Canberrafornia

[Gob]

Canberra has enjoyed a wetter summer, but three Fyshwick businessmen have dry days on their mind.



California dry days, that is.

As the 39 million residents of the US's most populous state enter their fourth year of severe drought, the business's water recycling appliance cannot go on sale soon enough.

Craig Richmond and his two colleagues' start-up, Nexus eWater, got the $2.1 million in backing they needed late last year and their NexTreater product could be on the market within weeks. It received US certification this month.

The company has said it is the world's first practical energy and greywater recycler for homes, promising to reduce annual water and wastewater usage by up to 40 per cent and electric energy usage by 12 per cent.

Mr Richmond said the team would be pushing for the appliance – which looks like a hot-water system – to be embraced by Californian builders.

"The motivation for the builder is that in California a number of cities are saying they may cease approving home production due to the drought – the pressure is on the builder to come up with better water solutions," he said.

The NexTreater unit is set to retail for about $US3000 ($3800), but with installation and the two tanks required it would be about $US5000-$US7000 ($6400-$9000). Mr Richmond said homeowners would likely break even within three to five years.

And while the company now has two offices in California and one in Alabama in addition to its Fyshwick R&D centre, its founders remain grateful for an early $50,000 grant under the ACT government's Innovation Connect program in 2012.

"It was critical to us getting where we are today," Mr Richmond said.

He said a roll-out in Australia would be dependent on US success.

California Governor Edmund Brown Jnr declared a drought state of emergency in January and earlier this month announced a $US1-billion emergency drought package.

[Gob]

The governor of California has implemented the first mandatory water restrictions in the state's history.

The order mandates a 25% reduction in water usage for cities and towns across the parched state. Vast areas of government-owned lawns will be replaced by drought-tolerant landscaping, and towns will be banned from watering ornamental grass. Last year, Governor Jerry Brown proclaimed a state of emergency after years of drought.

The snow in the mountains is at its lowest level since records began, so water supplies from melting snow will be lower than normal in coming months. "We are standing on dried grass, and we should be standing in five feet of snow," said Mr Brown, from the Sierra Nevada mountains. "People should realise we're in a new era. The idea of your nice little green grass getting lots of water everyday - that's going to be a thing of the past," he said.

[Lord Jim]

We started out with a very promising December, but it has sucked donkey dicks ever since...

[Crackpot]

not that there's anything wrong with that...

[Lord Jim]

[MajGenl.Meade]

Now if they could just make a beehive that purifies water.............

(continues praying for rain in California - don't want those fruits and nuts travelling east)

[Gob]

[rubato]

I think they're right that the best way is to design a system into the house when it is built. Re-fitting a grey water system is too clumsy and expensive other than the simplest installations (diverting the kitchen sick water through a crude filtration system and out to the lawn.)

But $7,000 is costly and they don't mention ongoing costs / labor /parts. On their site they say it is a "floatation/filtration/disinfection" system. Filters have to be changed or cleaned, and the disinfection system will need PM whether it uses ozone or chemical treatment.

I hope someone is successful at doing something like this but I'm not convinced it will be them and if it is only new construction it won't be a significant factor in water conservation for many decades.

yrs,
rubato

[Long Run]

As wasteful as much residential usage is in California, 80% or more of the water usage is for agriculture. Could see some even leaner farm years.

[rubato]

In fact, California is the leader in water conservation.

"... Although California faces some of the most challenging water issues in the country, the state is also a national leader in water efficiency and water conservation... " .

http://www.epa.gov/watersense/our_water ... facts.html

As one would expect since we have had serious droughts dating back to 1976-77 and Calif. is the most important agricultural producer in the country.


yrs,
rubato

[oldr_n_wsr]

I don't water my lawn. Crabgrass and weeds don't need so much water. And they are green.

[Gob]

Interesting article.

