The US West is in a drought. Lake Mead is only half full. Also, water is getting pumped up from deep aquifers much more rapidly than rain replaces it even when not in a drought. Yet the West's population is growing rapidly and water demand looks set to rise much higher. An article by Jon Gertner in the New York Times Magazine reports on the West's growing water problem.
But recent studies of tree rings, in which academics drill core samples from the oldest Ponderosa pines or Douglas firs they can find in order to determine moisture levels hundreds of years ago, indicate that the dry times of the 1950s were mild and brief compared with other historical droughts. The latest research effort, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in late May, identified the existence of an epochal Southwestern megadrought that, if it recurred, would prove calamitous.
When Binney and I met at Dillon Reservoir, he brought graphs of Colorado River flows that go back nearly a thousand years. “There was this one in the 1150s,” he said, tracing a jagged line downward with his finger. “They think that’s when the Anasazi Indians were forced out. We see drought cycles here that can go up to 60 years of below-average precipitation.” What that would mean today, he said, is that states would have to make a sudden choice between agriculture and people, which would lead to bruising political debates and an unavoidable blow to the former. Binney says that as much as he believes that some farmers’ water is ultimately destined for the cities anyway, a big jolt like this would be tragic. “You hope you never get to that point,” he told me, “where you force those kinds of discussions, because they will change for hundreds of years the way that people live in the Western U.S. If you have to switch off agriculture, it’s not like you can get back into it readily. It took decades for the agricultural industry to establish itself. It may never come back.”
Agriculture uses most of the water. Plus, the agricultural water mostly evaporates. Whereas much of the home use goes out in sewers where it can be recycled. Cut out the East Coast lawns and Western houses could recycle almost all their water usage. But a long drought would drive up food prices and push agriculture toward wetter areas.
Since long droughts are a natural occurrence one will happen sooner or later. But if we heat up the planet (which I still doubt will happen since we are running out of fossil fuels) then the West could get hit by a mega mega drought. We are talking Turbo Drought.
An even darker possibility is that a Western drought caused by climatic variation and a drought caused by global warming could arrive at the same time. Or perhaps they already have.
An extreme drought would cut off electricity from hydroelectric dams of course. But conventional electric power plants also use water. So electric power generation could be cut even more deeply. A drought alongside an ocean at least leaves the potential for desalination. If you can afford to build nuclear power plants near oceans you can use the energy to desalinate ocean water. But Colorado is far from any ocean.
Agriculture would be much harder hit by a big drought. What little water the farmers could get would be worth more sold for residential use. So I would expect farmers to give up farming while residences would convert to heavy recycling of water.
Speaking as someone who lives in the West I see my local utility bill as a disincentive to efficient water usage. First off, the water doesn't cost all that much. Second, the water costs the same whether used in ways that go back down the sewer pipe or used to water lawns. It annoys me to water a lawn and pay more not just for the water but also for sewer service.
But if the goal is to reduce evaporative loss of water then water should cost much more. But here's a twist: the sewer flow should be metered and water that returns out the sewer should reduce the cost of the water. In other words, you should be charged less for water that you return to the sewer system than for water that you use on lawns and gardens.
Cheap solar power (when it finally arrives) will some day provide coastal communities with power to run desalination plants. Solar works well for this purpose because the bulk of the water conversion could be done during daylight hours for use all day long. The purified water could be pumped during sunny days to reservoirs and water towers and then used at night and on overcast days.
Coastal desalinization will reduce the need for river water by coastal communities. That will free up more of the Colorado River water for landlocked states. In fact, landlocked states will probably some day buy water rights from California and California can use the money to fund desalinization operations. So coastal desal will help inland communities.
By Randall Parker at 2007 October 21 08:35 PM Trends Resource Depletion | TrackBackReally good point you made about solar + desalianation. I of course was defaulting to mass nuclear build. A proposal I've had out there for a few years is for California. To build say 4-8, 1 gigawatt nuclear plant clusters.. to share maintenance, operation and other costs... put them right on the coast. Then close by massive desalianation plants, to run all day and night. My idea was to fill up the aquafiers. Go back and find out the average depth and cycle of depth of the aquafiers before we exploited them heavily and try to match that.
