Dry without a Sense of Humor

The nasties that come with global warming – rising tides and melting ice (hard to fathom with all this cold weather around us – from our polar vortex – but it is still the overall trend), migrating insects and diseases, more intense hurricanes and cyclones, rising average temperatures and crops unable to adapt to these changes – are bad enough. But the droughts or water waste that we have imposed on ourselves (e.g., over-extraction of aquifer water from, for example, the once massive Ogallala Aquifer in the Midwest or the fracking-driven chemical pollution in ground water where such practices are now common) or that nature has imposed on us may be the biggest near-term story of climate change.

And nowhere can that reality be seen than in the West and the Southwest, from huge forest fires and an extended fire season to desiccated land that no longer can produce crops to down and dirty shortages of drinking, bathing and irrigating waters to common households. “The sinuous Colorado River and its slew of man-made reservoirs from the Rockies to southern Arizona are being sapped by 14 years of drought nearly unrivaled in 1,250 years.

“The once broad and blue river has in many places dwindled to a murky brown trickle. Reservoirs have shrunk to less than half their capacities, the canyon walls around them ringed with white mineral deposits where water once lapped. Seeking to stretch their allotments of the river, regional water agencies are recycling sewage effluent, offering rebates to tear up grass lawns and subsidizing less thirsty appliances from dishwashers to shower heads.

“But many experts believe the current drought is only the harbinger of a new, drier era in which the Colorado’s flow will be substantially and permanently diminished.” New York Times, January 5^th. If you have flown into Las Vegas recently, and if you focused on the rather dramatic drop in the water table as you wing over Lake Mead (pictured above), the water loss is a visual shock to the system (a 44-year low!). Projections suggest 2014 could experience a further drop in that lake of 20 more feet! But the river flows into the lake are down too. “Faced with the shortage, federal authorities this year will for the first time decrease the amount of water that flows into Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, from Lake Powell 180 miles upstream. That will reduce even more the level of Lake Mead, a crucial source of water for cities from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and for millions of acres of farmland.

“Reclamation officials say there is a 50-50 chance that by 2015, Lake Mead’s water will be rationed to states downstream. That, too, has never happened before… ‘If Lake Mead goes below elevation 1,000’ — 1,000 feet above sea level — ‘we lose any capacity to pump water to serve the municipal needs of seven in 10 people in the state of Nevada,’ said John Entsminger, the senior deputy general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

“Since 2008, Mr. Entsminger’s agency has been drilling an $817 million tunnel under Lake Mead — a third attempt to capture more water as two higher tunnels have become threatened by the lake’s falling level. In September, faced with the prospect that one of the tunnels could run dry before the third one was completed, the authority took emergency measures: still another tunnel, this one to stretch the life of the most threatened intake until construction of the third one is finished.” NY Times. Having always been a victim of minimal water availability, Las Vegas should never have been built where it is.

A 100 foot drop in Lake Powell would add another horrible: the loss of hydro-electrical power-generating potential cuts off electricity to 350,000 homes! “The federal Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month forecasts of water levels at Powell and Mead do not contemplate such steep declines. But neither did they foresee the current drought… ‘We can’t depend on history to project the future anymore,’ Carly Jerla, a geological hydrologist and the reclamation bureau’s Colorado River expert, said in an interview. The drought could end tomorrow, she said — or it could drag on for seven more years.” NY Times.

Likewise, in California, water flowing into the Imperial Valley is seriously at risk as well. “These new realities are forcing a profound reassessment of how the 1,450-mile Colorado, the Southwest’s only major river, can continue to slake the thirst of one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions. Agriculture, from California’s Imperial Valley to Wyoming’s cattle herds, soaks up about three-quarters of its water, and produces 15 percent of the nation’s food. But 40 million people also depend on the river and its tributaries, and their numbers are rising rapidly.” NY Times. Seven states are battling for their rights to this river’s water… and Mexico, at the bottom of the flow, is furious at the trickle (if that) that ever reaches that country.

With an already reduced water flow, experts suggest that if current reduced rainfall amounts in the Colorado River basin continue, by 2050, the water level will drop somewhere between 5-35% further… but these same experts are telling us that rainfall will not remain the same; they expect less. We are going to face water-rationing, and farmers are simply going to have to deal with more drought-resistant crops and water usage that targets moisture directly on the desired plant growth without excessive runoff. This simply means that the rising cost of food due to increased global demand will have another cost-push from the cost of implementing these water-saving methods.

But the cause of all this, burning fossil fuel, continues unabated. And we’re bragging about how much natural gas and oil the United States is now producing, losing our dependence on “foreign oil.” But what about the need to move away from fossil fuels, so that we don’t die from new disease or face losses of arable land or simple drinking water? No longer priorities? Apparently. That’s suffering that we are reserving for the next generation… unless it happens faster than we predict.

I’m Peter Dekom, and not only did we do this to ourselves, we seem to be unwilling to embrace any significant policies to stop the incredible damage we have yet to experience.