Much of U.S. Could See a Water Shortage
October 27th, 2007Via: AP:
An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.
Across America, the picture is critically clear – the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.
The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.
“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the Denver-based American Water Works Association.
Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.
“We’ve hit a remarkable moment,” said Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The last century was the century of water engineering. The next century is going to have to be the century of water efficiency.”
The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.
“Unfortunately, there’s just not going to be any more cheap water,” said Randy Brown, Pompano Beach’s utilities director.
It’s not just America’s problem – it’s global.
The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.
That doesn’t sound so staggering, compared with a certain other price tag.
People seldom reflect on the lavishness of water-use in our society. Our grandparents’ (or great-grandparents, depending how old your are) generation probably used about one-tenth the water we use today.
The main reason for this was, it was simply not physically possible to pull up, or pump with a hand-pump, enough water to allow every family member an individual daily bath. Nor was it physically possible to heat enough water on the wood stove–or chop enough wood–for such a luxury.
It wasn’t possible, either, for every family member to have freshly washed clothes for every day of the week. For Grandma, every day of the week would have been washday–in an era when wash-day was an all-day job, and the day when the week’s workoad was heaviest–the day when even meals had to be kept simple, because there was no time to cook.
And, of course, few people had flush toilets.
Our water use is in many ways like our oil use–almost unbelievably excessive, if you put it into a historical perspective. There has probably never in human history been a culture in which the average monthly water use for one person came to anywhere near 1,000 gallons a month–a level of water use that most people today would consider very restricted.
Limiting our water use will be as great a social adjustment as limiting our use of fossil fuels. And it will probably come about only when we are back to pumping it and heating it without fossil fuels.