Lake Mead Is Drying Up

LAKE MEAD IS DRYING UP

Excerpt:

The combination of a changing climate and a strong demand for the lake’s remaining water has resulted in 100 foot drop since 2000. While that’s just 10 percent under the lake’s high water mark in 1983, Lake Mead is like a martini glass—wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. That 10 percent dip represents a loss of half Lake Mead’s water supply in nine years, from 96 percent capacity to 43 percent.

Anyone who’s gone on a diet knows this simple equation: if you burn fewer calories than you eat, you’ll gain weight. But like a cheating dieter in Superman’s Bizarro world, the Western United States has been sucking more water out of Lake Mead than the dwindling Colorado River can provide to replace it. When output is greater than input, the reservoir shrinks.

And it continues to shrink. Lake Mead’s water level fell 14 feet last year, and the Bureau of Reclamation has projected the level will drop 14 more feet this summer. That will bring it perilously close to 1,075 feet, the point at which the federal government can step in and declare a drought condition, forcing a reduction of 400,000 acre-feet drawn from Lake Mead per year. A typical Las Vegas home uses a half acre-foot of water per year, so such a reduction would be equal toturning the tap off for 800,000 households.

In 2008, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography issued a paper titled “When will Lake Mead go dry?” which set the odds of Lake Mead drying up by 2021 at 50-50. No more water, no more electricity, no more pumping power.

“Today, we are at or beyond the sustainable limit of the Colorado system,” concluded the paper’s authors. “The alternative to reasoned solutions to this coming water crisis is a major societal and economic disruption in the desert southwest; something that will affect each of us living in the region.”

Conservation efforts are helping (Southern Nevada has significantly reduced its draw from 325,000 acre-feet a year in 2000 to 265,000 acre-feet today) but the Colorado River remains “oversubscribed.” Millions of acre-feet are sent to California, Nevada, and Mexico annually, draining Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell faster than they can be replenished. Conservation solutions include “grass buyback” programs to encourage people to install drought-tolerant landscaping, tax incentives for pool-covers, and inevitable rate hikes.

Frustratingly, Las Vegas residents tried to pass a bill that would allow homeowners to install graywater systems but the Southern Nevada Water Authority blocked it, offering up a piece of fuzzy math as a defense. Las Vegas Valley is alloted 300,000 acre-feet of water per year from the reservoir. The water that goes down drainpipes in Las Vegas gets pumped 12 miles back to a reclamation plant near Lake Mead. This returned water counts as a credit toward getting more fresh water from the lake. The Water Authority says if people start using graywater to water their lawns and gardens rather than using drinking-quality water, their lowered water bills will dissuade them from conserving water. In other words, the Water Authority believes that legalizing graywater will cause people to use more fresh water and return less dirty water to the reclamation plant.

One of the more radical proposals involves pumping water from the eastern United States (where many regions are suffering the consequences of flooded rivers) over the Rockies to the West. In a Las Vegas Sun interview on May 1, Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said, “We’ve taken water from the West now for a hundred years, maybe it’s time to start taking water from the East, rather than from the West.” Another speculative proposal lies beyond the shores of California, where there’s an ocean of water available for desalinization. In April, the California Coastal Commission approved the West Basin Municipal Water District’s plan to build a desalination system in Redondo Beach that can desalt 100,000 gallons of seawater per day.

The power requirement for either proposal—desalting seawater or transporting water over great distance—is enormous. But if the only other alternative is a mass evacuation from the western United States, what other choice do we have?
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Here you have it. Look long and hard, because this is our future if our moral will is superceded by status quo business as usual behavior. In order to not only save our water but ourselves a paradigm shift is now in order. It will require a new behavior brought about by a totally new mindset in line with a moral will to do what is right for the future instead of only thinking of the present and wanting what you want when you want it. It will involve the human species finally coming to maturity. The question is, is that possible now? Because if not the three alternatives listed in this article which are the reality of it are only bandaids on a moral wound that will then never heal.

