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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jun 21, 2015 - 05:22pm PT
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Hey, that would expose a lot of really good granite.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 11:40am PT
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Candy Man, Salty Dawg.
An analysis released by independent environmental scientist James Fryer estimates the cost of desalinated seawater in California will be $2,000 to $3,000 or more per acre-foot. Using cost data and production records from existing and proposed desalination plants and adjusting for California water conditions, current energy costs, financing costs, and other variables, the investigation found that there is no evidence to support cost projections by some desalination industry advocates of $800 to $1,000 per acre-foot. The report concludes that conservation measures are much less expensive, with a broad range of well-proven measures that cost well under $1,000 per acre-foot. The report also notes water recycling is a proven option that typically costs between $300 and $1,300 per acre-foot.
Appears to be a margin of error about about 50% (2000-3000). Maybe we water aficianados here on the ST can help him shape up his estimate.
Exhibit 1 - Calculation of Water Authority's CY 2015 Melded Supply Rate
This purports to be water usage in San Diego county in the San Diego County Water Authority’s 24 member agencies areas. Let's take 1999 because the bar stops right at 600,000 acre feet which make the math easier to do. Anyone doing the math as he/she reads.
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Jun 22, 2015 - 12:23pm PT
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Will folks down there drink reclaimed water? Ouch.
There is a good reason why Carlyle bought our water, with what the fracking is doing out in E.MT, we are sitting on a gold mine. However, MSO just won condemnation in court for ownership. We'll see what happens next. Right now, the river that runs through town is at late July levels with more algae than folks remember seeing.
It is going to be interesting to say teh least.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jun 22, 2015 - 12:36pm PT
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The cost of Co River water is listed on your table: $582 AF
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jun 22, 2015 - 12:39pm PT
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Will folks down there drink reclaimed water? Ouch.
They have been doing so for a long time.
Each city on the Colo River takes out water, then after use runs it through a water treatment facility to purify it, then dumps it BACK into the river, where it then flows downstream to the next city.
Repeat 300 times. Decade after decade.
Then it is pumped to SoCal
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jun 22, 2015 - 12:52pm PT
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Interesting enough it is only about 1200 miles from Lake Superior to Granby Lake in Colorado. From Granby on down the waterways already exist.
How long is that oil pipeline they're trying to build?
here's the problem: Lake Granby is at 8,284 feet in elevation.
Lake superior is at 600 feet.
So you would have to lift all that water 7,600 feet.
Currently, the biggest lift of water in the world is the water from Sacramento to SoCal, about 1900 feet. Costs about 500/ AF
The lift from Superior to Granby would use 4 times as much. So, in energy, would cost about $2,000 / AF PLUS cost of the water, PLUS cost of the project, PLUS financing.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 03:27pm PT
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Ken M. The chart also lists the cost of desalinized (is that a word) water at $1724, which I presume is an estimate since as far as I can tell the plant is not on line yet. May be the negotiated price.
I do not know about the cost and/or efficiencies of lifting water (where is Hartouni when you need him?). Is height to energy expenditure a linear relation? Perhaps I need to make a field trip to the Edmonston Pumping Plant.
Like was proposed for the cars coming into L.A. from the Valley, they're just going to have to tunnel it I suppose, if they want all that free Michigan water. :)
So the real solution here is controlled nuclear fusion. There will, at some point, be available a couple buildings up at San Onofre, if they figure out where to put all that nasty rad stuff lying around there.
Thanks to wikimedia!
Fusion power would provide more energy for a given weight of fuel than any fuel-consuming energy source currently in use,[178] and the fuel itself (primarily deuterium) exists abundantly in the Earth's ocean: about 1 in 6500 hydrogen atoms in seawater is deuterium.[179] Although this may seem a low proportion (about 0.015%), because nuclear fusion reactions are so much more energetic than chemical combustion and seawater is easier to access and more plentiful than fossil fuels, fusion could potentially supply the world's energy needs for millions of years.[180][181]
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 03:42pm PT
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^Apparently you have not been following the eminent domain (or was it manifest destiny) discussion.
Further, Fat Dad is researching at this very moment whether it is not in fact true that any waterway that empties into the U.S. owned oceans (that would be the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico - just ask Lindsey Graham) is in fact a public waterway owned by we the people.
So, the only argument is over whether it is we 'the confederate' or we 'the union' people.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 03:57pm PT
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Without looking very hard, I cannot find major legal impediments to digging your own well on your property. There is some expense though ... and ... is there any water under your lawn?
‘The cost for a 300-foot well will not exceed $6500. Then, for a one-horsepower pump, pipe, control box, pressure tank, and motor, it’s another $3500. Then you might want a storage tank. And the cost of running power from your house to the well will vary.’”
Edit: Quote from 2012 San Diego local paper, presumably for well in East San Diego county.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 22, 2015 - 05:13pm PT
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The cost for my(now my X's) well here in JTree was 24,000+
That was going 380' deep and about 3000 of that was for pump, tank, and wiring.
And it costs about 50-70 a month to run it. I hear now their trying to pass laws to allow them to put meters on all private wells.
It costs more for a well in sand compared to rock because they basically have to drill a bigger hole fill it with cement, then redrill and then stick in the pipe.
I did test my vacuum theory. I put one water filled garbage can 5' of the ground in the backyard. And another garbage can in the front yard sitting on the ground and threw a hose over the top of the house and got the water to flow. For free :)
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Jon Beck
Trad climber
Oceanside
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Jun 22, 2015 - 05:31pm PT
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ZBrown - there are future plans to regulate well water consumption in CA, but I suspect that plan may be accelerated considering how fast corporations are planting new almond groves and drilling wells.
