Resource Wars: Water

[Plantagenet]

I don't see why Canadians are worried about the US shipping water from the Great Lakes down to Arizona and Nevada and such.

The US would be careful to only take lake water from the US side of the lakes.

[Kaj]

I don't see why Canadians are worried about the US shipping water from the Great Lakes down to Arizona and Nevada and such.

The US would be careful to only take lake water from the US side of the lakes.

Is that a joke?
Its funny if it is.

[ki11ercane]

It's funny considering a few years back Minnesota gave a nice eff you to Manitoba and created the Devil's Lake Diversionary Project to funnel excess water back into Manitoba because of all the flooding in MN.

Yes, we will keep your water thank you.

[kublikhan]

Piece by piece, a 5,500-mile wall around the Great Lakes is going up. You can't see it, but construction is progressing nicely, along with an implied neon sign that flashes, "Hands off -- it's our water."

States Stake Claim to Great Lakes

Wisconsin recently finalized the deal to join the Great Lakes compact, an agreement to keep thirsty western states out of Great Lake waters. I can personally attest to how nice it is to drink water from Lake Michigan. We used to have well water back in the early 80's. Hard rusty water, the stuff was pretty nasty. Ever have blood in your mouth? Thats what our water tasted like. Then they piped Lake Michigan water out to us. What a difference. Clean and pure. After awhile I forgot all about nasty well water. Then I moved out for college. Back on well water again. Tastes and smells bad, some days it's so hard you can't wash the soap off your hands, and of course the friendly warnings from the city that the water is contaminated with unsafe levels of radium. Glad to be back on lake Michigan water again. So I can understand people's desire to keep the ecosystem intact and not take the path of the Aral sea:

The Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union, once the world's fourth largest inland body of water. Agricultural water diversions in the 1950s and '60s reduced the Aral Sea's volume by 90 percent and its surface area by 75 percent. "It is the most egregious example of water mismanagement on Earth," Annin said.

Great Lake Water Supply At Risk

Are there any water issues in your area? Out here we are more at risk of flooding than drought.

[Kristen]

Being in Minnesota I'm sure there are many policy issues related to water. If the U.S. dissolved, I imagine the midwest states would emerge as their own entity against other partitions.

[turner]

Have you seen the article in Business Week this week about T. Boone Pickens who has finished with making money out of oil and now "owns more water than any other individual in the US"? He's hoping to sell his water to Dallas etc etc. How does this happen and what does this mean for the average citizen?

[kublikhan]

Yeah I read the article. The water laws in Texas are a bit weird. Basically: "He who was the biggest pump wins." No one wants to buy his water. If instead someone buys a little plop of land(actually the water rights below that little plop of land) right next to his, installs a giant water pump, they could legally suck out all his water. I am guessing he will eventually find a buyer, but perhaps not at the prices he was originally asking.

[Niagara]

Yeah I read the article. The water laws in Texas are a bit weird. Basically: "He who was the biggest pump wins." No one wants to buy his water. If instead someone buys a little plop of land(actually the water rights below that little plop of land) right next to his, installs a giant water pump, they could legally suck out all his water.

Kind of like this?

[flash width=425 height=324]http://www.youtube.com/v/URjeS5-NaXY&hl=en[/flash]

[Denny]

I read that article about Pickens too and came to realize how fortunate I am to live alongside the Great Lakes. There seems to be something creepy about somebody buying up water so voraciously, I can't put my finger on it, but it just seems greedy somehow for one to try to corner the water supply market. I am not a socialist, but I feel that water should belong to the people as a whole maybe at a city or county level, not to individuals.

The people of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michiagan, Ohio, Pennsyvlania, Ontario and New York are so fortunate to have this amazing water legacy.

[mommy22]

Ohio just signed on to the Great Lakes Water Compact also. It would really be a shame to see all of the water in our Great Lakes to be piped down to the desert, only to be used to make sure there is green grass on all of those golf courses down there.
I'll agree with the poster who said how tasty the GL water is...our town just connected with Lake Erie, and the water is ever so much tastier!
It's nice to know that the water is protected. Hard to believe it's the same lake from which the "burning river" flowed in the late 60's from all the pollution. That was the impetus for the founding of Earth Day...the Cuyahoga catching on fire. Now the only Burning River is a local brewery!

[Ludi]

Thank goodness people in that region are taking steps to protect their water!

[cube]

...
Are there any water issues in your area? Out here we are more at risk of flooding than drought.

I live in California, I think that answers the question.

We have a North vs. South political conflict.
Most of the water is in the north but most of the people live in the south hence the south has more "voting power".
There's a massive aqueduct that runs for over 400 miles appropriately named, the California Aqueduct.

I don't recommend being here when TSHTF

[Newfie]

In the 1850's there was this guy named Wharton. The University of Pennsylvania MBA school is named after him. Anyway he decided that he was going to make a killing on water so he bought us a huge hunk of real estate in Southern New Jersey as there is a big aquifer there. He thought he could sell the water to Philadelphia.

