America’s Water Crisis Can No Longer Be Ignored
Europe’s Gas Prices Drop 5% On Renewed U.S.-Iran Talks Optimism Expanding Venezuela’s heavy oil production… Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment.
His work has also appeared in The Christian Science… Policymakers, politicians, and the media have been talking about the need for better water policy in the desert southwest of the United States for decades.
As the Colorado River, a major source of water for much of that area, continues to shrink, policymakers are having a hard time keeping up with nature.A new 10-year plan contemplates cutting water supplies for Arizona, Nevada, and California by up to 40 percent, depending on availability.Not surprisingly, these states don't like the plan that the Trump Administration said it will impose on the states since they have been unable to come up with an agreement.
The century-old Colorado River Compact governed water allocations to the upper and lower basins of the river.But the compact overestimated water flows,and the states along the Colorado have been dealing with that error ever since.
Now, a drought that has spanned more than two decades has made matters worse.
I can remember flying into Las Vegas in 2009, looking out my window and seeing the so-called "bathtub ring" aroundLake Mead, the lake created byHoover Dam.
The top of the ring indicated where the water level had previously been before the ongoing multi-year drought noticeably lowered the lake level.
Las Vegas was at the time involved in what was essentially an emergency project to build a water intake at a deeper level for fear that the surface of Lake Mead would fall below the current intake and deprive the city of 40 percent of its water. The water authority succeeded in building the intake, but, of course, that didn't do anything to increase water supplies from the Colorado River.
In fact, the same problems that plagued Las Vegas and its Colorado River neighbors are only worse now, as continued growth and poor planning have finally hit the brick wall of water shortages.
Not surprisingly, when serious problems arise, the solution to which requires serious sacrifice, fantasy solutions arise with them.A group focused on recreational access to public landshas proposed legislation that would fundeight large desalination plants for southern California to dramatically reduce that state's need for Colorado waterand thereby return most of California's current allocation to the river.
The energy for such energy-intensive facilities, the group says, would likely have to come from new nuclear power plants.
The group can't be faulted for thinking small! Elsewhere, the city of Corpus Christi, Texas, located on the Gulf of Mexico coast, faces the unwelcome prospect thatits water reservoirs could come close to running out sometime next year.Heavy rain in April has delayed the crisis, but much more rain would be necessary to end the extreme drought that has gripped the city and its.
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