Southwest Water Woes

A bleached "bathtub ring," the result of a six-year drought that has dramatically dropped the level of the reservoir, shows on red Navajo sandstone formations near Last Chance Bay at Lake Powell near Page, Ariz. Lake Powell and the next biggest Colorado River reservoir, the nearly 100-year-old Lake Mead, are at the lowest levels ever recorded.
David Mcnew / Getty Images














Southwest Water Woes

You can listen to the radio program at a link at the original link noted above. Here is part of the transcript:

There’s been a drought in the Southwestern U.S. since 1998, but that hasn’t stopped the population in the region from rising by a million people per year. Brian Mann reports on the Colorado River’s struggle to meet growing water demands in the Southwest:

CURWOOD: It's Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood. Every day, it seems, thousands of Americans pack up for the sunny skies of the Southwest, especially the booming cities of Las Vegas and Phoenix. The Southwest is a desert, of course, but thanks to the massive water projects of the 1930's it became hospitable for millions of settlers. But now there's trouble in the Southwest. The region is suffering through its eighth year of drought with little or no relief in sight. For much of its water the Southwest relies on the Colorado River to brings snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains. But snow patterns are changing and the Colorado is carrying a lot less water than it did a century ago. Overall it seems global warming is hitting the region harder than just about anywhere else in the country

Brian Mann of North Country Public Radio has our story.

snip

MANN: Seventy-five years later, big crowds of tourists squeeze through the dam's visitor center.

ANNOUNCER: Come on in, folks, Find a place where you can see!

MANN: This may be one of the world's modern engineering marvels. But tour guide Bruce Laughlin, who works for the Federal Bureau of Reclamation, acknowledges that the Colorado River's great reservoirs -- at Lake Powell and here at Lake Mead -- were built for much wetter times. For nearly a decade, they've been drying up.

LAUGHLIN: I think we're about 54%.

TOURIST: How long since it's been full?

LAUGHLIN: This lake was filled right to the top before this drought started in 1998. This coming year, they're going to hold as much water as they can in the upper lake because they need to fill up Lake Powell, because it's getting dangerously low. This lake's probably gonna go down more.

MANN: Scientists now believe that the West was settled during an unusually wet period. The people who built these reservoirs had unrealistic expectations for how much rain and snow would fall each year. Recent climate models predict further drying, less precipitation for the Southwest.

GLEICK: If nature gives us a little less water, then there just is not enough to go around.

MANN: Peter Gleick is a water expert at an environment and resources think tank in Oakland, California called the Pacific Institute.

GLEICK: It turns out that a very small decrease in average flow of the Colorado, in the long run, drains those reservoirs dry.

MANN: A new study by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University -- published in the journal Science -- focused on predictions for the Southwest. Atmospheric scientist and lead researcher Richard Seager says he expects precipitation in the region to drop by 10-20 percent before mid-century. Meanwhile the population of the Southwest is still growing by roughly a million people a year.

SEAGER: With declining water availability there's going to be quite a tussle about who gets the water and whether it's going to be possible to reallocate water in a way that will retain agriculture that's needed, but also sustain a growing urban population.

MANN: Rising temperatures are already shrinking the mountain snow pack, which feeds Western rivers through the summer. In the future, by summer's end, there may be no more snow to melt.

SEAGER: So that natural system of water storage that the water supply system is relying on is going to become less effective.

MANN: Water experts say these incremental changes could disrupt the Colorado River's complicated system of dams, reservoirs and allocation treaties that now supply water to 25 million people.

MULROY: What resources we do have, given what global warming could present to us, could evaporate tomorrow.

MANN: Patricia Mulroy is general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which is charged with supplying water to the city of Las Vegas.

MULROY: I do believe that the Colorado River is going to be severely challenged as we go through global warming. We're already behind in developing those alternatives on how to protect human existence in the West.

MANN: Conservation is a necessity. And some fast-growing cities have implemented water-use restrictions unheard of in water-rich parts of the U.S. Denver and Aurora, Colorado are seen as models -- as is Tucson, Arizona. Here in Las Vegas, there are actually water detectives, who sniff out waste.

snip

MANN: The Water Authority has combined this kind of enforcement with new incentives, urging people to convert from grass and shrubs to desert plants and rock gardens. But critics say the city isn't doing nearly enough. Down on Vegas's casino strip, there is water everywhere -- flowing from extravagant fountains, gushing over manmade waterfalls.

