Water Scarcity Facing 1/3 of US Counties

asteroids. You forgot the asteroids. Heat good, heat kill parasites. And cancer. Ungowah Cheetah.

Actually, some years ago scientists were supposed to be working on a cover material or chemical to stop evaporation from all US lakes and reservoirs. So technically this shouldn't be happening.

And if all our water wasn't being evaporated maybe Pakistan wouldn't have been flooded near as bad. Science has dropped the ball.

Science's best brains are working on space travel? Weapons systems and drones? Invisible armor and tanks? Hadron colliders and seed repositories? Avon lipstick and mascara?

wow really....?

"We"? Where does we come into anything? And what exactly d'ya mean by that strange word "allow"? I think people are doing what they want to do, without our permission. They ran out of Indians.

Well thats just what they want us to see. I think it's called propaganda or scare tactics. Oh yea Texas is also a pretty dry state. Well the west half is anyway. I've headed that way a couple of times. I didn't care for it to much. To hot an dry I'm used to the muggy Gulf Coast of South Texas.

I agree with you in regards to many counties and Texas regions. The Dallas area should plan ahead a little more carefully though.

Right now as we speak They are trying to buy some of the water rights from Oklahoma. My brother is going to send me some stuff in the mail about how it is going to hurt the locals around the lake they are wanting to drain dry.

It's another human fail. In other words, we still have time to conserve and take moral steps to preserve our water sources. But it seems humans on the whole are lazy and just want to jump to the quick fix which isn't really a fix because they don't have what it takes to choose the moral decisions. Dow and other companies however are salivating at getting started on that and their own form of privitizing a public trust. We could choose to do the right thing and decrease our usage and be more responsible in what we use in industry and with the energy sources we choose as coal, oil and nuclear use much water and pollute it, but of course, we won't. We will simply continue to pollute and waste it and then think taking the band aid way out will save us.

One of the problems with desalination plants is what do you do with the extracts that one gets from it? When you put it back into the ocean then you are just raiseing the salinity of the oceans which in turn kills off a lot of plants and fish. When you dump it onto the Earth it kills the soil an nothing will grow. So Ya see it is a catch 22. You will have water for mankind but you will destroy the very thing thats keeping us alive. Thats the problem with desalination plants what do you do with the by product ?

You start designing homes and buildings and skyscrapers our of salt crystals. Like they did back on Krypton before it exploded. Just add some chemicals to the salt and metal ions and all that stuff to form great crystalline cities.

And get away from working the carbon footprint stuff like metal.

What you are talking about makes little sense. The salt is to unstable to build with.

hahaha Salt can be shaped then added to whatever chemicals stops it from dissolving + causes it to harden into a CRYSTALLINE structure. Like a sand castle. Get the equation right Bailey and you're In Like Flint forever. When you die they bury ya in your house.

Since Salt is rather heavy you'd want to add something that expands it out, voila lighter. Possibly a chemical that after making the walls zap an electric current through it to FLASH HARDEN~DRY IT. It would be stronger than steel.

Um when I die I will be recyled. ashes to ashes dust to dust when I die it will be a rush.

Read the other day where a fellow patented a coffin that buries itself. I think you'd have to still be alive to push the button. Just a thought.

Here in the great State of Texas we can be buried on our own property an with out all the embalming if done within twenty four hours of death. So thats my plan.

Are you even worth a roll of Saran Wrap? Oh wait, I get it now. You want to go out like Outlaw Josey Bailey. Good plan.

Well that would be a lot of saltines or a lot beer salts.

That helps but I hear they are not legal every where. A lot of folks around here are putting in shallow wells for watering their yards an to save water. One can put in a shallow well in a weekend with simple tools and a little help from friends. Here is just one link on how to do it.http://www.ehow.com/how_2095726_install-shallow-well.html

In the back of Mother Earth News are some well drilling rigs that can be used by a homeowner with a minimum of mechanical ability. Well pumps need a 4" hole so that would be my barometer. Where I live you need a Health department permit to have a well drilled, even for cattle. Of course, greywater systems are verboten but many people have them. Back to water, yes I am aware that in some areas the collection of water is a no-no. The water is deemed to be owned by whoever owns the water rights in that area. Suffice to say that I would not be surprised to see more and more controls in this area over the next many years.
Thank you for the link. I will visit the site.

