Could trains haul millions of gallons of MN groundwater to the Southwest?

[BaltACD]

My understanding is that we are using the existing aquifers well in excess of their recharge rate - TODAY!  Let alone pumping the aquifers to move the water to locations where their own water systems are inadequate.

Railroads hauling the water is no problem.  The politics of it all is a BIG PROBLEM.

[tree68]

Convicted One

If you are exporting oil and the well runs dry, you go into another business. If you are exporting water and the well runs dry,  neighbors start showing up at your door with torches and pitchforks.

We've had something similar happen here when new municipal wells are drilled, resulting in the existing residential wells going dry or being greatly reduced in capacity.

It happened between my house and my neighbor when my well was drilled - well before I moved into the house.  The neighbor's well level dropped 10 feet or more.

Some years ago, the dam at a local paper mill went out - and wells in the area went with it.

Under the Texas Panhandle, I'm told there is a huge basin that holds water.  I visited a friend in that area some years ago.  Her father had pulled up a well casing that had extended a couple hundred feet.  He showed me where the water had been, and where it was now - substantially lower.  And that was just water being used for irrigation.

[Convicted One]

petitnj

Now as for the water, why is this different from oil?

If you are exporting oil and the well runs dry, you go into another business. If you are exporting water and the well runs dry,  neighbors start showing up at your door with torches and pitchforks.

[Convicted One]

Murphy Siding

If the customers don't like it, they can find a different way to get the water.

Well, it's reassuring to see that not everyone missed my intended point.

[Convicted One]

tree68

Municipal water isn't available out here in the sticks, yet.

It appears that you might have missed my intended point. I probably wasn't clear enough, in the interest of brevity.

The original linked article states that the party behind all this wanted to pump so much water ANNUALLY. This to me implies that their interest was not toward "drought relief", but rather to become an ongoing concern.

They wanted to find a niche, and serve it. So, I expect this niche would in some way be to fuel developement in a location  where currently a scarcity of water curbs that ambition? Maybe I'm assuming too much, but that is the picture in my minds eye when I read their story.

And I'll be darned if I would buy into any such scheme where water had that requirement built in.  Even barring residential, I really doubt that any industry that requires water as part of it's process would want to build a new factory where WBR was their primary source.

The railroad decides to get greedy later, and look at your alternatives. Plus you own a building where no one else wants to locate because of the very same problem, so good luck selling it.

Side note tangent: There are so many beautiful places out in the middle of nowhere in Utah where I'd love to build a house some day...except reality is that those out of the way places are undeveloped for a reason. People there tend to cluster around towns with the word "springs" and "wells" as part of the name for a reason.  Build a cistern and wait and wait for rain?

[Euclid]

I doubt you could find any state that would allow the exporting of their water for purposes such as irrigation or industrial usage.   

[petitnj]

Canadian Geese are non-indigenous, filthy, disease carrying rats with wings. If they didn't have wings, the cities would have Geese control cars out killing them off like the rat patrols in big cities. 

Now as for the water, why is this different from oil? North Dakota sends us trains full of crude. In fact water exporting as a renewable resource has far less impact than non-renewable oil. If you have it; sell it. 

 

[Murphy Siding]

Convicted One

 

Based upon discussion of others here in this thread, it appears that the RRs would only have an interest in doing this at an affordable rate, as a filler when their "bread and butter" traffic is depressed.

SO, once you are dependant upon it, what happens when the RRs lose interest because other traffic is more lucrative?

 

  No problem. This traffic becomes more lucrative because the railroad makes it their bread and butter traffic by raising the price. Problem solved. If the customers don't like it, they can find a different way to get the water.

[tree68]

Convicted One

Having thought about this for a few days, I can say that anyone who would build or buy a house in a location that was dependant on WBR would have to have a hole in their head.

I've encountered more than a few houses who relied on a cistern for their water.  Said cistern was usually filled by rainfall and/or a spring.  If both of those sources failed, it was water by truck...

My fire department used to haul water for such purposes.  Nowadays most folks have finally drilled a well.  Municipal water isn't available out here in the sticks, yet.

[BaltACD]

Convicted One

Having thought about this for a few days, I can say that anyone who would build or buy a house in a location that was dependant on WBR would have to have a hole in their head.

Based upon discussion of others here in this thread, it appears that the RRs would only have an interest in doing this at an affordable rate, as a filler when their "bread and butter" traffic is depressed.

SO, once you are dependant upon it, what happens when the RRs lose interest because other traffic is more lucrative?

