https://www.votervoice.net/HOM/1/campaigns/100774/respond

For those who have trouble reading between the lines: this is a set of laws that will open the entire state to untrammeled development and will allow incarceration of anybody who dares to demand an end to rampant land rape. Make no mistake: their prime motivation is an unimpeded explosion of detached homes. Homes that will suck ever more water out of our aquifers and rivers. Note to all LDS leaders: this is a moral issue. That's for all those LDS leaders who have trouble determining what is and isn't a moral issue.

Thank you.

Nature will prevail

It's crickets all over again. God will need bigger sea gulls.

Meanwhile Israel gets half its water from the desalinating the Sea and the rest of the world desalinates enough water to replace the flows of both the Colorado and Sacramento rivers.
There is no water shortage on a planet that’s 70% water, just a shortage of imagination.

there isn't enough inflow to Salt Lake to provide water
for that area;

isn't desalting extremely energy consuming? who's gonna pay for that?

personally I think if N waste could be resolved, the U.S. should go with a few more nuclear power generation after solar & wind are maxed out.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2023 11:37AM by GNPE.

Or we could all learn to conserve.

If 80% of the water diversion is for agriculture, then urban users could conserve their usage down to zero and it still wouldn't be enough. And they obviously can't cut their usage to zero.

Conservation is important, but it will not solve the problem unless agriculture gets included. Not even close.

Some industries consume lots of water too, idk about Utah.

Water pipes can be pumped up 5000 feet altitude near 1000 miles from water desalination plants along the Pacific Coast.

The same can be done along the Gulf of Mexico at a distance of around 1500 miles.

It won't be cheap. Not sure how it'll impact the oceans and global climate long-term. But it's definitely scientifically feasible.

For example, this one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River

One of the biggest problems will be on what to do if the watershed for Utah suddenly runs out at the same time as it hits much of the rest of the west. It'll take years to get all systems, pipes, water desalination plants, and other parts of the infrastructure up and running. I got to imagine it would be very costly to do some stop gaps of bringing in trucks of water for temporary relief. Before that happens the agriculture industry will first be turned off in Utah and then rules like bathing once per week so water can be preserved for cooking/drinking. It'll be a society catastrophe until resolved.

Among the numbers problems with desalinating is that it is very expensive, and the saltier the water, the more expensive it is. The water in the GSL would be horribly expensive to desalinate.

The second problem is that to desalinate salt water, you need a reliable supply of salt water to desalinate. The ocean is a pretty reliable supply. That's not ever going to run out.

The Great Salt Lake, not so much. It has already lost about 75% of its water, and if we were to take even more water out if it, it would just run completely dry that much faster.

So what salt water were you thinking of desalinating? The Pacific? Do you have any idea how much it would cost to pump any kind of water over the Sierra Nevada?

Talk about magical thinking.

It seems to me that the state of Utah could rent some land on the Pacific coast to ensure there was an adequate supply of low-salt salt water for desalinization, then process that water, and fly it by airplane to the Great Basin. That desalinized water could be stored in the Great Salt Lake until needed.

Problem solved.

Tongue firmly in cheek

What, me?

The [church] Savior will probably exhort the faithful to tithe harder, that the windows of heaven may be opened.

OTOH, if rain is nothing more than Jesus crying, then perhaps they can say the word "mormon" a lot.

Mr Ox, your name makes me think of you as being like a mean angry bossy bald old man who got stuck in an ecclesiastical position and then you made the best of it by being a power hungry narcissist who can't wait for some old heart surgeon to finally croak over so you can be king of the intermountain region.

Maybe God saved this narcissist Ox to be the big bald king who would save the GSL?

That or corruption.

If this winter is an indication of a longer term trend Utah might be coming out of its prolonged drought. I can remember when State Street flooded and the Great Salt Lake was going into flood stage. I’ve seen both extremes in my lifetime.

The planet never stays static. It’s always changing.

Rubicon, that makes no sense. Variability around a trend does not obviate that trend.

I know that most of our water is used for agriculture. If these bills pass, there will be no more agriculture in Utah. Just massive homes with huge yards.

Those days are largely gone. There are some standard suburban subdivisions going up west of Utah Lake, but by and large, new subdivisions have postage-stamp yards. See Suncrest, at Point of the Mountain.

