For some areas, climate change means too much rainfall as storms last longer and carry more rain. For others, it means extreme drought, as is the case for the Bay Area in California.
"A persistent lack of precipitation has landed most of the Bay Area in the worst drought category," The San Francisco Chronicle reports. "The U.S. Drought Monitor shows that seven of the Bay Area's nine counties moved to the 'exceptional' drought category in the last week. San Mateo and Santa Clara counties remained in 'extreme' drought, the second-worst category, as of [last] Tuesday."
Everyone needs water. Farmers need it for crops, firefighters need it to fight wildfires, and ordinary folks from Frank to Sally need water to drink.
But if the state isn't getting enough water from the sky, and levels of lakes and rivers are falling, where can Californians turn? Perhaps toward that massive body of water called the Pacific Ocean?
Except ... sea water is salty. A lot salty. Fortunately, America has the technology to remove salt from that water through desalination or reverse osmosis. This can and should be a major solution for California if the state would just ditch its love of red tape.
The Golden State could learn a thing or two from Israel, which is fully onboard with desalination and has been for years. How else do you get fresh water in a desert where it only rains during one season of the year?
In 2014, desalination provided about 35 percent of Israel's drinking water. By 2050, the process is expected to provide 70 percent of the nation's drinking water, according to the Associated Press. The same process is also used to provide fresh water for some U.S. Navy ships.
So why not unleash this solution on a state that desperately needs a drink? What stands in the way of desalination? It turns out the same thing that stands in the way of building more affordable housing: regulations.
There are environmental concerns about desalination plants, namely that their intake systems could suck in fish and fish eggs. Then there's the matter of what to do with the leftover salt. But there are engineering solutions for these problems. Intake systems can be built under the sea floor sand, and leftover salt can be dispersed responsibly and mixed back into the ocean water at a gradual rate.
Desalination plants consume a large amount of electricity, but this too is an engineering problem.
It's not a perfect process, but what we do know is that it produces clean drinking water. So the Golden State should be doing everything it can to reduce regulations and fund innovation that goes toward the desalination process.
That and Californians should probably swap out their imported lawns for native plants that don't require as much water and maintenance. But, you know, one step at a time.