Also, with only one or two railroads capable of carrying the Minnesota-Arizona routing, given the life or death nature of having water available, empowers those two railroads more than I'd feel comfortable with. 

I just don't see it happening on a long-term basis.

Disaster relief? perhaps, assuming the railroads can assemble the needed equipment within a reasonable time span.

Well - during the steam era, railroads in the 'desert Southwest' existed on Water by Rail.  One reason that those areas were dieselized first.  The economics of WBR mandated that it be eliminated ASAP.

[Convicted One]

Having thought about this for a few days, I can say that anyone who would build or buy a house in a location that was dependant on WBR would have to have a hole in their head.

Based upon discussion of others here in this thread, it appears that the RRs would only have an interest in doing this at an affordable rate, as a filler when their "bread and butter" traffic is depressed.

SO, once you are dependant upon it, what happens when the RRs lose interest because other traffic is more lucrative?

Also, with only one or two railroads capable of carrying the Minnesota-Arizona routing, given the life or death nature of having water available, empowers those two railroads more than I'd feel comfortable with. 

I just don't see it happening on a long-term basis.

Disaster relief? perhaps, assuming the railroads can assemble the needed equipment within a reasonable time span.

[Erik_Mag]

Overmod

 

 

Erik_Mag

One of the cheapest ways that Las Vegas can get more water is to pay for SoCal water districts to install desal plants in exchange for the Colorado River water rights.

 

 

Surely someone has written this up in detail, populated with numbers, and researched the men and women who would be responsible for ultimately negotiating for it and then providing the capacity?

If not, what are some source materials?  This may be good enough to pursue even outside of California.

 

My cousin recently moved to Lost Wages after she and her husband retired from the Gillette WY school system. Her husband stated that LV has the "pay for SoCal desal plants" as one actively researched option for increasing their water supply. The San Diego County Water Authority did something similar by paying  the Imperial Irrigation District to line the All American Canal and then transfer the rights of the water saved to SDCWA.

I had been hoping that the Carlsbad plant would get built (as indeed it did) in part because the desal water would be much softer than the Colorado river water.

[Paul of Covington]

   A few weeks ago on PBS there was a short series (3 episodes, I think) called something like "Land Of Oz" about wildlife in Australia.   One story was about a bird that would actually set grass fires.  It was a bird of prey that learned that brush fires would flush out rodents and other small prey, and learned to set fires by picking up a burning stick from an existing fire, flying to another area and dropping it, starting new fires.

   Sorry, Bruce, I know that you were trying to get back to the subject of trains, but this fascinated me.

   Edit:   It just occurred to me:  I think the program was on BBCAmerica, not PBS.

[Bruce Kelly]

Overmod, here's a link to the 2014 blog piece that should work. It contained a couple of sketchy assumptions on my part about car capacity, train length, density of water compared to other liquids that are hauled by rail, etc., which I worked out more thoroughly in the 2015 story.

https://www.railwayage.com/news/if-crude-by-rail-why-not-water/

I should point out that not only did BNSF and others look closely at the potential for handling WBR (as noted in the 2015 story), RA Editor Bill Vantuono told me that officials at a rail conference held some months after that story was published were heard saying that if declines in coal and other key markets didn't turn around, they could always switch to hauling water. I said to Bill, "Ah, they're just poking fun at my story." But he replied that there were some in attendance who were actually somewhat serious about the subject.

[Convicted One]

And, about a  mile downstream from me is a railroad bridge, where during nesting season a pair of geese regularly nested high on a center river pier under the bridge.

I have a three tone whistle that I have made the geese familiar with,  and during nesting season I can  walk back to my bank, utter the sequence twice, and about a minute later both geese will come flying  abreast around the bend in the river about 20 feet above it's surface, honking like crazy, and fly straight towards me, splashing down about 30 feet in front of me before swimming the rest of the way to my side.

There are about 150 geese total that recognize  and respond to my whistle, but none as spectacularly as that first pair.

My neighbor asks me which one of them is "Willard". 

[Convicted One]

Overmod

You can see what this implied: he understood the 'game', wanted to be part of it, realized what the 'equipment' involved, and scaled it to his size.

There is a city park approx 3/4 mile upstream from my riverbank location, same river flows through it, and so all the geese who are  familiar with me from my location readily recognize me when I am at the park.

I was sitting on a hillside near the river about 3 years ago, and this one gander that I was particularly familiar with, comes walking up to me with $32 "quarter folded" in it's mouth. A twenty, a ten and two ones tightly folded around one another. When it got close I grabbed the the wad, and was truly surprised to find it was money.

