EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- German Official Warns of Immediate 'Revolution' if EU Adopts US Model
- Think Fracking Is Bad? Wait Until You Hear about the Gas Industry's "Acid Jobs"
- President Obama Uses a Sledgehammer Against Dissent
- Beware Capitalist Tools
- We’re Being Watched: How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists
- Burning Tulsa: The Legacy of Black Dispossession
- Think Fracking Is Bad? Wait Until You Hear about the Gas Industry's "Acid Jobs"
- We’re Being Watched: How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists
- German Official Warns of Immediate 'Revolution' if EU Adopts US Model
- President Obama Uses a Sledgehammer Against Dissent
Popular content
Today's Top News
Mexico's Newest Export to US May Be Water
SAN DIEGO -- Mexico ships televisions, cars, sugar and medical equipment to the United States. Soon, it may be sending water north.
This undated photo released by the San Diego County Water Authority shows water gushing from an electricity plant in Playas de Rosarito, Mexico, next to a site where government agencies in the western United States are considering putting large desalination plants. (AP Photo/San Diego County Water Authority) Western states are looking south of the border for water to fill drinking glasses, flush toilets and sprinkle lawns, as four major U.S. water districts help plan one of two huge desalination plant proposals in Playas de Rosarito, about 15 miles south of San Diego. Combined, they would produce 150 million a day, enough to supply more than 300,000 homes on both sides of the border.
The plants are one strategy by both countries to wean themselves from the drought-prone Colorado River, which flows 1,450 miles from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez. Decades of friction over the Colorado, in fact, are said to be a hurdle to current desalination negotiations.
The proposed plants have also sparked concerns that American water interests looking to Mexico are simply trying to dodge U.S. environmental reviews and legal challenges.
Desalination plants can blight coastal landscapes, sucking in and killing fish eggs and larvae. They require massive amounts of electricity and dump millions of gallons of brine back into the ocean that can, if not properly disposed, also be harmful to fish.
But desalination has helped quench demand in Australia, Saudi Arabia and other countries lacking fresh water.
Dozens of proposals are on the drawing board in the United States to address water scarcity but the only big project to recently win regulators' blessings would produce 50 million gallons a day in Carlsbad, near San Diego. A smaller plant was approved last year in Monterey, some 110 miles south of San Francisco.
Mexico is a relative newcomer to desalination. Its largest plant supplies 5 million gallons a day in the Baja California resort town of Cabo San Lucas, with a smattering of tiny ones on the Baja peninsula. Skeptics already question the two proposed plants in Playas de Rosarito — known as Rosarito Beach to American expatriates and visiting college spring-breakers.
"It raises all kinds of red flags," said Joe Geever, California policy coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, an environmentalist group that has fought the Carlsbad plant for years in court, saying it will kill marine life and require too much electricity.
Water agencies that supply much of Southern California, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Tijuana, Mexico, are pursuing the plant that would produce 50 million gallons a day in Rosarito near an existing electricity plant. They commissioned a study last year that found no fatal flaws and ordered another one that will include a cost estimate, with an eye toward starting operations in three to five years.
Potential disagreements between the two countries include how the new water stores will be used.
The U.S. agencies want to consider helping pay for the plant and letting Mexico keep the water for booming areas of Tijuana and Rosarito. In exchange, Mexico would surrender some of its allotment from the Colorado River, sparing the cost of laying pipes from the plant to California.
Mexico would never give up water from the Colorado, which feeds seven western U.S. states and northwest Mexico, said Jose Gutierrez, assistant director for binational affairs at Mexico's National Water Commission. Mexico's rights are enshrined in a 1944 treaty.
"The treaty carries great significance in our country. We have to protect it fiercely," Gutierrez said.
Rick Van Schoik, director of Arizona State University's North American Center for Transborder Studies, said laying a pipeline across the border would be too costly.
"It's expensive enough to desalinate. I just don't see how it calculates out," he said.
The other big plant proposal joins Consolidated Water Co., a Cayman Islands company, with Mexican investors. Their proposal would send much of its 100 million gallons a day from Rosarito to the United States via a new pipeline, with operations beginning in 2014.
