The American Southwest needs to get started on desalination. It’s the only long term answer we have now, know works, and is at least within shooting distance of cost-feasible.

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Retric 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you own water rights, selling them to a city at near desalination rates is way more profitable than farming.

So desalination only makes economic sense after removing all farms from an area.

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mattmaroon 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, if you’re selling the water at rates that aren’t below cost farms will remove themselves. Desalination is cheap enough for humans to live and do most work things, it’s hard to imagine it ever being cheap enough for farming.

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HDThoreaun 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The problem is that the farmers own the water, its not about selling it to them but getting it from them.

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clcaev 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Farmers do not own the water that flows through their property. This is a Riparian rights concern and is quite complicated.

	▲	HDThoreaun 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Its definitely complicated. But the end of the story is that the government can not easily stop the farmers from using water in many of these drought stricken areas. Its going to be a big political battle

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mattmaroon 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Then tax them at a rate equivalent to their environmental cost? I don't think this is complicated (except politically, of course). You just want everyone to carry the cost of their own externalities.

	▲	nandomrumber 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Two problems with that, typically unelected bureaucrats get to set the price, and political complexity is the worse kind.

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logicchains 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Dubai has farms fed on desalinated water and the food they produce is still cheaper than imported equivalents.

	▲	Retric 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Dubai is paying ~$2,450 per acre-foot of desalinated water. You generally need around 2 acre feet of water per acre of farmland assuming near zero rain, it varies by crop type but goes up with temperature and down with humidity. Farms growing food crops don’t produce ~5,000$ in profits per acre, even 1/10th that is an extreme outlier. On top of this desalinated water still has significantly more salt than rainwater which eventually causes issues. Subsides can always make things look cheaper when you ignore the subsidy.
	▲	mattmaroon 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Is that just because imported Dubai food is insanely expensive? I don't believe the math on anything but maybe indoor farming here is going to work out if the water costs anything at all. Indoor farming can be extremely water-efficient, often at the cost of energy inefficiency, but with low solar prices and the level of sun they have in the Southwest perhaps that can become economical? I don't know, I just do know that water shortages are a problem, are going to continue to become more of a problem, and there's currently just one technology that's affordable enough that some nations currently use it at scale. So let's get started.

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kjkjadksj 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The hard part is getting all that water to parts inland and uphill

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TimorousBestie 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The southwest, for the most part, refuses to accept the federal funding & infrastructure support that would be necessary for desalination at scale to be feasible.

Nobody wants to vote for water rationing, and the state can’t even enforce consumption limits against corporations and the wealthy.

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_heimdall 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Is it really feasible if a state can only pull it off with large federal funding efforts?

It seems like a problem those in the area will just have to deal with given that they're knowingly walking down that path. If you can't fund desalinization or other options, won't take federal funding, and choose not to region or conserve water then you collectively made your own bed.

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mattmaroon 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't really know what they're talking about, states almost never refuse federal funding for anything.

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_heimdall 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Louisiana refused federal highway funding for long enough that their highway system went to shit. They refused due to a federal mandate that the drinking age be raised to 21.

It isn't common, but states have absolutely forwent federal funding to stand their ground, and in my opinion they should do it more often. Its a huge weakness in our federal system that states are so dependent on federal funding for long lived programs.

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mattmaroon 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I did say “almost”. I’m aware it has happened.

But I have property in Arizona and I have a real hard time imagining this state saying no thank you if offered water. It’s sort of a big deal out there these days.

	▲	_heimdall 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Oh I hear you, I have family in Phoenix. My main concern there is that states can and should turn down federal funding if it comes with strings the state isn't interested in accepting. Our federal system becomes fairly useless if states are so dependent on federal funding that we can no longer have 50 different experiments running to try out different legislative approaches.

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lazide 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Like people who build in flood zones and don’t have flood insurance, they do have a nasty tendency to make their problem your problem somehow though.

	▲	_heimdall 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They shouldn't be my problem, and I say that as someone who lived in a flood prone home with no flood insurance as it was ridiculously expensive for pretty terrible coverage. I wouldn't have lived in that house if I was unable or unwilling to deal with the consequences of a flood, no one else should either.