NJ passed a law against selling the water and Wharton ended up donating the land as a State Park. Now Wharton State Park which is a big hunk of the Pinelands.

So this is not a new problem its now just a BIGGER problem. Our population in 1850 was 30 million. We are now about 300 million. Ooops!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wharton

[Thunderbolt]

Being from Michigan, I can safely say that while I think it could get pretty bad (especially in the Detroit metropolis) here when TSHTF, we are blessed by being surrounded by 20% of the world's freshwater. Although I could definitely see water wars being waged here in the near future.

[Ludi]

There's a massive aqueduct that runs for over 400 miles appropriately named, the California Aqueduct.

It takes a titanic amount of energy to pump the water over mountain passes on its way down to So Cal.

[IgnoranceIsBliss]

Here in the Atlanta area, we have major water problems. We are in year 3 of a major drought (the type that they say comes along once in 100 years).

Our local lake is down about 15 feet from full pool and is expected to fall another 6 feet by end of summer. It supplies all drinking water to metro Atlanta. This is the lowest it has EVER been going into the rough summer season. (summer = major evaporation loss and increased flows out of the dam for hydro power) Last summer, "officials" said we only had 60 days of water left at one point. (then you get into the lower levels where you find stuff like bacteria, sludge, high concentrations of pesticides, etc) It would cost a lot more to process that water for drinking. Several local cities have had to lower their intake pipes to reach the new lower lake level.

So what did our governor do about this crisis? Well, he did hold a public prayer session on the capitol steps. Then he filed a lawsuit against Florida. Georgia and Florida are in a fight over how much water should be released from the lake here to flow down to FL. FL has an endangered mussel species that depends on the water, as well as their oyster industry. Oh, and our governor is also fighting Tennessee over some state boundary dispute going back to the 1800's. Supposedly, someone recorded the state boundary line a little bit off. If it were to be 'corrected', GA would 'own' part of a large river which would give us more water.

Last year, GA implemented strict conservation requirements (no outdoor watering at all). Everyone was encouraged to conserve, and it worked. Water usage dropped. However, this year, we suddenly don't need to worry anymore. (even though we've had basically no good rain in months) So the momentum was lost. Even worse, the government passed a rule stating that individual counties cannot impose their own water usage laws if they are stricter than the official state rules. How stupid is that?
This area of the state has clay like soil, which is now hardened like a brick. So any rain we do get just runs off, rather than soaking in.

Our local town is building a massive family pool and water park, and the same thing is proposed about 20 minutes down the road, including golf courses. No one has a clue. Metro Altanta is one of the fastest growing areas of the US, and it depends on a very small lake for water. In addition, that lake has a very small watershed area to recharge it. So the deck is stacked against us in the long term.

I used to live in Florida and they have major water problems down there too. My brother lives there and he's a hydrogeologist. Florida has a great source of water called the FLoridian aquifer, but it's being tapped out. The aquifer in the Tampa area was drained so low that saltwater from the ocean seeped into it. In the Orlando area, the future of the water supply also looks bleak. In the town where I used to live, they actually approved building hundreds of houses in a swampy area that recharges the aquifer. The state ended up putting the brakes on that I think.

So our only hope here in GA for now is that we get a nice tropical storm or hurricane remnant coming over from the Atlantic to drop a few inches on us.

[joelcolorado]

AGAIN
Do you see anyone NOT watering

Golf courses,
Sports complexes
City parks..

NO>.....we are not out of water. Poor allocation is all.

[jdmartin]

I read that article about Pickens too and came to realize how fortunate I am to live alongside the Great Lakes. There seems to be something creepy about somebody buying up water so voraciously, I can't put my finger on it, but it just seems greedy somehow for one to try to corner the water supply market. I am not a socialist, but I feel that water should belong to the people as a whole maybe at a city or county level, not to individuals.

The people of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michiagan, Ohio, Pennsyvlania, Ontario and New York are so fortunate to have this amazing water legacy.

You forgot Indiana

[Denny]

I read that article about Pickens too and came to realize how fortunate I am to live alongside the Great Lakes. There seems to be something creepy about somebody buying up water so voraciously, I can't put my finger on it, but it just seems greedy somehow for one to try to corner the water supply market. I am not a socialist, but I feel that water should belong to the people as a whole maybe at a city or county level, not to individuals.

The people of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michiagan, Ohio, Pennsyvlania, Ontario and New York are so fortunate to have this amazing water legacy.

You forgot Indiana

Oops, sorry Hoosiers!

[cube]

Here in the Atlanta area, we have major water problems. We are in year 3 of a major drought (the type that they say comes along once in 100 years).
...

Q:
Is any of the water used for agricultural purposes?
//
In California back in the days when we had a drought there was a massive propaganda campaign to conserve urban water usage.
I'm all for optimization of a scarce resource but the dirty "truth" was that urban usage was a small fraction of total water usage:

All those low-flow shower heads and water frugal toilets did almost nothing.
However water and politics are joined at the hip.
A California politician cannot tell the naked truth and say:

"Maybe we should stop subsidizing farmers to grow cotton and rice in near desert like conditions!"