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The norcal/socal divide caused by the river is funny to me. I grew up in LA, then moved to the Bay Area for college. In LA we never really talked about where our water comes from. But we were always 'in a drought' and always taught to conserve water.
My wife grew up in the Bay Area, and was told the same.
But her family is from Sacramento. Up until about 15 years ago, everyone in Sacramento paid the same for water (based on square footage of your home). There were no water meters. So they didn't conserve. They ran the sprinklers in 100 degree heat for hours, they washed sidewalks with water instead sweeping, and all the other things.
But when the meters came, her Uncle blamed SoCal for "stealing his water". He complained every month when the bill came about how he has to pay more now because of SoCal.
Owens valley, where LA "steals" water from, is on the eastern side of the Sierras.
NorCal, including Sacramento, is on the western side of the Sierras.
So unless they planned on pumping the water over/under the mountain range that surrounds it in every direction except for towards LA, that water was never available for any NorCal city to use.
Yes, Norcal spent decades wagging fingers at SoCal about this. There were books like Cadillac Desert.
Meanwhile, San Francisco drinks clean glacier water that a valley in Yosemite was destroyed to provide this and they refuse to repurpose a downstream damn that has enough capacity to do it.
Physician, heal thyself.
I grew up in Sacramento and I remember when my parents were had a flat rate water bill. Those were the good ol' days!
It frustrates me how everyone moralizes water use rather than accepting that free markets allow for people who are simply willing to pay for it. For example, if you live in Sacrmanto and don't have a pool, you're just doing it all wrong (in my opinion, of course).
I watched my friend's family farm in Modesto flood their fields to irrigate them. No meter, just a valve off the canal and they pay a flat rate. So it offends me that my shower head is legally required to restrict it's flow. Or that neighbors decide that a pile of rock in the front yard is "better for the environment" as it radiates heat on a 105°F day...
Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is the result of survival bias, but given how impossibly hard it is to just build anything where I live (Seattle), I’m not so sure.
Seattle just got done building light rail tracks over a floating bridge.
It is an insane engineering achievement. A train literally running on tracks on a road that is floating on water!
I don't think you're wrong. Every time someone says we can't do high speed rail it makes me very sad. And as far as Seattle goes... my commute is substantially affected by the I-5 closures. It's somewhat shocking to me that we allow infrastructure to decay as much as we do.
I'd be happy about the light rail expansion if they weren't talking about delaying the Ballard line indefinitely. :(
You mean, like NYC Water Tunnel #3?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No....
We're literally right now building a huge high speed rail project that is planned to link san diego to san francisco through LA, bakersfield and fresno. Progress is made on it daily. https://www.youtube.com/CAHighSpeedRail
Those projects would literally be impossible today with the environmental regulations in place, especially in California.
It’s too complicated to corruptly make money off of a large project like that. It’s much easier to just buy a bunch of drugs and needles and give it to the methheads, or spend money on homeless while building zero homes.
The grand projects the US has embarked on have been completed using unethical means and without regard for real environmental consequences.
This particular grand structural project was never a good idea, as the video describes. So it might not be the best basis for comparison.
Looking at what Tehran is facing (not related to the war, water shortage), I'm wondering why california isn't investing in more desalination for SoCal, especially for LA.
I see some here:
https://lynceans.org/all-posts/status-of-desalination-plants...
But there are only a few in SoCal and they're for smaller communities like carlsbad or santa barbara. So it is there and it is working for some, why not more? naturally i assume it's because everything costs more at the coast.
> I'm wondering why california isn't investing in more desalination for SoCal, especially for LA.
Because California has plenty of water for residents. What California doesn't have is plenty of water for agribusiness.
And the agribusinesses do NOT want people paying close attention as all the valid solutions to water problems are basically "shut down agribusinesses in arid areas".
Because the economics of desalination require locking in long term purchase/production rates at prices that dwarf current and other sources of water.
SD's Poseidon desal is projected at ~$3.7k per acre ft for 2026 whereas SDCWA SWP water is ~$1.5-1.9k acre ft.
Leak fixes, groundwater recharge, local aquifers, water banking, potable reuse, etc. are all more economical means of bolstering water supply.
A big factor in determining desalination placement in the region are the groundwater basins. Limited size and availability makes the case for desalination as means for resiliency. Another is that situating adjacent to power plants so as to use their already coastally degraded intakes/outfalls. Doheny is to use subsurface slant wells for intakes, but it's also lower output too.