What is happening to Lake Mead is a direct result of human greed and apathy. We have no one to blame but ourselves. The first step in mitigating this crisis is to admit that, and from there we can work on solving the problem. Unfortunately, human pride dictates that we always find another source for the blame to absolve ourselves from our selfish wasteful behavior. In doing so it gives us license to continue said behavior safe in the knowledge that we can still have what we want when we want it... until the well runs dry. But of course, then we will just find another source to ravage to get what we want, and then another, and another... not thinking that sooner or later that too will run dry.

In writing about the global water crisis over these years I have seen that this is about more than even political will, bills, and budgets. This goes to the very core of what we are as humans. This is political, yes, but it is also moral, spiritual, and ethical, and unless we reconcile to that the political will not follow. How can we continue to degrade the very resources that give us life with such abandon? How will we ever look our children in the eye and say to them that we knew that our wasteful behavior would bring us here but we just didn't care because we thought someone else would fix it?

Well, as we see here we are finding that the only ones who can fix this are those who have made it. Therefore, how is this fixed? Moving water from the Great Lakes to be wasted? Absurd and expensive and sure to start a regional conflict. Desalination? Carbon intensive, expensive, not guaranteed for long periods of time, threat to marinelife, and another excuse to keep wasting.... especially with a report just released showing the great damage to the ocean off the West Coast by humans already. Mass migration from the West Coast? I can't even begin to process that. Conservation? What's that you say? Actually CONSERVING the water left? Wow, what a concept. Not building golf courses and communities in the desert? Not wasting water in irrigation? Water restrictions that are adhered to? Truly ADEQUATE GHG emission targets instead of ones that appease industry? Actually planning for the future? But gee, we can't do that. It's just so much easier to keep doing what we are doing denying the results and thinking all will be well.

Only thing though, it isn't. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, and even that river is running dry.

Brazil Drought Staunches Famed Iguazu Falls

This is as close as you can get to a divine experience. It brings me to tears. Sheer beauty. Water is life.

And now:

Brazil drought staunches famed Iguazu falls


Excerpt:

"An acute drought in Brazil has hit the famed horseshoe-shaped Igauzu falls which straddle two countries, cutting back the tumbling waters to reveal the rocky sides.
Only a third of the usual volume of water is now flowing over the top of the stunning falls, which were listed as a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1984 and border both Brazil and Argentina, Globo television said.

At the foot of the falls on the Brazilian side, the bottom of the Parana river is now clearly visible, allowing environmentalists a rare chance to clean up mountains of accumulated trash.

The falls, which are actually made up of 275 waterfalls stretching some 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles), are taller than the Niagara Falls and twice as wide.

They provide a panoramic backdrop to the tropical rainforest region, with an average of 553 cubic feet of water per second from the Iguazu River thundering some 269 feet over the falls and then draining into the Parana.

Divers have been cleaning up the garbage which has collected in the Parana, finding everything from cameras to combs, CDs and batteries as well as plastic bottles, tin cans and umbrellas.

Some of the trash has floated down river from other towns, but most has been dropped by tourists, said environmentalist Tassio Lima."
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Now this should open your eyes. I have always thought that should these magnificent falls be diminshed that something surely was wrong with the climate balance of this planet. To stand and feel the raw energy and power and see the awe inspiring beauty of these falls is something to aspire to in life. To read these falls are now being diminshed due to drought leaves me sad, and must raise a flag.

We are changing the climate balance of this planet and it is affecting water beyond what I believe we could have comprehended or predicted. How much will we have to see disappear before we comprehend that as a species? And can you imagine, "tourists" throwing their garbage into the river there? Have we become that bereft of all respect for the natural beauty and power of this planet? We have forgotten our place and we are reaping the consequences of it now.

Asian Water Summit Ends In Dispute; Action needed

Asian Water Summit Ends In Dispute

Discussion of this summit at the link courtesy of Australian Radio.
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This is disappointing news. For all of my reporting here on the global water crisis about predictions of increased scarcity by 2030-2050, I always in the back of my mind believed that water disputes were actually in the end the one dispute that could and would be worked out amicably... as in MAD regarding nuclear issues where both sides have nukes therefore neither side strikes because they know it would only bring about their own demise.