Meanwhile there are about four thousand apartments coming online in and around SLC, and another five thousand in the planning and oermitting stage.

Utah has always been government of developers, for developers and by developers, but even they eventually run out of land for McMansions. Oh, and it is agriculture interests, mostly LDS Inc, that owns the senior water rights.

a few appeals court decisions limit the ability of government to deny building permits.

When / if IMW residents go dry, the s*it will hit the fan just as the Magic 15 exhort everyone to plead beg for prayers / moisture 24/7

Feasibility of a pipeline from other areas isn’t 100% out of the question

see St. George News online photo of officials at a discussion of water availability… on the table in the photo of a small plastic bottle of water, Ha!

Those bottles ought to be OUTLAWED as the most wasteful products in stores !!

I was recently at the G. Canyon, they have refill stations but don’t allow bottled water sales…



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2023 04:27PM by GNPE.

What pipelines might be feasible? Examples, please.

watch the water planners in/around St. George, they’re hoping for one…
Also, are there any water fountains / water features ala Las Vegas in or near St. George?

Pipelines from places that are running out of water themselves isn't a realistic option, which is why my proposal that Utah charter airlines to bring sea water to Salt Lick city is the only promising strategy.

I saw a proposed map for their pipeline. First, they want it to come out of Lake Powell, which is already in deep trouble. All it will do is deplete the reservoir's water supply even more quickly, which of course will make the situation worse.

Second, the pipeline crosses into Arizona and back. Do they imagine that Arizona is just going to bow its head and say yes? If AZ can even be negotiated into granting permission, Utah will have to pay a steep price.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/us/st-george-utah-water-lake-powell-pipeline-climate/index.html

Entitled St. George types are going to learn they aren't the only ones with "freedom."

Trucking the water in from a desalination plant at the closest point to St. George on an interstate freeway sounds like a good plan...

Thirsts are quenched, jobs are created, and toilets are flushed...

Win, win, win!


I envision waterwheels in the ocean that would drive big fans that would spin even bigger wind generators!!

Will U TILT at the waterwheels ?

btw, as if it’s germane ( it’s Not!) I don’t believe that triple truck trailers are allowed in Cali, how about non-derailing rail tank cars instead?

O wait…



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2023 06:19PM by GNPE.

People

slskipper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> https://www.votervoice.net/HOM/1/campaigns/100774/
> respond
>
> LDS leaders: this is a moral issue. That's for all
> those LDS leaders who have trouble determining
> what is and isn't a moral issue.
>

Moral Mormon/ human issue. Idiots!

There needs to be a moratorium on building new residences.

It's not water for lawns and gardens, it's water for thousands of new people showering, flushing toilets, washing dishes, washing cars etc.

Then add water use at schools for thousands of students, drinking fountains, cooking, washing, playgrounds and fields.

Then add water for business, restaurants, fast food, car washes etc.

Then add water for data centers, industrial uses, manufacturing etc.

Yes it's a small percentage but it is something we need to control better.

Agriculture needs to adapt, no doubt, massive irrigation has to be examined.

We need to learn to grow crops that are better suited to our climate. Expand our pallets to new foods.

We also need to get rid of invasive plants. While I enjoy Russian Olive trees, the drain 70 to 100 gallons of water a day. A current project to cut down thousands of them along Bear Creek and replace with new foliage that uses less water and conserves the river banks from erosion is underway. Hopefully it will succeed and lead to a statewide program.

Then if we do all that guess what?

It still won't be enough.

We're at the mercy of nature, as always.

>It's not water for lawns and gardens, it's water for thousands of new people showering, flushing toilets, washing dishes, washing cars etc

Not according to USU

https://extension.usu.edu/cwel/irrigation

"Approximately two-thirds of drinking water in Utah is used to water lawns and landscapes"


~85% of Utah's water use is for agriculture (68% for alfalfa)

https://www.kuer.org/business-economy/2022-08-08/utah-agriculture-wants-more-support-and-research-to-reach-future-water-saving-goals

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2022/11/24/one-crop-uses-more-than-half/

As you probably know, the federal and state governments massively subsidize agricultural consumption of water. The price paid per gallon can be a tenth or a twentieth of what households pay.

