point when the gray-water-infrastructure may be abandoned, but I think that is wishful thinking for our near-term.
One gray-water-infrastructure project which comes to mind as an absolute necessity is repairing the water-cycle up from the Gulf of California into the Great Basin. The benefits are huge and the negative results few.
The cost is fundable by fee on Colorado River Water use, and this is logical because the overuse of Colorado River Water is what broke the water-cycle.
The project uses mostly natural processes but has one pipe/pump section.
This is the plan:
1. Dig a gravity-flow ditch from Gulf of California, Baja, MX to Laguna Salada, Baja, MX.
2. Dig a metered, gravity-flow ditch from Laguna Salada to the Salton Sea, CA, USA.
3. Pipe and pump Salton Sea water into the Great Basin. Monitor the amount pumped by watching the surface level of The Great Salt Lake.
4. The saltwater pumped into the Great Basin will circulate within the Great Bassin via natural processes and ultimately depart via atmospheric moisture into the Colorado mountains.
For more details read:
https://climate-rescue.org/2023/10/29/open-letter-to-bureau-of-reclamation/
The water that flows to Los Angeles from the Owens Valley is 100% gravity fed. When a mountain got in the way they used closed pipe and created syphons. That is the case there.
In my case, we have a well and 100% of my water is pumped in gray pipes.
There is a lot of water that gets pumped uphill from northern california to southern california. Total energy per year is about 6,000 gigawatt to pump water. https://water.ca.gov/What-We-Do/Power Total usage of power in California is about 260,000 gigawatt. So about 2.3 % of Californias energy usage goes to pumping water around. Annual power generated by California hydropower is about 21,000 gigawatt. https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/renewables_data/hydro/index_cms.php . So about 1/3 of Californias generated hydropower goes to pumping water around California.