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Millions of Groundwater Wells Could Run Dry
- ianai 6y agoFamily of mine just had to install a cistern after their well needed to be extended-it’s already been extended. Ie there’s just no more water there I think or something. Water in the southwest has obviously always been something to take seriously. But as someone who’s always lived here, this seems much more pressing than anytime in the past. Wish this was a problem society could and would tackle as a “group effort”.
- milkytron 6y ago> Wish this was a problem society could and would tackle as a “group effort”. From a macro level, it has been. There have been water pacts in the west for nearly a century. But these will likely need to change in order to address the severity of the issue. I'm curious how these will be changed in the future, it seems like there might need to be new legislation sooner rather than later.
- Arrath 6y agoThose water pacts are generally very out of date and haven't adapted to modern populations and usage volumes, though. Change must come.
- bobthepanda 6y agoIsn‘t there also an issue where water pacts were drawn up during what appears to have been a rainier period of time?
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoMost the US southwest seems to be organized around the concept of water rights, typically measured in acre-feet. Even though this assignment of rights is rather old and has a multitude of problems related to the way it doesn't describe current usage patterns, that's not the biggest problem: it doesn't help to have the water rights to 300 acre-feet on your property if that water doesn't exist!
- nradov 6y agoUltimately I think we'll need to have state governments seize those water rights through eminent domain (with fair market value payments), then institute an auction system to allocated only a sustainable level of water extraction. The problem today is that water prices are fixed below the market rate and fail to account for externalities so water users have little incentive to conserve.
- derekp7 6y agoHere's the other lovely thing, is the deeper you go with a well the worse the water quality. Deep water could have been sitting there for thousands of years and may have a higher radon concentration.
- linuxftw 6y agoWe are solving it as a society. You're free to move somewhere there's more water, or you can not have any.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- omegaworks 6y agoAh yes, the Ben Shapiro climate solution: "Just sell your house and move somewhere else!" Who, pray tell, will buy a house with no water?
- ianai 6y agoThat’s also not going to work if we’re talking about farmland. Not every parcel of land is exchangeable for every other. It’s one thing to point at a city and say “fewer people could live there” and another to point at farmland and say society won’t feel an impact from not growing the crops on it.
- hedora 6y agoTell that to Intel. They’re building a fab in Phoenix.
- linuxftw 6y agoThat's up to the people that live in Phoenix. If they want Intel to deplete their aquifer, that's their choice.
- ab_testing 6y agoArizona has some of the largest lettuce farms in the nation. They consume extensive amounts of water. They can be moved to someplace with lots of rain like the Pacific northwest.
- m463 6y agoIs because lettuce grows well with sunshine? I wonder if somewhere with lots of rain would (necessarily) have weaker sunshine and grow lettuce slower, or grow smaller lettuce.
- tempfs 6y agoCalifornia and the other Mexico-bordering states have so much ag in the middle of the desert because of the ready supply of immigrants.
- s0rce 6y agoThere are lots of Mexicans working in ag in Central Washington state and even in Ontario, Canada. Its climate/weather driven not proximity.
- derekbaker783 6y agoFairly similar story in Upstate New York.
- anonAndOn 6y ago> California and the other Mexico-bordering states have so much ag in the middle of the desert because... ... the arable land is flat, sunny, cheap and the government allocated more than all of the Colorado River flow[0] into irrigation systems for them. [1][2] [0]https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45546 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45546 [1]https://www.iid.com/water/water-transportation-system/colorado-river-facilities/all-american-canal https://www.iid.com/water/water-transportation-system/colora... [2]https://www.cap-az.com/about-us/background https://www.cap-az.com/about-us/background
- xyst 6y agothe bill comes due decades of polluting the world with reckless abandon did not come without it's consequences. unfortunately the current generation has to clean up what the previous generations created
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoAlthough we have certainly spent decades polluting the world with reckless abandon, the issues outlined in TFA don't have much to do with pollution. It's about water use, more specifically excessive water use, not pollution.
- thatguy0900 6y ago"current generation has to clean up what the previous generations created" considering all my 20 year old friends zeal for bitcoin it won't be us cleaning it up either, good luck to the current 5 year olds
- loopz 6y agoIt'll be you reincarnated.
- dsalzman 6y agoBeen researching water usage a lot lately. Truly eye opening the amount of indirect water we consume through food products. We "eat" 3496 litres of water everyday. Check out https://thewaterweeat.com/ https://thewaterweeat.com/ for a great infographic.
- thesausageking 6y agoThis infographic is very misleading. All water isn't created equally. A liter in a very wet place like Florida used to grow strawberries doesn't have much of an impact, while a liter taken from depleted aquifers in dry, northern Texas makes a bad situation worse.
- dsalzman 6y agothat is true, but just like oil water can be transported via pipelines.
- CapitalistCartr 6y agoAnd, just as oil, it costs money, adding to the price.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoAnd, with enough electricity, taken right from the ocean.