In the back of Mother Earth News there are companies that make and sell home well drilling kits. Well pumps, at least the submersible ones, require a 4" hole so that would be my barometer. Around here we need a Health Department permit to drill a well, even for livestock. Of course, greywater systems are illegal as the state considers this to be dumping sewage on the land of the state. Doesn't matter, most people have this anyway.
I have heard that in many areas it is a no-no to collect rainwater as it is considered to be the property of whoever owns the water rights to that area. I would not be surprised to see this concept expand.
Thank you for the link.

it is only illegal if you get caught.

No argument there

You can always put one in and say it was there already.

They love the doom an gloom I think they just wake-up to see how bad they can make things look.

Its not something to panic over just something to keep in mind. The US although isolated and sitting on top a mountain of natural resources is not immune to problems like water shortages... especially in the arid and dry border states.

That is true but the border states have always been dry. I think it is called the Desert south west But I may be misstaken

Yes it would seem like a no brainer except people build cities in stupid places... such as in the middle of a desert. When MILLIONS of people rely on water being imported from other places there can be a serious problem if there are disruptions to that supply.

Oh no i know theyve always been like that. Actually i was gonna make the joke that this story was from the early 20th century but i didnt think anyone would get it but me haha

No need to make stuff up there IS an oxygen shortage, but right now it's at a point where it causes problems for larger people (BIG OLDER MEN) but not so much for smaller women and children. So there's an illusion that nothing's wrong.

Look how many large men are in prison. But the mental problems are not so much from the oxygen SHORTAGE. When there's a shortage of oxygen in the brain that means there's an accompanying increase of carbon monoxide.

Big old poisoned men commit more crimes. Killer eh?

This fails to explain Jan though so you're safe from having to actually alter any of your cherished-to-the-bosom beliefs.

Riiiiight...

No the Earth goes through a cycle of hot then cold wet then dry . We are seeing a cycle that is going to get hot an dry for some an wet for others.. Whats strange is so many don't want to see it for what it truely is a cycle an all natural cycle.

Most ADULTS don't want their epitaph to read ->

Here lies Joe Schmuck Bailey killed by a runaway cycle.

You're welcome.

what artemis6 said,..... +^d !

Global warming is a real environmental issue as well and is related to water scarcity.

"One out of three U.S. counties is facing a greater risk of water shortages by mid-century due to global warming"

The first line of this article.

"they won't supply us with the technology that converts humidity (the water in the atmosphere) to liquid"

A dehumidifier? Technology to pull moisture out of the air isn't exactly complicated.

I wonder how much water comes off a 25,000 btu heat pump and drips off into the ground where it just evaporates?

Not to mention all the super-sized heatpumps working to strain gnats on top of every store, every Sears Roebuck, Target, and Wal-Mart in the world. Are they using that water?

Every Sam's Club, every Penney's, every super Mall in New Jersey and Las Vegas Nevada motel chains, casinos and hospitals in the WORLD. Every one of em bleeding clean water out of the air and the people are crying about a Water Shortage?

True but dehumidifiers require access to a power source. DARPA has developed a device that can pull moisture out of the air without needing any power source.

Why is needing a power source a problem?

The AC we have fills a two Gallon bucket once a day. We use it too water the plants around the yard and to make sure the cats an other critters have water. I think it is a eight or ten thousand B.T.U. unit

What is it called - I want to see it !

I wish i could tell you. I saw an article here on current years ago about the device but its name escapes me. Sorry =(

The day may come when there will be a fine for doing this.

Well I really would only think it necessary if we saw drought to the extreme as Southern Australia or China has. I would hope people's common sense would help avert such actions.