Mexico isn't likely to approve both plants, said Gutierrez, whose government is sponsoring the 50-million-gallon-a-day plant with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the San Diego County Water Authority, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District and the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
A key question is whether Mexico will allow water first used at the neighboring electric plant to be desalinated — a giant potential savings. California recently adopted rules that prohibit the state's electric plants from sucking in vast amounts of seawater to cool their machinery.
The Carlsbad plant illustrates how difficult it can be to build a plant in California. Poseidon Resources Corp., based in Stamford, Conn., has survived about a decade of legal challenges and regulatory review.
The company, which plans to begin major construction when it secures financing, was required to restore 66 acres of wetlands and take other measures to offset carbon emission from the electricity it consumes.
The San Diego County Water Authority is also considering a plant at Southern California's Camp Pendleton that would produce up to 150 million gallons a day. Poseidon wants to build one in Huntington Beach, near Los Angeles, that would churn out 50 million gallons a day. Those ideas face significant challenges.
"The planets will never be in alignment like they were in Carlsbad," said Tom Pankrantz, editor of Water Desalination Report. "They had the right project, at the right place, at the right time."
The San Diego agency wants to get 10 percent of the region's water from desalination by 2020 as a way to lessen its dependence on the Colorado River, which is connected by aqueduct about 200 miles away. Tijuana also wants to rely less on the river, a priority that gained urgency after a 2010 earthquake knocked out its aqueduct for about three weeks.
The U.S. and Mexico can save money by joining forces, achieving economies of scale, said Halla Razak, the San Diego agency's Colorado River program manager. At least half of the plant's water would stay in Mexico, she said.
"Mexico is the entity that is driving the project, even more than the United States," she said.
U.S. and Mexican officials say they expect the new plants will adhere to the same standards as California, including water quality, but that Mexico's regulators may act faster and shield sponsors from legal challenges.
"The Mexicans will ask all the same questions that we ask here, but it's not endless lawsuits," said Mark Watton, general manager of Otay Water District, which would buy about 20 million gallons a day from Consolidated's Mexico plant for its San Diego-area customers. "You get an answer quicker."
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
43 Comments so far
Show AllPseudo patriot US politicians who are cracking down on immigration keep pushing more agriculture out of the US and into Mexico.
Crops throughout the US continue to rot in the fields for lack of hands to harvest them.
Where exactly are crops rotting for lack of labor to harvest them? The only crops I have ever known that were allowed to rot in the fields was due to a government subsidy that was instituted for farmers not to grow certain crops, in order to manipulated the market price of certain commodities.
I don't know where you get your information. Are you counting all the marijuana growin by Mexican nationals in state and national parks in California as increased Mexican agriculture?
Show me some pictures of those rotting crops.
Here's one (in Alabama, not California):
http://www.dailyhome.com/view/full_story/16040824/article-St--Clair-tomato-fields-remain-abandoned?instance=home_news_bullet
and another from wa state...
http://mynorthwest.com/174/563232/Gregoire-Wash-applepicker-shortage-growing-dire
"Jon Wyss, president of the Okanogan County Farm Bureau, called the potential results of the bill catastrophic. He represents more than 900 farm families in the county, and said growers were facing a bleak harvest this year. He read an e-mail that he'd just received from one of them, who complained about a harvest that was two weeks behind schedule because the farmer was 200 pickers short and it had rained on four of the past seven days. Wyss said all of his growers were struggling to find labor this fall."
...peace...
I and my cousins actually picked apples and cherries in Tacoma in the early seventies. At that time it was local teenagers that did the picking not migrant labor. I would think at 150.00 a day there would be an abundance of pickers. But I am thinking that "up to 150.00 a day" is based on piece counts that can't easily be achieved. What's wrong with offering minimum wage.
These farmers have actually squeezed local labor out over the years. One has to ask why? I am little atypical from the general population. I enjoy harvest work, but over the years I found my services were no longer required because I didn't speak Spanish and the migrant crew boss didn't want a gringo on his crew.
