Water Resources

Musings

Compared with most places in the world the North American continent and the United States are blessed with an abundance of water. We have many rivers and lakes and we have the Great Lakes which constitute the largest accumulation of fresh water in the world. The southwest is dryer but has an amount of precipitation, including from it's surrounding mountains and coastline, that it generally can support a modest amount of plant life. With all of this water everywhere it should be one of our problems of least concern. However, the problem seems to be we are grossly overusing our water resources and abusing them and  paying little or no attention to the problem.

In spite of the hoopla over the election this year the politicians in the United States should be spending a reasonable amount of time and energy trying to address the questions of how to best use and protect our water resources. As always we seem to have a lot of noise with regard to that issue but little action. A number of committees meet and experts prepare reports but this does not lead to the efforts needed to protect our water resources. We  need to wake up orsomeday soon or we will discover what we have lost the fight to protect our water.

Contemplations

In spite of our abundance of water we have numerous episodes in progress of it's being overused and polluted instead of parceled out  and protected. This is true in almost all areas of the country. The eastern half of the country has this issue on a lesserbasis. However, it should not be overlooked in the area east of the Mississippi. It was only a few years ago that the states of Georgia, Alabama and Florida had an intense legal fight over the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River as their water demands increased. This litigation lasted over 10 years. The basic problem was there was no comprehensive plan that had been laid out for how to divide the waters of these southern rivers as southern states increased in population and agricultural efforts. Inherently all those increases means increased demands on the water resources. As generally happens throughout the United States no one was paying much attention to the potential for the water to be overallocated, used and polluted as long as each was getting the share they needed to keep going. That is a recipe for a series of serious conflicts.

The water resources issue becomes more promenent as wecrosse the Mississippi River. The hallmark for this has generally been the Ogallala Aquifer.  The Ogallala Aquifer lies in a shallow water table beneath the Great Plains. It exists in portions of eight states throughout the plains, an area of approximately 175,000 square miles.  The area is not heavily populated. There are a few large cities such as Kansas City and Oklahoma Citybut it is mostly an area of farms which are abundant and productive. Farming accounts for 94% of the water usage taken out of the aquifer. However, once again there is limited control or plans for allocating the water out of the aquifer and numerous wells are pumping it out at a rapid pace such that within the next 50 years it should be 3/4 depleted and additionally subject to periodic droughts that may occur. Without sufficient rainfall leaching down to the aquifer it cannot be replenished.  To protect the aquifer any studies and action should be taken now so that it can be replenished on regular basis with amounts of additional water leaching from the surface and sufficient levels of ground water can be protected. However,  little action is taking place because each of these states is able  to keep using the water on the existing basis and indeed an increasing basis. In essence the politicians don't want to act because they don't have to act yet. This is like never taking protective measures for your home, business or other assets; just wait until the fire or storm or other event occurs and then rush to do what you can.

As we get to the southwest we have the driest part of the United States. The mountains there sometimes get enough rainfall and snow cap to produce water for the growing metropolitan populations and farming in those areas. However, as the soils are very productive and everyone is interested in having this year's crop be a strong crop, producing a good profit at this time, few politicians want to entertain ideas which will reduce the amount of water available for additional commercial development,residential development and or reduce the amount of farming produce from this productive area. Therefore, it is left as something to be contemplated but action does not occur.

California has the largest population in the country with massively growing commercial areas and has spent some amount of time addressing the water issues but never enough time and funds to achieve a result. Indeed the idea of desalinization by plants along the ocean has been considered but avoided because it is quite expensive. Instead numerous schemes have been put forth or enacted to purchase the water from lakes in the mountains, build bigger reservoirs, restrain use of water and other measures without creating political backlash before the next election cycle. Hence there has been some effort to address the problem but on an insufficient scale.

