Running Dry
Why haven't we heard about this before now?
It's surprising to us that someone hasn't run this flag up the flagpole before. But others, like Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute in Berkeley, have been saying that the Colorado River will run out of water since the early 1990s. But no one has paid much attention to him. The Bureau of Reclamation said the reservoirs could be in trouble, but they've never said when. Marty Hoerling at NOAA (the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) in Boulder and a colleague looked at the soil moisture content and developed a river flow scheme. His answer was more severe than ours. But I don't know of another study that is as specific as ours.
How serious is this situation, in your opinion?
The people of Southern California and the desert Southwest are facing a water crisis that could well affect the sustainability of our culture as it is today in this region. The signals have been there for at least 20 years: less snow, warmer temperature in the mountains, less river runoff. The evidence has been here for some time; we just pulled all the data together.
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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.