"I would think at 150.00 a day there would be an abundance of pickers. But I am thinking that "up to 150.00 a day" is based on piece counts that can't easily be achieved"
not everyone is capable of living in primitive conditions (shacks and tents - near rivers on orchards) for 6-8 weeks at a time (did it in N Minn in november in a tent). unfortunately, as a poor person living in wa state, i don't see good organizational planning here. it's true that in the inner cities (tacoma/seattle) there are high rates of unemployment, and even seasonal picking jobs should be appealing to these unemployed workers. unfortunately, the logistics of moving unemployed workers from the inner cities to the orchards/vineyards several hundred miles from the cities doesn't exist (wa work source - the state agency responsible - hardly helps the unemployred match labor w/ services).
i see it as a structural flaw in capitalism - for me it's a strong indictment of 'the system' when the bourgeoisie can't find labor w/out special provisions (access to migrant workers) that provide them w/ below market semi-legal labor.
if americans want food, produced safely by workers who are paid a fair wage, in a capitalist system - then, they must be prepared to pay more for the goods and services in the marketplace (and subsidies for corporate farming should be eliminated...)
...peace...
"He said some immigrant workers are third and fourth generations of pickers and many have their own specialized equipment. "
Sorry not buying into the idea that tomato picking is specialized work and requires 3 generations to train that labor pool. In fact I don't think tomato picking skills are passed genetically. And what sort of specialized equipment does it take to pick tomatos, I am thinking the farmer should be providing necessary tools for harvest.
This farmer sacrificed his crop to make the point that he was only interested in hiring migrant labor.
In the 1950 in upper New York state, Plattsburg area, we only earned $40 a day picking apples, no one spoke Spanish then... In the 1950s $40 a day was super great wages for anybody of the middle class, on a five day week that was $200 a week. My four year old 49 Buick roadmater convertable cost $600. Had red leather seats and a rear seat speaker too. .
That's how it was up till the 1980s. And in New Jersey it was the same, great money for high school and college kids, any (American) picking tomatoes, peaches, blueberries, strawberries and apples... Not anymore.
Tomato pickers get first raise in 30 years. They make 1.4 cents per pound. This was a historic raise and maybe why some don't want to pay the price.
http://news.change.org/stories/ripe-opportunity-florida-tomato-pickers-get-first-real-raise-in-30-years
A friend of mine has a small farm in South Carolina and said that if she hires help at minimum wage, after all the costs of the government's requirements and red tape, medical and so on it costs her 22 dollars an hour for every minimum wage job.
I was surprised and if true, it explains something that is usually ignored when talking about jobs.
You don't need to worry about the quality, if your drinkng botteld water now, it will be the same Mexican Labor producing this water. So enjoy!
>^^<
"U.S. and Mexican officials say they expect the new plants will adhere to the same standards as California, including water quality, but that Mexico's regulators may act faster and shield sponsors from legal challenges."
Everyone read that word "expect"? That's the legal cop out. Before anything is signed that should be guarranteed and in writing. Water is the next financial "bubble". The Bush family didn't buy that land in Paraquay on a whim.
"The U.S. agencies want to consider helping pay for the plant and letting Mexico keep the water for booming areas of Tijuana and Rosarito."
Didn't NAFTA lead to prosperity in Mexico, why should US citizens have to pay for anything that Mexico needs? I am thinking profits from drug dealing in the US would be enough for them to set up multiple desalination plants. We even supplied their drug lords with automatic weapons. What more do you want?
"The other big plant proposal joins Consolidated Water Co., a Cayman Islands company, "
Privatization at it's "best", a Cayman Islands corporation and taxpayer subsidies. I'd like a list of shareholders for that company and anyone else that stands to profit. Those pesky Cayman Islands seem to be popular for the anonymous 01%. Funny thing is I've never met a person that lived there.
