Drought Settles In, Lake Shrinks and West's Worries Grow

[fearnobush]

By KIRK JOHNSON and DEAN E. MURPHY

Published: May 2, 2004


AGE, Ariz. — At five years and counting, the drought that has parched much of the West is getting much harder to shrug off as a blip.

Those who worry most about the future of the West — politicians, scientists, business leaders, city planners and environmentalists — are increasingly realizing that a world of eternally blue skies and meager mountain snowpacks may not be a passing phenomenon but rather the return of a harsh climatic norm.

Continuing research into drought cycles over the last 800 years bears this out, strongly suggesting that the relatively wet weather across much of the West during the 20th century was a fluke. In other words, scientists who study tree rings and ocean temperatures say, the development of the modern urbanized West — one of the biggest growth spurts in the nation's history — may have been based on a colossal miscalculation.

That shift is shaking many assumptions about how the West is run. Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, the states that depend on the Colorado River, are preparing for the possibility of water shortages for the first time since the Hoover Dam was built in the 1930's to control the river's flow. The top water official of the Bush administration, Bennett W. Raley, said recently that the federal government might step in if the states could not decide among themselves how to cope with dwindling supplies, a threat that riled local officials but underscored the growing urgency.

more
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/national/02DROU.html?hp>

[acmavm]

1. And if the bush* administration steps in we all the water will go to the

highest bidder (amongst his political cronies).

[dusty64]

12. This issue ought

to kill the rethugs in Nevada, Arizona and elsewhere if they try to privatize water. Lets hope that doesn't happen with Democratic support.

[dArKeR]

2. I'm in San Jose CA now and EVERYONE waters their lawn. But 60% of the

water flys out onto the sidewalks, streets, and onto man made objects. You can see small creeks flowing down the driveways onto the streets. Other have mist sprayers which all you need to do is look at and see 70% of the water being blown or evaporated away. As I remember being taught in school back in the 70-80s, we were supposed to become an environmentally wise society. But isn't it common sense by now? I thought San Jose was one of the more educated and modern cities in America?

Though, if Dems want to win the election, I think they have to follow the Reagan tact of pretending everything is fine and only speak of the positive.

In my opinion, we have a serious educational problem in America.

[gate of the sun]

3. I live in Santa fe

and if we let our water run into the streets we are fined. We can only water 3 days a week and are fined if we go above a certain amount. My lawn is dead. Not that I agree with lawns I don't. I think it's nice to have a bit of it but when I bought my house 2 years ago there was a lawn. It died. Even watering it , it died. Most of the Pinion Pines are dying or dead in Santa Fe , you see dead trees everywhere. It's very sad. Everyone no matter where they are should conserve and use water and other resources properly. Education in these regards only occurs usually because of something extreme in the place where you live in effected.

[R Hickey]

4. In Northwest Wisconsin we've had little rain or snow in three years

Me and a friend take his boat out every spring, when the snow melts and our local rivers flood. We like to go up rivers that are too shallow most of the year. Unfortunately these last three years, there have been no real floods to speak of.

Oddly enough though, because of the record warm weather, we have been able to get the boat into the Mississippi River, (near a power-plant where the water never freezes) at least once every month of this last winter, including December, January and February, and the coldest day that we ever took the boat out this winter, even in those three coldest months, was 44 degrees f.

[WillyT]

6. Anywhere Near Hayward, Or Grindstone Lake ???

:hi::shrug::hi:

[R Hickey]

13. Near Eau Claire

My friend with the boat lives near Hudson. Never heard of Grindstone Lake, I'll have to look on a map.

[WillyT]

36. It's North Of You, About 90 Miles South Of Duluth !!!

In Sawyer County, outside of Hayward, WI. We've had our family reunions there for years. Love fishin for Muskie!!!