Such is the situation with water. It is kind of like, MAWD... mutually assured water destruction. Countries must learn to mediate diplomatically regarding the crucial water issues such as freshwater resources now becoming scarcer in light of population growth, climate change, waste, pollution, and privitization. To do otherwise would only wind up destroying their own ecosystems and social structures. I fear however, that with so many issues given a political significance over the moral that the root causes of the global water crisis we face will be overlooked in lieu of working for political solutions that do not address the root causes but only exacerbate them.

As with the climate crisis, countries are looking for solutions that are overly technical, hard to manage, expensive for end users, and that will take longer to implement than we have time in order to avoid tipping points. Such as "clean" coal which is an oxymoron, cap and trade which is involved and open to fraud, and Co2 cuts that do not match the urgency of the threat simply because they wish to not upset the apple cart of those industries that have had close political ties with them for decades thus bringing this crisis on. All because it was made a political issue rather than a moral issue, which dictates looking to natural readily available solutions such as solar power, wind, reforestation, etc.

With the water crisis it appears that solutions are taking the same road, and we cannot afford to take that road. Expensive technologies like desalination that are actually CO2 intensive may work well in the Middle East, but in poor countries such as India and many in Africa that is simply not an option. Therefore, once again we see natural readily available options as the solutions we must be willing to provide which include education on sustainable agriculture (NO GMOs,) water conservation, population control through family planning, solar water pumps, sustainable irrigation practices, crop rotation that takes into account changing weather patterns as a result of climate change, and major reforestation to bring water up to the roots to also provide food, shelter, and a thriving ecosystem. These solutions are cheaper, easier to implement, and more timely than the costly time consuming political solutions that only deem to hold us back from achieving progress now.

We find ourselves now sitting at the abyss and looking in as we see a world shifting towards more hunger, poverty, war, and financial instability, along with the threat of global health crises like pandemics. All of these problems have been deepened in scope through political will only working to its own ends. Only through grassroots efforts and people movements seeking moral solutions to these crises can we bring about the political will to do the moral thing.

As with water disputes, there is no time for bickering out of selfish motivations. Water is the lifeline of our planet and should not be used as a bargaining chip at a political meeting. This is why I am so adamant about it being declared a global human right. This is why we need that to happen in order to open the door to lessen disputes, stop its privitization for profit (which would also go a long way in conserving it for agriculture and other needs of the people) and shifting the discourse from a strictly political focus to one that sees it as a transboundary transglobal problem with equitable solutions that maintain life for all. Like the climate crisis however, that requires a higher consciousness in seeing beyond political bickering to the future we wish to leave to future generations.

If only the leaders of this world would understand that addressing water issues first effectively would alleviate so much of the poverty, hunger, war, and financial instability the world is now experiencing, we would be on our way to the solutions for our species most pressing challenge now: Sustaining the habitability of this our only home.

Photograph credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/274762201/

Life cycle assessments measure water's impact on Earth's ecosystems for first time

The damages to ecological systems from overconsumption of water are illustrated in this world map (yellow represents low impacts, navy high impacts).
Figure 3, PFISTER ET AL.



LCA's finally measure water consumption
Catherine Cooney
Environ. Sci. Technol., Article ASAP
DOI: 10.1021/es901078v
Publication Date (Web): April 22, 2009
Copyright © 2009 American Chemical Society

Despite water’s significance, modeling how freshwater consumption for drinking, industrial manufacturing, and agriculture has affected ecosystems, human health, and the depletion of nonrenewable freshwater resources has been overlooked. In a new ES&T study (DOI 10.1021/es802423e), researchers take the traditional life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach one huge step beyond current practices with a model that incorporates water consumption.LCA models were created to address problems in industrialized nations, and most of these countries don’t experience human-health risks due to water scarcity, the authors note. Recently, researchers have started to use LCA models to manage diminishing resources in developing countries. To incorporate water consumption into the LCA process, Stephan Pfister, Annette Koehler, and Stefanie Hellweg at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich’s (ETH Zurich’s) Institute of Environmental Engineering started from scratch: they created units of measure for water consumption that are compatible with the many values for energy and resource use that appear in an internationally recognized LCA method. “For water use, this hadn’t been done, ever,” says Hellweg, who is a professor of ecological systems design at ETH Zurich.

