America is Facing Water Shortage

[quote]What else can we do about this water shortage?

Maybe choose to live somewhere that’s not a desert?

James Howard Kunstler, a city planning historian, wrote about it in his books in the 1990s.

Don't build cities in hot places with no water.

r1, or stop building new homes?

YEARS ago, knowing that this was going to happen, Nevada installed a pipe at the very bottom of the lake. Nevada will be able to withdraw water when the other states cannot.

They've known about this for quite a while. "Arizona will face the largest cuts" so no more cotton? golf courses? And will California look at these big industries in addition to asking people about shorter showers? I am curious to see how this plays out.

As an Eldergay i loathe Greta.

They better not try to come for Great Lakes water. We Michiganders will not look kindly to that idea.

If this drought continues which states will suffer the most,? SW or SE USA?

Ben Tracey reports...

Oh, Ben Tracey also has a hot boyfriend.

I hope the Great Lakes states make a pact to never divert water to the South. It’s bad enough that Red State Indiana has access.

R7 The SE isn't under a drought. In fact, I wish it would rain a little less where I'm at, it seems like it rains everyday.

Agriculture is the main culprit.

I could see though, how Arizonians could read this and feel like they are getting screwed. They are losing 21% of their allotment and CA isn't losing any.

R12 is right. A lot of these states use 80% and up for agriculture alone. And while they make all kinds of water restriction laws for residents, agriculture can do whatever they want. It’s fine to tell residents to cut back on watering their lawn, but if people are growing almonds and it’s taking over a gallon per almond during a drought, the states need to do something. Not washing your car is just lip service next to that.

Crops should be changed to something less water intensive. If people eat peanuts instead of almonds, it’s not going to hurt anything. They’re barely going to notice. And peanuts are grown in the southeastern U.S., mostly in states without a water shortage.

Peanuts Require Less Water than Other Nuts.

Peanut plants need 1.5 to 2 inches of water per week during kernel development; however, it takes just 3.2 gallons of water to produce an ounce of peanuts, compared to 28.7 gallons for an ounce of almonds.

[quote] I could see though, how Arizonians could read this and feel like they are getting screwed. They are losing 21% of their allotment and CA isn't losing any.

It's all about "water rights" based on when each state entered the Union.

California became a state before any of the others, so they have more rights.

I'm going to read more about this, because I find this interesting.

I have never understood why arid places devoted so much to agriculture when youve got states like Alabama,Mississippi etc that have plenty of available land and water to grow crops.

People don't need to live in desert states. They were mostly uninhabitable until air conditioning. It's ridiculous to try to preserve a lifestyle that climate change is making unobtainable. Nature doesn't care about what humans want.

R15 I understand that but the average person would not, which is why I think there are going to be a lot of pissed off Arizonians when they read that. I've also, always thought, that states where the water actually is, should have more rights to the water regardless of the date of their admission to the Union and the Colorado is either in or on the border with Arizona much more than California.

R14 I find it so strange that especially in a state like California, who regulates EVERYTHING, they don't regulate that you can't grow water intensive crops in or near a fucking desert.

We live in a small town in the middle of Nevada, and our water doesn't come from the Colorado River. There is abundant underground water and even quite a few springs. We have a local water utility. Deserts are not always dry. We get snow in the winter and we had a tremendous thunderstorm last night which dropped maybe an inch of water. Other areas receive water from the Sierra Nevada or large aquifers. Not all of the water in the Southwest is stolen by Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco.

R19, is it Pahrump? I’ve heard they have underground springs there.

R15, the original treaty between the states was written in 1920, when Arizona and Nevada didn’t have much population. Southern California was already booming and had lots of agriculture. Arizona and Nevada get a lot of their food shipped in from California.

Now, Arizona and Nevada have greatly increased their population but not their share of water.

No, Goldfield. It's such a lightly populated area that water isn't in short supply, although mining interests may complicate the situation.

Pahrump, on the other hand, is in a water crisis of its own. They use groundwater, not water from the Colorado River. Many properties have their own wells. When you buy land in that area, you must also buy the water rights, if you want to have a well. But, they have overbuilt Pahrump, so there is now too much demand for too little supply.

