Forget about asteroids; the coming drought will do us in!

[NW-Bound]

Here's the new list of states with the worst drought (the worst listed first)

#1: California
#2: Nevada
#3: New Mexico
#4: Kansas
#5: Arizona
#6: Oklahoma
#7: Texas

Source: Seven States Running Out of Water - 24/7 Wall St.

This is bad! 100% of California is in "Severe Drought" (or higher), while 77% is in "Extreme Dought". For comparison, 76% of Arizona is in "Severe Drought" but only 7.7% is in "Extreme Drought". I do not know how the levels are defined, but the highest level is "Exceptional Drought". Oklahoma has 30% of the state at that highest level, while none of Arizona is at that level. A full 25% of California is at that highest level, and being a large state, that is a huge area.

Following is the drought map.

We are in deep (and cake dried) doodoo.

 

[Ronstar]

These cities aren't running out of water - it's just that they haven't installed facilities to use the water supplies at their disposal

 

[HFWR]

I would note that many of the places on that map (a) are relatively arid already, and (b) have growing populations, with the obligatory lawns, golf courses, etc.

 

[NW-Bound]

California drought has increased food price already - per news I've heard on my way home from work.

Makes me want to hoard CA almonds and walnuts!!!

I found out last night that CA now produces 80% of the world's almonds, and also that a single almond takes 1 gallon of water to produce. That seems awfully high, but then I also read that almond orchard annual water requirement is equivalent to flooding the field to the depth of 3 ft. So, 1 gallon per almond sounds plausible.

Many golf courses now use effluent from sewer treatment plants. Last year, there was a stint about an Australian town proposing mixing some of its effluent back into the fresh water for drinking, saying that it was completely safe. That might be so, but there was so much public objection that the plan was cancelled.

 

[NW-Bound]

These cities aren't running out of water - it's just that they haven't installed facilities to use the water supplies at their disposal

Perhaps elsewhere, but in the West and Southwest there really isn't more water. And we have had a poor winter. Lake levels in AZ are only 70% of normal, but in CA the snowpack is 16% of normal. Bleak!

Some orchard owners in CA pay for their own million-dollar drill rigs to dig for water. Whoa! We are pumping our aquifer dry. There's no more.

 

[Chuckanut]

Farming uses the most water then industry. So, while individual conservation is good in theory, overall, it's agriculture and business that need to find a way to do things with less water. A few million people putting a brick in the toilet to save flushing water is not going to do much.

 

[Chuckanut]

FWIW, Farmers in places like Oregon, Idaho and Washington are making a ton of money these days.

 

[NW-Bound]

I do not know much about agriculture, but read that CA climate is conducive to growing some crops that are tougher or impossible elsewhere. Similarly, AZ grows 90% of produce for the US during the winter months.

 

[Ronstar]

Perhaps elsewhere, but in the West and Southwest there really isn't more water. And we have had a poor winter. Lake levels in AZ are only 70% of normal, but in CA the snowpack is 16% of normal. Bleak!

Some orchard owners in CA pay for their own million-dollar drill rigs to dig for water. Whoa! We are pumping our aquifer dry. There's no more.

I was thinking mainly of the cities listed in Midpack's link - Cleveland, Miami, DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles. They have sources of water. And like tryan said - just build desalination plants for the cities on the coasts.

I don't know the answer to Arizona's water crisis. It's a problem due to a shrinking water source.

But Chicago puts nearly 1 billion gallons per day through its plant a day. I don't see why other cities with good supply can't do the same

 

[NW-Bound]

Cleveland, Miami should not be lacking water. I find that difficult to believe.

Actually SF and LA lack water just like Phoenix. This goes back way when (see the movie Chinatown). Decades ago, these cities already bought water rights hundreds of miles away, then pumped it home.

The big cities in the West are always fighting with the farmers to get water. In AZ now, around 60-70% of the water is used for agriculture. I think it's about the same in CA. And precipitation, both rain and snow, has been poor the last few years throughout the West and Southwest.

 

[robnplunder]

Farming uses the most water then industry. So, while individual conservation is good in theory, overall, it's agriculture and business that need to find a way to do things with less water. A few million people putting a brick in the toilet to save flushing water is not going to do much.

+1. Likewise, reducing number of showers I take isn't going to save a lot of water compare to feeding my lawn. This week, I received a letter from my county water department about drought penalty rate increase.

I wonder if there are a lot of efforts to grow genetically modified plants which uses less water.

 

[rodi]

I live in drought territory. People ignore the water restrictions. I see people watering their lawns daily, middle of the day.

We've got veggie planters, fruit trees, and xeriscape landscaping. We use gray water for some of the watering (outdoor shower and laundry). We do irrigate the veggie water with first-use tap water.

Waste water recovery is used to irrigate parks golf courses, and commercial landscaping. It's not potable, but the plants don't seem to mind. You can tell by the purple backflow preventers on that water system.