For example, the team interpreted a well-known value established by the World Health Organization in LCA models and applied it to water use. The disability-adjusted life year is a value that expresses the number of years a person's life will be shortened as a result of disease or premature death. The team also adapted an indicator applied to address ecosystem impacts and known as PDF (potentially disappeared fraction of species) to express how water impacts species.LCAs routinely rely on aggregated data to represent large areas. But the ecological impacts of water use depend on regional factors, such as freshwater availability, water infrastructure, rainfall, and consumption patterns at a specific location. The team used a geographic information system to gather regional data and divided large rivers, such as the Nile and the Mississippi, into subcatchments. “The watershed level is more appropriate for the assessment, because hydrological processes are connected within watersheds,” Pfister says.

In the paper, Pfister and colleagues demonstrate their model with a case study of a process that is water-intensive worldwide: cotton production. They began with data from the “virtual water” database developed by researchers in The Netherlands. A relatively new idea, virtual water describes the amount of water that evaporates during agricultural use. Specifically, the database is an inventory of the water consumed for agricultural use for many crops in most countries.The team found that the impacts from water consumption in the cotton industry vary according to country: Egypt’s water supply experiences the highest level of damage (77%) from cotton production, whereas Brazil experiences the lowest level of damage (0%), followed by the U.S. (4%).

The model’s focus on the resulting damage to ecosystems and human health is somewhat controversial among LCA practitioners in general, some modelers told ES&T. Many U.S. researchers tend to stick to LCAs that create resource-use inventories but that don’t measure ecological or human-health impacts, notes Christopher Weber of Carnegie Mellon University. Referring to the new ES&T study, Weber says: “There is a great deal of uncertainty in their inventory, and there is still disagreement over many of the definitions they use.” Modelers in the U.S. also shy away from incorporating water into LCAs because there is a shortage of water data in this country, explains Chris Hendrickson, also of Carnegie Mellon. More data are available for the EU, and for areas with water scarcity, such as in Israel, Hendrickson says.

Nonetheless, the study demonstrates a huge range of work, Weber says. “I absolutely think that [the] method they are using is a good one,” he says. “It’s good to take the next step and to turn water use into something that can be used to compare it to something else, such as toxic releases or CO2.”Pfister says that within the LCA community, work has been done to clearly define the terms related to water use. “Our method directly uses those definitions,” he adds.

Despite the uncertainties inherent in all LCAs, the researchers are confident that this approach, as well as the assumptions they make in this study, will compare favorably with other LCA methods. The group members say that they hope their work will be used by businesses and governments that are searching for ways to protect diminishing water resources. Some nonbinding declarations in the EU suggest that consumer goods show LCA information on product labels, and many companies are beginning to conduct LCAs, Pfister says.Determining water use “has really become popular in the last year,” Hellweg says. “But companies are not really looking at what happens afterwards, and they are all looking at water use in an aggrandized area,” she adds. “I really hope that businesses take this one more step and incorporate the differences of water use in Egypt compared with water use in a wet country such as Switzerland,” Hellweg says.
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It is good to finally see life cycle assessments being done for water use. The impact of water use on our ecosystems should be of chief concern in every area of the world as water is the one resource we cannot live without.

More water is wasted(and polluted) in industry, yet they are not accountable for the water they use. And even though these assessments are not ironclad based on changing factors over time, they at least give a good idea of what is being used, wasted, and how best to conserve water in different regions of the world experiencing different effects regarding that usage due to population, population growth, deforestation, agriculture, and now chiefly, climate change which is precipitating drought and melting glaciers more rapidly which absolutely effects the life cycle of water and all that depend on it.

