Water security

[tServo]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Western states face first federal water cuts
^†This statement got my attention. An acre-foot is 43560 cubic feet, which is 325851.429 gallons. Dividing by 365, we find that an acre-foot per year is a bit over 892 gallons per day, or around 27154 gallons a month. Half that would be just over 446 gallons per day, or 13577 gallons per month.

An excellent "speculative fiction" book ( tho it seems less fictitious every day) is Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Water Knife".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife

[S485122]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

...
I converted an acre-foot to cubic metres, and found the figure 1223 was 10 cubic metres too low.

? 5280^2*12^3*.0254^3/640.
%1 = 1233.4818375475200000000000000000000000

Indeed !
It could be a simple case of mistyping on my part or a result of my dyslexia:-(

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by S485122

Indeed !
It could be a simple case of mistyping on my part or a result of my dyslexia:-(

If it had been me, mistyping would have been very likely. Copy-paste is my friend!

Converting "proper" US units of cubic feet to "proper" US liquid measure units brings to mind one of my favorite explanations of what's so good about the metric system: "Quick! How many cubic inches are there in a pint?"

The standard "proper" US liquid measure is the US gallon, which by definition is 231 cubic inches. Since a gallon is 8 pints, a pint is cubic inches.

I grew up hearing, "A pint's a pound the world around." And a pint of water is 1.04318- pounds (a "pound mass" is 0.45359237 kilogram) assuming a cc of water is 1 gram.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

"A pint's a pound the world around."

To add to the fun, dry measures are volumetrically large by about 1/6, presumably to allow for average packing factors of commercial goods such as berries or grains.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/dry+quart
https://www.metric-conversions.org/v...uid-quarts.htm

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

I grew up hearing, "A pint's a pound the world around." And a pint of water is 1.04318- pounds (a "pound mass" is 0.45359237 kilogram) assuming a cc of water is 1 gram.

Except where it isn't.

"A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter."

[kriesel]

https://doodlize.com/media/ecom/prod...nt-glass-2.jpg

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by xilman

Except where it isn't.

"A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter."

Right, an Imperial pint is 1.201 US pints, so is (1.04318)*(1.201) or 1.252859 pound masses.

Curiously, the Imperial pint, quart and gallon are 1.201 times their US counterparts, but the Imperial fluid ounce is smaller than the US fluid ounce. There are 160 Imperial fluid ounces in an Imperial gallon, as opposed to 128 US fluid ounces in a US gallon. So an Imperial pint is 20 Imperial fluid ounces, but "only" 19.2 US fluid ounces.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

So an Imperial pint is 20 Imperial fluid ounces, but "only" 19.2 US fluid ounces.

The difference between 19.2 and 16 is still very noticeable when buying beer.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Booming Colo. town asks, 'Where will water come from?'

GREELEY, Colo. (AP) - "Go West, young man," Horace Greeley famously urged.

The problem for the northern Colorado town that bears the 19th-century newspaper editor's name: Too many people have heeded his advice.

By the tens of thousands newcomers have been streaming into Greeley - so much so that the city and surrounding Weld County grew by more than 30% from 2010 to 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making it one of the fastest-growing regions in the country.
<snip>
"If anything stops that burgeoning growth, it will be the lack of water. It's a limited resource," said Dick Jefferies, leader of a northern Colorado chapter of the conservation group Trout Unlimited.

Water has long been a source of pride for Greeley, which was founded in 1870 at the confluence of two rivers, the Cache la Poudre and South Platte. The New York Tribune, Horace Greeley’s newspaper, played a key role in forming what was intended as a utopian, agrarian colony.

The city established its water rights in 1904 and completed its first water treatment facility near the Poudre River three years later, a system still largely in place.

Like other cities in Colorado's highly populated Front Range, Greeley gets its water in part from the Colorado River and other rivers that are drying up amid the prolonged drought. This week, federal officials declared the first-ever water shortage on the Colorado, triggering mandatory cuts from a river that serves 40 million people in the West.
In Greeley, the cost of new taps, or connections, to the city's water supply is rising exponentially. "It's like bitcoin," one official jokes - the city believes it has ensured its water supply for decades to come.

The City Council unanimously approved a deal this spring to acquire an aquifer 40 miles (64 kilometers) to the northwest, providing 1.2 million acre-feet of water. That's enough to meet the city's needs for generations, while offering storage opportunities for dry years. The water from the Terry Ranch aquifer near the Wyoming border will not become the primary source of drinking water, but will be a backup source in dry years.
<snip>

Storage opportunities? Greeley is at the confluence of two rivers, and is also getting water from a third (the Colorado River, which is on the other side of the Continental Divide) and others as well. And they anticipate that that's still not going to be enough, which is why they're tapping into an aquifer.

Never mind the uranium in the water in that aquifer. The thing to keep in mind is that tapping into an aquifer is mining water. The water level in that aquifer is only going to go in one direction, and that is down.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by xilman

The difference between 19.2 and 16 is still very noticeable when buying renting beer.

Fixed that for you.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Never mind the uranium in the water in that aquifer. The thing to keep in mind is that tapping into an aquifer is mining water. The water level in that aquifer is only going to go in one direction, and that is down.

Those who have been paying attention to aquifers in general have been frightfully concerned for decades and decades. I was just listening to a story about a media event from the 1940's (one that is taught in schools as a landmark media event) that had to do with aquifers and water management spanning 100 years before that. I hadn't thought about it like that. It was something I have known about for a while. My ancestors talked about it and it was local lore. There is a plaque at the site and all.