The cost of desal is directly related to the cost of energy, with natural gas plummeting in price, the cost of desal has also dropped.
San Diego has been trying to reuse water, opponents tagged it as Toilet-to-Tap and effectively killed the idea years ago. They are now planning on putting the recycled water into local reservoirs, might work if they do not find "Snickers bars" in the lake.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 05:43pm PT
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snicker, snicker :)
It is kind of funny that for the most part reservoirs are "open" and could have all manner of sheeit dropped into them.
For some reason though, fishermen are viewed as more trustworthy than ordinary folks, because they are just about the only ones who can get into Barrett Lake these days. It used to be possible to drive up from the south, but no more. To get in from the north you must have a fishing lottery ticket and be escorted down to the lake.
The road was a very scary trip for a few little kids.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Jun 22, 2015 - 05:52pm PT
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^Or the feds. You may not have heard about Obama_wawa ... morphing into Clinton_wawa_care.
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Jun 22, 2015 - 06:27pm PT
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"The cost of Co River water is listed on your table: $582 AF "
That figure is what MWD charges after adding all fees for delivery, transport, treatment, pensions, tunnels, reservoirs, etc.
The actual cost charged to MWD by the federal USBR (Lake Mead/Parker Dam) is approx. zero.
"Currently, the biggest lift of water in the world is the water from Sacramento to SoCal, about 1900 feet. Costs about $500/ AF."
That's not what I calculate. Can you find an error below?
Giant water pumps are 90% efficient.
"Typically, the round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies in practice between 70% and 80%,[1][2][3][4] with some claiming up to 87%."[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
Round trip includes both pumping loss one way, and turbine loss the other way.
Energy = MHD m= mass, H=height, g= gravity
1 AF = 325851 gal = 1233.4 cu. meter. Water is 1g/cc or 1000 kg/m3,
so 1 AF is 1233.4 m3 x 1000 kg/m3 = 1.233 E6 kg
1900 feet = 579m
1 joule = (1 J = 1 N·m = 1 kg·m2 / s2 )
So Energy per AF is 1.233 E6 kg x 579 m x 9.8 m/s2
= 7 E9 joules
Electricity at $20 per megawatt hour is $.00555 per mega Joule
Cost = 7 E9 j x $.00555 /1000000
= $39 per AF.
Adding the 11% inefficiency raises it to $43 per AF.
For a pipeline twice as long that went over two 3800 foot passes, the power cost would be 4 times as much, or $173 per AF.
I think I have heard that the LA aqueduct is a net generator of power, since it's mostly downhill. The California aqueduct is uphill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct
http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/swptoday.cfm
lots of historic pics of LA aqueduct
http://waterandpower.org/museum/Electricity%20on%20the%20Aqueduct.html
http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/revisit/commentary/concrete-and-chaparral/a-self-guided-tour-of-the-los-angeles-aqueduct.html
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jun 22, 2015 - 06:51pm PT
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As of last fall MWD was charging member agencies between $1,300 and $1,500 per AF.
A whole lot simpler method of calculating
P = Power, hp
Q = Flow Rate, gpm
S = Specific Gravity of fluid
H = Head height, ft
u = Efficiency coefficient
Efficiency wire to water, combined motor and pump efficiencies is usually somewhere between 82 and 87% Then most of the time a pump is going to be runing a bit off of its BEP (best efficiency point)
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jun 22, 2015 - 07:22pm PT
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"The cost of Co River water is listed on your table: $582 AF "
That figure is what MWD charges after adding all fees for delivery, transport, treatment, pensions, tunnels, reservoirs, etc.
The actual cost charged to MWD by the federal USBR (Lake Mead/Parker Dam) is approx. zero.
That is the cost for untreated water. Treated costs about $900 AF (although I don't remember the actual price)
However, I will grant that the price of the water itself is virtually nothing. However, that is the price 300 miles away. If you don't like MWD's price, feel free to put in your own pipes, or truck it.
I imagine that you can't really beat their price for delivery, transport, treatment, pensions, tunnels, reservoirs, etc.
"Currently, the biggest lift of water in the world is the water from Sacramento to SoCal, about 1900 feet. Costs about $500/ AF."
That's not what I calculate. Can you find an error below?
Giant water pumps are 90% efficient.
yes, you have to figure in the cost of building it, the cost of financing, then the cost of pensions, work comp, salaries of people running the pumps and pipes, and as you say-- etc.
I'm taking the rate directly from the MWD chart above. I rounded to $500, but it was listed as $420 (Wheeling rate)
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jun 22, 2015 - 07:44pm PT
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Treatment costs about $900 AF
That's crazy!
Not anywhere close to that, although given MWD accounting practices I'm sure they can justify it. They just took the EPA average national average for a composite of much smaller districts and published it.
OCSD's surcharge for the AWT is a bit more than $1, 000 per MGD. ($3,000 AF) That's to run an advanced microfiltration and RO waste to better than drinking water quality process.
The MWD plants have to be an order of magnitude cheaper to run than the nationwide average, just based on economy of scale. They have converted all of them to zone for primary disinfection in the last few years with a huge capital outlay that I'm sure they are recovering at an accelerated pace.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jun 22, 2015 - 08:05pm PT
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The MWD plants have to be an order of magnitude cheaper to run than the nationwide average, just based on economy of scale. They have converted all of them to zone for primary disinfection in the last few years with a huge capital outlay that I'm sure they are recovering at an accelerated pace.
Actually, I wouldn't think so. Nationwide, they don't have to pump their water thousands of feet over mountain ranges.
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