"Didn't NAFTA lead to prosperity in Mexico"
==============================================================
What planet have you been living on? The only one who has prospered from NAFTA is the good ol' USA. Not Mexico or Canada. NAFTA allows the US to dump it's subsidized goods in Canada and Mexico and still maintain barriers to protect it's own producers. Many Mexican farmers have been bankrupted by these policies and forced to illegally enter the US in search of work to support their families. In Canada, many farmers and those in the lumber industry have been wiped out due to high tarriffs on Canadian agricultural and softwood products entering the US. In any deal with the US it's "heads we win, tails you lose".
It didn't even work out that well for the USA. It was deisgned to profit only one group: multinational corporations with no national ties. Maybe the Cayman Islands profitted?
We citizens of all three countries should ask ourselves why it wasn't repealed within the 10 year window. But that was never ever considered as an option. Instead our countries instituted the SPP, and deny it ever existed.
Today Obama and congress give us the TPP.
http://www.ustr.gov/tpp
We are truly "blessed"/"screwed" with such visionaries. But hey, the portfolios of elected officials continue to grow, while we lose our jobs, homes and investments. Where are the Cayman Islands? Perhaps the rest of us should become "boat people" and immigrate to them?
Go to Cuba and make a right turn... (a british commonwealth) no income tax, capital gains, or corporate tax.
The international Corp's building these plants will have ton's of prosperity, The Mexican Bosses will have some prosperity, the Mexican laborers will have $1 an hour.... Maybe..lol
>^^<
The entire massive agribusiness complex in the Imperial Valley is at risk if the Colorado dries up ...And so is the equally massive agribusiness complex in the delta regions of the Colorado.
While this plan is far from ideal ...give me a better plan.
Rely on rainfall and fertility/friability, not property ownership and existing industry investment.
Once again you are making a argument that one industry is too big to be allowed to fail. And that society should sacrifice everything else to prop it up.
No one stepped in to save the family farmers or the dust bowl refugees during the depression or the eighties.
I am not against offering aid to an industry which wishes to contribute to the society, but I think we need to agree on a return on investment. And I am not sure we got much of a one when we sold out our family farms to the syndicates. Kind of ranked up there with how well Enron worked in privatizing energy concerns in California.
"Rely on rainfall and fertility/friability"
==============================================================
Irrigation is essential in any large scale farming. Relying on rainfall is absolutely not an option.
==============================================================
"No one stepped in to save the family farmers or the dust bowl refugees during the depression"
==============================================================
With all due respect, I beg to differ.
The government stepped in and bought livestock (even sick livestock), machinery and land from those affected. They also paid them to plant grasses and trees in an effort to reclaim the land. It was enough to allow them to survive years of drought and dust. Many people don't realize the dust bowl also affected the east coast with New york and Washington being inundated with millions of tons of dust from the plains. It was in the national interest to fix the problem.
A little hard to farm when you've sold off your property, livestock and machinery.
And perhaps something besides large scale farming should be looked at.
C'mon theres no way in hell anybody could afford de-salinated water for crops! ain't gonna happen! TOO EXPENCIVE!!! But drinking water swimmong pool water, at a price the average Southern Californian will pay Sure!
>^^<
Let the Imperial Valley go back to the desert we found it in. The California water authority is the only reason they can farm there. By stealing water from Northern California.
>^^<
The Colorado River is slowly but surely drying up? __ Yes it is. .. Here is one small example of how a (few) control the most,, because it is (profitable) for the few... In 2002-3 Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona began using "Central Arizon Project", __"CAP"__ water from the Colorado River... A great big open 335 mile concrete ditch from northern AZ to Pheonix and then south to Tucson.... Millions of gallons a day and lots of water evaporates in an open ditch in a desert area and lots of electrical energy to pump that water when it runs uphill.
Why did the state's elected leaders do that? __ Well, a very few big-shot farmers grow (cotton and pecans) in the state of Arizona... Those two crops need lots and lots of water, which is pumped from deep wells depleting one of the largest aquifers of pristine water on the planet... Gotta have that good Pima cotton and the pecans and of course growing hemp is illegal, an easy to grow crop, (a weed), which needs no irrigation or chemical fertalizers and makes better cloth than cotton, better cooking oil than corn, etc, etc, over 5,000 commercial uses for hemp, which is not marijuana.
