America’s Water Supply

-April 8, 2008


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I am amazed: since last summer, almost every day we see at least one news story on another water crisis in the U.S. The water crisis is no longer something that we know about as affecting developing countries or their poor in particular. It is right here in our own backyard. Today, in many parts of the U.S. we are nearing the limits of our water supplies. And that is getting our attention. The writing has been on the wall for some time. The private sector has been showing much interest in water as a source of profit, and water privatization has been an issue in many parts of the country.The failure in public water systems has indeed been a contributing factor for this interest. In many cities, consumers have been organizing and opposing the privatization of water utilities, because they have been concerned about affordability or deterioration in the quality of service. Environmental organizations and consumer activists have also been concerned about the socio-economic, health and environmental implications of ever increasing bottled water use. But for most of us living in the U.S., water is something we take for granted, available

-Groundwater resources, which provide half of the country’s drinking water as well as irrigation for crops and water for industrial use, also are diminishing, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Groundwater Resources Program. The Ogallala Aquifer, the massive groundwater network that lies under the Great Plains and feeds water to more than a quarter of the region’s irrigated land, continues to be a significant concern.
“Basically the groundwater is being depleted of its resource,” said Kevin Dennehy, the USGS project coordinator. “It’s been happening for quite some time and it’s going to continue to happen. The removal of water from the aquifer is at a greater rate than water is being re-charged in the aquifer naturally.”

The deteriorating condition of the Ogallala is a case in point. According to a June USGS reportwater from the aquifer is generally acceptable for drinking, irrigation, and livestock. But irrigation and leakage of nutrients down inactive irrigation wells is increasing concentrations of contaminants including nitrates deep in the aquifer, posing long-term risks to its safety as a source of drinking water.

In a worst-case scenario, water levels for all five Great Lakes could fall by an average of one to two feet, with Lake Huron and Lake Michigan facing the sharpest declines. Such declines will affect beach and coastal ecosystems, expose toxic contaminants and hinder recreational boating and commercial shipping. This could be particularly troubling for Michigan, a state with more than a million recreational boaters and more shoreline than any other state but Alaska.
Melanie Fitzpatrick, a climate scientist with UCS’ Climate Program, said in an interview with Circle of Blue that her organization’s findings were based on two scenarios—one that predicts lower emission levels in coming decades and another that estimates higher emission levels.
“They depend on our population, they depend on our emissions choices and they depend on the kind of technology we might create,” she said.

The lower emission scenario is based on global adoption of emission limits like those in the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), which the U.S. House passed in June. ACES calls for reducing the nation’s carbon emission levels between 17 and 20 percent by 2020.
The higher emission scenario was meant to reflect a worst-case scenario, Dr. Fitzpatrick said. “Unfortunately, our emissions are currently tracking higher than that high-emission scenario,” she added.
Under either scenario, increasing temperatures could shift rainfall patterns across the Midwest—resulting in less rain in the summer, but more in the winter, spring and fall.

With heavy rains already twice as frequent as they were a century ago, the Midwest should brace for even heavier downpours in the coming decades and more frequent floods like those that inundated the region in 2008.
“We know that that’s already a problem,” Dr. Fitzpatrick said, “Spring flooding is a problem in agriculture in terms of farmers getting into their fields to sow their crops, and we’ve seen some really significant flooding.”
She cited the Red River in western Minnesota and eastern North Dakota as an example. In the spring of 1997, the river rose to record levels, killing 11 people, causing billions of dollars in damage, and forcing more than 60,000 people from their homes. While that flood was thought to be a once-in-a-hundred-years event at the time, similar floods followed in 2001, 2006 and 2009, with the river reaching its highest level in recorded history this spring in Fargo, North Dakota.
In Wisconsin last year, much of the state experienced its wettest June. Six inches of rain fell on the town of Ontario in a single day, and flash floods swept away homes, roads and bridges. In the popular resort town of Wisconsin Dells, water overtopped a highway separating Lake Delton from the Wisconsin River, creating a washout that drained the lake dry.

These flash floods and heavy rainfall events are already a problem in cities like Philadelphia that don’t have adequate combined sewer overflow capacity,” Dr. Fitzpatrick noted. In Philadelphia and other cities where sewage systems are combined with storm water drainage systems, heavy rains can overflow the systems, and divert the wastewater into nearby streams and rivers.
Paradoxically, the Midwest also faces the possibility of more frequent short-term droughts in the coming decades due to falling amounts of summer rainfall combined with rising temperatures. Long-term droughts should be less frequent, according to the UCS report.

-when you turn your tap on -- to brush your teeth, to take a shower, to wash your car, to water your lawn, and if you have your own swimming pool then, to fill that as well.So it was with alarm that many of us read the story of Orme, a small town tucked away in the mountains of southern Tennessee that has become a recent symbol of the drought in the southeast. Orme has had to literally ration its water use, by collecting water for a few hours every day -- an everyday experience in most developing countries, but unusual for the U.S. This is an extreme experience from the southeast region that has been under a year long dry spell. In fact, the region's dry spell resulted in the city of Atlanta setting severe water use restrictions and three states, Georgia, Florida and Alabama, going to court over a water allocation dispute (settled in favor of Florida and Alabama early last month).Early this year we also heard that drought in the region could force nuclear reactor shut-downs. Nuclear reactors need billions of gallons of cooling water daily to operate, and in many of the lakes and rivers water levels are getting close to the limit set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is possible in the coming months that we may see water levels decrease below the intake pipes, or that shallow water could become warmer and unusable as a coolant. While this may not cause blackouts, this can result in increased costs for energy as utilities have to buy from other sources.Water concerns are not restricted to the southeast region -- similar issues have also been popping up in other parts of the United States. In the Midwest, concerns abound as to whether the newly emerging biofuel industry is putting undue pressure on the region's groundwater resources. The issue came into focus for the first time in the late summer of 2006 in Granite Falls, MN where an ethanol plant in its first year of operation depleted the groundwater so much that it had to begin pumping water from the Minnesota River.