This is from another site:

[quote] There is a water problem in Pahrump. Has been for a while. The real problem is that Nevada assigned water rights that do not exist to cotton farmers in the 50s. Now the people who drill domestic wells are tapping a water aquifer that cannot support the existing load on it. So the real conflict is between the right of small land owners to tap their local water versus the right of commercial users to use rights granted by the state of Nevada. The state ducks hard because they do not want to agree to any liability for allowing too much water draw years ago.

Not just America..

Three things that would help tremendously:

1) stop beef production. Even a mere burger requires 660 gallons (that‘s about 16 bathtubs!!) of water

2) close golf courses and other vanity projects that require an ungodly amount of water

3) mainstream the desalination of sea water for consumption and release into lake- and riverbeds

r22

[quote]No, Goldfield.

Is it like Perfection?

Thanks to my fascination with the YouTuber Wonderhussy and the fact I’ve watched her videos multiple times I almost feel like a local when people are discussing Pahrump and Goldfield even though I’ve never been to Nevada.

Welcome to Chinatown 2022.

Pity there isn't some way to divert eastern river flood water to the west.

[quote] Now, Arizona and Nevada have greatly increased their population but not their share of water.

Sounds like poor planning.

Las Vegas and Phoenix metro areas have well over a million people each.

How do you develop an area for millions of residents, KNOWING that there's no water? Or that water will eventually run out.

How idiotic.

But hey, that's America for you.

R23, people keep saying desalinization plants are the answer, but right now the technology is not up to processing huge amounts of water without dumping huge amounts of salt into the ocean and killing all the fish and wildlife nearby. And right now the water is double the price, even with the latest technology. And that’s a big cut in cost from what it was before. We don’t have the ability to process enough volume to support a city. San Diego has a desalinization plant and it supplies ten percent of water, and that water is much more expensive. Imagine the shoreline after fifty years of pure salt is dumped into it. There’s just nothing tenable about that long term. It will end the fishing industry. And at a time when there are going to be food shortages due to global warming.

I see people all the time that think there’s an easy solution, we just have to do it. There isn’t. There’s no easy way to do any of this. Even if you tear out trees and greens in an effort to conserve water, it raises the temperature nearby because those greens were reflecting heat and now they’re not there. We don’t have the technology to fix this right now.

Just a general comment, but there are TOO GODDAMNED MANY PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET!!!

Too many mouths to feed with dwindling resources. Stop popping out babbies like they're gumballs.

Agriculture where it should have never been encouraged. Deforestation, soil erosion and compaction which just lets water flood and roll away. Building water impervious infrastructure which just shunts water off. And destroying wetlands.

Everyone talks about almonds, but not rice or alfalfa or any of the other shit that shouldn't be there.

Like r15, I find this topic not only interesting, but fascinating.

I find it tempting to gloat. I live in North East WI. with its abundance of rivers and a Lake Michigan shoreline.

But, I don't gloat about it. I read a science article I read a few years ago that sobered me.

Those who study hydrology are sounding alarm bells that Lake Superior is not creating the amount of ice it has in previous eras and their measurements are indicating that its dropping, slowly, but surely.

So, I content myself with thanking my lucky stars that I was born one of those people who LOVE winter- its beauty, its coldness, its snowy Christmases.

Yes, Winter is dangerous, yes, Jan, Feb, and March get a little longer each year the older I get, but I wouldn't live anywhere else. It's all worth it.

Besides, I'll take a few weeks of combined 10 below, if it means alligators, scorpions, poisonous spiders, red ants don't like it.

R29 thank you I didn’t know that.

Wouldn’t it be an option to burry the salt? Not saying that’s a long-term, sustainable solution; but it beats dumping it back into the oceans..

[quote]Why are Saudi Arabian cows still eating Arizona's water?

It's as if Perfection was turned into a trailer park, R24.

[quote]Besides, I'll take a few weeks of combined 10 below, if it means alligators, scorpions, poisonous spiders, red ants don't like it.

Aso note that certain species of scorpions are very well-adapted to cold conditions. Some species of scorpions live in Canada (Alberta). Black widow spiders are also capable of surviving winters by rolling up into a ball and hibernating.