They've got the technology for toilet-to-tap - but people are too heeby-jeebied by it. Given the fact that some of our water comes from the end of the colorado river (which is pretty nasty by the time it gets to us) I'd almost rather have toilet-to-tap water.

I'm not sure if residents of San Diego will ever figure out that lawns are not appropriate landscaping for this area. It's a desert.

 

[NW-Bound]

I have also read about desalination. The problem there is cost. The water to supply a family of four will cost about $2K/year. Desalination takes a lot of energy. So, forget about using it for agriculture.

And a desalination plant is being built in San Diego County. Yes, same as LA and SF, SD lacks water too.

 

[H2ODude]

We referred to desal in the business as electricity in a bottle.

The whole pricing structure and respect for water is completely out of whack. Spent 38 years in the business and am glad it's someone else's worry now. In the southeast, saw bad droughts in 2001-2 and 07-08, the last one which damn near exhausted Atlanta, Raleigh, and Durham's sources. The panic all went away when it started raining again, and to my knowledge not a single additional source has been brought on line since then. One thing I know, you absolutely cannot solve a water deficit when you're in a drought (source development takes decades these days). Restrictions? Maybe choke off 5-10% but in most places as price has gone up discretionary water use has gone way down. What we called hardening the demand. Went from 80k to 105k customers as prices went up; the overall usage actually decreased because people cut out most irrigation. So now if a drought there's not much to squeeze out.

I predicted in 07 08 that a major city would have a water failure within 10 years. It may not happen before 17, but it will happen. Policy leaders have no stomach for dealing with these vulnerabilities. Water supply is designed on basis of 50 year safe yield, as in to withstand the worst drought of 50 year recurrence, or in other words, with the plan that there is slightly less than a 2% chance in any given year.....a city will run out of water. We don't design bridges, buildings, or airplanes with a chance of failing in any given year of 2%. I'm done, too painful.

 

[NW-Bound]

They've got the technology for toilet-to-tap - but people are too heeby-jeebied by it. Given the fact that some of our water comes from the end of the colorado river (which is pretty nasty by the time it gets to us) I'd almost rather have toilet-to-tap water.

Most people do not realize that the once mighty Colorado River stopped flowing to the sea a long, long time ago. The trickle that crosses the border has been so laden with salt that as a pact with Mexico, the US built a desalination plant to have some good water to pump to these poor downstream Mexicans to use.

And I read that in a National Geographic article some 15-20 years ago.

Speaking of agriculture, efficient irrigation methods have another side effect. Bad, bad side effect. Salt, fertilizer, and insecticides accumulate in the soil instead of getting leached away. With time, the productivity of the land decreases as the salinity of the soil increases.

If it's not one thing, it's another!

 

[NW-Bound]

The lack of water in LA has been ongoing for more than 100 years!

See: California Water Wars - Wikipedia.

Introduction:

The California Water Wars were a series of conflicts between the city of Los Angeles and farmers and ranchers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California. As Los Angeles grew in the late 1800s, it started to outgrow its water supply...​

 

[audreyh1]

Here's the new list of states with the worst drought (the worst listed first)

#1: California
#2: Nevada
#3: New Mexico
#4: Kansas
#5: Arizona
#6: Oklahoma
#7: Texas

Source: Seven States Running Out of Water - 24/7 Wall St.

This is bad! 100% of California is in "Severe Drought" (or higher), while 77% is in "Extreme Dought". For comparison, 76% of Arizona is in "Severe Drought" but only 7.7% is in "Extreme Drought". I do not know how the levels are defined, but the highest level is "Exceptional Drought". Oklahoma has 30% of the state at that highest level, while none of Arizona is at that level. A full 25% of California is at that highest level, and being a large state, that is a huge area.

Following is the drought map.

We are in deep (and cake dried) doodoo.

Texas looked like CA now in 2011.

Our tip of the state is white - for now. It will be turning color soon.

 

[Chuckanut]

They've got the technology for toilet-to-tap - but people are too heeby-jeebied by it. Given the fact that some of our water comes from the end of the colorado river (which is pretty nasty by the time it gets to us) I'd almost rather have toilet-to-tap water.

We already gave toilet to tap. It's called Earth's water cycle and it has been working well since before the first cave folks wandered about.

Earth's Water Cycle - Windows to the Universe

 

[NW-Bound]

But the recycling circle is getting shorter and shorter. Soon, we will be all like astronauts, doing our own processing of our waste in the home. Nice!

I happened to see a blog of a guy who was building his own RV out of a cargo trailer. He was going to process his own effluent and all that. My, what an ambition! So I got really interested. The guy changed his mind and abandoned the project before he even got to that point.

 

[Ronstar]

We already gave toilet to tap. It's called Earth's water cycle and it has been working well since before the first cave folks wandered about.