The inevitable outcome of this under-pricing is that farmers produce on land that would not otherwise be economically viable and the incentive for them to use water more efficiently is sharply reduced. This is in fact one of the better examples of the way government policy can encourage the waste of scarce national resources.

I have not looked at the data for Utah, but I'd bet the state fits the pattern. And why not? God apparently cared more about desert vistas than long-term agricultural and societal viability.

"The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus."

--Isaiah 35:1

Yes, much of Utah's water - agricultural and residential - has been developed through federal projects - Central Utah Project, Provo River Project, Weber River project to name just three of the many Bureau of Reclamation projects.

Utah also subsidizes residential water projects through property taxes. For example, in western Salt Lake County much of the water comes from the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District which gets much of the water from the Central Utah and Provo River projects. The JVWCD levies property taxes to cover ~30% of its budget. As a result, it sells water to municipalities at a lower rate than it otherwise would have to.

When I lived in Davis County, there were taxes from the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District wnich got water from the federally funded Weber River project (the district did have to reimburse the feds for part of the costs of the project over a period of decades). The water we got from them ws untreated and intended for landscape irrigation. It was also unmetered, and therefore one could use as much of it as you wanted at no addtional cost.

So most of the water used for all purposes in Utah is subsidized by taxes either state, local, or federal.

Yep, agriculture is the 800 pound gorilla. Yes, we need to grow food, but it doesn't have to be grown in Utah. Besides, alfalfa is not "food", well, unless you are a horse or cow, and a fair chunk of Utah alfalfa is sold to China. We really should not be exporting our water. Alfalfa is popular because it is semi-perennial - it eventually needs to be replanted, but it will regrow from the roots for several years. That cuts planting costs way down.

And there are a lot of small towns in Utah that depend on those farms and their income to keep the towns alive. That's a large built-in constituency to keep the alfalfa growing.

Lawns, and large yards are slowly going out of style, just for the expense of the land, if nothing else. I live in a downtown high-rise. about 600 people situated on 1.5 acres, with zero lawn. If you include the underground parking, the entire physical foot print is 2 to 2.5 acres. Hard to get more efficient than that.

People are not the problem. Lawns are part of the problem, and in a sense low-hanging fruit, but they are not the 800 pound gorilla. Maybre a sloppy Irish setter with three tennis balls in its mouth.

If these bills pass, moratoriums will be illegal punishable by jail terms. Read the fine print.

It’s no longer “if”. They have either passed or not. The session is over.

I will check tomorrow for the results.

Misplaced



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2023 01:06AM by Brother Of Jerry.

More that 125 years ago John Wesley Powell warned a Congressional panel that the western states, including Utah, could not sustain the volume of agriculture and settlement envisioned by investors who saw the vast area as a potential development goldmine.

Three year moratorium on all water taken for farming. All farmers paid the equal of the top producing year in the last 5 for the three years of no watering.

Let the rivers flow free all that time and Great Salt Lake will start a good recovery.

Cost will be less than the Federal/State "studies" - all of which will make recommendations that won't be followed.

Utah and Idaho along the Bear River don't really have enough farming to make much difference, especially when compared to States with real farm economies.

The Prophet should just hold a world wide fast and pray the dry away like he did Covid!

There is irony in the fact that the longer our unusually cold and snowy winter drags into March, or, heaven forfend, April, the more likely we are to have significant flooding when the melt finally comes.

Maybe the church could pay to load up a tanker train of brine from the ocean and fill it back up with salt water.

Has anyone done a little cost study of the various proposed solutions of getting more fresh water into Utah?

Trucking water, a water pipeline, railcars of water, etc.?

The environmental costs, the fuel costs, the waterline costs, etc. are enormous. Do you think China will lend the trillions of dollars to get the job done?

It'll never happen, at least not until there is a major change in the weather in areas that are currently desert and the seasons bring several times more rain/snow than happens now.

Until the major weather patterns change, the housing market and water supply will be limited and population/housing boom will end.

Look again to China when they tried to limit the population growth.

Here's a hint: it cannot be solved by money.

Trucking water is a last-ditch plan, sending it by rail could be economically feasible with stainless steel new tank cars IF there was demand that can’t be filled any other way.