:hi:

[Eye and Monkey]

5. ""Enchanted" and "xeriscape" may not be words that most New Mexicans - "

"Enchanted" and "xeriscape" may not be words that most New Mexicans use to describe the same landscape. But a new brochure from the New Mexico State Engineer Office is designed to change the way we think about xeriscaping by showing just how colorful and beautiful water conserving landscapes can be.

http://wrri.nmsu.edu/publish/dr/xviii3/xeriscap.html

[bpilgrim]

9. The Enchanted Xeriscape - LINK

http://www.seo.state.nm.us/water-info/conservation/enchanted-xeriscape.html

peace

[Lisa]

40. and it's not just for the "arid" areas either!

www.compost.bc.ca/serv/nesletters/ newslet_02_spring.pdf

Ever since we almost tapped out our local reservoir during a not-entirely-unexpected drought a couple of years ago, there has been increasing public interest in water conservation -- on the West Coast of Canada, an area which has always been thought of as having "plenty" of water.

Not so -- even Seattle and Vancouver get dry summers, and urban growth and climate change will both lead to increasingly severe water shortages this century.

[NickB79]

46. Heck, I live in MN and I xeriscape 1/5 acre of land

There is a sandy hilltop next to one of our ponds in the middle of our fields, and I've planted purple coneflower, gayfeather, black-eye Susan, Maximillian sunflower, staghorn sumac, burr oak, black locust, and even a few cold-hardy prickly pear cactus pads. Plenty of native species are beautiful and can survive poor, dry soil by using deep taproots.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

8. Native vegetation.

The native vegetation here is so beautiful that I can't understand why more use isn't made of it. It doesn't require the irrigation (or at least nowhere near as much)

It always irks the hell out of me when I see something like a street median being irrigated. (San Jose is exceptionally bad in this respect) It's totally unnecessary.
I understand the desire of people to have grass yards (nice for the kids, etc.) but there ought to be more stringent requirements for irrigation. What you say is correct about the little creeks flowing down the street.

[keithyboy]

15. But, but, we're Americans...we don't have to sacrifice for anybody

Reagan told you that when he was running for President...now get over it and move along.

[dArKeR]

24. Took some pics Monday morning May 3. Water Waste

http://darkerxdarker.tripod.com/ click top link 'Water Waste'.

[cally]

43. EBMUD used to fine for water waste

You may want to contact them to see if they will come out and talk to these people.

[opihimoimoi]

7. Its time to go ask scumbag Rush Limpdic about his denial of Global Warming

Our Nation is supposed to be the LEADER in addressing this threat
...not the procastinator.

[Mr.Green93]

16. How does this situation have anything to do with Global Warming?

[NickB79]

21. Some have speculated

That increased global warming will alter weather patterns; ie flooding in some areas and droughts in others. Since it seems that the evidence from geological and tree-ring studies show this to be a natural cycle, I don't think you can blame global warming entirely for this change. It may play a small part in worsening the drought, but in this case natural climatic flucuations seem to be doing most of the damage.

[opihimoimoi]

26. But evidence shows we are upsetting the natural cycle by our

heavy usage of fossil energy, deforestation, use of ozone affecting chemicals and compounds, poor environmental practicies, and waste.

Too many warnings by noted scientists have come forward for many years now telling us of the consequences and yet, it seems, the warnings fall on deaf ears.

Rush and a few others of his ilk led the way to refute those warnings. I place him at the head of the list who promoted the GW Denial Agenda. And now look, are we fucked or not?

Just wait till the Oceans really warm up, more and strong hurricanes, floodings, rising sea levels(already taking place and recently escalating), etc etc Nature is out of balance and She is Pissed.

[Beaker]

10. in chicago, our house doesn't even have a water meter...

we pay a flat fee, with no restrictions on useage...we can use the sprinklers as often as we like- i prefer to do so in the evenings, but a few times i've forgotten, and gone to bed with the sprnkler running.
my wife and i are contemplating a relocation in the near future, and I want to stay close to the great lakes- within pipeline distance, anyway.

[TahitiNut]

17. Most residences in California's Central Valley aren't metered.

It's a little-known fact that 90% of Califrnia's potable water is used for agribusiness. When California imposed water rationing and penalties, most Central Valley residences were immune due to the fact that their water isn't metered -- even if rationing 10% of the use made sense.