Earth's Water Cycle - Windows to the Universe

Yep. It's like the old saying. When you take a drink of water in New Orleans, 11 people drank it before you.

 

[brewer12345]

We referred to desal in the business as electricity in a bottle.

The whole pricing structure and respect for water is completely out of whack. Spent 38 years in the business and am glad it's someone else's worry now. In the southeast, saw bad droughts in 2001-2 and 07-08, the last one which damn near exhausted Atlanta, Raleigh, and Durham's sources. The panic all went away when it started raining again, and to my knowledge not a single additional source has been brought on line since then. One thing I know, you absolutely cannot solve a water deficit when you're in a drought (source development takes decades these days). Restrictions? Maybe choke off 5-10% but in most places as price has gone up discretionary water use has gone way down. What we called hardening the demand. Went from 80k to 105k customers as prices went up; the overall usage actually decreased because people cut out most irrigation. So now if a drought there's not much to squeeze out.

I predicted in 07 08 that a major city would have a water failure within 10 years. It may not happen before 17, but it will happen. Policy leaders have no stomach for dealing with these vulnerabilities. Water supply is designed on basis of 50 year safe yield, as in to withstand the worst drought of 50 year recurrence, or in other words, with the plan that there is slightly less than a 2% chance in any given year.....a city will run out of water. We don't design bridges, buildings, or airplanes with a chance of failing in any given year of 2%. I'm done, too painful.

Interesting. I have a silly question: as a retail simpleton/customer, what can I do to hedge these problems? I keep a 55 gal drum of water in the basement for emergencies, but obviously that does not go far. We are planning to get rid of the lawn in the front yard over the next few years and then shut off the sprinklers there. Anything else I can do?

 

[H2ODude]

Unfortunately, I have no answers as to what an individual reliant on utility water can do to hedge against flawed assumptions of supply sufficiency. During my first drought I went over two weeks without any decent sleep as I contemplated the various scenarios. Sure, no one will die of thirst. What is more problematic is economy, sanitation, firefighting. You can't turn the utility pressure down to conserve and you can't alternate delivery to areas; the hydraulics of about any utility don't allow it especially with any kind of terrain.

I attended one state meeting hosted by the governor and thought it was hilarious when the state honcho of public safety assured everyone that they were prepared if a major city lost its supply; their hurricane plan provided for delivery of bottled water! Really Toilets don't flush for days or weeks, no water for firefighting, and an economy basically...stops. Then after it started raining everyone forgot about the perils of the inadequacy.

I'm really not that familiar with western supply alternates; I suspect that in times of scarcity there may be the ability to divert ag water to municipal. However, in southeast cities except coastal are totally dependent on reservoirs and there aren't any real alternate sources except wastewater effluent. When the lake goes down, that's it. Don't even get me started on the flawed assumption that you can make drinking water out of the last 10-20% of the lake volume when it's chock full of sediment and algae, and your filter runs go from a day to hours and the losses from backwashing go from 10% to way up there.

As my signature line might indicate, I'm glad to free from any responsibility for the above subject. It's other's problems. As for the solution when facing growing populations and demand, it's depressing. Almost all potential reservoir sites in growing areas are in play or development has made them unpermittable if the environmental regs haven't already. In our state most would predict that we've permitted the last major drinking water reservoir. Now what? Meanwhile in our city people bit_h about a water and sewer bill going to over $40. Retirement is good!

 

[REWahoo]

With underground aquifer levels dropping and being 100% dependent on a well for (non-drinking) water, I've looked at rainwater harvesting. I discussed it with a neighbor down the road who installed a 20,000 gallon system a few years ago. It worked great - when it rained occasionally. During a couple of long dry spells he had to run a garden hose (several, actually) to his closest neighbor to get water from his well.

 

[H2ODude]

Let me add that one of the great fallacies of drought planning is states mandating that cities interconnect supply in the event of drought, which ReWahoo's post reminded me of. The problem is that a) when there's a drought in your city there in almost all likelihood is one in your neighbors! and b) when everyone is eyeing dropping lakes, no one cares about the neighbor if their city is in imminent danger. Hence the only way interconnects work is with ironclad contracts to supply in the face of drought; and that will come with a steep price IF the supplier is willing to sell those rights. I've seen cases where one city's residents say "why should WE be on restrictions, we're selling water to that OTHER city, dammit!" No easy answers in the business... Add to that that it used to be cities wanted to sell all they could for the revenue. Now there are few who do. OTOH, when droughts hit and restrictions kick in, if they are effective guess what happens to the revenue? You mean you're raising my rates because I conserved like you told me? The water business is largely one of fixed cost.

 

[NW-Bound]

... Retirement is good!

At the right place that is. Perhaps I should stick with my original plan as spelled out in my screen name: go where water is abundant.