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The next market crunch: water; To stave off water crises created by climate change, we need new systems that manage water, energy and ecosystems together

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 14, 2008 at 10:20 pm

From Miller-McCune:

It’s common practice to use business or banking metaphors when discussing the human use of water; in both cases, the central idea is to exert control, to manage. In its natural state, after all, water tends to be as unpredictable as booms and busts. It arrives as rain or snow, melts, runs into streams or seeps into the ground, floods, evaporates. Through enormous effort and expense, people have been able to corral that irregularity into something that can be relied on, mostly. You assume that your kitchen faucet will run whether or not it has rained recently, just as you expect you can tap into your savings during a recession. Farmers in California’s Imperial Valley, where rainfall averages three inches a year and temperatures routinely exceed 100 degrees, have for a hundred years known that the irrigation water will run so they can plant and harvest the nation’s winter salad crops.

What the managers who operate the water systems are doing is operating accounts. They’re balancing income and expenses, doling out allowances, sometimes running a surplus, sometimes a deficit. And sometimes hiccups occur, just as they do in the financial system. In recent months, some of them have been pretty severe. Just consider a few scenes from the last year in water.

In Southern California, where most of the last 10 years have been drier than usual, water managers last year asked consumers in San Diego to cut back their water usage by 20 gallons a day. Some farmers, meanwhile, faced less-than-voluntary cuts. Due to a previous deal that had provided them with cheap water in exchange for agreeing to be the first to cut back in case of drought, many saw their water supply sliced by 30 percent on Jan. 1. As a result, many have fallowed fields, even cut back avocado trees, to ensure that they can grow some crops with the remaining 70 percent.

These events serve as reminders that, for all the recent hullabaloo about oil — its rising price, its environmental impact, its political volatility — it’s not the only liquid likely to be fought over. Unlike oil, water’s not a cause of recent climate change, and it isn’t in any danger of being used up; indeed, it can be recycled ad infinitum. But there is still grave doubt about whether a warming world will have enough of it.

Read more of this comprehensive discussion of water issues from Miller McCune by clicking here.

July 14, 2008 · Filed Under General Water Issues, National water news

Comments

One Response to “The next market crunch: water; To stave off water crises created by climate change, we need new systems that manage water, energy and ecosystems together”

Ray Walker on July 15th, 2008 4:21 am

Amazing that the huge water agencies of CA, NV and AZ have been offered a truly new fresh water Source of 325,900,000,000 gallons a year ( 1 million acre feet) which is 3 times NV’s allocation from the Colorado River and all refuse to investigate. Development of the Source will not damage the environment or anyone’s water rights. Lake Mead could be kept reasonably full for the generation of 1800 megawatts of renewable energy. Mexicali’s water supply from seepage out of the All American Canal could be augmented rather than the present plan to terminate their only supply. The Bureau of Reclamation could easily coordinate investigation and development of the new Source. There is no interest in the new Source. Talk about A Failure to Communicate! Just goes to prove, you can lead a mule to water, but you can’t make it drink! Ray Walker waterrdw@yahoo.com

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