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Will EBMUD (and other water districts) lower their rates now that we're not in drought..

Benefits of dams:
  1. Flood control. The Los Angeles River occasionally gets torrential flows that, in the past, washed away homes, cows, kids, and anything else that got in its way. The Sepulveda Dam captures and controls that flow. Same with other dams in the region.

  2. Electricity production. The energy in stored water can be turned into electrical energy without burning hydrocarbons and emitting either pollutants or CO2, and without the fission remnants of a nuclear plant.

  3. Agriculture support. Stored water can be redirected into areas with tremendous agricultural potential, increasing farm productivity while using less land.

  4. Human life support. If you turned on a tap today, you were probably enjoying the benefit of water captured in the Sierra at Hetch Hetchy Dam and pumped to the Bay Area.
 
mrmarklin said:
No new dams have been built since the 70s. No list of dams not built.
There are some in the proposal stage. Let’s see how far that goes.

Conservation is as good as far as it goes. But dams have a lot of benefits. And the reality is that in a drought conservation can only go so far.

Maybe desalination is our best solution for what is an ongoing problem.
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Desal kinda sucks for whatever eco system is it being built next to. I think the solution will end up being recycled water. The cost per gallon can be cheaper (30-50%) than desal, it has zero effect on nearby water, and doesn't need an ocean nearby.

But it sounds icky so people don't like that.
 
Abacinator said:
How much damage was done to our waterways by hydraulic mining during the gold rush?
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The turbidity of the Bay is just now beginning to clear up.

And then there's all the leftover mercury...
 
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I'm not going to argue that dams don't provide benefits. But I will make some comments on these benefits and state that in my opinion, the benefits do not always outweigh the negative consequences. In addition, all dams have a lifetime. Most of the dams we have built in California are reaching the end of that lifetime. They fill up and capacity is reduced. Algae blooms due to an increase in nutrients is becoming a huge problem. Downstream of dams, conditions have gotten worse and worse, and no I don;t have time to get into all of those conditions but they have to do with water quality and temperature, geomorphology and erosion, and loss of habitat.


DataDan said:
Benefits of dams:
  1. Flood control. The Los Angeles River occasionally gets torrential flows that, in the past, washed away homes, cows, kids, and anything else that got in its way. The Sepulveda Dam captures and controls that flow. Same with other dams in the region.

    This is true to some degree. LA is a special case due to the hydrologic regime. They get nothing for a loooong time, then a massive storm with flash floods. A flood control reservoir is a completely different thing than a water supply reservoir. In addition, LA has sandy soils that almost immediately fill in these reservoirs. There are better ways to deal with flood control. We tend to like concrete channels to convey flows downstream as fast as possible. Instead, we should be slowing that water down and creating meandering natural bottom channels with a low flow channel that allows sediment to move through the system and recharging groundwater supplies. This would minimize the impacts of stormwater flows while allowing that water to be reabsorbed in aquifers for future use, rather than sending it all down to the bay in one big nasty toxic wave.
  2. Electricity production. The energy in stored water can be turned into electrical energy without burning hydrocarbons and emitting either pollutants or CO2, and without the fission remnants of a nuclear plant.

    There are better and more efficient ways to produce energy with less environmental impact. However, all forms of electrical prodcution have A: cons, and B: impacts.

    Wind kills birds. However they have done a lot to mitigate this impact. It can only produce when it's windy in areas that are windy
    Solar takes up vast areas in the desert and causes impact to desert wildlife. Can only produce during the day.

    Hydro production is a reliable source of energy, no doubt. But it's impacts are huge    .

  3. Agriculture support. Stored water can be redirected into areas with tremendous agricultural potential, increasing farm productivity while using less land.

    So we can grow water-loving crops in the desert? Sorry, this is BS. Increases in heavy metal such as selenium due to evaporation. The southern San Joaquin Valley has no business growing water loving crops such as government surplus and subsidize cotton and almonds sold to China.

  4. Human life support. If you turned on a tap today, you were probably enjoying the benefit of water captured in the Sierra at Hetch Hetchy Dam and pumped to the Bay Area.