In addition; the Green Valley Retirement Community south of Tucson has about a dozen 18 hole golf courses, in the DESERT, which require lots of water, again from deep wells.
Well after the Tucson City Council approvng buying the CAP water to replace pumping ground water for the citizens use, big troubles began.. The CAP water caused home water pipes to burst, as it was heavily chemically altered so it was "safe" for use, horrible tasting stuff too... So the citizens of Tucson rebelled and the City Council agreed to stop using CAP water for home use... Now the CAP water is discharged out into the desert to recharge the deep underground aquifer,,, which doesn't seem to be workng very well,,, as far more water is pumped out for (pecan) groves and golf courses than is recharged. And of course when you dump water on hot desert ground a lot evaporates.... Pretty neat huh?
Another addition; Tucson has millions of gallons a day of sewer water which is sent to the water treatment plant to seperate the bad shit and then that water is also dumped out into the desert... That treated sewer water is full of fertalizer which could be used to water the miles of pecan trees south of Tucson .. But NOOO... The city won't sell that sewer water to the pecan farmers at a lower cost to the farmers than pumping pristine, millions of years old water from deep wells and buying chemical fertalizers... Why not? __ Because that would make sense.
Anyway; just one reason the Colorado River is slowly but surely drying up. and another good example of stupisity of governmental decisions... Money and a very few always rule.
Thanks for the insight.
In Florida it is common to see sprinklers for the plants on street medians and shoulders spraying water on the roads and wasting many thousands of gallons of water. Of course, Florida is a state with a large population of conservative old farts, redneck reactionaries and latin American refugees so scared of a communist takeover that they elect flag waving, jingoist regressives who don't seem to care about their environment as long as the golf courses and lawns stay green.
No reason for those sprinklers to be shooting out onto the road except a poorly designed irrigation system. I am wodering who got that contract and on what criteria.
One of several reasons why the Everglades is/are dying.
So What, another 3meters of Ocean rise will have all Florida under sea level. Then nobody will have to worry about grass the everglades anything Except that Cubans will have to paddle an extra 200 mi to immigrate!
>^^<
"The proposed plants have also sparked concerns that American water interests looking to Mexico are simply trying to dodge U.S. environmental reviews and legal challenges."
Ya think? Look no farther than California to see where over kill leads you. Unless we plan to revert to the trees, I believe we might want to come to a solution rather than an ideology.
Those that don't care about their own country is welcome to continue down the path to obscurity being charted by the extremists on both sides. It is a sickness to condemn people just because they don't agree with you, its even worse when they just proved their point and your argument is "I believe"
"In exchange, Mexico would surrender some of its allotment from the Colorado River..."
AKA The Wetback Clause.
"... letting Mexico keep the water for booming areas of Tijuana and Rosarito ..."
Tijuana's booming again? I thought all the tourists stopped going there when the drug cartels starting putting decapitated heads on the posts of bridges.
Some educational comments above... I've lived in New Mexico and the San Fran area, but that was decades ago.
The article itself is a jumble of disconnect unless you already have familiarity with some of the details. A huge omission goes to the question of the energy sources for the electrical generation to move the water. Probably not a single solar-powered plant!
(Hint from the article: "The company, which plans to begin major construction when it secures financing, was required to restore 66 acres of wetlands and take other measures to offset carbon emission from the electricity it consumes.")
Seems like another corn-ethanol-type scam, where the energy inputs exceed the energy outputs while corrupt politicians and companies take booty up and down the line and the taxpayers are screwed on both sides of the border.
-30-
Those are excellent points OleManRiver.
Another (huge) comsumption of well water in Arizona are the massive open pit copper mines... It looks as if another coper mine is going to be dug near Tucson, AZ and the Copper Queen mine in Bisbee, AZ is now in the proces of re-opening and will be one of the lagrest open pit copper mines in the world.
And that mine is now owned by a corporation in Australia... And they horribly pollute the pristine ground waters with chemicals to leech out the gold from the copper ore..
This planet is just not big enough for all of us.