[WATER SOUNDS]

MANN: Outside the Venetian, one of Vegas's showcase casinos, gondolas ferry tourists through glittering canals. This water is re-circulated and reused, but Jill Rowland-Legan says it's a symbol of the city's outdated thinking.

LEGAN: Are they being smart about growth? Should they have some type of moratorium on growth until we get this water issue taken care of? Are they still catering to the major casinos and the major contractors?

MANN: Jill Rowland-Legan heads the chamber of commerce in Boulder City, a small town that lies between Las Vegas Vegas and the Lake Mead reservoir. Her community has embraced a slow-growth ordinance that limits new home construction.

LEGAN: We don't even take our complete allocation of water here in Boulder City because it's all going to Vegas to make sure that they're taken care of.

MANN: But Patricia Mulroy, with the Southern Nevada Water Authority, says slowing Las Vega's growth is not an option. Construction cranes punctuate the horizon. With eight thousand new residents arriving every month, neighborhoods push steadily toward the arid hills.

MULROY: Every piece of private land is acquired with an expectation to not leave it desert, but to build on it. And the private property owner has a right to develop his property.

MANN: Eighty percent of the Colorado River's water is still used for agriculture and Mulroy says that has to change. The Water Authority has already begun buying up farms and ranches in rural Nevada, in a bid to control more water rights.

But as the drought deepens, Columbia University researcher Richard Seager says rain and snowfall in this region will decline to levels not experienced since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Only this time, the dry spell won't end.

SEAGER: That level of reduction was enough to cause really severe trouble and that level of reduction persisting for an even longer period of time will equally cause a lot of trouble.

For Living On Earth I'm Brian Mann in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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It is always the same. People moving to the desert to swim in their pools, water their desert lawns, and live a life in excess not thinking about the future. Well, the future is here and it isn't looking so good unless those people wake up and think about something other than themselves. It sometimes is as simple as that.

Weather patterns are changing and temperatures are warming due to the climate crisis we face. That means as we are seeing, that snowpack that feeds the rivers will be no more if the current level is sustained and what is left will have to be allocated amicably and equitably with a rising population. Just how do people propose that will happen without tensions? How will people be able to live with most of the water being used in agriculture? You think what has happened in Australia can't happen here in the U.S.? Think again. It has already started.
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Scientists Predict Southwest Mega Drought

WASHINGTON - Changing climate will mean increasing drought in the American Southwest — a region where water already is in tight supply — according to a new study.

“The bottom line message for the average person and also for the states and federal government is that they’d better start planning for a Southwest region in which the water resources are increasingly stretched,” said Richard Seager of Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. Seager is lead author of the study published online Thursday by the journal Science.

Researchers studied 19 computer models of the climate, using data dating back to 1860 and projecting into the future, to the year 2100. The same models were used in preparing the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The consensus of the models was that climate in the southwestern United States and parts of northern Mexico began a transition to drier conditions late in the 20th century and is continuing the trend in this century, as climate change alters the movement of storms and moisture in the atmosphere. The models show the drying trend continuing all the way to 2100 — for more than 90 years.

"If these models are correct, the levels of aridity of the recent multiyear drought, or the Dust Bowl and 1950s droughts, will, within the coming years to decades, become the new climatology of the American Southwest," the researchers wrote.

In a telephone interview, Seager said that doesn’t mean there would be dust storms like those of the 1930s Dust Bowl, because conditions at that time were also complicated by poor agricultural practices. But he said the reduction in rainfall could be equivalent to those times when thousands of farmers abandoned their parched land and moved away in search of jobs.
Currently, the majority of water in the Southwest is used in agriculture, but the urban population of the region is growing and so the water needs of people are growing as well, he explained.

“So, in a case where there is a reduced water supply, there will have to be some reallocation between the users,” Seager said. “The water available is already fully allocated.” He said feels that adjustments can be made to deal with the change, perhaps by withdrawing some land from production and by conserving water in urban areas. “But it’s something that needs to be planned for,” Seager said. “It’s time to start thinking how to deal with that.”

Jonathan T. Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona, said the finding “agrees with what is already happening in the Southwest, and will be further complicated by the already declining spring snowpack due to warming.”

“These are scary results, but scary in part because they are results of well thought-out scientific work by a large number of strong scientists,” said Overpeck, who was not part of the research team.

Drought Drops Italy's Po River to Historic Lows

Drought Drops Italy's Po River To Historic Low, Threatens Crops Across Europe

May 4, 2007 12:08 p.m. EST
Linda Young - AHN Staff Writer

Rome, Italy (AHN) - A severe drought in several European countries is threatening crops and has caused Italy to declare a state of emergency in its northern and central regions a day after France imposed water rationing. Farmers in Italy, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland say it is the worst drought they have seen.

