Water Scarcity On The Increase Out West

During the winter months, my weekly conversation with my Dad usually involves the weather. He tells me how it is eighty degrees outside in the San Fernando Valley while the wind chill touches zero here in New York. Then I counter in a semi-joking manner that goes something like this: "Well Dad, you live in a desert, of course it's warm, but at least we get rain here."

While it is funny over the phone, the future implications of that warm, dry weather are extremely dangerous for a part of the country that keeps growing in population yet is seeing its average precipitation amounts falling. Scientists continue to study the problem, but the more they pore over the data, the worse the outlook becomes.

From The NY Times:

The work builds on an earlier study by the researchers that looked at whether Lake Mead, the huge reservoir behind Hoover Dam, would eventually go dry. For the current study, they tweaked their model of river inflows and outflows and looked at the delivery shortfalls that would be needed to keep Lake Mead at the lowest functioning level. The modifications in the model “didn’t really change any of our answers,” Dr. Barnett said. “It just made the study a lot stronger.”

The study found that, with a 20 percent reduction in runoff, by 2050 nearly 9 of every 10 scheduled deliveries would be missed. But the problem may be even worse, because the allotments were determined in the 20th century, when, according to tree-ring data, the region was wetter than normal. So if drier conditions persist, delivery shortfalls will be even greater.

Water deliveries would have to be reduced, something that is achievable through conservation, water reuse and other measures. “We are hopeful that this would serve to get people to sit down now and see what options look realistic,” Dr. Barnett said, “before you have a crisis on your hands.”

On top of all that disheartening news concerning climate predictions, the article forgets to take population growth into account. Cities throughout the west are growing at exponential rates and they simply cannot take consume more for what the area allows. Here on the east coast, twenty million people in the NYC area have no problem getting water from the watershed upstate. We consume a lot, but there is more than enough supply. We even waste millions of gallons a year from faulty pipes and it is still ok (though that really should be fixed). Out in the west, every drop counts, and there are simply too many people for a decreasing amount of water.

The Coming Water Shortage

Make no mistake about it, water supplies are already dire in many places around the world. The poorer the country, the less access there is to clean, portable water. Thousands of people die due to easily treatable diseases that were stamped out in much of the western world a long time ago. Yet things are going to get much worse for us all if we do not drastically change the way we do things here on Earth.

From MSNBC:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Half the world's population could face a shortage of clean water by 2080 because of climate change, experts warned Tuesday.

Wong Poh Poh, a professor at the National University of Singapore, told a regional conference that global warming was disrupting water flow patterns and increasing the severity of floods, droughts and storms — all of which reduce the availability of drinking water.

Wong said the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that as many as 2 billion people won't have sufficient access to clean water by 2050. That figure is expected to rise to 3.2 billion by 2080 — nearly tripling the number who now do without it.

Most of those numbers are especially focused on the Asian continent, where burgeoning urban populations not only strain water infrastructure but pollute the supply nearby. Rising ocean levels are also a problem for low-lying areas in South Asia. Even in one of the richest areas of the world, California, will begin to suffer as the snowpacks of the Sierra Mountains continues to dwindle year by year. Much of the arid state relies on the snowpack through the dry summer and fall months. There are countless other problem spots, but all can be dealt with if we plan ahead, conserve better and stop emitting so much damn carbon into the atmosphere.