[stevedeshazer]

39. Same in Eastern Washington

Since you mentioned you'd lived there for a while.

Many of the agribusiness interests there get water for next to nothing from the Columbia Irrigation Project, which was a New Deal program to entice small farmers to settle the area and utilize the water newly stored by the Columbia dams. Most of them are gone now, but Archer Daniels Midland and J.R. Simplot outfits still get the cheap water.

And this in a place where it's 105 degrees in the summer, 20 degrees in winter, and gets seven inches of rain in a GOOD year. Not good "public" policy, IMO.

[Lisa]

41. Hamilton, Ontario only got metered a few years ago ...

It was a new concept for my parents, but they adapted pretty quickly.

[nolabels]

11. We will never run out of water

Just cheap ways to produce potable or usable, this why it is imperative to find viable and environmentally friendly energy sources. The focus on keeping the world hooked on petroleum is no accident. The oil cartels want to milk every last dime out of anybody that will give it up (they are greedy to say the least)

California Coastal Commission
Seawater Desalination in California
CHAPTER ONE: BACKGROUND
(snip)
Desalination Plants Worldwide

Of the more than 7,500 desalination plants in operation worldwide, 60% are located in the Middle East. The world's largest plant in Saudi Arabia produces 128 MGD of desalted water. In contrast, 12% of the world's capacity is produced in the Americas, with most of the plants located in the Caribbean and Florida. To date, only a limited number of desalination plants have been built along the California coast, primarily because the cost of desalination is generally higher than the costs of other water supply alternatives available in California (e.g., water transfers and groundwater pumping). However, as drought conditions occur and concern over water availability increases, desalination projects are being proposed at numerous locations in the state.
Desalination Technologies

Desalination is a process that removes dissolved minerals (including but not limited to salt) from seawater, brackish water, or treated wastewater. A number of technologies have been developed for desalination, including reverse osmosis (RO), distillation, electrodialysis, and vacuum freezing. Two of these technologies, RO and distillation, are being considered by municipalities, water districts, and private companies for development of seawater desalination in California. These methods are described below.

* Reverse Osmosis (RO)

In RO, feedwater is pumped at high pressure through permeable membranes, separating salts from the water (Figure 1). The feedwater is pretreated to remove particles that would clog the membranes. The quality of the water produced depends on the pressure, the concentration of salts in the feedwater, and the salt permeation constant of the membranes. Product water quality can be improved by adding a second pass of membranes, whereby product water from the first pass is fed to the second pass.

Figure 1. Flow Diagram of a reverse osmosis system (courtesy of USAID). (Kahn, 1986.)


(snip)
http://www.coastal.ca.gov/desalrpt/dchap1.html

[Ripley]

14. That was my thought...it will force new technology.

Well, I guess desalination is not new...Japan has done it for a long time. But it is expensive. Maybe the necessity will create new jobs and a process that won't cost an arm and a leg.

[NickB79]

22. True, but it won't come cheap

The days of cheap, virtually unlimited water supplies are over in the US. Unless you are some of the lucky few who have their own wells, like my dad on the farm, or live in a particularly wet part of the country, we will soon have to start paying big for water. Even with widespread implementation of desalination plants, widespread plantings of bright-green lawns and golfcourses in the West are a thing of the past, unless you are rich.

[mbperrin]

23. Here's a cheaper method -

http://www.takenaka.co.jp/takenaka_e/techno/n02_kaisui/n02_kaisui.htm

This membrane works the same way our bodies do.

[nolabels]

27. There are some places that such things would be feasible

Humans are sometimes very inefficient at using space and resources wisely but as soon as more people figure out that it all can work if we stick together with common goals, only then will success await us.

I sometimes worry about such things as fate, but for the remembering a secret once happened upon, that even if one dreamer still lives on, then real change is going to come regardless of what others might think. (we all are living what others dreamed of from earlier, good and bad)




Mojave Desert near Barstow, California." Color postcard. California Historical Society, Photography collection.

