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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Kern who wrote (103785)	2/10/2009 9:47:44 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542043

Desalination is very expensive, even on a large scale. Right now, farmers in southern CA get their water dirt cheap. Desalinized water would cost a huge amount more, I forget the exact number. Plus desalinized water isn't environmentally cost free, especially when it is done on a large scale. The left-over brine has to go somewhere, and will in the ripeness of time contaminate wherever it is placed--even, given enough of it, the ocean itself, which is already facing problems with increased acidification. Farmers will have to go to dry farming where possible, and to drip irrigation where it isn't. Those two actions alone will save large amounts of water, since something like 80-85% of the water that CA uses is for farming, and they largely use flood irrigation now due to their current cheap water.