Italy acted on Thursday even as it was beginning to rain in the worst affected areas, saying that the forecasted rain would not make up for the rain deficit in the region.

The lack of rain in many parts of Europe has lowered river levels to historic lows. That includes Italy's Po River, which runs west to east across northern Italy. It feeds the fertile Po Valley where about a third of Italy's food is grown.

The German Weather Service said that April broke records kept since 1901 as the hottest and driest month. Italian officials say this winter was the warmest on record in 200 years.

Italy's warm winter caused the level of the Po River to start the Spring season low because there was very little snow in the Alps to melt and runoff into the river. That combined with a warm dry spring brought the river levels down further.

The Po Valley is also heavily industrialized and about 15 percent of Italy's electricity is from hydropower plants. Officials said the drought might force industries to shut down.

In Italy, sugar and rice crops are threatened. The drought has also dried up feed for dairy cows that produce milk for such classic Italian cheeses as Grana Padano and parmesan and feed for hogs that are used for Parma and San Daniele prosciutto.

In Germany, wheat, rye, barley, rapeseed, strawberries and lettuce crops are threatened by the drought. Dry meadows mean farmers have to buy fodder for cattle, which drives the price of milk up.

In Switzerland, the drought threatens the dairy industry, a large exporter of cheese and premium butter to the United States, that is suffering a lack of hay and meadows for cows.
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About the Po River

The Freshwater Boom Is Over/Our Rivers Are Starting To Run Dry

The Freshwater Boom Is Over

The freshwater boom is over. Our rivers are starting to run dry

We can avert global thirst - but it means cutting carbon emissions by 60%. Sounds ridiculous? Consider the alternative

George Monbiot
Tuesday October 10, 2006
The Guardian


It looks dull, almost impenetrable in places. But if its findings are verified, it could turn out to be the most important scientific report published so far this year. In this month's edition of the Journal of Hydrometeorology is a paper written by scientists at the Met Office, which predicts future patterns of rainfall and evaporation.

Those who dispute that climate change is taking place, such as Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail, like to point out that that the predicted effects of global warming rely on computer models, rather than "observable facts". That's the problem with the future - you can't observe it. But to have any hope of working out what might happen, you need a framework of understanding. It's either this or the uninformed guesswork that Phillips seems to prefer.

The models can be tested by means of what climate scientists call backcasting - seeing whether or not they would have predicted changes that have already taken place. The global climate model used by the Met Office still needs to be refined. While it tracks past temperature changes pretty closely, it does not accurately backcast the drought patterns in every region. But it correctly reproduces the total global water trends over the past 50 years. When the same model is used to forecast the pattern over the 21st century, it uncovers "a net overall global drying trend" if greenhouse gas emissions are moderate or high. "On a global basis, drought events are slightly more frequent and of much longer duration by the second half of the 21st century relative to the present day." In these dry, stodgy phrases, we find an account of almost unimaginable future misery.

Many parts of the world, for reasons that have little to do with climate change, are already beginning to lose their water. In When the Rivers Run Dry, Fred Pearce, who is New Scientist's environment consultant, travels around the world trying to assess the state of our water resources. He finds that we survive today as a result of borrowing from the future.

The great famines predicted for the 1970s were averted by new varieties of rice, wheat and maize, whose development was known as the "green revolution". They produce tremendous yields, but require plenty of water. This has been provided by irrigation, much of which uses underground reserves. Unfortunately, many of them are being exploited much faster than they are being replenished. In India, for example, some 250 cubic kilometres (a cubic kilometre is a billion cubic metres or a trillion litres) are extracted for irrigation every year, of which about 150 are replaced by the rain. "Two hundred million people [are] facing a waterless future. The groundwater boom is turning to bust and, for some, the green revolution is over."

In China, 100 million people live on crops grown with underground water that is not being refilled: water tables are falling fast all over the north China plain. Many more rely on the Huang He (the Yellow river), which already appears to be drying up as a result of abstraction and, possibly, climate change. Around 90% of the crops in Pakistan are watered by irrigation from the Indus. Almost all the river's water is already diverted into the fields - it often fails now to reach the sea. The Ogallala aquifer that lies under the western and south-western United States, and which has fed much of the world, has fallen by 30 metres in many places. It now produces half as much water as it did in the 1970s.