The Mojave is the largest desert in California, covering some 25,000 square miles. Much of the surface consists of immense stretches of sandy soil. Active volcanoes erupted long ago, depositing layers of lava, mud, and ash onto the desert floor. Today the region is dotted with extinct volcanic cones and small isolated mountain ranges.

[mbperrin]

35. Yep, here's a list of about 100

http://www.usbr.gov/pmts/water/reports.html

[nolabels]

42. It also makes it so galling that the government that is supposed to......

be working with us and for us has seen fit to work so much against the people its supposed to represent. If we are not going backward now, we are in at least in great big standstill with these corporate shills that have been installed

[THUNDER HANDS]

18. oops

Shoulda never left the Northeast, folks. There's a reason why this country was founded here instead of in Nevada.

[noonwitch]

19. Well, you can't have Michigan's water, our previous governor sold too much

and the Great Lakes are at an all-time low. Plus, due to the same former governor's relaxation of polluter-pay laws, the lakes are not only low on water, they are higher in pollution. My sister lives in Holland-the beaches on Lake Michigan in Holland were closed last summer a few times. I can never in my 39 years of living in the area remember Lake Michigan beaches ever being closed. Lake St. Clair, yes, repeatedly over the last 10 years or so (the Engler effect first showed up in the smallest Great Lake), Lake Erie in the 60s was a repulsive mess, but this is new and very scary.

[Nile]

20. Make lawns, swimming pools etc. against the law.

It is supposed to be desert isn't it? It is nothing but stupid people screwing up the environment. If you want to live in the desert try growing cactus instead of grass.

[sazdem]

25. Excuse Me

Making swimming pools illegal is not an answer. I have a pool but I am very conservative with my water usage. I have all desert landscaping. The state and local governments are some of the worst offenders. They are constantly landscaping freeways and around government buildings. All of this landscaping needs water. It doesn't make sense.

[Nile]

29. Is evaporation not a problem?

How many gallons of water do you have to add every week to your pool. Probably about as much as it would take to water a lawn.

[ConcernedCanuk]

28. The more you read - the scarier it gets.

.
.
.
_{Arizona's Lake Powell has lost nearly 60 percent of its water, making some boat ramps useless. The loss of nearly 60 percent of Lake Powell's water led to cracks five feet deep in the dried lake bed near Hite, Utah, as the Colorado River cut a new channel in the sediment.}

Part of the lake's problem, for example, dates to a miscalculation in 1922, when hydrologists overestimated the average flow of the Colorado River and locked the number into a multistate agreement called the Colorado River Compact. The compact, along with a subsequent treaty with Mexico, requires Lake Powell to release 8.23 million acre-feet of water each year below the river's dam, Glen Canyon, no matter how much comes in.
____________________________________________________________________

OOPS!

Time to break another agreement

More from the article:


Lake Powell, which has been called the aquatic piggy bank of the upper West, is overdrawn.

If water levels continue to fall, Powell will be unable to generate electricity as early as 2007 or sooner, some hydrologists say. And it would be reduced more or less to the old riverbed channel of the Colorado River not long after that. Even now, the lake's managers say, it would take a decade of historically normal rainfall to refill it.

/snip/
____________________________________________________________

So it's a problem that is NOT going to go away, and may or may not "fix" itself.

Time to get serious about water conservation.

Of course there's that other pesky problem.

Pollution from testing sites, - actually TOXIC pollution from bases, chemical plants, WMD factories and storage sites, under ground nuclear testing and so on has endangered the safety of he underground water supplies, and will for decades and centuries as the toxins continue to seep down through the soil.

Mother Nature's revenge has begun.

[ConcernedCanuk]

30. Found out there are larger pictures available - very sobering

.
.
.

YUP - that is a boat ramp in the left side of the picture



Imagine what you see in the forground, the dried up part USED to be covered with water.

Very sobering indeed.

[nolabels]

31. This is just one more reason big money needs to own the mass media

Or at least thought they should. You don't see this stuff on the Six-o-clock news, just happy smiley faces, telling everybody things are alright, just few criminals here and there. When truth is Corporate America is destroying the rest of America.