Seems to me they'd be well situated to use electricty from AZ.. Failing that, why not just build their own nuclear power plants, Electricty + Heat to boil Sea Water! into fresh water. win-win I'd say! For the internationasl who build it that is. >^^<
What makes you thionk AZ doesn't use their own electricity~Catz~?
BTW Catz, AZ already has two of the GD nucler power plants and enough sun beams to power the entire United States forever.
Hoover Dam and the diversion of CR water to LA& the aridzona turned a million acres of agricultural delta at the Sea of Cortez into desert(just as Saddam killed the Iraqi marshes)
Many comments exhibit the fatal flaws of:
Ignorance of the "back-story".
"American Exceptionalism"
Hubris.Racism. Hand-Wringing.
This knee-jerk off on a tangent ignorance...from top to bottom of US "society"
(it goes without saying,or should, the problem is "top-down") are the personal/cultural issues that all must address privately, and move forward with a realistic perspective.
"Western states are looking south of the border for water to fill drinking glasses,"
Make that _SOME_ western states, where stupid people waste water trying to grow grass and other non-desert plants in arid regions.
They even came up with a stupid plan a few years ago (our governor said NO) to pipe water from the Columbia River to southern California.
WHY DESALINATION
The detrimental effects of desalanation on our on our fragile nearshore sea ecology, and its large energy requirements when the carbon pollution and adverse trade deficits are such concerns, render this applicatin not only infeasible but environmentially disastrous. Morever, its costs can be expected to well exceed those, estimated by its proponents.
Our water supplies can be increased through further conservation measures--hence avoiding the environmental damage and excessive costs. Since over half our water is used for irrigation, major savings could be achieved through more controlled watering, and conversion to vegetation suited for natural conditions
From the article,,,("Rick Van Schoik, director of Arizona State University's North American Center for Transborder Studies, said laying a pipeline across the border would be too costly.")
Is that a fact? __ Strange, it wasn't "too costly" for Arizona legislatures to approve constructing a multi-billion dollar (335 mile long) concrete lined ditch from nothrern Arizona thru Phoenix to Tucson, Arizona to pump millions of gallons of Colorado River water every day, which was unfit for human use in Tucson and ended up being dumped into the desert to evaporate and serve little useful purpose.
I suppose one thing that was found to be useful was for any who could not make their car payments to reported their vehicle stolen to the police and their insurance agent and dumped their car into that deep and wide open ditch where it was difficult to detect in the murky water...Yum yum drinking and bathing water.
In the future will we be trying to cross the border for jobs? Can they clean oil from the water because it looks like we are headed for more oil drilling, thus more spills. If the Kochs get their way with Texas Rick and their deregulation agenda for the teabaggers to hail.
This is disgusting, throwing the buying power of the United States against the Mexican water supply, when we *still* waste water so egregiously.
Have a look at some real solutions:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Home_Generation:Gray_Water_Recycling
http://www.oasisdesign.net/greywater/laundry/
http://www.biolet.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainwater_harvesting
I lived briefly in San Diego when their water supply was supplemented with a desalination plant that was later moved to Guantanamo. I don't know whether desalination was the reason, but the city water tasted awful - but you could drink it. I never got used to it, however, it always tasted unpleasant to me.
But desalination of water is just trading one problem for another. It is a very energy-intensive process however it is done. Perhaps a well designed solar desalination plant could do the job but is there one anywhere? It seems quite possigle, but so far as I know they depend on fossil fuels to power pumps for reverse osmosis or on fossil fuels to boil salt-water for distillation.
I lived briefly in San Diego when their water supply was supplemented with a desalination plant that was later moved to Guantanamo. I don't know whether desalination was the reason, but the city water tasted awful - but you could drink it. I never got used to it, however, it always tasted unpleasant to me.
But desalination of water is just trading one problem for another. It is a very energy-intensive process however it is done. Perhaps a well designed solar desalination plant could do the job but is there one anywhere? It seems quite possible, but so far as I know they depend on fossil fuels to power pumps for reverse osmosis or on fossil fuels to boil salt-water for distillation.