Going inland we run into Arizona, Nevada and Utah. All of these states suffer from the same mentality of we want more growth and growth takes water so we'll try and find a way to limit the water the growth takes but we want more growth. They also enjoy their productive farm areas and they don't want to deplete those. What this has done is left an unregulated use of water under western water law which is very wasteful. 80% of Arizona's groundwater is unregulated. That means that the various surface owners own the water rights and use it or sell it at their leasure. Sense no one likes government regulation there has been a hesitancy to impose regulations on how all thisoccurs. An example is the new developments in Arizona which have no water but have to buy their water from other adjacent properties and have it trucked in under contract. When the contract expires the people that were getting their water through the contract delivery have no water. They then have to proceed further out in some direction or another to try and find more water that can be trucked into them. The question becomes why were the residences allowed to be built if they did not already have water rights associated with them. Indeed some amount of the Arizona sprawl will have to be made subject to water rights and not allowed to be permitted without it. That will cause great umbrage by  developers and those who are claiming private property rights but without it this episode of constantly building more without the necessary implements for living there will continue. An interesting example is the three micro-chip factories that the federal government help sponsor and are supposedly being built in Arizona which will bring in 6000 new workers when there is no water. How did the state government and the federal government dream this up  brilliant plan when they're not able to provide water the 6000 new workers and the owners of the chip plants expect.

Utah has a similar problem with great Salt Lake. In order to encourage its development and agriculture it has consistently allowed the water coming off of the mountains in Utah to be sucked up for development projects and agriculture. The end result is lack of water  reaching Great Salt Lake. If you go there today you will see a lake that is 1/3 of what it was a few decades ago. Research by Brigham Young University suggests that the lake is in danger of disappearing within five years. As the lake disappears the flocks of birds and other wildlife that use the lake will be forced off or perish and the remaining sand/ dust, with its toxic effect, will proceed to be blown onto Salt Lake City and all the other communities bordering the lake as dust storms pick up the sand and dust at the bottom of the lake and blow it around on all of the commercial and residential communities that were built and used up Great Salt Lake's water. Obviously there is a need to enact statewide  legislation that forces the water from the precipitation in the mountains to be allowed to follow the natural courses down to the lake and so it can start refilling Great Salt Lake. The alternative is to wind up with a dry lake bed contaminating the surrounding areas such as the Aral Sea that the Soviet Union created with its 5 year agricultural plans'

Multiple western rivers create similar examples of water that is overused and being fought over. The Colorado River supposedly has water allocated to seven states, multiple Native American tribes and the country of Mexico. Its reservoirs are down to 30 percent capacity. Everyone claims one of the other users has an excess allocation and is overusing its allocation. Nothing motivates them to solve the problem because of the political ramifications of giving up any water to one of the other users. A similar problem has occurred in Northern California and Oregon where the farmers and the salmon fishermen are fighting over the flows in the river because taking too much water out for the crops does not allow the salmon to use the river and vice versa. These problems are endemic around the country.

There are many more instances where our farming, industrialand residential uses have polluted waterways. One of the best known is Lake Erie which now has toxic algae blooms on the west end of the lake in the late summer from all of the excess fertilizer put on the farms in Ohio and Michigan that washes down into the lake and feeds algae. The farmers keep putting the fertilizer on their crops to get a better crop and the lake keeps deteriorating. This problem is not uncommon in areas where there has not been sufficient effort to have the farmers reduce their fertilizer and contain their animal waste from the herds of animals that they are keeping.

Thoughts

This is a very busy political season. The interesting feature of the problem of our water resources is that the issue is known and the solutions are there but they can only be implemented if there is enough determination by the politicians to enact laws and regulations that will control the pollution and the overuse so that our abundant water resources can continue to support our privileged lifestyle. So far we have just come up with patchwork solutions such as moving water around to have more in an area that uses too much. Indeed that is so common  that it is brought up in the Southwestern states to suggest that they should get ahold of some water from the Great Lakes and start using it in the southwest where it would be more productive than just having big lakes. That is an interesting thought except that thecorrection would be very expensive and given our history of what we do when we get a resource is as fast as we built the pipelines to suck up the water from the Great Lakes we would just overuse it  in an excessive fashion  around the SouthwestThere's no reason to suspect there would be a decent regulation of water that is brought in whether from the Great Lakes or lakes in Canada or anywhere else. This is a question of political willpower. Unfortunately right now that willpower is lacking. Let us hope it appears soon.

Silence Dogood

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