All this was known before the new paper was published. While climate scientists have been predicting for some time that the wet parts of the world are likely to become wetter and the dry parts drier, they had assumed that overall rainfall would rise, as higher temperatures increase evaporation. At the same time - and for the same reason - soils could become drier. It was unclear what the net effects would be. But the new paper's "drought index" covers both rainfall and evaporation: overall, the world becomes drier.

Even this account - of rising demand and falling supply - does not tell the whole grim story. Roughly half the world's population lives within 60 kilometres of the coast. Eight of the 10 largest cities on earth have been built beside the sea. Many of them rely on underground lenses of fresh water, effectively floating, within the porous rocks, on salt water which has soaked into the land from the sea. As the fresh water is sucked out, the salt water rises and can start to contaminate the aquifer. This is already happening in hundreds of places. The worst case is the Gaza Strip, which relies entirely on underground water that is now almost undrinkable. As the sea level rises as a result of climate change, salt pollution in coastal regions is likely to accelerate.

As these two effects of climate change - global drying and rising salt pollution - run up against the growing demand for water, and as irrigation systems run dry or become contaminated, the possibility arises of a permanent global food deficit. Even with a net food surplus, 800 million people are malnourished. Nothing I could write would begin to describe what a world in deficit - carrying 9 billion people - would look like.

There are four possible means of adapting to this crisis. One is to abandon regions that are drying up and shift production to the wettest parts of the world - the Amazon and Congo basins, for example. But as these are generally the most forested places, this will lead to a great acceleration of climate change, and of the global drying it's likely to cause, as the carbon in the trees is turned to carbon dioxide. Another is to invest in desalination plants. But even the new desalination technologies produce expensive water, and they use a great deal of energy. Again this means more global warming.

Another is to shift water, on a massive scale, to the drying lands. But vast hydro-engineering projects have seldom succeeded in helping the poor. Giant dams and canals - like the Narmada system in India, the Three Gorges in China and Colonel Gadafy's "Great Man-Made River" - are constructed at stupendous cost. Then, when no further glory can be extracted by the government officials and companies who built them, the fiddly work of ensuring the water reaches the poor is forgotten, and the money is wasted. As Fred Pearce shows, perhaps the best method, which in the past has kept cities alive even in the Negev desert, is the small-scale capture of rainwater in ponds and tanks.

But to stand a high chance of averting this catastrophe, we must ensure that the drying doesn't happen. The predictions in the new paper refer to global warming in the middle or at the high end of the expected range. Beneath that point - 2C of warming or so - a great global drying is less likely to occur. As the figures I've published show, to keep the rise in temperature below this level requires a global cut in carbon emissions of 60% by 2030 - which means a 90% reduction in rich nations such as the United Kingdom. It sounds ridiculous . But then you consider the alternative.

George Monbiot's book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning is published by Penguin monbiot.com

Interview With Fred Pearce
Very good and informative interview.

Trade Off Looms for Arid U.S. Regions. :Water or Power?

Trade Off Looms for Arid U.S. Regions: Water Or Power?

Trade-off looms for arid US regions: water or power?
By Peter N. Spotts,
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Albuquerque, N.M. - The drive to build more power plants for a growing nation – as well as the push to use biofuels – is running smack into the limits of a fundamental resource: water.

Already, a power plant uses three times as much water to provide electricity to the average household than the household itself uses through showers, toilets, and the tap. The total water consumed by electric utilities accounts for 20 percent of all the nonfarm water consumed in the United States. By 2030, utilities could account for up to 60 percent of the nonfarm water, because they use water for cooling and to scrub pollutants.

This water-versus-energy challenge is likely to be most acute in fast-growing regions of the US, such as the Southeast and the arid Southwest. Assuming current climate conditions, continued growth in these regions could eventually require tighter restrictions on water use, on electricity use, or both during the hottest months, when demand for both skyrockets, researchers say. Factor in climate change and the projections look worse. This is prompting utilities to find ways to alleviate the squeeze.

Here in New Mexico, scientists and water managers are already wrestling with the issue. One of the state's main sources of electricity is the San Juan generating station. Its main source of cooling water is the Navajo Reservoir, which straddles the state's border with Colorado. Under today's climate conditions, a three-year drought might require users of the reservoir to cut their water consumption by 18 percent, according to preliminary research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. But a three-year drought with an average temperature rise of 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F.) could mean a 65 percent reduction by the end of the third year.

"This isn't just the San Juan River basin we're talking about," says Andrew Wolfsberg, a hydrologist at the lab. If the US decides to develop oil shale deposits in southern Colorado, which is likely to be water-intensive, it will be difficult to keep oil shale development going, he adds.