The world's population right now is just under 8 billion, and it's predicted that it will reach 8 billion sometime around November 15th. Compare this with approximately 1 billion in 1800. The increase is now approximately 200,000 people per day.

"Peanuts Require Less Water than Other Nuts."

I'm not so sure of that. Lots of Republicans I know have huuuge swimming pools.

Duh, it’s called climate change, induced by carbon emissions exacerbated by over population etc. The catastrophic effect of our species has been destroying species and now altering the climate for about 30 thousand years. Recently due to fossil fuel combustion of the last 150 years we have eccelerated the process. What me worry? I have my playlist and air conditioning!

R36 - Let's have math fun!

At 200,000 births per day multiplied buy "have sex an average of 104 times for each pregnancy" multiplied by 10cc (remember that group from back when?) divided by 3,785 (so us non-communists get gallons), and we get 55,000 gallons of spooge sprayed every day into assorted cooters around the planet.

Golf courses have advanced water recycling systems so they really aren’t the problem.

I live in a NYC suburb and have a well from an aquifer. No shortage of water but we are in a drought. I cut back on my container gardening this summer but anything that I need to water in the ground, like grass and a new tree, the water goes back into the aquifer.

R2 James Howard Kunstler has become a trump loving conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer and claims Covid is a fake disease. He spewed out a ton of propaganda twice a week. And all the posters are extreme right-wing nutbags. It might as well be Breitbart. He puts out a blog Mondays and Fridays. He calls his blog the clusterfuck nation. below is a link.

r40, there are two types of water use.

1] Closed loop water, that is used, goes down a drain as gray water and is recycled.

2] Irrigation watering that grows crops and lawn grass.

I do not think that water used for lawns and golf courses is not completely recyclable, as plenty of water is evaporated off. If it went back into the aquifers, fire hydrants would not be sticking out of the sidewalks in the SW. We need low water crops and no golf courses. QED

[quote] James Howard Kunstler has become a trump loving conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer and claims Covid is a fake disease. He spewed out a ton of propaganda twice a week. And all the posters are extreme right-wing nutbags. It might as well be Breitbart. He puts out a blog Mondays and Fridays. He calls his blog the clusterfuck nation

Listen, maybe he has dementia or something. I honestly didn't think he would still be alive. He's got to be over 80.

His books in the 1990s about city planning (specifically) were not only prescient, but very funny and even elegant. I have no idea what has happened to him since then. The Trump fan-ship surprises me most of all: he used to despise developers and especially casino developers, along with Vegas and Atlantic City.

He used to be good.

R43 He is only 73 just a year older than me. I agree he used to be great. I read his books. I think he sold out because he is now making tons of money on his blog spewing propaganda. But the fact that he is so willing to sell out that drastically makes me think he has no ethics at all. I can't stand him anymore.

Not bad as out west, but many parts of NY/NJ area are facing various levels of drought conditions.

One thing in common with elsewhere is many areas of NY or NJ just do not receive heavy snowfalls as in winters past. Thus come spring you don't have that snowpack run off that helps fill up reservoirs and so forth.

Other thing is instead of days or long periods of soaking rains, we keep getting intense storms. Yes, lots of rain comes down, but because it's all so sudden and fast much of it goes down sewers or elsewhere instead of into ground or reservoirs.

Why do people move to the desert? We all know California (at least SoCal) doesn't have enough water for the HUGE population. There are simply too many people living there.

AS GOD IS MY WITNESS! I will not forsake my beautifying Calgon bath time just so you libs can have more water. It makes my skin silky smooth for all of my gentlemen callers.

Arizona has been giving the Saudis water essentially free for years, to grow alfalfa for their horses and cattle.

Good luck getting fraus to feed little Aiden, Jaden, and Olivia peanuts instead of almonds. Many schools don't even allow students to bring peanut butter sandwiches any more, because even the mere scent of peanuts can cause allergic shock.

[quote]Arizona in desperate need of potable water and Repubs did this? My God.👇

[quote]Arizona State Land Dept recently handed over thousands of acres to a Saudi corp called Fondomonte, giving it permission to pump UNLIMITED amts of groundwater to grow alfalfa hay for export to Saudi Arabia.

