Lessons from a wildfire

[Alpine4x4]

If not for Ca. heavy regulation there would be many more desalinations plants in the state which can make millions of gallons of fresh water per day. There are currently only 12 plants all with far lower capacity as that of Carlsbad plant. The largest plant in the western hemisphere is in Carlsbad Ca. in northern San Diego county. It has an output capacity of 50 million gallons per day, at a. cost of .07 cents per gal. by using reverse osmosis. By comparison there is a plant in France with the capacity of 75 million gals. per day. The reservoir which was drained for repairs had a capacity of 117 million gals. which means it would have taken just over two day to fill it if all the output of a plant the size of the Carlsbad plant went to filling the reservoir. Another thing I have always wonder about is why there is not a system in place to capture some of the trillions of gallons of rainwater that run into the ocean every year. The reason is two fold, first nobody wants the plants or the storage reservoirs in their back yard, second is the cost of the projects, well the last I heard, the cost of the current fires may run as highs 250 billion$. It's all a bunch of political BS.

Storage is going underground. My company manufactures many that are being installed in Washington. They put massive multi compartment storage tanks under parking lots and the such. The one we deal in is called Stormtrap, but there's a few others out there as well. I think the main issue with using the stormwater runoff would be filtering chemicals and sediments out.

 

[GSPHUNTER]

Storage is going underground. My company manufactures many that are being installed in Washington. They put massive multi compartment storage tanks under parking lots and the such. The one we deal in is called Stormtrap, but there's a few others out there as well. I think the main issue with using the stormwater runoff would be filtering chemicals and sediments out.

There was one just installed where I live, it has a 500k gal. capacity. It is storage for runoff only and is used for irrigation only. I think the answer to issues with runoff water can be solved by reverse osmosis filtration, cheap, prolly not, but it's one answer to water shortage issues.

 

[Billinsd]

If not for Ca. heavy regulation there would be many more desalinations plants in the state which can make millions of gallons of fresh water per day. There are currently only 12 plants all with far lower capacity as that of Carlsbad plant. The largest plant in the western hemisphere is in Carlsbad Ca. in northern San Diego county.

The other huge issue is the huge energy to run desalination plants. San Diego, and East County are building facilities, and pipelines to reclaim treated sewage and then conveying to existing untreated water reservoirs to be combined and treated to be potable. Reclaiming sewage is much cheaper and requires much less energy as ocean water, because ocean water has much higher total dissolved solids, especially salts.

 

[Billinsd]

Storage is going underground. My company manufactures many that are being installed in Washington. They put massive multi compartment storage tanks under parking lots and the such. The one we deal in is called Stormtrap, but there's a few others out there as well. I think the main issue with using the stormwater runoff would be filtering chemicals and sediments out.

The other thing would be collecting it all and storing it somewhere. Then what would you do with it? If you sent it to a sewage treatment plant, it would be very expensive to treat and reclaim. You couldn’t send it straight to a water treatment plant, because it’s too dirty. You couldn’t use it for irrigation either without treating. Individually people reclaim rain water successfully for their own irrigation.