A large-scale move to biofuels would be even more water-intensive, says Ronald Pate, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque.

Over the past five years, water availability and quality have become rallying points for opponents of new plants around the country, according to a December 2006 Department of Energy report on the issue. By some estimates, electric utilities plan to build 150 coal-fired generating stations in the US over the next 30 years.

"Utilities are beginning to recognize that water is becoming a greater permitting issue than air quality," says Thomas Feeley III, a technology manager at the US Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh.

The potential collision of water, energy, and climate is not limited to the US. "This is a big issue in other arid and semi-arid parts of the world," says Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, a nonprofit environmental think tank in Washington. The challenge is especially acute in China and India. India already faces serious water shortages around the country, he says. And in China, he says, the central government is losing control over energy planning as local governments drive the push for more power plants. In the future, if climate forecasts are correct, the demand for thermoelectric power could continue to grow as mountain glaciers melt, reducing the amount of electricity hydroelectric dams downstream can generate.

In the US, utilities are exploring ways to cut water consumption at power plants or are looking for alternative water sources.

In West Virginia, for example, construction began in February on a 600-megawatt coal-fired plant that will pull its water from pools in the same mine that it's tapping for coal. Although the plant is a commercial facility, it also is a test bed for approaches to tapping mine pools, which are found throughout the region, notes Joseph Donovan, who heads the Hydrological Research Center at West Virginia University in Morgantown.

And at the San Juan generating station outside Farmington, N.M., the Public Service Company of New Mexico has been exploring a range of approaches to reducing the plant's water consumption, notes Timothy Jones, the utility's water resources manager. In June, the plant will test a new design for cooling towers that attempts to capture and recycle the cloud of condensation that towers give off. The plant already recycles water from 20 to 50 times before it's evaporated off or becomes so tainted that it needs to be hauled off for disposal. The plant also has looked into using water produced as a byproduct of oil and gas extraction in the region.

"It has a fabulous potential for power plants," he says. But today's water-treatment technologies are too expensive and don't have enough capacity to fit the need.

The plant also is using a hybrid cooling tower that uses water only when air temperatures rise too high; otherwise the plant uses air for cooling.

In the end, "there is no single silver bullet" for coping with the projected effects of global warming, Mr. Jones says. "Renewables will play an important role, but energy efficiency is the only way you can deal with it without environmental impacts."
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We are on a collision course with our own morals. At what cost progress? Our demand is growing as our population grows as the very resource we need to sustain us begins to dwindle. And this is not something that is news. The looming global water crisis (that does include the U.S.) due to mismanagement, corruption, governmental indifference, privitization, outdated infrastructure, waste, and now climate change has been warned about for at least twenty years. And yet, not only until now when it is beginning to be felt economically by the energy companies who waste it will it be considered to be a crisis.

And it is ironic that the very fossil fuels that exacerbate climate change which contributes to the soil evaporation, erratic rainfall patterns, glacial melt and droughts that are depleting our water are still the preferred energy choices. I wonder if we will EVER learn. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either we conserve and get SERIOUS about alternate energy sources like solar and other water management incentives especially regarding agricultural irrigation, or we are heading for a very dry future for which we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

Fighting The Corporate Theft Of Our Water

Fighting The Corporate Theft Of Our Water

Excerpt:

By Tara Lohan

The Bush administration is helping multinationals buy U.S. municipal water systems, putting our most important resource in the hands of corporations with no public accountability. All across the United States, municipal water systems are being bought up by multinational corporations, turning one of our last remaining public commons and our most vital resource into a commodity.

The road to privatization is being paved by our own government. The Bush administration is actively working to loosen the hold that cities and towns have over public water, enabling corporations to own the very thing we depend on for survival. The effects of the federal government's actions are being felt all the way down to Conference of Mayors, which has become a "feeding frenzy" for corporations looking to make sure that nothing is left in the public's hands, including clean, affordable water.

Documentary filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman recently teamed up with author Michael Fox to write "Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water" (Wiley, 2007). The three followed water privatization battles across the United States -- from California to Massachusetts and from Georgia to Wisconsin, documenting the rise of public opposition to corporate control of water resources.

They found that the issue of privatization ran deep.

"We came to see that the conflicts over water are really about fundamental questions of democracy itself: Who will make the decisions that affect our future, and who will be excluded?" they wrote in the book's preface. "And if citizens no longer control their most basic resource, their water, do they really control anything at all?" As the effects of climate change are being felt around the world, including decreasing snowpacks and rainfall, water is quickly becoming the market's new holy grail.