Just wondering How does a pool lose hundreds of gallons of water a day ? I could see it if it were to have a leak but even that would drain the pool every day. The most you will lose on evaporation is fifty or a hundred gallons a day during the peak of the summer. The pool it self may contain a hundredthousand gallons of water but I dout if it's losing that much.

What about the water filtraion system? How is it to lose that much water? The pond down the road from me is no wheres near that big and it goes dry once every two or three years.

Big toys for rich boys. I guess it beats swimming in the local pond

No there not that would be a illegal hook up. The pool must have a seperate fill hose. Well thats the way they are around here.

http://etc.ga

While population is a factor, it is the actions of those people that in the end bring about the change or destruction of the species. If we didn't pollute, used more water conserving irrigation practices, used only what we needed, had access to rain harvesting, waterless toilets, etc., gave more funds to upgrade infrastructrue than wars, and actually instilled in our children from a very young age the importance of conserving water I think it would go a long way to providing for the needs of all, even in places with moderate population increases. To say it is just population increases seems to negate our responsibility regardless of them.

And all of the water that you save from doing that would not provide sufficient water to the third world that they need right this minute. If you want Americans to use less water then charge them more. I happen to work quite closely with a very forward thinking water authority in the wealthies county in the US. Their motto is "all the water you need". They control over usage with a multi tier billing system which allows each residence all the water they need for a fair, affordable price but quickly becames very pricey for people with high usage. Secondly you would need to ban development in areas that dont have the water to support it. That would include Nevada, California and Arizona right off the type. Then we could move on to the water hunger agriculture and our system of shipping our food from across the globe to the local supermarket.

On the surface, water conservation sounds good. But when you conserve water to the extreme you're also halting down on the earth's water cycle. We had a bad drought here in SW Vrginia in 2002 that suddenly ended mid-2003. I wrote an article to the newspaper about the need to keep the water moving.

We've had plenty of rainfall here ever since. Just like the rain forest and trees in the forests. Anyone who cuts down too many invites a drought. They stopped the water cycle. You could make a good argument for returning to using clotheslines... if it wasn't for the fact that moisture is the worst "greenhouse gas".

The worst drought-stricken areas are in Africa, so probably if we poured some think tank power into fixing Africa the rest of the planet would pull itself back on course. I imagine the flooding of Pakistan was actually aided by the droughts elsewhere.

The way it looks from here, the airborne water is sloshing around like the planet has lost its baffling effect. As in the baffles used in tanker trucks.

But if the US is in need of increased rainfall we need to get MORE WATER IN THE AIR and that can be done very easily with a small pipeline from Ventura California up across & partly through the Panamint Mountains over into Death Valley. Just dig out a small lake there and start the water to siphoning from the Pacific Ocean over into the lake.

It so happens that the EVAPORATION RATE in Death Valley is maximum there => so let the sun put the ocean back up into the air and we can have more fresh water than we can use, replenish the underground water tables and even maybe flush out some of the 80,000 chemicals accumulating there too.

Maybe even go back to having more winter snows also.

"And all of the water that you save from doing that would not provide sufficient water to the third world that they need right this minute"

That may be true, but there are things we can do: Drip irrigation is a must in Africa to conserve water. Perhaps even moving water intensive crops to areas that now have more rainfall. However, due to global warming it has shifted rainfall patterns and intensified rain events in patterns that are hard to predict so that is something we need to deal with as well.There should be a moratorium placed on dam building with solar energy becoming the predominant energy source. Also, a moratorium on companies like Shell that plunder countries and pollute their groundwater and waterways. Holding these companies accountable for their environmental crimes and using that money to bring solar energy and water conservation technologies like drip irrigation, catchement, etc. would do much to improve the situation in Africa.

