Doesn't Texas have sun, wind and coastline? Invest in renewables and then power desalination plants.
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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Texas is f-ing huge.
I think desalination plants don't scale well.
Why do you think it doesn't scale well? The ocean isn't going to run out of water, and Texas being huge only means it's easier to find space for all the solar power you would need.
I'm also curious about what you think the alternative is.
Doesn't Texas have a lot of oil? Just let them ~~eat cake~~ drink oil.
I don't know the solution as I haven't done the math. But the alternative is piping water from another location. You'd have to weigh the fixed cost infrastructure and electrical power costs against one another.
Until that place runs dry too. Las Vegas knows what I'm talking about.
It might ne time for the US to start looking into sustainable designs for their cities, which will be fun because most of US city.designs are just plain unsustainable. They don't have to, of course, but you know, limits are being reached and when whatever resources are gone, they are gone.
Good luck with that
I think this speaks more to water reusability than where you get the excess. If you can recycle 90% of the water, then you're water demand will be 10x less and likely easily sustained by rainfall.
Again, it's a cost analysis between reusing water, i.e. filtration, and desalination. Without numbers, it's only speculation.
Vegas has been emptying it's aquifers in less than a hundred years. It took millions to fill them.
Meanwhile, here we have a new golf course, in the middle of the desert! Cool, right?
Vegas is fucked, pretty much, that is no speculation. Other cities will need to make drastic changes in the upcoming decades, and I've seen shit all done because noone cares until it blows up in their faces.