    Not me man, I live in the foothills. But I don't disagree with this. Dams do provide water sources. Are there other sources? Sure. Are they better or make dams obsolete? Not at this time.
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Lights_Guy3 said:
Desal kinda sucks for whatever eco system is it being built next to. I think the solution will end up being recycled water. The cost per gallon can be cheaper (30-50%) than desal, it has zero effect on nearby water, and doesn't need an ocean nearby.

But it sounds icky so people don't like that.
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I think new construction should be required to have grey water systems. I also think homeowners should get $$ from the state or a tax break if they install one themselves.
 
Lights_Guy3 said:
Desal kinda sucks for whatever eco system is it being built next to. I think the solution will end up being recycled water. The cost per gallon can be cheaper (30-50%) than desal, it has zero effect on nearby water, and doesn't need an ocean nearby.

But it sounds icky so people don't like that.
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Yeah. I think first step should be greater reuse of recycled water and more advanced facilities that can bring water to drinking level quality. Santa Clara county has one, but it's not clear what the water is actually used for. The icky factor is definitely a big barrier to people being ok with adoption.
 
DataDan said:
Benefits of dams:
  1. Flood control. The Los Angeles River occasionally gets torrential flows that, in the past, washed away homes, cows, kids, and anything else that got in its way. The Sepulveda Dam captures and controls that flow. Same with other dams in the region.

  2. Electricity production. The energy in stored water can be turned into electrical energy without burning hydrocarbons and emitting either pollutants or CO2, and without the fission remnants of a nuclear plant.

  3. Agriculture support. Stored water can be redirected into areas with tremendous agricultural potential, increasing farm productivity while using less land.

  4. Human life support. If you turned on a tap today, you were probably enjoying the benefit of water captured in the Sierra at Hetch Hetchy Dam and pumped to the Bay Area.
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1. Proper wetlands do the same thing with minimal problems. But they were wiped out in LA Basin, and ditto at New Orleans. Which is why New Orleans has such horrible floods.

2. Correct.


3. "Agriculture support" is a nice term for propping up Big Ag. We do that in Ca, where almonds are grown ( the most water intensive crop of all). See that one pound bag of almonds in your pantry? That's 1900 gallons of water. Ca uses 10% of its water for almonds, most of the money goes to a few growers, and most of the crop is exported.

4. Hetch Hetchy supports mostly SF, with some to Marin and the East Bay. We get none in most of Alameda County. What it did was allow four million people to move to the Bay Area. Not sure that's a plus.
 
Lights_Guy3 said:
The turbidity of the Bay is just now beginning to clear up.

And then there's all the leftover mercury...
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:laughing

I wonder how many people know that the South Bay has thousands of tons of mercury in it at the bottom, and it still washes down from the hills.
 
people sure don't like the term "toilet to tap" but I agree, recycling water is important
 
does anyone know if dams actually "create" more fresh water, effectively storing more that would normally return to the ocean? or do they just make it easier for humans to obtain it, say by storing it all above ground?
 
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stangmx13 said:
does anyone know if dams actually "create" more fresh water, effectively storing more that would normally return to the ocean? or do they just make it easier for humans to obtain it, say by storing it all above ground?
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There's a given amount of fresh water that falls from the sky any given year. It makes its way down to the lowlands and ocean. If it's trapped behind a dam, less water makes its way to down the rivers to the Ocean. In the Delta it's easy to track, just measure the salinity, it tells you how much salt water intrusion there is any given year.

Is that what you are asking or am I missing something?
 
Brokenlink said:
Historical stupidity shouldn't be an excuse for contemporary stupidity.
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That wasn't my intention, sorry to be unclear. I'm seriously asking if it's an issue. lightsguy gave a pretty clear answer that we're still suffering the effects of mining operations from 150 years ago.
 
Abacinator said:
That wasn't my intention, sorry to be unclear. I'm seriously asking if it's an issue. lightsguy gave a pretty clear answer that we're still suffering the effects of mining operations from 150 years ago.
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The bay used to be something like twice the size it is now, a lot of the reduced size is a result of the huge amounts of sediment washed downstream during the gold rush that filled a lot of the shallow/wetland parts of the bay.