israel has some cutting edge tech on drip irrigation. However, good luck in Africa. A friend of mine is a missionary in the process of building one of the only orphanages in Nigeria for children whose parents have died from aids. He has the full support of the tribal elders, local mayor and police and the state governor. two Sundays ago while driving the children to church in the van they had just purchased several men approached him and demanded the keys. They then shot him in the face with a shotgun and took it he barely survived. The governor's own chief of staff came down to supervise the investigation and stated that Joey was the primary target of the crime not stealing the van. That is just a small example of how hard it is get anything done in the third world. As corrupt as it may be Nigeria is actually rather advanced in comparison to a lot of other areas. Good luck also in holding companies such as BP or Shell accountable. They are the ones that have already trashed half of Africa. I still believe what will happen is a continuation of what is going on in Africa right now. Hill people are being crowded by farmers looking for water for the herds. Political factions are arming them and turning them against each other. There are several areas of violence right now that are being fueled by lack of water. Eventually when the food and water runs out you will see Somalia all over again throughout the continent and the only places that wont are likely to be the ones that are being exploited for their minerals and oil. That will pay for enough military force to hold on a bit longer.

That would be good . If only ....

"israel has some cutting edge tech on drip irrigation."

Too bad they won't share it. They have done much to exacerbate water scarcity and hunger in the West Bank. And I don't know, there are many NGOS getting things done in the developing world. I think there is a contingent that just doesn't want people in developing countries to get help, especially governments that thrive on keeping them down because it's good business for them. But that doesn't mean we stop fighting ther good fight.

Its as simple a buying it. maybe they dont give it away for free.

Not so simple for those in poverty with little freedom.

Hell of an interesting story.
Africa is a big continent but I tend to think your right about the probably worsening outcome for many African nations.
Parts of Asia, like Pakistan and Bangladesh could easily be on the edge of on collapse as well for the same political and ecological reasons.

Here's the way the snowball rolls.

Hypoxia contributes to people becoming obese.

Low oxygen is killing Americans slowly from obesity.

Sugar consumption also lowers oxygen, adds to hypoxia.

Low oxygen contributes to the high cancer rate.

In other words we are in a Death Cycle.

It gets worse too. Sugar feeds bacteria in the body. The bacteria that usually turns a dead body into a coffin meal. Those bacteria are drawing against the oxygen in the body, making hypoxia much more acute.

And cancers.

I do not have your contempt for people . I wanted an electric car all my life . I rent , so I do not have a say over what is done with the property where i live . I did not marry a wealthy man or have a job that profits from the system as it is , ( I suppose you think there are plenty of them ) and so do not have enough resources to get off the grid , as I would like . Simply no access to these things is easy . And for this many people to do as you would wish , it would have to be very easy . Loathe me if you like . Compassion connects people . I think more people would listen to a message delivered with it . If that is really you aim .

I'm talking about conserving water here and it was delivered with concern and frustration not contempt. How much money does it take to conserve water? It was in reference to desalination which I think should only be used in truly dire circumstances, and also I mentioned my concern for people in the midstates because once we exhaust all of our options and cannot use ocean water as a viable source, what do they do? You don't acknowledge there are people who are apathetic about this? Why would you think I was referring to you anyway? I would think after reading so many of my posts here you would already know where I am coming from. I'm really hurt by your comment so if that was your intention, you succeeded.

Dear Jan , I would much rather have you for an ally , than an adversary . I read " God forbid we actually care about decreasing emissions and taking responsibility for what we put in the atmosphere ....... the moral obligation is lost upon so many ." Out of context . I took it personally . I apologize . I hope you know , I respect you and the work you do here . I have some personal stress that slipped out where is should not have been allowed to . You did not deserve that response . I not glad I sent it . i should not have hurt you in that way .

No problem. I can certainly understand personal stress. I respect you too, and actually will work on my phrasing so as not to sound so inclusive when explaining my frustration.
Thanks.

That looked fun. I hope you're doing ok. If you ever want to talk about anything, I'm here. I know about stress.

Doing better , actually , not tip top , and certainly little thanks to the medical profession . I studied holistic healing for over a decade , never imagined how helpful that info it would be , and a good naturopath . Thanks for the offer .

What would you do with the By product from the water desalination plants?