I looked over on the slope to where it had come from, and saw more debris sitting in the grass.  A drivers license and two credit cards.  Evidently all of it had slipped out of someones back pocket as they sat on the slope....  I really don't believe that the gander consciously made a retrieval for me.....but I suspect that the money smelled like humans, and the gander made the association.  And of course being his "favorite" human, I was the beneficiary.  (Later I encountered two cops at a Starbucks, and surrendered it all for them to return....and the odd thing was, they really didn't want to get involved.. Told me to drop it in a mailbox.)

3 months later I saw a picture of the same guy in the local paper in the "Outstanding warrants"  section...small world...eh?

[BaltACD]

Overmod

 

Deggesty

So, "bird-brain" is not necessarily a derogative term? 

Depends entirely on the bird.

Perhaps the single smartest act of reasoning I ever saw from an animal was from a bird.  This was in a hunting camp north of the Arctic Circle in the Brooks Range.  One of the guides happened upon a baby raven that had been pushed out of its nest (this happens a lot with ravens) and was able to keep it alive as a pet.  Of course it was socialized with people.

We'd been playing with the camp dog for a couple of days using a big stick, which we'd hold in the adjacent stream.  The dog would clamp down on the stick with his nose under water and hold on until he finally had to come up for air ... then clamp down again.  One afternoon we were dragging the stick to the stream, with the dog happily frisking with anticipation, and I look behind me ... to see the raven happily popping along, carrying a raven-size stick in his beak so he could play, too.

You can see what this implied: he understood the 'game', wanted to be part of it, realized what the 'equipment' involved, and scaled it to his size.

And yes, when we got to the stream, he happily seized on the stick under the water and wouldn't let go until he had to come up for air...

Recently broadcast on PBS

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/ravens-discover-the-brainpower-of-the-bird-in-black/1507/

[Overmod]

Deggesty

So, "bird-brain" is not necessarily a derogative term?

Depends entirely on the bird.

Perhaps the single smartest act of reasoning I ever saw from an animal was from a bird.  This was in a hunting camp north of the Arctic Circle in the Brooks Range.  One of the guides happened upon a baby raven that had been pushed out of its nest (this happens a lot with ravens) and was able to keep it alive as a pet.  Of course it was socialized with people.

We'd been playing with the camp dog for a couple of days using a big stick, which we'd hold in the adjacent stream.  The dog would clamp down on the stick with his nose under water and hold on until he finally had to come up for air ... then clamp down again.  One afternoon we were dragging the stick to the stream, with the dog happily frisking with anticipation, and I look behind me ... to see the raven happily popping along, carrying a raven-size stick in his beak so he could play, too.

You can see what this implied: he understood the 'game', wanted to be part of it, realized what the 'equipment' involved, and scaled it to his size.

And yes, when we got to the stream, he happily seized on the stick under the water and wouldn't let go until he had to come up for air...

[Convicted One]

Overmod

If not, what are some source materials?  This may be good enough to pursue even outside of California.

Arizona received a bigger slice of the Colorado River allotment in exchange for it's contributions to the Brock Reservoir in California

[Deggesty]

Overmod

I don't understand why you weren't civil and said 'êtes-vous du Québec?' 

I would regularly have Canada geese come up from my pond to investigate while I was working on cars in the garage.  Made me nervous at first to see those bills and eyes out of the corner of my vision... but it was interesting to see them crane to look under to see something I'd just reached in to work on.  Very interesting birds with their own 'personalities,' much like cats. 

 

So, "bird-brain" is not necessarily a derogative term?

[Overmod]

Erik_Mag

One of the cheapest ways that Las Vegas can get more water is to pay for SoCal water districts to install desal plants in exchange for the Colorado River water rights.

Surely someone has written this up in detail, populated with numbers, and researched the men and women who would be responsible for ultimately negotiating for it and then providing the capacity?

If not, what are some source materials?  This may be good enough to pursue even outside of California.

[Erik_Mag]

Paul_D_North_Jr

From the article linkewd by Bruce Kelly (thanks!): 

"Desalinated water delivered to San Diego County will reportedly work out to just over one cent per gallon to residential users. WBR, if priced anything like CBR, could cost anywhere from 10 to 32 cents per gallon, or more."

The desalinated rate of 1+ cent per gallon is consistent with the typical rate for 'regular' water in my post yesterday - 1.33 cents per gallon, $3.33 per day, $100 per month, $1,200 per year for a typical residential home.

