Environmental cooling. A lawn with non-dormant grass can easily be 10 degrees cooler than the same surface baked into straw-covered tile. IF water is cheap enough, this is a reasonable response to a heat wave.
The Colorado river is supposed to flow into Mexico but they are always complaining that we used all the water before they got any. It is a dry riverbed for much of the year. The next place to dry up will be the Imperial Valley in California, if they don't curtail use of the water up stream..
st areas of the country, 100 gpd is more common as I recall.
which is why all residential irrigation ought to be outlawed. Which it is getting pretty close to in LV I understand. Stupid ass waste of drinking water. SHHH, don't tell my wife...
Not just residential irrigation, either. On a business trip to Phoenix some ten or twelve years ago, I was appalled to see from the air all the swimming pools, lush lawns, and heavily irrigated golf courses. Once on the ground and headed to my meetings, what do I see in the plaza at the Phoenix civic center, but this fountain:
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There might be a few fountains in the world that are more efficient at evaporating water than that one, but not many, I'll wager. Especially in that climate.
Then, about my third day there, the local paper had a big article about a new business that was coming to the area just north of Phoenix -- all excited about the several hundred jobs it would provide. The business? A fish farm.
These people just don't understand that they're living in a desert.
Helloooo! Reality check time! Deserts aren't supposed to be green and wet. If you want swimming pools, and green lawns and golf courses, then move to some place that has plenty of water.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. so you're going to lower the temperature in the area by wasting water on a lawn. What a gass!
It's my understanding (I live 2k mi. from AZ) that Phoenix gets their water from underground, not the Rio Grande and has plenty more where that came form.
And they are required by law to use renewable water resources. Not just dump their waste into the river and let the next city downstream take care of it.
So? What should be done with the water? Let it flow into the ocean?
It isn't being used up. If you are depriving someone downstream of drinking water that is something else. But if you can recycle and use it for your pleasure I really can't see anything wrong with that.
Not like burning up several gallons of gasoline to drive to a beach.
Los Angeles brings water hundreds of miles and when it has been cleaned up it dumps it into the ocean. Same with most sea side cities. That seems to me to be a waste.
Municipal water is pumped and treated, and that consumes a significant amount electricity as well as other resources.
Since you speak of LA, according to a report prepared for the California Energy Commission, in southern California, an average of
1.3 kWh of electricity is used to process each 100 gallons of water consumed. If we use the 100 gallons per person, per day, average rate of consumption others have mentioned here, the supply of water to a four-person household would require just a little over 1,900 kWh/year.
Looking at the full picture, in 2001, total water-related energy use in the state of California came to 48,013 GWh -- that's 19.2 per cent of the state's total energy use of 250,494 GWh. I think you will agree, the numbers are not exactly trivial.
Source:
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So? What should be done with the water? Let it flow into the ocean? >
The last I remember is that all that processed water is dumped in the ocean. Naturally don't want to dump raw sewage but I would think it could be recycled. There was a big plant along the beach between Redondo and Culver City. (I used to drive that way to work a few hundred years ago). They may well be doing some recycling now.
I often thought they should pump it out on the desert.
A town in the desert to the south east was reclaiming all their water. After being cleaned it flowed through a series of about 5 lakes. By the time it got to the last one it was ready for drinking again.
Las Vegas has been changing (getting more humid) due to all the water spread around in the desert by people that want to bring lawns with them. Just because you CAN do something does not mean it is a good idea.
That's kind of the point. The fountain helps cool the plaza, which would otherwise be even more of a giant stone solar oven. This is classical roman technology, here.
As long as it's a recirculating system, I don't see the problem.
A simple non moving pool of water will lose a quarter inch per day in evaporation. Move it around like the one Doug showed and I'd be willing to bet that fountain is going through AT LEAST a hundred gallons a day in that area.
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