Running Dry
What are some of the alternative sources of water for people in the region?
There is talk of building desalination plants along the coast in California. Arizona can pump water from under the ground, from beneath Phoenix and other areas, but that's fossil water that has been there a million years. The sources for water are obviously limited.
What kind of water wars might we see? Does your study look at the potential political and societal fallout from all of this?
No. We're scientists, not policy makers. We present the numbers and the timing for the problem. We're not the ones to solve it.
But what can we do to prevent this from happening? Is it preventable?
A lot of things will have to change, from a policy standpoint. Water rights will be an issue. Global warming is not preventable. This will happen compared to the time it would take us to impact the CO2 burden in the atmosphere. Adaptation is the word here. How will our desert Southwest civilization adapt with a third less water from the Colorado River? Consumption, of course, is something that can always be changed … It is a complicated situation. Everyone in this debate will have a self-serving interest … I spent a year in Montana, and there's an old saying there that you can put your wallet on the road and it will be there a week later, but if you have a cup full of water, your neighbor will do what he can to find it and take it.
Has there been opposition or resistance to some of your findings with regard to global warming and its effects?
No, none that I am aware of. But I caught on early to the people in the White House who were changing things, funding alleged scientists, the political connections. These guys have been outed by now, but they are still around. They say no, no, no, but we show them evidence, we bring up the fact that there have been some 20,000 papers written on climate change and they don't have any evidence to back up their claims.
What impact might this have on agriculture, which obviously uses a large amount of water?
Agriculture still uses 75 to 80 percent of the water from that area. In California agriculture is the number one industry. How far do you go cutting its throat? How will you get the water? This is something that people will have to work on to develop a strategy for the future. There is simply a limited supply of water.
What kind of reaction do you expect there will be, both publicly and politically, to your troubling findings?
We've talked about it, but no one is quite sure. We know there will be media attention; that's part of my job. In terms of political fallout, I don't know the answer to that. I can't even imagine. Arizona won't take this as good news. People who live along the upper basin, the folks in Wyoming, Utah and those areas that are the most junior in the water rights agreements, will not be pleased.
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Member Comments
Posted By: Nins @ 07/10/2008 7:30:53 PM
Comment: Know why McCain wants to distance himself from former Senator Phil Gramm? It is not just because of Gramm's recent obnoxious remarks calling Americans "a nation of whiners" and that unemployed Americans are in "a mental recession." In fact, those remarks were so obnoxious that I wonder if they were engineered just to provide McCain an excuse for publicly distancing himself from Gramm. This issue is a lot deeper than it looks on the surface.
When Gramm was a Senator he was chair of the Committee on Banking, and in that capacity he was able to push through the legislation now known as the "Enron Loophole." This loophole allowed US investment banks to bypass the Federal regulations governing futures trading, and is the reason why the investment banks were able to falsely inflate the prices of oil, wheat, corn and other commodities through massive futures trading, causing your costs of gas, heating oil and food to go through the roof.
Gramm was a member of McCain's campaign team, but now Gramms' name is turning to mud. In addition to the Enron loophole, Gramm pushed through the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act in 1999, which got rid of the laws that seperate banking, insurance and brokerage activities in America. Essentially, this Act did away with all of the good laws written after the Great Depression to protect us from another Wall Street/Banking Industry collapse. That's right, Gramm stripped the system of it's safe guards nine years ago, and guess what? The value of the dollar has nose-dived, Wall Street is highly unstable, and we are in the midst of a recession.
Now you could say that this is not Gramm's fault, that he didn't know what the outcome of his actions would be. However, it turns out that the same investment banks that benefited from the Enron loophole and from the Gramm Act gave more than a million dollars to Gramm's campaign. Uh oh. A Congressional hearing is going to be convened to investigate this. And McCain wants to have noting to do with Gramm, wants us to forget that Gramm has been a key player on McCain's campaign team. Gramm was McCain's campaign CO-CHAIR and LEADING ECONOMIC ADVISER.
With Gramm in the driver's seat as his leading economic adviser, now you know why economists and analysts are saying that McCain's economic policy plans are untenable.
Posted By: BumbershootBaby @ 07/09/2008 4:29:59 PM
Comment: This is erroneous! There is one reason and one reason only that Lake Mead is running dry and scientists (so called) need to stop blaming agriculture. Las Vegas is the closest major city to Lake Mead (unless you count Laughlin and I don't). Las Vegas in the past twenty years has experienced an apocalyptic population explosion. They've also changed their skyline at least six times since I lived there. And where do you think all the water for the manmade lakes (think The Lakes suburb and Summerlin and Sun City) for the fake volcanoes, for the fake moats, for the fake harbors, for the dancing fountains, not to mention the huge golf courses comes from?
I'm not even talking about the hotel pools and tons of laundry done each day there. THIS is the drain on Lake Mead and the Colorado river. Stop blaming global warming, climate change, emission or whatever and dry up Bellagio's dancing fountains, the pools, the huge golf courses and the idiocy "curb appeal" utilized in the form of Treasure Island's moat or The Mirage's volcano (all Wynn Properties I might add sucking up the most water).
Get real people. This is not a new problem. The Valley Water district will go out and fine people for watering their postage stamp sized lawns but will not say boo to the worst water wasters: the hotels and golf courses.
Posted By: BumbershootBaby @ 07/09/2008 4:28:21 PM
Comment: This is erroneous! There is one reason and one reason only that Lake Mead is running dry and scientists (so called) need to stop blaming agriculture. Las Vegas is the closest major city to Lake Mead (unless you count Laughlin and I don't). Las Vegas in the past twenty years has experienced an apocalyptic population explosion. They've also changed their skyline at least six times since I lived there. And where do you think all the water for the manmade lakes (think The Lakes suburb and Summerlin and Sun City) for the fake volcanoes, for the fake moats, for the fake harbors, for the dancing fountains, not to mention the huge golf courses comes from?
I'm not even talking about the hotel pools and tons of laundry done each day there. THIS is the drain on Lake Mead and the Colorado river. Stop blaming global warming, climate change, emission or whatever and dry up Bellagio's dancing fountains, the pools, the huge golf courses and the idiocy "curb appeal" utilized in the form of Treasure Island's moat or The Mirage's volcano (all Wynn Properties I might add sucking up the most water).
Get real people. This is not a new problem. The Valley Water district will go out and fine people for watering their postage stamp sized lawns but will not say boo to the worst water wasters: the hotels and golf courses.