Western US States Using Up Ground Water At an Alarming Rate

sciencehabit (1205606) writes A new study shows that ground water in the Colorado basin is being depleted six times faster than surface water. The groundwater losses, which take thousands of years to be recharged naturally, point to the unsustainability of exploding population centers and water-intensive agriculture in the basin, which includes most of Arizona and parts of Colorado, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Because ground water feeds many of the streams and rivers in the area, more of them will run dry.

Comments

Peak Water

[Anonymous Coward]

And you thought the wars and environmental harm over oil was bad, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Re:Peak Water

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, predicted as in considered the possibility of, right?

No. Predicted as in we already see the wars being fought over the economic conditions arising from a lack of it elsewhere.

Believe it or not, you can live without Internet, oil, air conditioning or even meat. But if drinking the local well water is gone, or "just" poisons you, you can't survive. You'll kill not for gold or ideology, but for water to drink, or to prevent your kids/wife/etc from dying of thirst. The ironic bit is we will poison the local well water via fracking for gas, so we can have "cheap" oil to fight for farther distant oil fields.

Re:Why I'm on a well in a sustainable aquifer.

[TheReaperD]

You say that now but, when that well runs dry, you'll be screaming "why didn't the government do something about this!"

Re:Colorado has California over a barrel

[Grey Geezer]

There is a proposal to built a freshwater pipeline from Lake Superior. I'd prefer to see growth limited to sustainable levels before they start pumping water out of the Great Lakes...but moneyed interests will probably get their way...they usually do.

Re:Colorado has California over a barrel

[xfizik]

Pumping out of the Great Lakes would not make Canada happy.

An old Colorado Saying about water applies here:

[bobbied]

Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting.

This applies to all of the southwest and a lot of the plains. Land is useless for anything but energy production without a supply of water, so you drink your whiskey and fight over the water. This has been true for centuries and will continue to be true for many more.

PBS covered this

[WillAffleckUW]

One of the local farmers said "I expect when we run out this next decade, everyone will be very angry over the decisions we made to plant water-intensive crops in a very arid land for so many years".

It's like Global Warming.

It's coming for you whether you believe in it or not.

Re:Oh really?

[WillAffleckUW]

So what alarmist hyper-environmentalist news stories are we to believe? Last time I checked, we had environmentalists screaming that fracking thousands of feet down leaks chemicals (sand, light hydrocarbons) through thousands of feet of permeable geological layers. If these layers are so permeable and the alarmists are telling the trough, how come it takes `thousands` of years to recharge the aquifers?

The act of fracking, or fracturing, creates many tiny cracks.

Here's a thought experiment: Stick your head under a bucket of tightly packed soil (mostly clay) in a bottomless bucket and fill it up.

Now try the same thing after you use a spade on the soil in the bucket for a few minutes.

Get the picture?

Is California populated by idiots!!!

[FudRucker]

California is sitting next to the largest body of water on the planet, all they need to do is set up some desalination plants to make it potable

Re:Is California populated by idiots!!!

[DudemanX]

Agreed. Now let's work on the hard part of your plan which is convincing people not to be against new wind farms and nuclear plants along the coast.

Re:Colorado has California over a barrel

[lagomorpha2]

That said if you have a lawn and your shower/bath water doesn't provide the primary water to the landscaping, you are part of the problem too.

If you still believe in the concept of lawns you are part of the problem.

At what point did people start thinking that spending resources planting and maintaining a monoculture of sterile inedible grass was a good idea? Did golf players do this to us? The same area and resources could be used for everyone to have fresh vegetables growing around thier homes except:
1) homeowners associations and baby boomers would throw a fit
2) Americans don't eat vegetables anyway

Re:Why I'm on a well in a sustainable aquifer.

[nine-times]

I might be misunderstanding, but how does having a well protect you from people depleting the groundwater? If the groundwater is depleted, doesn't your well go dry?

Re:Colorado has California over a barrel

[phantomfive]

Sad thing is Los Angeles is right there on the ocean......they have plenty of water if they would just purify it instead of stealing it from half of the rest of the country.

Re:Should the United States accept more foreigners

[ranton]

Food is not cheap. Taking inflation into account, food prices are at an all-time high on a global basis. They're even higher than they were during World War II, when rationing was in place.

The price of food increasing far faster than wages has in fact resulted in more poverty, which has in fact resulted in more obesity is many nations around the world.

The parent post should have said developed countries instead of modern world, because in developed countries food certainly is cheap. In 1900 families spent 43% of their money on food, while in 2003 it was 13%. Food is incredibly cheap by historical standards, about a third of the cost of food 100 years ago. source

Poverty only correlates to obesity in areas where food is abundant. Then the same incapability to delay gratification that causes poverty also causes obesity. One does not cause the other, they have the same root cause.