Posts
Actually this is not a crisis; it is a predicament. Crises have solutions.
"Something has to be done". There is nothing to be done. This is the future.
"Something has to be done". There is nothing to be done. This is the future.
California
Has Never Experienced A Water Crisis Of This Magnitude – And The
Worst Is Yet To Come
18
June, 2015
Things
have never been this dry for this long in the recorded history of the
state of California, and this has created an unprecedented water
crisis. At this point, 1,900
wells have already gone completely dry in California,
and some communities are not receiving any more water at all.
As you read this article, 100
percent of the state is in some stage of drought, and there has been
so little precipitation this year that some young children have
never actually seen rain.
This
is already the
worst multi-year drought in the history of the state of California,
but this may only be just the beginning. Scientists tell us
that the amount of rain that California received during the 20th
century was highly unusual.
In fact, they tell us that it was the wettest century for the state
in at least 1000 years.
Now
that things are returning to “normal”, the state is completely
and total unprepared for it. California has never experienced a
water crisis of this magnitude, and other states in the western half
of the nation are starting to really suffer as well.
In the end, we could very well be headed for the
worst water crisis
this country has ever seen.
When
I said that some communities in California are not receiving any more
water, I was not exaggerating. Just consider the following
excerpt from
one recent news report…
The
community of Mountain House is days away from having no water at all
after the state cut off its only water source.
Anthony
Gordon saves drinking water just in case, even though he never
thought it would come to this.
“My
wife thinks I’m nuts. I have
like 500 gallons of drinking water stored in my home,”
he said.
The
upscale community of Mountain House, west of Tracy, is days away from
having no water. It’s not just about lawns—there
may not be a drop for the 15,000 residents to drink.
So
what are those people going to do?
And
what is this going to do to the property values in that area?
Who
in the world is going to want to buy a home that does not have
running water coming to it?
Other
communities throughout the state are pumping groundwater like crazy
in a desperate attempt to continue with business as usual. In
fact, it is being projected that groundwater will account for almost
all water used in the entire state by
the end of this year…
Underground
aquifers supply 35 percent of the water used by humans worldwide.
Demand is even greater in times of drought. Rain-starved California
is currently tapping aquifers for 60 percent of its water use as its
rivers and above-ground reservoirs dry up, a steep increase from the
usual 40 percent. Some
expect water from aquifers will account for virtually every drop of
the state’s fresh water supply by year end.
But
of course this creates a huge problem. When the groundwater is
gone, it is gone for good. Those aquifers took centuries to
fill up, and now they are being drained at a staggering rate.
In some parts of the state, aquifers are being drained so fast that
it is causing thousands of square miles of land to sink…
Californians
have been draining water so rapidly from underground aquifers
that tens
of thousands of square miles of land reportedly are sinking — so
drastically that the shifting surface is starting to destroy bridges
and crack highways across the state,
according to a recent report by
the Center for Investigative Reporting.
So
what is the solution?
Some
of my readers have suggested that desalination is the answer.
But the truth is that desalination is very expensive and it is really
bad for the environment.
For
those who are saying, “There’s no water problem in California! It
has the entire Pacific Ocean right next door!”, you need to look
into the catastrophic environmental destruction tied to ocean water
desalination.
Not
only does desalination use fossil fuels which emit the very same
carbon emissions that the California government insists caused the
drought in the first place, the desalination process itself pollutes
the ocean
with high concentration salt brine that kills marine ecosystems and
destroys ocean life along the California coastline.
And
that’s on top of all the Fukushima radiation that’s already
causing a marine ecosystem collapse in many areas of the coast. Add
more salt brine to the mix and you get a state where rich,
self-entitled Hollywood celebrities demand their lush, green lawns at
the expense of ocean life, climate change and the global ecosystem.
If that happens, California will lose all credibility as a “green”
state, and its wealthiest residents will be living an ecological
lie.
Others
have suggested that California can solve their water problems
using “toilet
to tap” technology…
Potable
water reuse – or converting sewage effluent to heavily-treated,
purified drinking water – is receiving renewed attention in
California in the midst of the state’s four-year drought.
According
to a report by the Los Angeles Times, “California water managers
and environmentalists” are pushing the idea of recycled sewage
water. Yet past efforts in the state to employ similar systems have
stalled, as opponents have dubbed the concept “toilet to tap.”
How
would you feel about that?
Would
you be willing to have your family drink water that came from the
toilets of your neighbors?
I
don’t think that I could do that.
But
something has to be done.
It is not just the state of California that is experiencing a major
water crisis. All over the world, underground aquifers are
being drained rapidly. In fact, according
to the Washington Post,
21 out of the 37 largest aquifers in the world “have passed their
sustainability tipping points”…
The
world’s largest underground aquifers – a source of fresh water
for hundreds of millions of people — are being depleted at alarming
rates, according to new NASA satellite data that provides the most
detailed picture yet of vital water reserves hidden under the Earth’s
surface.
Twenty-one
of the world’s 37 largest aquifers — in locations from India and
China to the United States and France — have passed their
sustainability tipping points, meaning more water was removed than
replaced during the decade-long study period, researchers announced
Tuesday. Thirteen aquifers declined at rates that put them into the
most troubled category. The researchers said this indicated a
long-term problem that’s likely to worsen as reliance on aquifers
grows.
Sadly,
this is just the beginning.
There is a reason why experts refer to fresh water as “the new
oil”.
Without fresh water, none of us can survive. But we are very
quickly getting to the point where there simply won’t be enough of
it for everyone on the planet.
As
for the state of California, it was once a desert and now it
is turning back into a desert.
As I mentioned earlier, the 20th century was the wettest century that
part of North America had seen in
at least 1000 years.
During that time, we built enormous cities all over the Southwest
that currently support millions upon millions of people. But
now we are learning that those cities are not sustainable
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.