From John Kopp
I enjoyed Michael Brooks’s feature exploring California’s water problems (26 July, p 36).
The proposed $25 billion pipeline to address water shortages will not provide any additional water, and may cause more problems than it solves.
A better solution is desalination plants to get water from the Pacific Ocean. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that California has 17 planned desalination plants, and a $1 billion facility to provide San Diego with 200 million litres of drinkable water per day is under construction.
Spending $25 billion on such plants instead of a pipeline should provide almost 2 billion cubic metres of water per year. This should alleviate the need to draw water from the delta.
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Unfortunately, too many people in California can only see water-shortage solutions in new reservoirs and pipelines taking water from resources that have already been overexploited.
Nipomo, California, US
