The Water Wars

As ISIL, Ebola, the mid-term elections, Ukraine, economic instability, surveillance over countries and citizens and political corruption dominate the headlines, perhaps the biggest story over the coming years is going to be access to water. Water to drink. Water to clean. Water to grow crops. The combination of shifting weather patterns due to global climate change with wasteful past and present water usage practices have taken once fertile land and plunged these fields into useless dust.

I’ve already covered the deep political ramifications of desertification of farms in Syria and Iraq creating cadres of angry, displaced and desperate Sunni farmers that have provided backbone and support to both ISIL and the Syrian rebellion. I’ve tracked specific water pollution issues, rendering vast water resources useless. I’ve complained of inefficient irrigation practices, like using grading to carry water introduced at one side to carry water across a crop field, not only consuming much more water than needed but pretty much guaranteeing toxic fertilizer and pesticide runoff.

The United States is hardly immune to these changes. We’ve watched as large sections of the massive Ogallala Aquifer (once the size of Lake Huron, an underground treasure-trove of water stretching from the Dakotas, through some of our most productive grain-producing regions, and down into northern Texas) have succumbed to decades of diesel-powered pumping. Parts of the aquifer in Kansas and Texas are now bone dry, and the land above is parched and fallow. The Colorado River is virtually a trickle by the time it meets the Mexican border. Lakes and reservoirs all over the Western and Southwestern states are precipitously low. Fires rage every year in the arid land.

California is so slammed with drought (pictured above), the worst in living memory, that the Governor has declared a state of emergency. Access to local water has ripped into some of the richest communities in the state. Montecito, home to some of America’s wealthiest citizens, has seen a contraction in water availability by as much as 90%. Polo fields are brown, and the lush and expensive lawn and landscaping surrounding mega-mansions is now dead and dying. The real harm: Farms up and down the state have simply gone brown and fallow.

California is facing the beginning of a global process that could lead to wars and misery based on the movement and disappearance of vital water resources. And California is learning that private property and its legal system’s allowing people who own land to have open access to any water that lies beneath their property is no longer tenable.

While other states have regulated these resources, primarily because well water and aquifers are seldom simply locked to the land above them, California is now grappling with this once-sacred right to ground water without government interference. Fractured by too many “water districts” across the state, and traditional water resource rivalries between north and south, California is now facing the harsh reality of past mismanagement.

Writing for the October 24^th Los Angeles Journal, lawyers Kathryn L. Oehlschlager and Estie M. Kus, tell us of the imminent changes proposed for the Golden State, which threatens to become the Golden Brown State, imperiling its position as the fruit and vegetable larder for America.

“On Sept. 16, the state Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown responded to that call with the passage of a package of bills known as Assembly Bill 1739, Senate Bill 1168 and Senate Bill 1319 that collectively constitute the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, designed to provide a long-term solution to a long-standing problem. But with the bulk of regulatory authority delegated to local water agencies and counties, many water users fear it opens the door to haphazard, inconsistent management and inequity among various parts of the state.

“California often finds itself on the forefront of environmental legal and regulatory issues; not so when it comes to groundwater management. Unlike other Western states, in its 164-year history, California has never adopted a comprehensive groundwater management program. Until now, California placed no real limitations on how many wells a user could drill, how deep those wells could be, or how much water could be pumped by any given user. Use generally was permitted as long as it was ‘reasonable and beneficial,’ and there were no usage reporting requirements; the primary limitation for most users was the cost of drilling the wells themselves.” California doesn’t even know how much of this “private” groundwater is being extracted!

But think about the court battles, the jurisdictional disputes, and the massive task of just gathering information. These are legal structures and regulations, but they represent the tip of the iceberg (forgive the pun) of what we are really going to have to do to manage water shortfalls and crop devastation that can result. Hard to understand all this if you live in an area of the United States that has experienced new levels of flooding, but the issues are very real. Kus and Oehlschlager fill in the details of this legislation:

“The new law creates a framework for sustainable groundwater management that will be implemented at the local or regional level, but provides the state authority to act as a backstop. Specifically, the provisions of the act will be implemented through a local public agency that has water supply, water management, or land use responsibilities within its respective groundwater basins and that elects to become a groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) for the area. Areas not within the jurisdiction of a designated GSA will be managed by their respective counties. If a GSA fails to adequately manage a specified basin, or if the Department of Water Resources makes a determination that the basin is in a condition of long-term overdraft, the basin will be declared a probationary basin and the State Water Resources Control Board will have the authority to develop and implement an interim plan until the GSA is prepared to resume management.

“GSAs are granted broad powers and authority to achieve the sustainability goals of the act. GSAs may require groundwater well registration, measurement of groundwater extraction, and filing of annual extraction reports. GSAs may control groundwater extractions by regulating the construction of new groundwater wells, limiting the enlargement of existing wells, or establishing groundwater allocations. GSAs may also impose and collect regulatory fees to fund the costs of groundwater management programs.”

Just one program in just one state, and it’s clear, it’s going to get ugly – uglier – fast. But for each and every one of us, the future of water usage and access is literally going to define the future of the United States itself… and lots of other nations around the world. Political battles can easily escalate into armed conflict over this precious resource… as we have already seen all over the world.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as much as oil may have defined the 20^th century, expect water to be the story of the 21^st century.