Peak Water - America

[werpen]

Peak Water hitting the american high plain and texas

scienceblogs.com/significantfigu … 88.twitter

Here are a few pieces of the puzzle that we had better start to put together into a coherent picture if we hope to change our direction.

In January 2012, the Texas town of Spicewood Beach ran out of water. Then Magdalena, New Mexico ran out. More recently, Barnhart, Texas. Now Texas publishes a list of towns either out or running out of freshwater. In some parts of Texas, demands for water for fracking are now competing directly with municipal demands.
Because of a severe, multi-year drought (described as “the worst 14-year drought period in the last hundred years”) and excessive water demands, the US Bureau of Reclamation, this week, announced it will cut water released from Lake Powell on the Colorado River to the lowest level since the massive reservoir was filled in the 1960s. Water levels in Lake Mead have already dropped more than 100 feet since the current drought began in 2000, but even in an average year, there is simply more demand than supply.
Las Vegas is so desperate for new supplies they have proposed a series of massive and controversial ideas, including: a $15+ billion pipeline to tap into groundwater aquifers in other parts of the state, diverting the Missouri River to the west, and building desalination plants in Southern California or Mexico so they can take a bigger share of the Colorado.
Governor Jerry Brown is pushing a $25+ billion water tunnel project to try to improve water quality and reliability for southern California farmers and cities and improve the deteriorating ecosystems of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, with no guarantees that it will do any of those things at a price users are willing and able to pay.
San Luis Reservoir in California, which serves the Silicon Valley and other urban users, has fallen to 17 percent because of severe drought, making business, communities, and water managers nervous. Other major California reservoirs are also far below average, though massive deliveries of water continue on the assumption that next year will be wet.
Praying for rain has become an official water strategy for some politicians in Texas, Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma, and elsewhere.
Another popular water strategy seems to be to sue your neighboring state. Here are some examples: Texas v. Oklahoma and Kansas v. Nebraska and Colorado, and outside of the west, Florida v. Georgia (and Alabama too).
Groundwater is disappearing in California; the Great Plains; Texas (tables in this report (pdf) show continuous and often massive declines in almost all Texas groundwater systems); and elsewhere in the West, because our laws and policies ignore the fact that surface and groundwater are connected. Contributing the problem, water managers and legislators typically put no restrictions on groundwater pumping, leading to inevitable, and inexorable, groundwater declines.

https://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/graphics/gwdepletion-map-2008.png

https://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/graphics/gwdepletionchicago.gif
ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html

[mr_anderson]

Potentially a Piston thread, but will leave it here for a while and see how it develops.

[dolanbaker]

I was reading one of the peak oil websites and there are claims that much of the recent decline can be attributed to water companies selling vast quantities to frac’ing companies. It appears that they’re willing to give the oil frac’ing companies first refusal on the water over the farmers & consumers in the area.

[Tis_Meself]

If we have a very dry year or two that’ll be the Greater Dublin Area ‘peaked’ as well!

[dipole]

I talked with an American over the weekend at a street party. He is from one of the States which is almost desert and they have a big cattle industry despite the fact that the cattle are fed on everything except grass e.g. Almonds, maize.
He said they’ll never frack in his area as the cattle industry is too important and they wouldn’t risk the water supply. The locals wouldn’t allow it. I myself don’t think Haliburton and others give a flying f*ck about their local livelihoods.

[ditch_dweller]

recent piece in the GUardian about fracking’s effect on the meagre water resources in Texas.

theguardian.com/environment/ … l-no-water

“The day that we ran out of water I turned on my faucet and nothing was there and at that moment I knew the whole of Barnhart was down the tubes,” she said, blinking back tears. “I went: 'dear God help us. That was the first thought that came to mind.”

Across the south-west, residents of small communities like Barnhart are confronting the reality that something as basic as running water, as unthinking as turning on a tap, can no longer be taken for granted.

Three years of drought, decades of overuse and now the oil industry’s outsize demands on water for fracking are running down reservoirs and underground aquifers. And climate change is making things worse.

In Texas alone, about 30 communities could run out of water by the end of the year, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Nearly 15 million people are living under some form of water rationing, barred from freely sprinkling their lawns or refilling their swimming pools. In Barnhart’s case, the well appears to have run dry because the water was being extracted for shale gas fracking.

Meanwhile, Lake Travis in Austin is approaching its lowest level ever recorded.

https://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/lt/lt_cache/thumbnail/908/img/photos/2012/09/20/7b/c9/lhs_Lake_levels_03_1240976a.jpg

[Ardillaun]

For quite some time now, there’s been talk of a North American water grid to smooth out these shortages. No prizes for guessing which way the water would flow.

[BoyRacer]

International wheat production statistics → en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio … statistics

World Soybean production 2010 → targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=17618

Corn Production by Country in 1000 MT → indexmundi.com/agriculture/?commodity=corn

List of largest producing countries of agricultural commodities → en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la … ommodities

[discostu]

Was talking to a Kansas farmer last the other day, he grows corn (didnt ask what type) basically there is a sort of Coop and everything they grow is turned into ethanol which is used for about 10% of gasoline replacement in the US. According to him they have had weird weather very wet start to the year and now several weeks of droughts. He cant remember when it was so dry and he voiced concerns about water availability in the short to long term

[Tis_Meself]

@Ardillaun

For quite some time now, there’s been talk of a North American water grid to smooth out these shortages. No prizes for guessing which way the water would flow.

Downhill?