As for LA. they're working on getting their potable reuse plants/projects up and running. The largest indirect potable reuse plant in the world has been operating in OC for ~18 years. Lower operating costs than desalination, reduced wastewater discharge, and reduced coastal impact.
There are environmental and financial concerns https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/05/california-desali...
I don't understand the financial concern at all. How could increasing the water supply increase the price? It only makes sense to me if the price is artificially low right now.
Environmental damage by a desalinization plant couldn't possibly be worse than overdrawing the acquifer -- the defacto solution.
I’m in a rare community in Southern California (part of north county San Diego) where my water is 27% from the ocean (10% for rest of San Diego county).
It’s cool. Still totally hard and makes everything fail early.
The US needs a national water grid.
It would pay for itself after a few flooding events where were are able to redistribute the water more quickly. It also provides clean energy storage.
I've posted about it before with links to the studies but it usually just starts an argument by people worried the rest of the country is going to steal their water...
Being from LA, I am used to a water system that works without needing power. I think most of CA is like that. It was a surprise to lose the water back east when the power went out during a storm.
Why is that picture an extreme recolor of the original?
https://images.nebula.tv/5ba7e541-f57c-44cc-a91d-6a89bad158d...
"Well There's Your Problem" on the collapse of the St Francis Dam, mentioned in Grady's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxLgM1vnuUA
Also I love when they refer to it as the "_First_ California Water Wars" in a grim realization of the future of water scarcity in the West
I was in Owens River Gorge last week, it's a very interesting place. It has some of the tallest single pitch rock climbing in the world, sometimes requiring 80M ropes: https://www.mountainproject.com/area/105843226/owens-river-g...
If anyone wants a deep dive on this subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert
There's a poem carved into the stonework of Washington Union Station, part of the art installation The Progress of Railroading from c. 1909:
the old mechanic arts / controlling new forces / build new highways / for goods and men / override the ocean / and make the very ether / carry human thought
the desert shall rejoice / and blossom as the rose
My favorite part of this video is where they divert and dry up one lake, and then build two reservoirs further downstream.
I love Practical Engineering. Grady Hillhouse's enthusiasm for engineering shows through brilliantly. Being a graduate engineer, I've learned a lot from his videos and transcriptions. Well worth browsing practical.engineering.
PS: and it is NOT about software engineering LOL!
I was surprised to find out it was largely uncovered, though I guess it probably makes it much cheaper to construct. I usually think of aqueducts as pipes or tunnels, like Persian qanāts. I wonder how much water is lost due to evaporation.
Does anyone know why there's been a bit of a surge of videos/articles about this? Or am I just getting Baader-Meinhof ed?
Am curious, how have the shade balls been working out in terms of maintenance, coating wear, leeched microplastics, containment (so they don't wind up in oceans), etc? In retrospect, did it make sense compared to the $250M or so uplift it would have taken to build a conventional roof?
Just a quick plug for Cadillac Desert. People don't realize how fragile the urban areas of Coastal California are. We should.
Nice picture but I've never seen the water anywhere near blue like that.
NYC aqueduct from the Catskills is wild too, especially if you like the effect on NYC pizza and bagels.
Great articles have been written on the engineering but I like this one from 1909 showing the perspective of the time:
I wonder at what point the up-front costs of massive desalination would overcome the (often hidden and externalized) costs of projects like this.
Quite interesting.
This is also why every video needs a transcript: that took me 6min to read, about 1/4 of the video's running time.
Is it really considered the Cascades all the way down near LA? I thought the mountains down there were the Sierra Nevada? Did Grady just get that detail wrong, or am I wrong in thinking that the Cascades stops in Northern California?
Reminds me of when I was talking to friends about the film Chinatown and I referred to it as a movie about the California water war and someone else said “dude, that’s not what that film is about”.
We were both correct.
Growing up in LA, I was fascinated as a kid watching the water flow down this aqueduct. Anytime we drove by it on the way to Magic Mountain, I'd hope that it would be a water-on day.
For anyone interested in a deep dive, I recommend the book Vision or villainy: origins of the Owens Valley-Los Angeles water controversy.
I remember hearing years ago that this aqueduct was going to be shut down and then it just... never was? Does anyone else recall that?
Some say the LA aqueduct saved Owens Valley from development. (I’m sure the old timers out there would have a different opinion)
I really dig the editorial viewpoint of this article. New journalism style meets fun facts about engineering.
Pretty upsetting history along with the interesting engineering.
The California aquaduct system is an engineering marvel.
Insane waterslide
Really enjoyed watching that. Good luck with water LA.