Discussion
bombcar: I wonder at what point the up-front costs of massive desalination would overcome the (often hidden and externalized) costs of projects like this.
JumpCrisscross: > the up-front costs of massive desalinationDesalination is dominated by operating costs.
KerrAvon: If anyone wants a deep dive on this subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert
hparadiz: The California aquaduct system is an engineering marvel.
actionfromafar: Or another kind of take:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8...(Chinatown)
rimunroe: 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.
z3ugma: "Well There's Your Problem" on the collapse of the St Francis Dam, mentioned in Grady's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxLgM1vnuUAAlso 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
strongpigeon: 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.
dogemaster2025: 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.
rabid_0wl: Those projects would literally be impossible today with the environmental regulations in place, especially in California.
