Desalination Agriculture
Pardon Our Dust
The Team Is working on this particular plank to our Policy.
Feel Free To watch this work in progress and, by all means, feel free to comment or contribute to the discussion.
A steady increase in both human and animal population, as well as a growing scarcity in land available for farming and cultivation, threatens our agricultural sustainability.
As Mayor, I will work with the state to explore water acquisition options to supplement the 1922 Colorado River Compact; explore the feasibility of resourcing salt water for desalination; ensure less utilization of fresh water for agricultural purposes; as well as maximize our water conservation and water reclamation efforts.
Recently, the federal government declared a first-ever shortage on the Colorado River, and announced mandatory water cutbacks for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials warned that more cuts may follow.
The Lake Mead reservoir has fallen to its lowest levels since the Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s, and the lake's level is continuing to drop after years of chronic overuse and drought intensified by climate change. It now stands at just 35% of full capacity.
We have to encourage residents to harvest rainwater. NB74 allows for rainwater collection under a water right grant, which must be used for intended purposes or risk being revoked. Assembly Bill 198 states that the Legislative Committee on Public lands will review alternative water sources, including rainwater harvesting.
As Mayor, I will fully and completely examine the feasibility of mimicking the nation’s largest seawater desalination plant in the coastal town of Carlsbad California. This plant, which provides enough high-quality water to serve about 400,000 people, is the result of a public-private partnership.
This $1 billion project includes the nation’s most technologically advanced and energy-efficient seawater desalination plant, a 10-mile long, large-diameter pipeline and improvements to Water Authority facilities for distributing desalinated seawater throughout San Diego County.
The installed cost of desalination plants is approximately $1m for every 1,000 cubic meters per day of installed capacity. Therefore, a large-scale desalination plant serving 300,000 people typically costs in the region of $100 million. The costs of infrastructure to distribute water must be added to this. In a growing, yet uncertain economy like ours, taxpayers should not be asked to bear the burden of establishing such a cost intensive plant, alone. Thus, we would establish a Public-Private Partnership to achieve this objective.
Water used in Agriculture is not reclaimable. Because seventy percent of the water used in Nevada is used for Agricultural purposes, we would be remiss if we did not consider saline agriculture to reduce fresh water usage for that purpose.
The generally negative effects of salinity on crop yields, salinization threatens food production and food security in many areas in the world.
Saline agriculture is a possible solution: food is produced on salt-affected soils and/or using salt or brackish water for irrigation water.
The latter strategy also saves fresh water, which is a scarce resource on this planet, and even more so in those areas generally affected by salinization.
To make saline agriculture possible, conventional farming techniques would need to be adapted. We have identified four pillars of agriculture, all of which would need to be adapted to make saline agriculture possible:
- crop and cultivar choice
- irrigation
- fertilization
- soil management
