Water Wars
Fact: We are running out of water
Sustainability of water resources depends on many factors and the further away a city is from its water supply the more complicated it becomes. Water that needs to travel hundreds and thousands of miles to its destination is susceptible to loss from evaporation, quality degradation and changes the eco-systems that rely at on the water source. Consider California's historical "water wars" to demonstrate the importance of the distance the water must travel. The California Aqueduct channels water 444 miles from North to South. Along the way it is pumping through desert landscape where it loses even more water from evaporation and seepage. The State Water Project runs millions of gallons of water from the San Francisco Bay Delta to SoCal. It is the pumps used to move the water that are the cause of the death of the Delta Smelt. Then, there’s the Los Angeles Aqueduct that has dried up the Owens Valley. LA pretty nearly emptied Mono Lake. There are too many examples to list but make no mistake, water sustainability is a big issue now and with time it will be critically gigantic.
So what do we do?
It’s a debatable point. Society has been built on populations settling in vastly different landscapes. People are used to moving water to their communities. In cities, especially the big ones, there are large concentrations of people who rely on water resources from an ever widening range to meet the demands to run a large city. This raises lots of questions: how many other cities and communities are relying on the same water source? Is the existing water source consistent and is it renewable? Is the population increasing significantly in a particular area putting more pressure on water availability? There are numerous metropolises that don’t have this all figured out yet and the problem is only going to worsen. But for example, Phoenix is in a better position than other western regions. Unlike Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego and many others, Phoenix has the legal rights to more water and the infrastructure for moving it. This is not the case in Las Vegas where demand far exceeds supply even though it's closer to the river. Instead of talking about a ‘red herring’ -distance – it has been the casual over consumption of limited water resources that has resulted in skewed and inaccurate measurements.
Now Here’s the Bottom Line…
Debating the point is as useless as trying to stop a tornado. There are many people who think that all desert cities will not survive with or without fossil water. Just look at the Colorado River which continues to be eroded by drought. Is this the new ‘normal’? If so, we may be running out of the life sustaining water we need even sooner than we were led to believe.
The research team at Scripps Institution of Oceanography says: "The river is already so beleaguered by drought and climate change that one environmental study called it the nation's 'most endangered' waterway…the river's reservoirs could dry up in 13 years."