Mayor Gary Podesto, in his State of the City address to his constituents in 2003, sang the praises of privatization to his community, located in California's Central Valley. "It's time that Stockton enter the 21st century in its delivery of services and think of our citizens as customers," he said. And there is the crux of the issue -- privatization means transforming citizens into customers. Or, in other words, making people engaged in a democratic process into consumers looking to get the best deal.

It is also means taking our most important resource and putting it at the whims of the market.

Currently, water systems are controlled publicly in 90 percent of communities across the world and 85 percent in the United States, but that number is changing rapidly, the authors report in "Thirst." In 1990, 50 million people worldwide got their water services from private companies, but by 2002 it was 300 million and growing.

There are a number of reasons to be concerned.
End of excerpt.
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The article linked above is a most comprehensive look at the schemes involved in buying up our public trust to keep us hostage. And it is happening now, and in this country under the radar.

With their insatiable desire for profit corporations globally are going too far regarding infringing on a resource that is not their own. What gives a corporation the right to come into any state and take the ground water and use it to make a profit for themselves by selling it elsewhere? A resource that is a fundamental human right? This will happen more and more in the United States however, as water resources become more depleted elsewhere and demand for bottled water increases. It is a problem we must deal with now, especially also in light of changes predicted from the climate crisis should conditions remain the same or worsen as governments collude with corporations to control dwindling resources in order to extort higher prices to make a profit.

Just look at the climate crisis and the affects of it already being felt globally ( with Darfur a clear example of how far environmental devastation can go and its effects.) The Bush regime knows full well the truth about this crisis and the extent of it, and that is why I believe they are purposefully fronting a disinformation campaign to keep doubt in the minds of people as to its true repercussions in order to buy up the water resources in the meantime before people enmasse truly wake up.

This is why the politics of fear and secrecy is so important to address and fight, because it is affecting our very ability to survive.

And it is not only the privitization of our resources that we must be concerned about. The water bottling industry in this country alone is a 400 billion dollar industry. It pulls in three times more than the pharmaceutical industry and demand is rising. So as population rises and demand rises with it worldwide, freshwater resources will begin to dwindle to satisy the demand, and once it's gone it's gone. One in six Americans drink only bottled water. Moreso, bottled water is often not what it appears to be.

Corporations spend millions of dollars promoting it as safe, clean healthy, and superior in quality to tap water, while many popular brands actually come from our public taps. A Natural Resources Defense Council study found that bottled water is no more "pure" or safe than tap water. The bottled water industry is also the least regulated industry in the US. And it can be seen by the price which in many cases is marked up to cost more per gallon than gasoline! Which of course makes those in this industry very happy, but at what price to us in the costs it brings to our land and to our global environment? Do they truly have the universal right to simply use this precious resource for their own profit over the needs of others?

It was Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle which sponsored the World Water Forum which took place last March, and they account for half the global bottled water market. And they are also pushing for privatization of water resources with the World Bank backing them up. I think you get the picture.

Water should remain a public trust controlled by local government at the behest of the taxpayers. It should also be declared a fundamental human right. It is the utter insensitivity and indifference of these companies overshadowed by their greed that makes this all so unfair and so morally wrong. I believe there need to be more stringent guidelines in allowing just anyone with a permit to take water out of the ground. Again, the taxpayers of any state should have rights over corporations who come in simply to raid their water resources for profit and privitize their systems. So we must keep fighting to see the day when water, that most sacred, beautiful, and life sustaining force is treated with the respect it should be treated with and used to give life to all equally who need it.

Link here:

Fighting The Corporate Theft Of Our Water

Don't wonder why Bush bought acreage in Paraguay.

Australia's Epic Drought: The Situation is Grim

Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.

Australia's Epic Drought: The Situation Is Grim

By Kathy Marks in Sydney

Published: 20 April 2007

Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation. The Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia yields 40 per cent of the country's agricultural produce. But the two rivers that feed the region are so pitifully low that there will soon be only enough water for drinking supplies.

Australia is in the grip of its worst drought on record, the victim of changing weather patterns attributed to global warming and a government that is only just starting to wake up to the severity of the position.The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered dire tidings to the nation's farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock. A ban on irrigation, which would remain in place until May next year, spells possible ruin for thousands of farmers, already debt-laden and in despair after six straight years of drought.

End of excerpt.
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But let's continue to sit and waste time continuing to debate whether or not this is real. Let us pretend that the government of PM Howard has truly cared about this all along knowing what the consequences would be for their continued political stonewalling.