First job is to make a contract with a willing supply source, then assure purity.

However lots of bottled water now moves long-distances by truck which befuddles me…

Good grief, you need to do a little back-of-the-envelope math.

The GSL input for maintaining a lake level of 4200 feet is about 2.5 million acre-feet per year. It is getting about 1.3 million acre-feet, for a shortfall of 1.2 million acre-feet.

That of course varies based on the snow-rainfall for a given year. So let's say the shortfall is 1 million acre-feet.

How many trains does it take to move a million acre feet?

An acre foot is about 326,000 gallons.
A large tanker car is 33,000 gallons
So an acre foot is about ten tanker cars of water.
A typical freight train is about 100 cars, or ten acre feet of water.

So, to bring in a million acre feet by rail would require 100,000 trains per year, of nothing but tanker cars full of water.

That is 11.4 trains per hour, every hour, 24/7/365. or about 1 train every 5 minutes.

And in that 5 minutes, all 100 tanker cars need to be emptied, and the train sent back out for a fresh load of water.


There is no <bleeping> way in hell that is either economically feasible, or physically feasible, to ship water to GSL by rail.

BTW, Americans consume about 47 gallons of bottled water per year per person. Using a figure of 330 million for US population, that comes out to about 47,600 acre feet of water. So all the bottled water for the entire US for a year would be under 5% of what the GSL would need to remain at 4200 feet with current rainfall in the Great Basin.

Shipping by truck is considerably more expensive.

And the St George pipeline, which is too expensive, has an unreliable water source, plus it is almost all downhill. St George is 1,000 feet lower than Lake Powell. And that pipeline is still too expensive to build. Building a pipeline over the Sierra Nevada would be orders of magnitude more expensive to build and operate.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2023 08:10PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There is no <bleeping> way in hell that is either economically feasible, or physically feasible, to ship water to GSL by rail.

> Building a pipeline over
> the Sierra Nevada would be orders of magnitude
> more expensive to build and operate.

Hence my suggestion that Utah use charter flights to bring the water in.

No, we should electrolyze sea water in CA, and send all the hydrogen generated in large dirigibles. When they get to GSL, the hydrogen should be burned to recreate water, and the hot air from the burning directed back into the dirigibles for the return trip to CA.

Yeah, I know, hydrogen dirigibles got a bad name after that Hindenburg dust-up, but hey, to make an omelet, sometimes ya gotta break some eggs.


Now that's thinking outside the box. ;)

Thank you B of J.

I started to do the analysis and found that a spreadsheet would best explain the situation but wouldn't be too well accepted by the masses.

You did a great job.

By the way, the suggestion to use aerial tankers bring in the water isn't feasible. The largest aerial tanker used to fight forest fires has a capacity of just under 20,000 gallons.

I was jesting, tumwater.

BoJ's dirigible idea, now, that's interesting. If the Chinese can do it, we can too!

Do the math to see how much water the largest dirigible can carry.
If there would be enough of the balloons floating around, it might block out enough sunlight that would cause some localized global cooling that might reduce the amount of water demand.

Alternatively, we could coat the state of Utah in sun screen.

Utah is an area of about 85,000 square miles, guessing about 40,000 square miles need to be covered.

The average tube of sun screen will cover about 50 square feet, that's about 2.23 billion tubes are needed to cover the area.

Maybe crop spraying planes could be used to do the application.

I think we might have a solution!

I don't know how it will solve the GSL water problem, but Utah will end up with a nice bronze tan, just a shade or two darker than the natural terrain.

All the white-and-delightsomes will become tall-dark-and-taciturns like EOD?

I can see that!

I was suggesting that rail could augment to domestic supply for select urban areas is a possibility

Status of the five bills mentioned in the article posted in the OP:

HB 364 passed
HB 406 passed
HB 173 failed
SB 174 passed
SB 240 passed

I tried to read through the bills, but it was a bunch of references to existing statutes, and modifications to them, and I gave up at having to look up the existing laws.

HB 406 looks like the most bulldozer-friendly of the lot, and SB 174 next. If anyone wants to read the text of the bills, knock yourself out:

https://le.utah.gov/DynaBill/BillList?session=2023GS

I will never have a happy day again in my life.