- Retric 6y agoIn theory sure, but not so much in practice. The east coast of the US dumps a lot of fresh water into the ocean, but trying to transport it to the Midwest is pardon the pun a herculean task.
- Clubber 6y agoWe transfer millions of dollars of fresh Florida water all over the world every day at a profit margin of ~1600x. It comes in little plastic bottles.
- c54 6y agoAnyone have the access to the PDF they cite? I don't have an account on AAAS https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6540/418 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6540/418
- MooMooMilkParty 6y agoYou can get a copy at the lead author's website: http://www.jasechko.com/papers.html http://www.jasechko.com/papers.html Edit: Or, here's the direct link: http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/372/6540/418?ijkey=E3Wia9eSV/hWo&keytype=ref&siteid=sci http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/372/6540/418?...
- harpiaharpyja 6y agoThe #1 factor impacting groundwater production is land use. Yes, blame climate change, but it's going to become increasingly important to ensure that land is used in a way that generates lots of high quality groundwater (forests) and avoid land use that diverts water to overland flow (agriculture and urban land use).
- goda90 6y agoHealthy soil is important too! A thick layer of living soil will absorb a lot more rainfall than dust and sand. If farmers were to practice things like no till and cover crops, they'd find they have to do a lot less irrigating after it rains
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoCover crop is an extremely common practice among farmers. No-till not as much.
- mythrwy 6y agoOne of the lowest hanging fruits in water conservation are reducing irrigated forage crops (like alfalfa or silage). Without getting into meat production, dairy is a tremendous user of water. I'm particularly excited to see lab created milk. I suspect it will be easier to take to production then artificial meat, and we can free much of the water (and land for that matter) while continuing to enjoy our cheese pizzas.
- mdorazio 6y agoWhy lab created milk instead of something like oat milk? As a lactose intolerant person, I don't miss cow milk at all. Cheese substitutes mostly suck, though.
- lainga 6y agoWell, I am not lactose intolerant, and I don't don't miss cow milk.
- InvaderFizz 6y agoI'm lactose intolerant and I miss milk greatly. It doesn't help that I also have a mild reaction to nuts, so almond milk is out. Oatmilk is just meh. Best I've found for cheese substitute so far is a brand called follow your heart from Sprouts. It is only good if really well melted on toast, otherwise it's very much unsavory. Stay away from the mild cheddar and Gouda, both are really bad. The provolone is ok, the American is ok as well.
- toiletfuneral 6y agoBut the market should have priced this in and managed the resource efficiently....hahahah just joking. Congrats to big Ag's shareholders
- Veserv 6y agoFreshwater depletion is unlikely to be a real problem in any developed country. State-of-the-art desalination plants in Israel are fulfilling contracts for hundreds of thousands of people at ~$0.40/m^3 [1], so $0.40 per thousand liters. The per-capita water usage in the US is ~1200 m^3/yr including all indirect water such a industrial, food and food exports [2], with peer nations such a Germany using ~300 m^3/yr, and Israel using ~130 m^3/yr. That amounts to a ~$480/yr increase in yearly expenditure per American which is a ~1.4% increase in base expenditure for the average American which by most metrics would constitute a fairly moderate expense especially for something as critical as food or water. This also assumes that the increase in water prices would not result in a change in water habits similar to other peer countries which are using a fraction of the water per-capita or Israel whose people have already adapted their lifestyles to the expense of desalination. About the only conceivable problems for developed countries relate to scaling up global desalination by a factor of 100x-1000x. However, given the existing scale and maturity in the industry, I find it fairly unlikely that it would not be possible to scale up while maintaining existing prices given a reasonable lead time. Given that it is highly unlikely that any country would preferentially choose to deprive their citizens of water or food unless there were no other choice, this reduces the problem of freshwater depletion to just a problem of power generation and a problem of how to solve it for less-developed countries who might not have the resources to engage in mass desalination. However, I will declare those problems to be out-of-scope for this discussion as they are complex topics in their own right with various proposed solutions and tradeoffs. [1] https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/05/27/2039505/0/en/IDE-Technologies-Secures-the-Sorek-B-Tender.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/05/27/203950... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263156/water-consumption-in-selected-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263156/water-consumption...
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoI live in the dry US southwest. My home is roughly a thousand miles in two directions from an ocean, and much, much more in the other two directions. Although it is not completely unimaginable, I very much doubt that there will ever be a pipeline from an ocean desalination plant to the area where I live.
- economusty 6y agoIt's going to be fine, we will reach peak population soon enough then population will fall, fewer homes and urban areas will be developed farm land will sit fallow.
- hyperion2010 6y agoI will point to a related thread [0] along with my previous comment. In the western United States there is no "could" there is only "will." This has been understood for more than 140 years [1]. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18098899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18098899 1. https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/70039240/report.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/70039240/report.pdf LANDS OF THE ARID REGION John Wesley Powell