New York - greenest city in US

[Nowhere]

Quite interesting

http://www.walkablestreets.com/manhattan.htm

...and not very compatible with "american dream" or something like that.

[TnT]

I've been telling people that for years is that I'd rather build up then out. I went to my friend's wedding in Phoenix earlier this year and I absolutely hated it. A huge urban sprawl because of the desert there's nothing keeping people from spreading outwards. It takes an hour just to get anywhere, so forget about riding a bike or walking.

There's a duality to it, like most things. People love nature and want to live in it, but if everyone loved nature and lived in it then there wouldn't be anymore nature.

A huge counterpoint to make though. People that live in the city and don't experience nature have little respect for it. Many urbanites (and suburbanites) don't understand what it takes to produce food, what it's like to get your hands in the dirt. The good news is that there's a real strong push for the return of school gardens (which used to be standard) where kids get to learn where the food they eat comes from and also to experience it first hand.

One thing I love about Portland, OR is the urban growth boundries, the bike friendly streets, it's a lead (get it LEED...) in buildings designed to be environmentally friendly and great public transportation.

*edit*
Talking to my bro a few minutes ago he told me something he learned while recently in Yosemite. Water is being drained from an area near there because there are vast sections of land owned by the cities of LA and San Francisco. They've been buying land there for years to use as a water source. Two things wrong there: 1) Desalination technology is fubar right now and we have cities on the ocean requiring water from inland. The late senator Paul Simon gave a series of talks about how wars of the future will be over fresh water. 2) LA and SF, and other metropolitan areas like that, instead of conserving water they export their water problems elsewhere. Apparently farmers in the area being drained are losing the water they need for irrigation.

[Fluff]

Apart from Desal (seawater) being power hungry, how else is the technology fubar?

[TransformX]

The tech is there and ready to be used with enough fundings. It's being used here with great success for quite some time. Its only due to our stupid government that we don't have more such plants being built and operated.

[Brian Ellis]

Apart from Desal (seawater) being power hungry, how else is the technology fubar?

I'll tell you why, from the point of view of an island strapped for water.
1. We have 2 RO desalination plants working: they have caused our greenhouse gas emissions to rise by ~20%
2. They have cause other air pollution emissions to rise by ~20%
3. The membranes need frequent backwashing with, er, clean water
4. The membranes need periodical replacement
5. The water is fit to drink, but still contains sufficient sodium ions that it may represent a health hazard to a hypertensive portion of the population. For this reason, it is diluted with real water.
6. It is horrendously expensive (~$0.90/m3, as opposed to ~$0.10/m3 for natural water)
7. Because we waste wholesale large amounts of natural water that could be used/re-used; if this were used correctly, we would need no desalination plants - and have some left over.

Read a 1998 report at http://www.cypenv.org/cyprus_water/

OTOH, in desert countries, solar flash distillation of seawater could be used, but this requires vast areas of land that we don't have. It is less polluting and fossil-energy intensive.

[TransformX]

Then again, compare all the above points against importing water.
edit: I don't know how old your data us Brian, but check this link:

http://www.biu.ac.il/Besa/waterarticle1.html

All these savings in cost should lower the cost of desalinated water by the year 2005 by approximately 30%, from a range of 67-84 cents per cubic meter to 48-56 cents. The effect of these changes in energy, costs, energy consumption and membrane replacement costs are presented in Fig. 7.

By the way, Eilat gets 80% from its drinking water from the desalitation plant, so water quality shouldn't be all that bad..

[TnT]

Apart from Desal (seawater) being power hungry, how else is the technology fubar?

A combination of what Brian said and TransformX about the government. Although I am a little behind in the technology, so in other countries it may be working quite well.

It's kind of irritating to think that the US has vast coastlines yet water is being sucked out of the aquifers to transfer it to populated desert, to grow rice in the midwest, and to fill "mountain spring water" bottled water.