This is what happens when you have a global warming denier as your leader. This is what happens when profit trumps morality. This is what happens when political gain supercedes doing what is right. This is what happens when people are not given information about conservation with an emphasis on proper agricultural irrigiation practices, fishing practices, and management of water reources for human use and consumption.

PM Howard is now seeing his country wither away and it is the people who are paying for it. Now we will see the special interests looking to invest in nuclear power and build expensive reclamation plants and desalinization plants with their coal fired plants that will not begin to make up for the damage already done in the amount of time it will take to meet this challenge today.

How many different organizations around the world have to tell the leaders of the world over and over again how absolutely urgent it is for governments to begin working on this crisis NOW for the sake of our planet? Exactly what has to happen before that morality trumps politics? How many suicides? How many mass migrations? How many lives shattered? How many species destroyed?

Tomorrow is Earth Day, and while I have hope that at least this crisis is in the consciousness of more people than it was last year, there is still such a long way to go to see progress that sustains our resources for future generations. The Howards and Bushes of this world need to move out of the way if they are not going to understand the reality of this situation and let those who do come to the forefront to join with people to try to do all we can to fix the damage we have done to this planet. That is, the damage that is not too far gone already. This is truly tragic.

And Australia is just the starting point.

Report On Australian Drought And Global Warming


There was a report put out in 2003 that already linked the drought to human induced global warming. And yet, here we are.

Living With Water Scarcity-World Must Act Now

Living With Water Scarcity-World Must Act Now


Living With Water Scarcity -- World Must Act Now
Main Category: Water - Air Quality / Agriculture News
Article Date: 25 Mar 2007 - 11:00 PDT

Only if we act to improve water use in agriculture now will we meet the acute water-environment-poverty challenges facing humankind over the next 50 years. "With earth's water, land and human resources it is possible to produce enough food for the future - but it is probable that today's food production and environmental trends will lead to crises in many parts of the world" says David Molden Deputy Director General of the International Water Management Institute.

This is the opening prognosis given in the Earthscan publication Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. The Assessment, the first of its kind, brings together the work of over 700 specialists from hundreds of institutes around the world into the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of water and food ever written, critically examining policies and practices of water use and development in the agricultural sector over the last 50 years.

Spearheaded by International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one of 15 CGIAR agricultural research centres striving to increase food production, increase rural incomes, and safeguard the environment, the report is co-sponsored by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), FAO, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the Convention on Biological Diversity in a bid to find solutions to the challenge of balancing the water-food-environment needs.

The assessment finds that 1/3 of the world's population live in areas where water scarcity must be reckoned with. While much of this water scarcity cannot be avoided, water problems can be averted through better water management.

For example: A litre per calorie. A main driver of water use and scarcity comes from us - and what we eat. As a rule of thumb, about one litre of liquid water gets converted to water vapor to produce one calorie of food. "Each of us is responsible for consuming between 2,000 and 5,000 liters of water every day, depending on our diet and how the food is produced - far more than the 2 to 5 litres we drink every day" says Molden. A heavy meat diet requires much more than a vegetarian diet.

In developed countries water scarcity poses no threat to what appears on the dinner plate. In contrast, the relation between water and food is a real struggle for over two thirds of world's 850 million under-nourished people, where water is a key constraint to food security. There is already physical water scarcity in India and China, two water use giants. Because of rapid economic growth in both countries, diets are changing, with more dependence on animal products. In China, per capita meat demand has quadrupled over the last 30 years, and in India milk and egg products are becoming increasingly popular - meaning an accelerated demand for more water to grow more food.

Growing cities take more water, and environmental concerns are rising. A water-food-environment dilemma. Water use in agriculture is recognized as one of the major drivers of ecosystem degradation, causing habitat loss, drying up of rivers, and reduction in groundwater levels. Flows in the Colorado River in USA, the Yellow River in China, the Indus in India and Pakistan - all important food producing areas - dry up because of the water needed for irrigated agriculture. Clearly limiting agricultural water use is key for environmental sustainability. Therein lies the dilemma. More people require more water for more food; more water is essential in the fight against poverty; yet we should limit the amount of water taken from ecosystems.

How much more water? To rid the world of poverty and hunger, and to feed a growing wealthier population, the global food demand will double over the next 50 years. In the worst case scenario where practices don't change, water use will also double. Agricultural practices are changing, but not fast enough. The Assessment shows that with wise policies and investments in irrigation, upgrading rainfed agriculture, and trade it is possible over the next 50 years to limit future growth in water withdrawals to 13% and cultivated land expansion to 9%. But, further complicating the situation are effects of climate change, and the increased use of biofuels, and the necessary actions to address these. "The bottom line is that water scarcity is with us to stay, and we have to learn to live with it. This will require making some hard choices now instead of deferring them until later," says Molden. It starts at home.