R49, a lot of people with peanut allergies can’t have any nuts. Peanuts and almonds aren’t necessarily closely related, IIRC, but the allergy is for the pollen, so it may affect people the same.

It’s likely that people avoiding peanut butter are also avoiding almond butter. Some may be eating sunflower butter instead, but that’s not a great choice either because sunflowers draw toxins out of the soil, like lead and radiation. They planted sunflowers all around Fukushima after the accident to try to remove radiation from the soil.

[...]

[quote] stop beef production. Even a mere burger requires 660 gallons (that‘s about 16 bathtubs!!) of water

Greta/Gore style exaggeration. It's still a surprising amount of water used but the average slaughtered cow is 1400 pounds, not just one pound.

A University of Georgia publication lists the estimated water requirements for cattle in different production stages when the daily high temperature is 90 degrees F.

The data suggest for cattle in this environmental condition, a growing animal or a lactating cow needs two gallons of water per 100 pounds of body weight. A nonlactating cow or bull needs one gallon of water per 100 pounds of body weight. As an example, spring-calving cows will need close to 20 to 24 gallons of water per day for themselves and another 5 to 10 gallons for their calf in these high temperature environmental conditions.

Remember, some of the water will come from the feed they eat and/or vegetative grass which is high in water content. Also, for the nursing calf, a portion of the daily water needs will come from the dam’s milk.

[...]

[...]

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[quote] stop supporting and justifying the cruelty of the animal agriculture industry

The hidden agenda is revealed

My dad had a PhD in what R31 is talking about and as far back as the late 80s he was convinced the first wars of modern times in some of the highly developed western countries (including North America) would be over water. We're Canadian and he thought it inevitable that the day would come when the US would either invade us for our water or threaten invasion. It still feels unthinkable to me but I dunno, when it comes down to survival I guess most people - and nations - would pretty much do anything.

My grandad said the same thing, r58. The next world war would be fought over water.

Of course, the Kartrashians are water hogs. In yesterday's news .... others arementioned.

R59 The water shortage is global, rivers everywhere are drying up.

Eat your heart out

And yet the phoenix to Tucson corridor is growing at a break-neck pace

Idiots

[quote] I have never understood why arid places devoted so much to agriculture when youve got states like Alabama,Mississippi etc that have plenty of available land and water to grow crops.

It’s a complex scene. But honestly, the soil is much poorer in Mississippi compared to arizona. Also, a state infrastructure that isn’t innovative and resistant to change. Arizona at least Wants to grow

Try the western Cape

So where is there enough water but no floods?

Lake Powell’s houseboat rentals are full of spiders.

R58 I totally agree with you. I think in the future we will see global warming refugees, from droughts etc. It will be a massive problem. I think more people will move north, where there is more water, aka the northern states, and yes, even Canada. The southern states will be unhabitable.

R29, if thermal desalination were phased out and thermal desalination plants completely switched to the reverse osmosis method, it would not have the energy deficit, salt waste and high expense.

r39 Hmmm. We could kill two birds with one stone if instead of being used to produce babies straights' cum were directed into facilities in which usable water could be extracted from the cum and added to the water supply. Fewer babies, more water!

Not sure what we'd do with the non-water residue.

It's a global problem.

Why do people move to the desert?

Jeez, come down south and get some water. Literally rains every day here in Louisiana. My lawn is like a green carpet that requires mowing once a week or I start losing my 80lbs dog in it.

R60 she's a H2Ore.

[quote]Dinosaur tracks dating from around 113 million years ago were revealed at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas due to severe drought conditions that have dried up a river, the park said Monday in a statement

[quote] Why do people move to the desert?

Because you can GAMBLE and RUN CASINOS and PROSTITUTION IS LEGAL.

It's too expensive to live in California.

I've got this.

You can have it, too. Just pay the markup and make me richer and you'll have plenty of water to drink. Or enough to stay alive. Until you run out of money!

Have a nice day!

In the near future, water will become a more valuable commodity than oil. Companies and people will need to relocate where the water is, primarily in the midwest.

