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.

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: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: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.