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This post is part of a series in which we look at why those basic things that we take for granted--such as water, food, and fuel--are getting expensive and scarce, all at once.
We have lots of water in the States, so much that we can let it just flow over Niagara Falls, right? How did it get to the point where there are such problems in Georgia and the Southwest?
Blame Willis Carrier. Before he invented air conditioning,not many people lived in the American Southwest, it was just too hot for much of the year. It was only after World War II, when air conditioning became common and affordable, that the mass migration of people and industry could happen from cooler Northern states to California, Nevada and Arizona. Without AC, Atlanta and Florida are almost uninhabitable.
People used to live where the water was; rivers were also the medium of communication, the cheapest way to move goods and people. With the development of rail transport and then roads, People could go anywhere. But they still had to drink.
Blame Herbert Hoover. While Secretary of Commerce under President Harding, he beat the state governors into submission to apportion the Colorado river among Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, and paved the way for the Hoover Dam, providing water and energy to enable millions to move south. Americans acted like they had as much water as they wanted, and use more of it per person than anyone else, over 2500 cubic meters per person per year. (See a graph at Wired here).
Blame Bad Government Policies. two-thirds of the water used in America goes to agriculture, some of it hugely subsidized. Like rice growing in California. And don't get us started on how much water is needed to make ethanol. Much of the rest is used for industry; only a tenth is used by people. Stopping the dripping faucet in your bathroom is a joke compared to the millions of gallons lost to leaky infrastructure. (Not that you shouldn't fix it.)
For all of these reasons, people have moved from where the water is to where it isn't, and are pulling it out of the ground and out of the rivers at a rate faster than it can be replenished. They are also looking back north and wondering why they shouldn't get some of it. "We will, in fact, get into major water wars," says Milton Clark, a senior health and science adviser for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "You will see water wars coming in every way, shape or form. In the U.S., there are some leading politicians who have said the Great Lakes do, in fact, belong (to everyone) and all water should be nationalized and this certainly is a concern."
Blame Canada. That is what a lot of Americans are doing; Canadians let billions of gallons of water flow north to Hudsons Bay when it could be replenishing the Great Lakes, and under international treaties has an equal say in how the Great Lakes water can be used. There are many Canadians who are seriously worried that the next wars will be fought over water, not oil.
However, like Peak Rice, this is a political problem masked as a resource problem. There is lots of water in America, it is just grossly mis-allocated and wasted. Stop subsidizing water-hogging agriculture; re-work the distribution among the southwestern states; fix the distribution infrastructure and set up policies that encourage the revitalization and repopulation of the Great Lakes States.
Learn more from TreeHugger:
Water Shortages Hit Long Beach
Eco-Tips: Conserving Water California Farmers To Forgo Planting: Sell Water To Thirsty Cities
More Peak Everything posts from this series
Peak Everything: Learn About Peak Corn
Peak Everything: Learn About Peak Oil
Peak Everything: Learn About Peak Rice
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