[Dr Mordrid]

Then you have the Great Lakes region (US & Canada) where fresh water almost literally bleeds from the walls

[Brian Ellis]

TX

Talk about cooking the books to give you the figures you want:

· Capital cost according to 8% for 20 years 30 cents/CM
· Energy costs (5.5 kWh/CM) according to 8 cents 44 cents/CM
· Operation and maintenance 24 cents/CM
· Total 98 cents/CM

For comparison purposes, the capital cost of a plant of similar capacity in Eilat (Glueckstern, 1998), Israel, which began operations in 1997, and which will produce 20,000 cubic meters per day by 2003, is also $20 million. However, the cost of water is 25% lower, as indicated below:

· Capital cost according to 6.5% for 20 years 27 cents/CM
· Energy costs (4 kWh/CM) according to 6 cents 24 cents/CM
· Operation and maintenance 21 cents/CM
· Total 72 cents/CM

How dare he make comparisons by changing the amortisation interest rate, the cost of energy and operation and maintenance? If you wish to make comparisons, then you cannot compare apples and pears. As for the energy costs, they are laughable. I can assure you they are very much higher, today by a factor >2. If the EAC could produce electricity for that price, even then, I would plug Cyprus into the Israeli grid! Most of the operational costs are labour and membranes. The latest membranes have a better osmotic ratio (about 20, instead of 15), producing better quality water, but they are more expensive and don't last any longer.

Another factor you should consider is that desalination is used for two purposes: potable water and agriculture. The quality specifications for the latter are much less rigid than for the former and the stations can use much cheaper membranes at lower pressures, without ozonation or chlorination. Agricultural RO water is <<½ the price of potable RO water so that averaging world desalination figures gives a false picture.

FYI, the first RO plant here is up to 40,000 m3/day at full nominal capacity but averages only 28,000 due to operational difficulties, mainly related to the membranes. It opened, if I remember correctly, in 1999. The other has a nominal rating, I think, of 55,000 m3/day but I have no figures as to the actual production, probably proportionally better. It opened about 2 years later. A third plant was projected to produce agricultural water, but the project was shelved because the authorities in their wisdom, thought that it was no longer required because it rained in 2001 and 2002! They must have interpreted this as meaning God was on their side and would remain so. The winter of 2005/6 was a poor year with roughly ½ the annual average rainfall. This has not yet led to drought but if this coming winter is as bad, then that 3rd plant will be needed (2-3 years construction!) or we'll be back to rationing as we were from 1997 to 2000. We averaged 1-2 hours of water supply 3 times/week for all our needs. The pressure was such that we were well under the WHO recommendation of 100 l/person/day for all purposes at times.

However, if the authorities had taken measures of water conservation, we would have sufficient natural water for all purposes, even with several years of poor rainfall on the trot. Most of the water on the island is simply wasted. For example, I live in a compact village of 1100 inhabitants. There are 3 other villages of similar size withing a 5 km radius, totalling about 5000, living in some 1500 houses. All the waste water goes into septic tanks, where most of it infiltrates at random in a maze of fissures in the pillow lava out to sea. There is no water table. When it is available, we can say the water consumption per head would be ~100 l/person/day (plus another 200 l for horticultural purposes, but this will be lost). If the waste water were collected and purified for irrigation, at least 150,000 m3 could be recuperated and reused. All the road gutter water is collected and the drains lead to a dry stream bed, again lost. None of the houses here have roof gutters, so that 40 m3/year is lost (OK, half of that will evaporate) per average house, but 20 m3/year could just about fill the toilet cisterns. All that would be less costly than having to desalinate water. And this is not accounting for all the leaks in the water supply pipework, estimated to vary from 5% in some places to >20% in others. Many of the water mains date back to pre-1960 colonial days, using flanged cast iron pipes, often cracked with seismic activity and traffic vibration, with leaky gaskets.

I agree therefore that desalination is an expensive, polluting fubar under these conditions. Of course, there are places, such as Malta and the Gulf States, where it is essential at any price.

[TransformX]

Here is it and will be even more essential with the years to come. If and when the canal from the mediterrenean to the dead sea is built, desalination would be much more cost effective and easy. Compared with importing water from Turkey, desalination is the only viable option.