The Other Liquidity Crisis Revisited Yet Again – Newer, Drier and Scarier

On February 20^th, farmers in California’s Central Valley learned “that federal officials anticipate a ‘zero allocation’ of water from the Central Valley Project, the huge New Deal system of canals and reservoirs that irrigates three million acres of farmland. If the estimate holds and springtime remains dry, it would be first time ever that farmers faced a season-long cutoff from federal waters… The state has put the 2008 drought losses at more than $300 million, and economists predict that this year’s losses could swell past $2 billion, with as many as 80,000 jobs lost.” NY Times, Feb. 21. Hundreds of thousands of acres of once rich farmland will lie idle as this incredible, multi-year drought continues to strangle California in the midst of the worst economic downturn since The Great Depression.

CNN.com on December 11: “At least 36 states expect to face water shortages within the next five years, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. According to the National Drought Mitigation Center, several regions in particular have been hit hard: the Southeast, Southwest and the West. Texas, Georgia and South Carolina have suffered the worst droughts this year, the agency said.” While the battle rages over why – climate change as the possible accelerant is the venue for the contest – no one disputes that population growth and wasteful water-usage policies are primary drivers that threaten a return of the infamous “Dust Bowl” scenario to many regions in the U.S. – ironically that first infamous Dust Bowl also occurred during the “depressed” 1930s.

"The demand for water has gone up," noted John R. Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in the above-noted CNN piece, "The demand has skyrocketed in places like California and New Mexico because they've tried to grow crops in deserts." Even where there has been sufficient rainfall has been sufficient, the complacency about the availability of “cheap water” has de-prioritized water storage, conservation and movement systems. But when a region runs out of that precious commodity, immediate solutions often result in desperate actions.

Here’s a little example with an historical twist. When a surveyor plotted the precise border between Tennessee and Georgia back 1818, he seems to have missed the Tennessee River (in Tennessee, of course) by a mile. They call it a “flawed survey,” but it didn’t seem to matter until Atlanta, in northern Georgia, began to run completely out of water. The Georgia State Legislature has often tried to fix this anomaly by legislative force, but the border is the border. Northern Georgia didn’t get a break even as to its own local reservoir: a federal appellate court ruled in February of 2008 that the state could not withdraw as nearly much water as it had planned to from the reservoir that supplies the city. Seems that to fill northern Georgia’s reservoirs and to keep a good chunk of Florida out of recent droughts, they need lots of nasty tropical depressions and hurricanes, stuff that tends to kill folks and destroy property on the coast.

The above map and this little summary come from the University of Nebraska, Center for Agricultural Meteorology and Climatology: “The Ogallala Aquifer underlies approximately 225,000 square miles in the Great Plains region, particularly in the High Plains of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska.” In short, if your farm isn’t on the Mississippi or Missouri Rivers (or one of their tributaries), and you are a farmer near this giant underwater lake (once the size of Lake Huron of the Great Lakes), this aquifer is your lifeline. When they didn’t have pumps modern enough to pull enough water out of this aquifer – and excessive grazing blended with a drought – the great depression era Dust Bowl was the result. We’re pumping a lot now, and there has been some heavy rain in the region, but...

Water expert Marc Reisner (who wrote a great book about water and American policy: Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water) still thinks there’s pretty good chance the Ogallala Aquifer could run basically dry in a quarter of a century (or less). I am so glad that we have finally reversed the trend of growing subsidized corn in the area served by that aquifer – to burn as ethanol – because corn, with its fat, juicy and water-filled kernels, uses water at an alarming rate!

So what else is around that could supply water to America’s heartland? Maybe the Great Lakes? They provide 20% percent of the world's fresh surface water and supply eight states and two Canadian provinces – home to roughly 40 million people. On October 3, the President signed into law (the “Great Lakes Compact”) a federal statute that bans virtually any attempt to divert water from the Great Lakes to any outside region. Hmmm? We’ll just have to get it somewhere else. The oceans – minus the salt?

Moving water uphill – a necessity given America’s topography – is a very expensive solution (read: a huge energy requirement – just think how heavy a bucket of water is – although you can pick up some electricity from the downhill flow). That means even with cheap desalinization (it isn’t yet; still takes lots of energy to covert salt water into fresh water), just getting water to where it needs to be is not cheap or easy.

As a part of America’s going-forward rebuild of her infrastructure and focus on alternative energy, we also need to prioritize maximizing our water resources, conservation and new methods for pulling potable water out of the oceans and even thin air (yes, the technology exists!). Water conservation technologies just moved way up in the list of “projects” that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act should address as soon as possible.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.