Water keeps us alive. Oil grows development and it is killing us.

[quote] Companies and people will need to relocate where the water is, primarily in the midwest.

Last time I was in Iowa, the water coming out of the tap smelled like rotten eggs. Yummy.

R81 It's a good way to get used to the sulfurous smells of hell.

It's interesting that while all the climate modellers were fixated on the north Atlantic (where all the money is) they kinda glossed over the massive effects climate change could have on the Pacific rim.

Now it looks like the La Nina/El Nino might be reversing. Which means the Western seaboard of the America's are pretty fucked...And Australia gets an inland sea!!!

[quote] Now it looks like the La Nina/El Nino might be reversing

What would be the result of that, R83?

It will be pretty fucking dire R84

I was kinda joking in my post above. But we should expect wilder swings in temperatures and rainfall right around the Pacific rim. I wasn't joking about climate modellers being obsessed with the North Atlantic and not paying enough attention to the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) which will effect a far bigger chunk of the world's population.

In California we have a restriction on water usage, Almost all the lawns on my street are dead or dying except for the homes of Republicans. I'm assuming water shortage and conservation means nothing to them.

R86 Most Republicans tend to be selfish so that doesn't surprise me at all.

We'll see how things shake out over the next decade or so, but for now I'm not interested in owning property. I want to be able to pack up my uhaul and hit the road if forced to be a climate refugee.

Hold me David. I'm scared. No, really. I'm scared.

I live here... Wisconsin is one WAS (Wet Ass State)

"W hen it comes to water, there’s no place like Wis- consin. We are water- rich. Between the mighty Mississippi River and the Great Lakes of Michigan and Superior, there are more than 15,000 lakes, 7,000 streams and five million acres of wetland. And that just scratches the surface. Below our feet Wisconsin has a buried trea- sure — 1.2 quadrillion gallons of groundwater. "

See all that blue? That's where the water is without even tapping into Lake Michigan

Read Wes Jackson.

We should have been developing his ideas for years now.

BOTH Republicans and Democrats are failing on this front.

[quote] I want to be able to pack up my uhaul and hit the road if forced to be a climate refugee.

Don't you think Uhaul will be out of rentals if everyone is a climate refugee?

This has been known for decades!!!!! No one did a fucking thing about it! In fact Ca encouraged almond farmers to plants more trees in central Ca. Americans are the greediest and dumbest cunts on the planet!!!!!

......

The hundred billion wasted on Jerry's Brown's train to nowhere could have dug a log of canals and reservoirs.

Oh well.

Can't we just wear that contraption from the movie Dune that extracts the water from our urine?

We can't count on rivers any more. They are beginning to dry up.

I agree R43. Kunstler was sane at one point and then went over the edge.

But a lot of what he said about hideously ugly suburban planning and planning in general is very smart.

You know what this is....? It's SAND!

You know what this will be 2000 years from now? SAND!

MOVE!

MOVE TO WHERE THE WATER IS!

Can someone from CA please give me perspective on what it is like to limit/ration water usage? I live alone but have weekend guests 2 - 4 weekends a month, usually 1 to 3 guests. Occasionally parties with 8 - 20. I have a well so don’t pay for water or get any usage reports. When I am by myself I usually do 4 full loads of laundry a week, run the dishwasher 3 times a week. I take 2 showers a day (1 long and 1 short). Weekends with guests I guess multiply that by 4. Just want to know how to know how much water I use and how to adjust if I ever move somewhere that has metered/restricted water usage.

There was a crackdown in So Cal after an arial view shot above the Kardashian home in Calabasas appeared on the news. Sprinklers were going full force and every inch of property was green. They were not following DWP guidelines. Now everybody's water bill has gone up.

Glad I live in Norway. We may have a long winter, but we usually have enough water. We have plenty of lakes and rivers. Well... we had a drought this year, but that doesn't happen often. Also, fall is around the corner, fall is usually very wet, it rains a lot. So that helps.

Nestle will keep the Elites will hydrated!

[quote]The hundred billion wasted on Jerry's Brown's train to nowhere could have dug a log of canals and reservoirs.

Which still won't make it rain.