Can Los Angeles continue to dominate as the country’s capital of entertainment and glamour, and Silicon Valley as the center of high tech, if people are forbidden to take a shower for more than five minutes and water bills become prohibitively expensive? Will tourists worry about coming? Will businesses continue their expansion in places like San Francisco and Venice?

“Mother Nature didn’t intend for 40 million people to live here,” said Kevin Starr, a historian at the University of Southern California who has written extensively about this state. “This is literally a culture that since the 1880s has progressively invented, invented and reinvented itself. At what point does this invention begin to hit limits?”

California, Dr. Starr said, “is not going to go under, but we are going to have to go in a different way.”

An estimated 38.8 million people live in California today, more than double the 15.7 million people who lived here in 1960, and the state’s labor force exploded to 18.9 million in 2013 from 6.4 million people in 1960.

California’s $2.2 trillion economy today is the seventh largest in the world, more than quadruple the $520 billion economy of 1963, adjusted for inflation. The median household income jumped to an estimated $61,094 in 2013 from $44,772 in 1960, also adjusted for inflation.


“You just can’t live the way you always have,” said Mr. Brown, a Democrat who is in his fourth term as governor.

Continue reading the main story

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/us/ca ... .html?_r=0

[Guinevere]

In fact, California is the leader in water conservation.

"... Although California faces some of the most challenging water issues in the country, the state is also a national leader in water efficiency and water conservation... " .

http://www.epa.gov/watersense/our_water ... facts.html

As one would expect since we have had serious droughts dating back to 1976-77 and Calif. is the most important agricultural producer in the country.


yrs,
rubato

The fact is any state (such as California) that withdraws more groundwater than is recharged, which pipes water from other states for its needs, can hardly be called "a national leader in water efficiency and water conservation" despite what EPA has to say. It may be a leader in residential efficiency and conservation, but the ag uses are orders of magnitude larger and orders of magnitude less efficient.

[Econoline]

(Now I feel guilty for putting chopped almonds in the haroset I made for our seder....)

[rubato]

In fact, California is the leader in water conservation.

"... Although California faces some of the most challenging water issues in the country, the state is also a national leader in water efficiency and water conservation... " .

http://www.epa.gov/watersense/our_water ... facts.html

As one would expect since we have had serious droughts dating back to 1976-77 and Calif. is the most important agricultural producer in the country.


yrs,
rubato

The fact is any state (such as California) that withdraws more groundwater than is recharged, which pipes water from other states for its needs, can hardly be called "a national leader in water efficiency and water conservation" despite what EPA has to say. It may be a leader in residential efficiency and conservation, but the ag uses are orders of magnitude larger and orders of magnitude less efficient.

but the ag uses are orders of magnitude larger and orders of magnitude less efficient.

Pure horseshit. "orders of magnitude"? We do not pipe water from other states; it is drawn from a river flowing along the border but I think that is a common practice.


California has been a national leader in efficient water use for agriculture since the 1970s and 1980s droughts provided the impetus.

"... Sacramento Valley farmers are continually implementing new practices and infrastructure to increase efficient water management at the field, district and regional level. The challenge in implementing new water management and farming practices is to ensure that increasing efficiency at the local level will not jeopardize the benefits and values the water use provides to the environment or to other downstream water users. Put, differently, efficient water management decisions must be made with a clear understanding of the impact those decisions have on regional sustainability. From a regional perspective, agricultural water use in the Sacramento Valley is a relatively modest portion of overall water use in the Valley as shown on the left side of the accompanying chart... " .

We're better at it than the rest of the country because we've been dealing with it for longer and have a powerful motive.

Groundwater pumping remains an issue because we lack a regulatory framework to control it; it is a political more than a technical problem. I suspect that the current drought will be the push to get this started as larger numbers of voters have had their residential wells dry up when the water table dropped from over-pumping. But the central states depletion of their aquifiers is far worse and for very low-value crops like corn grown for EtOH production.


yrs,
rubato

[BoSoxGal]

Looks like California needs to nix almonds and alfalfa - both of which, sadly, are mostly imported elsewhere for consumption.