It is time to take our use of water much more seriously. It is the lynchpin of our survival on this plaent and if we are to have any success at all in preserving our planet for ourselves and those to come, how we manage water is essential to that success and preservation.

PBS Frontline: Poisoned Waters

More than three decades after the Clean Water Act, two iconic waterways—the great coastal estuaries Puget Sound and the Chesapeake Bay—are in perilous condition. With polluted runoff still flowing in from industry, agriculture, and massive suburban development, scientists fear contamination to the food chain and drinking water for millions of people. A growing list of endangered species is also threatened in both estuaries. As a new president, Congress, and states set new agendas and spending priorities, FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith examines the rising hazards to human health and the ecosystem, and why it’s so hard to keep our waters clean.


FRONTLINE EXAMINES NEWEST HEALTH HAZARDS IN NATION’S CONTAMINATED WATERWAYS

FRONTLINE Presents
POISONED WATERS
Tuesday, April 21, 2009, from 9 to 11 P.M. ET on PBS

Poisoned Waters
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Water pollution is one of the main causes of scarcity of potable water in our world. Even three decades after the Clean Water Act, our waterways are filled with toxic chemicals, human waste, animal waste, agricultural run off, and factory farm run off. This is one of the major problems we now face as population rises in a world where much of it is in some form of drought. Not having potable freshwater left threatens our ability to sustain ourselves.

This is a very important topic and one that is too often ignored in the media. I recommend this program to get a better view of what our waterways now face. Only through reaching a higher consciousness regarding what our actions bring will we be able to respect and cherish this most precious resource.

World Water Forum A Huge Disappointment

World Water Forum Pledges Action But Rift Over Statement

What a disappointment this World Water Forum turned out to be. In the final language of the closing statement water was declared a "need" and not a right. This is clearly language intended to benefit the corporate sponsors of the World Water Forum that now see a great opportunity ahead of them in making profit from the water scarcity facing many areas of the world due to agricultural waste, population growth, and now climate change which is causing more severe and sustained droughts.

There is absolutely no credibility to this event as long as it chooses to refrain from declaring water a human right. Any resources needed by a species to sustain it's life is a right. To deny that right is to deny the very life and existence of that species. It is beyond comprehension how any countries would even stand in the way of declaring water a human right, but at this conference three nations did and one of them was the U.S. It is not hard to understand why with Nestle, Coca Cola, Pepsi, and other companies now looking to make more profit off this crisis. I suspect Dow as well was hoping for this ending as they wait to be able to build monstrous desalination plants around the world that will only exacerbate climate change. Conservation, declaring water a human right, and really doing what is morally right for the developing world and all of us do not seem to be what this forum is about.

By 2030 it is estimated that 2/3 of this world may well be without access to freshwater, and that does not necessarily mean in all cases due to it not being there... remember, toxification of our freshwater resources by these very companies as well as others is also decreasing the amount of potable water that can be used. If you were to fill a one gallon bucket with water, only a tablespoon is what would represent the amount of freshwater available to the world at this point.

Just where are we going then with privitization looking to be the way we all get our water in a world with rising population and decreasing resources? To some the thought of war over water seems incomprehensible. I can only hope they are right, but looking at the landscape of the world and the forces working to control the very resource that sustains all life on Earth I would say the chance of war over water is very real. Especially if we continue to have forums like this one that are simply as Maude Barlow phrased it, "trade shows" for the water companies that sponsor them.

Remote Tribe's Threat From Destructive Mine

Remote Tribe's Threat From Destructive Mine


What a beautiful place. The peoples' ability to live off the land is something that should be respected. These companies must be stopped in their seeking destruction of others' traditions and livelihoods for their own profit. Their resolve to stand up for their beautiful mountain to the death is inspiring. This is why I am posting here. Please go to the site for this film and take action to help indigenous peoples whose land, water, and lives are being destroyed by greedy profit hungry corporations that do not care for the environment, tradition, or culture. Preserving pristine areas of the world and respecting the traditions and cultures of its people are what humanity is all about.