They knew they would never would win the debate, so they have taken the tools of debate away. Essentially blinding most of the people that work under or around them. A few other tragedies is loss of environmental and cultural diversity. Some, all or a few is going make it more difficult for succeeding generations.

Global warming / green house effect or ozone depletion. The most adapted to the onslaught is our mostly un-welcome Friend the insect. A mostly efficient life form, will run circles around us if push comes to shove.

Food Conversion Efficiencies of Insect Herbivores
March 1993. Volume 6, Issue #1.
By Richard L. Lindroth
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin

In his classic children's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle describes the development of an increasingly voracious caterpillar, from egg hatch to metamorphosis into a beautiful butterfly. In addition to the character appeal of the larva and aesthetic quality of the illustrations, the book teaches some valuable lessons about the nutritional ecology of insect herbivores. The caterpillar hatched on Sunday: on Monday he ate through one apple, on Tuesday two pears . . . and on Saturday "he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon. That night he had a stomachache!"

What are the lessons we can learn? First, the older (and bigger) the insect is, the faster it eats. Indeed, consumption and growth rates increase exponentially with insect age. For example, leaf consumption by the forest tent caterpillar (Malacosoma disslria) is approximately 0.05, 0.2, 0.8, 2.9 and 18.0 square inches for instars 1-5, respectively. Second, the older an insect is, the more diversified its diet may become. Most herbivorous insects are specialists. feeding on only one or a few related species for their entire life span. But some insects are generalists; notable among these is the gypsy moth (Lymanlria dispar), which feeds on over 300 species of woody plants. For these generalist feeders, diets typically become increasingly diversified as maturity affords both greater mobility and increased capacity to detoxify the chemical defenses of plants. Third, for caterpillars. as for humans, some foods or combinations thereof may bring considerable discomfort.

These are basic principles of the discipline of nutritional ecology, which, in short, addresses what insects eat, why they eat what they do, and how efficient they are in doing it. The latter theme will be introduced in this paper. Several excellent reviews have been published on the topic and can be consulted for additional information (see References).

Insects, like all living organisms, require energy and nutrients to survive, grow and reproduce. The nutritional components (e.g., protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals) of ingested food may or may not be digested and absorbed. The proportion of ingested food that is actually digested is denoted by AD, the assimilation efficiency (also called "approximate digestibility"). Of the nutrients absorbed, portions are expended in the processes of respiration and work. The proportion of digested food that is actually transformed into net insect biomass is denoted by ECD, the efficiency of conversion of digested food. A parallel parameter, ECI, indicates the efficiency of conversion of ingested food (ECI = AD x ECD). In short, AD indicates how digestible a food is, whereas ECD and ECI indicate how efficient a herbivore is in converting that food into biomass. These efficiency values may be calculated for specific dietary nutrients as well as for the bulk diet. For instance, nitrogen use efficiencies are informative because levels of plant nitrogen (an index of protein) are often times limiting to insect performance.

Food conversion efficiencies may vary considerably within a species. One cause of such variation involves homeostatic adjustment of consumption rates and efficiency parameters such that an insect can approach its "ideal" growth rate even with foods of different quality in various environments. For example, insects that experience reduced ECDs due to increased respiratory costs may be able to compensate by increasing consumption rates or digestion efficiencies (ADs). Not all changes are homeostatic, however. For instance, many insects increase food consumption rates in response to low concentrations of critical nutrients such as protein. Increased consumption will accelerate passage of food through the gut and thereby reduce ADs. In our work with the gypsy moth we found that larvae reared on a protein deficient diet increased consumption rates by 3-4-fold, but overall ADs declined by nearly as much. Other nonhomeostatic changes in efficiency values may occur in response to plant allelochemicals. For example, compensatory feeding to increase intake of a limiting nutrient may simultaneously increase exposure to plant toxins, which in turn may reduce ECDs. In practice, however, it can be quite difficult to ascertain "cause" and "effect" responses with efficiency parameters. Does the insect eat more because digestibility is low, or is digestibility low because the insect is eating more? Efficiency parameters are so closely physiologically related that determination of "cause" and "effect" is not a trivial matter
(snip)

<insert Tom Delay joke>

[JCMach1]

32. Desalinization is already a large-scale reality in the UAE

Coming soon to a site near you in the U.S.

