Drought in Charlotte/Mecklenburg

[RiverwoodCLT]

There was a desalinization research lab at Wrightsville Beach for years, but I do not think it is now in service. I do not know what they came up with as far as desalinization.

When you have no water you will go to almost any cost to get it. I was in the Navy and that is the way we got water. It would be at great cost to build a pipe line to the coast and pump water here, but if you have no water the cost to move most people from Charlotte and close down the city, that cost would be paid to save the city. New technology would have to be found to desalinate the water.

But I hope we never we go this far that our lakes dry up and have to find new water sources. What every the solution, it will be expensive.

[Raintree21]

Desalinization is very expensive and uses a lot of power so pollution would increase dramatically. Also, unless a big source can be found to buy up all the salt, there is also the pollution of all of the salt that is produced. Most of the time, it is dumped back out to sea, increasing the salinity of the water and altering all the sea life around it.

[elvigy]

Desalinization is very expensive and uses a lot of power so pollution would increase dramatically. Also, unless a big source can be found to buy up all the salt, there is also the pollution of all of the salt that is produced. Most of the time, it is dumped back out to sea, increasing the salinity of the water and altering all the sea life around it.

[Raintree21]

Chemically speaking, it's not really all that different from the salt we put on our french fries. Table salt is essentially sea salt, just refined to remove impurities and chemical elements that we don't want like magnesium. I'm not sure if current desalinization efforts use their "waste" salt to make table salt but all I've ever heard about is that they usually dump it back out to sea, totally screwing up ocean life and creating dead zones due to the salinity being too high. It would make sense to use it and seemingly save the environment both by not having to mine for it and by not dumping it back into the ocean. Though I'm sure there would be quite a few countries that would be upset by that though since they export quite a bit of salt and their economies depend on it.

[monsoon]

Technically the salt part is not different at all. It's NaCl. As noted its the other compounds that may or may not be with it that make the difference. A lot of salt that is consumed comes from the evaporation of sea water. Basically they flood a field with it, let the sun evaporate the water, then they scoop up the salt. They have been doing this for as long as humanity figured out there was salt in the ocean. Mined salt in comparison is a relatively new way of getting it. Sea Salt is exactly that, it comes from evaporated sea water.

Back to the subject of the water shortages in Charlotte, I think we are a very long way from needing to build a long pipeline across 1/2 the state to pull in water from a desalination plant. There are a lot of opportunities to get people to conserve water that just are not being taken that seriously right now. And there are other technologies too. Think how much water is condensed out of the air in Charlotte during the summer from air conditioners. Even simple things like Rain Gardens could go a long way towards conserving water. I do commend CATS for building a rain garden at its Northcross bus station. To my knowledge, it's one of the very few in the entire county managed by the government.

[Justadude]

It's also worth considering that the pipeline would stretch across quite a few counties that are in just as bad of shape as Charlotte. I don't think the state would go for it.

[Spartan]

^ Desalinization is cost-prohibitive, which is why it's not used in places that have other options. Even as bad as things have gotten I don't think the legislature would be able to come up with the budget necessary for desalinization plants.

[Raintree21]

For the first time since August of 2007, no county in North Carolina is in the Exceptional Drought category. Mecklenburg and 44 other counties are now considered to be in Extreme Drought, the second worst and two counties are now categorized as not being in a drought.

[PlazaMidwoodGuy]

There's a very interesting article in today's Observer about the dramatic increase in the number of wells being drilled in the state since the drought began in earnest last summer. It takes note of the fact that some businesses and individual homeowners are drilling the wells not necessarily for drinking water, but for irrigation and for watering of lawns and landscaping. The Environmental Health Dir. of Cabarrus County even mentioned that he knew of one business on Speedway Blvd. that drilled a well specifically to get water to hose down their parking lot. While I'm sure that many users of wells in our area do a fine job of using that water source sensibly, far too many do not. And at the moment, the state is powerless to do anything to regulate groundwater usage, except for some areas in the eastern part of the state where the aquifers are more at risk. The article states that this may change next year, however, as both NC and SC are looking at the possibility of requiring permits for large users of ground and surface water. Good grief! Why is that not already the case?!

Unfortunately, too many well users (especially those who have them dug just to keep their grass watered) seem to be oblivious to the fact that groundwater is a SHARED resource and there's not some endless lake sitting below the ground that's there to make sure they have a prize-winning fescue lawn.

[Miesian Corners]

^One of the big drawbacks to being a 21st Century American: no such thing as the common good. I am constantly amazed at how supposedly educated people cannot grasp the concept of conservation!

[Justadude]

Unfortunately, too many well users (especially those who have them dug just to keep their grass watered) seem to be oblivious to the fact that groundwater is a SHARED resource and there's not some endless lake sitting below the ground that's there to make sure they have a prize-winning fescue lawn.

[dubone]

http://www.charlotte.com/109/story/571180.html

Every drought they go through the same thing! Why don't they just set up their rate structure to voluntarily elicit conservation, and at the same time, maintain their revenue.

The news stories are so obnoxious, but the city sets themselves up for it by not adjusting their fees to help cause the conservation. By always lagging like they do (people conserve and THEN the rates go up as the drought seems to be nearing an end), they give the press an easy way to write stuff like "Your rates will go up because you conserved."

By treating demand as elastic, as it is, and using PRICE not government enforcement to drive down usage during droughts, they actually provide themselves with enough revenue to continue their project work.

Of course the press would then shift another template (gasishighandoilcompanieshaveprofits.dot), to auto generate some consumerist sob stories.

When water is scarce, you charge more for it, and people use less of it. It's magic, like an invisible hand... or something.

[elvigy]

All of which just goes to show what a huge uphill battle we face, not just locally but globally. Our entire economic system is set up to reward consumption, not conservation. We get volume discounts, buy in bulk, etc. There really is just no built in incentive to conserve resources. It may be obnoxious for the news outlets to say our rates are going up because we conserved, but it actually is the truth.

We really need to adjust the way things operate. Water, gas, etc, all need different pricing structures to encourage conservation. I don't have the expertise to know how to do that, but as it is now, rewarding people for buying and using large amounts of resources is totally counterproductive.

[uptownliving]

The City approved the "conservation" rates for CMUD about 15 years ago. This is when they introduced the tiered rate system so those who used less water paid a lower rate. They did this to give a financial incentive to conserve water. With the new rates they approved last night another level to the conservation rates was added so that those people who use 4 CCF or less will see only a 3% increase in the water rate. The typical Mecklenburg redsidential account uses 8 CCFs.

The problem with the "Conservation" tiered rate system is that it is much more susceptable to large rate increases than a flat rate. And of course the problem with the flat rate is that it doesnt promote conservation. Well even after all the teeth knashing about the 15% rate hike for CMUD the end result is that our rates are still lower than Raleigh's.

[New Name]

Hey what's the deal with how/when fountains are allowed to be on Uptown? Specifically, is there a schedule for when the "fish fountains" are on at the Green?