The sheer amount of dirt moved during the gold rush is pretty mind-blowing.
 
Brokenlink said:
They do not create water. In fact, due to evaporation, they lose water. According to he following article, the world's dams lose the equivalent of 7% of the total freshwater supply consumed in the world annually.

https://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/how-dams-affect-water-supply-1727
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thnx

afm199 said:
There's a given amount of fresh water that falls from the sky any given year. It makes its way down to the lowlands and ocean. If it's trapped behind a dam, less water makes its way to down the rivers to the Ocean. In the Delta it's easy to track, just measure the salinity, it tells you how much salt water intrusion there is any given year.

Is that what you are asking or am I missing something?
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general curiosity, esp considering the discussion about the positives of dams. IMO, making it easier to get water isn't a big enough positive to offset all the negatives that are now known. so itd be great if they also do something else. but it looks like they don't.
 
Allowing storage means we can use more water - when there's a big storm, and no storage, large amounts of fresh water flow into the ocean.
 
afm199 said:
1. Proper wetlands do the same thing with minimal problems. But they were wiped out in LA Basin, and ditto at New Orleans. Which is why New Orleans has such horrible floods.This was all fine and good when the population was 1/4 of what it is today. More people use more water. Without more storage and/or super conservation the infrastructure we have now will not support the population. Flooding farmland during heavy rain is now being done, not at the level it should be, but it's starting. In New Zealand, there are river overflow catch basins so all that run off can be captured and not just flushed out to the ocean. We do very little of this from what I've seen

2. Correct.


3. "Agriculture support" is a nice term for propping up Big Ag. We do that in Ca, where almonds are grown ( the most water intensive crop of all)Alfalfa takes more acre/feet than almonds. Almonds get a bad rap because it has the most acreage of any tree crop. In actuality, they are first tree crops harvested, what comes off last uses the most water: probably walnuts. See that one pound bag of almonds in your pantry? That's 1900 gallons of water. Ca uses 10% of its water for almonds, most of the money goes to a few growers, and most of the crop is exported. how much of the tech sales from the bay area comes from overseas? Getting rid of agriculture and conserving water is really not a realistic goal for our huge population: we all know that it is not going to happen...

4. Hetch Hetchy supports mostly SF, with some to Marin and the East Bay. We get none in most of Alameda County. What it did was allow four million people to move to the Bay Area. Not sure that's a plus.
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I've heard rumors that the real reason of having all the freshwater going thru the delta is to keep the dilution of the waste in the Bay up at a level where it will not trigger an event that will gather attention to the problem
 
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oobus said:
I've heard rumors that the real reason of having all the freshwater going thru the delta is to keep the dilution of the waste in the Bay up at a level where it will not trigger an event that will gather attention to the problem
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"All that fresh water in the Delta" is a myth. There is far less fresh water going through than fifty years ago, and a fraction of what went through 100 years ago. The Delta is far more saline now than it was, and the fauna and flora reflect that. Waste water intrusion in the bay happens in the winter in big storms, but the water board has had extreme success in forcing the big polluters ( Oakland, Richmond, etc.) to cut down on the storm surge overflows. The water's not that bad. I used to swim in it in the eighties and wouldn't hesitate to do so today.
 
afm199 said:
"All that fresh water in the Delta" is a myth. There is far less fresh water going through than fifty years ago, and a fraction of what went through 100 years ago. The Delta is far more saline now than it was, and the fauna and flora reflect that. Waste water intrusion in the bay happens in the winter in big storms, but the water board has had extreme success in forcing the big polluters ( Oakland, Richmond, etc.) to cut down on the storm surge overflows. The water's not that bad. I used to swim in it in the eighties and wouldn't hesitate to do so today.
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That's good to know! I'm wondering what happens in the summer when there is less flow? Is there a site where the water quality in the Bay can be seen on a weekly/monthly basis?
 
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