My recollection was that the cost of water at the plant was a bit less than one cent per gallon based on $2000 per acre foot talked about during the brouhaha over construction of the plant. The additional cost may have to do with the cost of the pipeline connecting the plant to the SDCWA. The major part of the cost is the cost of the plant itself, water from the Poseidon plant uses less energy than water for San Diego from NorCal and certainly a lot less energy than WBR from the midwest.

One of te cheapest ways that Las Vegas can get more water is to pay for SoCal water districts to instal desal plants in exchange for the Colorado River water rights.

FWIW, it looked like Bruce Kelly's old neighborhood in Thousand Oaks was part of the evacuation area for the "Easy" fire that started in Simi Valley. I used to live about a mile away from where he used to live.

[York1]

tree68

And you have the problem of possibly not needing it once the water shortage is over - possibly because it rained enouigh to make importing water unnecessary.

 

This is one that I wanted to ask about.

Southern California had a very wet winter last year.  Yet most of the water ran into the ocean.  To make matters worse, some dams which could have helped capture the water have been removed.

One of the problems stated in the following article is the cost of building systems to capture the water.

Maybe building water capture systems should have been a higher priority than the billions spent on HSR.

 

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet-winter-california-20190220-story.html

[Overmod]

I don't understand why you weren't civil and said 'êtes-vous du Québec?' 

I would regularly have Canada geese come up from my pond to investigate while I was working on cars in the garage.  Made me nervous at first to see those bills and eyes out of the corner of my vision... but it was interesting to see them crane to look under to see something I'd just reached in to work on.  Very interesting birds with their own 'personalities,' much like cats. 

[Convicted One]

CMStPnP

Then they hiss and flap their wings at you if your just minding your business walking by.   

True story: I was sitting out on my river bank earlier this year when a Canada goose walked up and stood right beside me.

"Have a seat" I implored........got no response, so I repeated two more times. Still no response

So then  I said "Asseyez-vous", and the goose promptly sat down beside me.

"Ahhhh", I  exclaimed, "You're from Quebec?"

I'm sure it was just a situational awareness type thing, but the timing was impeccable. 

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

From the article linkewd by Bruce Kelly (thanks!): 

"Desalinated water delivered to San Diego County will reportedly work out to just over one cent per gallon to residential users. WBR, if priced anything like CBR, could cost anywhere from 10 to 32 cents per gallon, or more."

The desalinated rate of 1+ cent per gallon is consistent with the typical rate for 'regular' water in my post yesterday - 1.33 cents per gallon, $3.33 per day, $100 per month, $1,200 per year for a typical residential home.

Multiply those figures by 10 to 32 and think about what the effect would be on the average household.  Also consider the subsidy concepts in that article. 

Thought experiment: Suppose a prospective buyer of a house in Arizona becomes aware that his water rate after the purchase is going to be $1,200 per year more than it is now.  What effect will that have on how much he's willing to pay for that house, all else being equal? Hint: If the monthly total of mortgage plus water bill stays the same, then that means the amount of the mortgage payment would be $100 per month less.  So how much less principal of the mortgage could he get for that lesser payment?

- PDN. 

[Convicted One]

It's interesting to read the linked-to article at the Railway Age site, particularly in context with the Poseidon desalination plant in Carlsbad CA 's production being equivalent to 2,700 rail cars per day (27 loaded trains arriving per day, with an equivalent amount of empties departing). And that total amount equaling only 7% of San Diego county's total water requirement.

I question whether sufficient quantities of WBR can be shipped to even be relevant? 

[Overmod]

Mr. Kelly, why is your original blog entry from 2014 (referenced in the 2015 article) no longer available?  Do you have a link to a copy we could read?

[Bruce Kelly]

Four years ago, some background on the potential methods, costs, and participation (or not) of BNSF and UP was covered here:

https://www.railwayage.com/freight/class-i/drought-relief-by-rail/

 

[BaltACD]

CMStPnP

 

Murphy Siding

That looks like a good beginning for a horror movie- the ordinary, quiet day and then...The Birds II- this time, they're Canadian!  

It's not only the over population that has me concerned it is instead of honking like regular geese the Canadian geese make this strange sound...."eh?, eh?, eh?, eh?, eh?".    Then they hiss and flap their wings at you if your just minding your business walking by.   Almost as bad as riding a train in Quebec during a Mary Kay convention.

Sully is not a fan of Canadian geese over New York!