Orme, Tennessee Has Run Out of Water !

I read about Southeast USA running low on water due to the drought, but this town actually has run dry. They have a convoy of water tanker trucks that shuttle back and forth to get short term water. Wake up call. Please....no politics. This is a compassion & thoughtful solutions issue.

What ever happened to cloud seeding? I remember they were doing that in the 1950s and 1960s? Did it fall out of favor or just not work?

Another solution, albeit costly in terms of energy and money, is to build an atmospheric condensor to draw moisture out of the air.

I saw this on the news a few nights ago. I really feel for these people. I also fear that due to global climate change droughts and floods will become more common. Lately we've been getting over 60 inches a year compared to the normal 40 or so. All it's doing is flooding basements. I'd be happy to send some of our surplus to our neighbors in need down south.

LuxLuthor said:

I read about Southeast USA running low on water due to the drought, but this town actually has run dry. They have a convoy of water tanker trucks that shuttle back and forth to get short term water. Wake up call. Please....no politics. This is a compassion & thoughtful solutions issue.

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I don't know how much this will help but the only thing that occurs to me is this device. It is not cheap, but it does supply the most urgent daily drinking water needs. If you were TOTALLY out of water, it'd figure you'd prioritize having a drink first. So....

http://www.air2water.net/residential_products.html

Sounds like the town is dying anyway just relocate them to a better place with water and work.

It is pretty dry here in the South. In the past 30 years I have never seen a drought this bad. What's odd though, is that the trees aren't really losing their leaves yet. Normally this time of year, there are leaves everywhere on the ground. And also since so much electricity in the South is based on water flow from rivers(both nuclear and hydroelectric plants) we could potentially see power shortages as well.

It's definitely dry here
http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html

It's amazing! When completing my undergrad... a "earth sciences" of sorts mamjor was telling me the next world war would be over water, not oil. I chalked it up to drunken tree hugger talkin' smack. Now with this new happening in mind.... Jeeze.. the little bugger was on to something.


I hope does not continue... bad bad bad

KevinL said:

I don't know how much this will help but the only thing that occurs to me is this device. It is not cheap, but it does supply the most urgent daily drinking water needs. If you were TOTALLY out of water, it'd figure you'd prioritize having a drink first. So....

http://www.air2water.net/residential_products.html

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[Uncle Owen] What I really need is a droid that speaks the binary language of moisture vaporators[/Uncle Owen]

Unfortunately, any real solution to retrofit houses to recycle gray water would probably be economically prohibitive for most of the residents of this small town.

Maybe they could pool their resources and build a water tower and store water so future droughts won't have so big an impact.

thats what eventually will happen to any town feeding off a static ground water supply...

cloud seeding requires airborne distribution of Silver iodide and dry ice on SATURATED clouds in order to produce rain, and I'm pretty sure theres other factors involved...as with equilibrium vapor pressure and that sort of things

if you look at the current water vapor loops
http://www.weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_wv_us_loop-12.gif
Tennessee's bone dry:candle:

I can testify to it. no rain at all.

Looks like they might have to do what people in rural communities the world over have been doing for hundreds of years, use rain cisterns, re-use grey water, etc. In many parts of the world fresh water has always been a precious resource even if it were plentiful. Maybe with stories like this and the SE drought more in the US will start to view it the same way. Still, it would be a pain to have running water only 3 hours a day.

I don't understand what the obstacle is to developing high volume desalination technology to turn sea water into fresh water. I know that capable minds have been aware of the problem for a long time, so it must not be easy. I just don't see why the available solutions are necessarily so expensive (RO) or energy intensive (distillation).

I honestly never thought I would be glad we are getting a glancing blow of Hurricane Noel off the CT coast tomorrow. Our water levels are down somewhat this year, but not enough for them to make people stop watering their lawns.

It must be prohibitive to desalinate seawater for the masses.

paulr said:

I don't understand what the obstacle is to developing high volume desalination technology to turn sea water into fresh water. I know that capable minds have been aware of the problem for a long time, so it must not be easy. I just don't see why the available solutions are necessarily so expensive (RO) or energy intensive (distillation).

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How do we water the state? It feels much bigger than seawater. so little rain, that it feels like the environment really might be changing. ground cracking and long-lived trees and shrubs dying on my property. very disturbing from this perspective.

My mother told me while growing up in Hong Kong, there was a water shortage at one time and the government had to do "water rationing". In a similar manner to what Mayor Reames is doing, the water to their block was turned on for a couple hours ever four days ( the next block would get water on the next day, then the third, and so on )

During the time the water was turned on, her family would fill up a large 55 gallon barrel they kept in the kitchen plus several 5 gallon buckets and whatever other jug or container they had and stuff like baths and laundry would also be done during that period.

The rest of the time when the water was off, they had to draw from the barrel and each family member (3 sisters and 4 brothers) were allowed roughly 2 gallons each to wash up for the day.

LuxLuthor said:

It must be prohibitive to desalinate seawater for the masses.

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well no...expensive is the issue, the expense lies in using what to power it
I've always been confident that solar power would one day supply the source of energy for desalination...but apparently no one is willing to put that into practice.

I've heard reports that it doesn't even take that much money (relativley) to set up a few square miles of solar farms.

It would actually work very well. During the daytime there is sometimes too much energy, and it could be used to desalinate water.

I wish home solar setups would drop in price though.

Making a home solar distiller isn't difficult. Basically a big wooden tray lined with black RTV, covered with a slightly sloping sheet of glass (like a shower door). Put water in the tray, it evaporates and condenses onto the glass and slides downward by surface tension, til it hits a PVC collecting tube. There are plans for this type of thing that you can google around for. However this produces only 1-2 gallons/day for a 3x6 foot collector, enough to drink but not enough for typical washing and other activities.

Reverse osmosis doesn't use anywhere near as much energy as distillation but the equipment for it is very expensive. I don't know why this is.

It's also always seemed to me that the air right above the ocean surface must contain a lot of water vapor from sunlight hitting the water. By just pumping the air into a heat exchanger that's below the water surface it sounds possible to condense out the water and collect it. I don't know if anyone has tried this or if it's unworkable for some simple reason that I'm missing.