Greywater feeds immense parks and landscaping that turns the desert into a garden... Drip irrigations saves the evaporation...

It can be done right... it just takes planning and cash.

For example, when they build any new powerplants here they couple the plant with a desalization plant to utilize the by-product of the energy production (heat) to distill water...

[Nile]

33. Not much salt water in Arazona and New Mexico.

No use for a desalization plant unless you are near the ocean.

[duhneece]

45. Not true

Southern New Mexico has very brackish, saline water under the White Sands National Monument (White Sands Missile Range). Native Americans mined for salt within 3 miles of where I live (between Alamogordo and Cloudcroft).
Right now there is a serious consideration about acquiring an RO system.
But I see the biggest problem in the laws that allow a city to buy the water (rights) from out-lying communities. This lowers water tables, drying up wells and drying up the few creeks that run in this area, killing plants and wildlife.

[Nile]

47. Not a very practical source of salt water.

Look for that to be sucked dry in a few years. You need to be near the ocean like most other desalinization plants.

[JCMach1]

48. However, wise water management would suggest DESAL

for California... You could then divert the resources of the Colorado and other western rivers to the interior West.

Ag would have to move to drip irrigation where possible.

[MadHound]

34. This is simply another reason to prepare if you can

It has been a well known fact for decades that the Ogallala Aquifer, a huge underground water reservoir strectching from southern South Dakota to northern Texas, is being depleted at an alarming rate. Water from this aquifer is getting redirected to the West coast urban areas, while the areas that normally are supplied by the aquifer, the High Plains and Midwest, are going without. And meanwhile, the supplies of cheap, potable water are becoming scarce.

I recently bought a small parcel of land, and one of the projects I've started on is to dig a large cistern and install a runoff rain catching system to fill the cistern. Thus, I will have water for crop irrigation(I'm planting a small garden) and with proper treatment, livestock and human consumption. My lawn, such as it is,doesn't get watered in the summer, except for the areas of new grass that I put in(tall fescue, hardy and drought resistant).

If you live in the city, you can start a rain catching system also. Simply cut short the drainpipes on your gutters, and then divert them into a covered rainbarrel. You can even incorporate the rainbarrels into your landscaping, giving your lawn a touch of the wild west. Then you will have a gravity fed supply of water to use in order to water gardens, plants, and grass if you feel the need.

[eeyore]

37. Cadillac Desert indeed

For a great read on the subject try Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. It will completely change your perspective on the way that the west was developed.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was a perceived urgency to quickly inhabit the west. The problem was that much of the west was unfit for most crops without massive irrigation systems, leading to the army corp of engineers dam building bonanza.

Now we have entire cities built around irrigation that is fed by the very dams that are lethal to fish. The Klamath Basin here in Oregon is a perfect example of the problem. Runoff has dwindled in recent years, and the farmers and ranchers believe that since their families homesteaded the land they are guaranteed water for eternity. Meanwhile, salmon are unable to get upstream to spawn if the farmers and ranchers get the water they need for their crops. To make things even more complicated, many of the farmers are government subsidized to grow crops that we already have in great surplus.

We have completely false economies built up all over the west that are sucking our limited water dry. But if we cut off their water the rural west would die a swift economic death.

This is only goin to get worse!

[hippywife]

38. Check out the top link

from today's (Monday, May 3rd) All Things Considered program.

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/

I was listening to it on the way home. The lake is down 100 feet and the idiots are still building a $75 million dollar marina complex.

[cally]

44. It's absurd that any of us in the west have lawns

I see new developments in Las Vegas with lawns and fountains. It's crazy. We have lawns all over California. All of us need to get rid of the lawns, plant native plants, and use drip irrigation. I think this may be my summer project.

[JCMach1]

49. You can have all the lawn you want with GREYWATER

:)

Plus the added bonus of a little extra fertilizer...