Jan Lundqvist of the Stockholm International Water Institute points out that "reducing losses in the food chain and being careful with our diets can lead to significant water savings. Combined with other good agricultural production practices, water use could stabilize at present levels." In developed countries, people eat more than what is healthy and 30% to 40% of food is lost between farmers fields to our forks. In developed countries, much of this loss is between the shop and our plates, and could be avoided if we are more careful.

The way forward. The Comprehensive Assessment challenges all of us - not just policy makers and investors - to think differently about water and food. Instead of viewing water for food as different and competing from water for environment, we need to consider agriculture as an ecosystem producing multiple services for people and sustain biodiversity, and we need to protect the natural resource base on which it depends. We need to be more proactive in our policies and reform processes, crafting water institutions to meet local needs. And we need to place the means of getting out of poverty into the hands of poor people by focusing on water as a means to raise their own food and gain more income. Growing more food with less water - increasing water productivity - can reduce future demand for water, thus easing competition for water and environmental degradation. A 35% increase in water productivity could reduce additional crop water needs from 80% to 20% by 2050.

"While getting more crop, fish, meat and milk per drop is important for the environment, getting more value and nutrition per drop of water is a key for poverty reduction" says Molden. Improving access to water, and using it better are essential in the fight against poverty. Actions that target livelihood gains of smallholder farmers by securing water access through water rights and investments in water storage and delivery infrastructure are essential ingredients. The value obtained per drop of water can be improved by pro-poor water technologies, and investments in roads and markets. Multiple use systems - operated for domestic use, crop production, aquaculture, agroforestry and livestock - can improve water productivity and reduce poverty. The Assessment finds that the greatest potential is found in those rainfed areas of the world that are home to the highest number of poor people. A little additional water can go a long way in these areas. "Upgrading these rainfed lands through better water management holds the greatest potential to increase productivity, and decrease poverty," says Johan Rockstrom of Stockholm Environment Institute and author of the Assessment chapter on managing rainfed agriculture.

Since climate change is expected to hit these areas hard, better water systems will be a key to helping people cope with dry spells. Poverty, hunger, gender inequality, and environmental degradation continue to afflict developing countries not because of technical failings but because of political and institutional failings. There is need for drastic reform in the water sector. Governments must lead the reform process, but ironically state institutions themselves are in greatest need of reform. While water scarcity is here to stay, many of the problems associated with water scarcity can be avoided.

This will require that we deal with difficult choices and tradeoffs. Reconciling competing demands on water requires informed negotiations by the many stakeholders involved in water with transparent sharing of information. "The hope is in realizing the unexplored potential that lies in better water management along with non-miraculous changes in policy and production techniques" says Margaret Catley Carleson, Chair of the Global Water Partnership, "but world leaders must take action now." As Sunita Narain, 2005 Stockholm Water Prize Winner says, "this issue must become the world's obsession."
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Amen to that.

This is also not only about "eco talk" as some label it. This is about who we are as human beings. Climate change is affecting water tables, glacier melt, weather patterns that affect rainfall, and driving drought in many places, particularly in Africa and Australia, and now beginning in North America. However, much of this crisis is due to people wasting this precious resource, mismanaging it, polluting it, the proliferation of dam building for profit that cuts off basic water supplies that devastate environments and marinelife, overpopulation, lack of education, and violating the basic principle that guides its use: it is a human right.

If we are to see any progress in water management in the next 50 years, there will have to be a massive shift from apathy regarding its use and management with an emphasis on making sure it is declared a human right globally to keep corporatization and commoditizing it at bay and holding polluters accountable. This is why I believe any global climate treaty agreed upon next year (should that miracle actually occur) must include water conservation as one of its principle points of reference based on the severity and rapidness of glacier melt currently taking place globally. Billions depend on this water for their lives. Once it is gone, well, should we even contemplate what will happen then?

This crisis is real and is being made worse by human behavior. We have the water we need to sustain our planet if we only look beyond our egos and do what must be done now to preserve it for all. However, melting glaciers will not wait, and the longer we wait the more peril we put our own species in. This is also for me the most crucial environmental challenge of this century, and I have devoted my life to writing about it and bringing that information to others. I can only hope that with the water justice movement gaining steam and other events currently taking place, that we will see that shift in time.