This comparison really caught my attention because pre-Covid I had given one or two talks on the Delta Conveyance Project where I started by comparing the State Water Project and Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant with a series of multiple-choice questions. Than twice the capital cost of the Diablo Canyon Desalination Option 2, discussed below, which, at aĬapital cost of approximately $6.5 Billion, yields up to seven times the amount as the DCP. Significantly more fresh water than the highest estimate of the net yield from the proposed DeltaĬonveyance Project at less than half of the investment cost.Īlso notable that the projected capital cost of the Delta Conveyance Project, at $15.9 Billion, is more One of the intermediate sized Diablo Canyon-powered desalination options would produce Here are some quotes from the desalination chapter, Proposed Delta Conveyance Project-but at significantly lower investment cost Water supplies to the state as a whole and to critically overdrafted basins regions such as theĬentral Valley, producing fresh water volumes equal to or substantially exceeding those of the Using Diablo Canyon as a power source for desalination could substantially augment fresh Here is the second highlighted finding in the Executive Summary I am not persuaded it is a good idea either, but the Stanford team clearly demonstrated that it is far from the worse idea in California water. Mega-scale nuclear-powered desalination! I can see my environmentalist friends recoiling in horror at the idea. Thus, a recovery is unlikely this year.Ī recent study from Stanford scientists has caused some policy makers, including Governor Newsom, to reconsider the timeline for closing the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, California's last operating nuclear plant.Īmong the future visions for Diablo Canyon plant evaluated in the study was using it as a mega-scale desalination facility. What will 2022 bring? The drought continues, and the impacts of the pandemic and less abundant and more expensive labor are also continuing to some degree. While it is still the lowest-paying sector in California, this wage growth is significant and has benefited thousands. Average wages in the agriculture industry in California increased again in 2021, and have risen about 60% over the past decade (not adjusted for inflation) after years of stagnation. While drought employment declines grab the headlines, the more impactful story in the ag jobs data is the continued strong growth in wages. Overall, this is just over a 2% decline in employment relative to non-drought conditions. That seems pretty accurate to me and I am happy to see that this modeling of drought impacts seems to be much better than what UC was producing a decade or so ago. Their estimates suggest 2021 employment would have been just under 420,000 in the absence of drought. While I say this is the first reliable data, UC-Merced (in partnership with others) released a projection in February 2022 that the drought eliminated 8,744 jobs in California agriculture compared to what they would expect in non-drought conditions. In 2021, Covid impacts on the farm labor were lower, but drought impacts likely prevented recovery. Backing a public vote were agricultural organizations and elected officials from Delta jurisdictions like Solano County, Contra Costa County, San Joaquin County and Sacramento County.As you can see on the graph, jobs had steadied near 423,000 in the years prior to Covid, and then declined by about 15,000 during the first year of the pandemic. Lawmakers representing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area, where signs opposing the project are ubiquitous features of the landscape, have clashed with a potent pro-tunnels coalition of business groups, organized labor and major urban and agricultural water importers. The $15.5 billion plan to construct two massive water conveyance tunnels in the heart of California’s water circulatory system has driven the latest round of a decades-long battle over exporting water from wetter Northern California to more populous Southern California. Randall California Assembly committee on Tuesday moved to force a public vote on a controversial water conveyance project. Aerial photos of the region to be affected by the Delta water tunnels and intakes near Walnut Grove on Wednesday, April 10, 2013.
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