I like your idea a lot for California. Instead put in big solar arrays to drive the deslianation plants. Because desalianation is something that can just go whenever there is lots of sunlight.
Btw remember my prediction of electrical use increasing 14 times from 2000 to 2100? Well I think desalianation is going to be a good chunk of that. From what I read all the world's aquafiers and many of the lakes are shrinking. I just read in India the aquafiers have dropped a lot, it sounded quite scary just how far they have fallen. I think we need massive desalianation and pumps to fill them all back up.. and the lakes, like Lake Victoria in Africa. Imagine filling a lake the size of a small country? Other lakes in addition like Lake Chad is in big trouble.. and some of the big lakes in central asia/ex soviet union.
Plus additional energy use. A place like China needs to go to the lakes and rivers and streams and aquafiers and clean them up. That seems to me is going to take pumping the water into purification systems which probably use a lot of energy, then pumping the water back to where you want it.
Add all this up and its going to take fantastic amounts of energy. Solar looks like it can provide a good chunk of that energy.
Yes, but all you need to do is pump water up 500 ft, and then acquaduct in a double-shell and use normal solar heat, where a clear middle precipitates evaporated water. By the time you are inland enough for the agriculture, you have more than enough fresh water running in the central channel.
This also ignores the endless stream of low-pressure wind precipitators (Whisson's I think) that can easily do the same at the local level.
I think the money to put in a meter to monitor the water that goes down your sewer would be more than you could possibly save, as compared to someone who skipped the meter and told the company to assume none of the water did.
Most of the water is agriculture, right? Probably crops subsidized by the feds. Probably strains bred to maximize yield at the cost of less drought resistance and needing more water. Seems to me we have our work cut out for us.
Isn't that stuff about coal running out highly speculative? I think right now it's too cheap for most countries to export, but when the price of oil goes up and coal to liquid takes hold ...
I saw a reference to one study in the United States, but none world wide.
This water issue highlights why we should abolish farm subsidies. Farmers in Arizona are growing cotton as the desert runs dry. As to solutions to depleting water supplies, if you want to be ambitious and dream big, dig a canal from the Pacific or Gulf of Mexico to the Salton Sea. Dig another canal to Death Valley and flood it. Put nuke or solar powered desal plants along the Salton Sea/Lake Death Valley. Run pipelines if you want. The greenies and NIMBY types would scream bloody murder, but if you want to dream big.....
I think the greens and nimbies should lose their seat at the table by only being against any solutions. But what I noticed is they manage to block things until a crisis hits, like the California energy crisis. Then they get taken from power and the new guys steamroll in solutions at whatever cost.
And dreaming big is how great national wealth is made. Like the water men of the 1930's. You read about the falling aquafiers in the world, and falling lakes and in some places its already reaching crisis level. And it appears to me national efforts are needed to reverse course.
I think recycling is the secret to water shortages. And I'm not only talking about showers and dishwashers. For some crops, drip irrigation combined with no-till plowing are cost-effective. Hydroponics/closed loop farming will work for others. Longer term we'll be manufacturing food rather than growing it, and water will no longer be a limiting factor.
Another water conserving measure: When Buckminster Fuller designed his Dymaxion house, its bathroom contained a piece of equipment called a fogger. I don't know details but supposedly when using a fogger one person could shower and use only one cup of water. Has anyone else heard of this device?
Larry,
I agree with your points. Let the price of water go up (and it must as it becomes in short supply) and the higher prices will provide the incentives needed to use it much more efficiently.
I saw a TV show about a huge enclosed greenhouse which grows 5 times as much lettuce per area as open fields. The lettuce floats on water in foam containers. But the enclosure and the tank bottoms means that little water goes into the ground or the atmosphere. I bet they use much less water per head of lettuce. Plus, such a system could be made much more automated.