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In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

arstechnica.com

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Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#41

Post by PhantomGremlin »

mjevans wrote: post #18

Lets stop wastefully watering lawns as a starting point. Some places are probably already doing that, but the use of native landscaping needs to spread further.

The largest water user, at least in California, is agriculture. Fortunately they're now planting fewer acres of low-value crops such as cotton. But other crops use an insane amount:

   1 walnut     4.9  gallons
   1 almond     1.1  gallons
   1 pistachio  0.75 gallons
And it looks like Palm Springs is a big water user. Must be all those golf courses?

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-calif...

Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#42

Post by SilasX »

wrong_variable wrote: post #35
hombre_fatal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just price water to reflect supply realities? Why would anyone care about saving water when it's so dirt cheap? "Awareness" seems like a waste of time in comparison.

Being able to "price" something requires existence of a functional market. Markets can only exist when contracts can be enforced. Being able to enforce a contract requires monitoring and ability to issue fines, you also needs appropriate laws. All of the above does not exist when it comes to ground water harvesting - especially in India and even in a police state like China.

If it makes you feel any better, California is perfectly capable of doing all that, but they still don't, and are stuck in a tragedy-of-the-commons type water shortage where farmers will gladly waste $1 of water to produce 5 cents of crops, because the alternative is to get nothing.

Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#43

Post by r00fus »

jcmeyrignac wrote: post #33
mjevans wrote: post #18

Lets stop wastefully watering lawns as a starting point. Some places are probably already doing that, but the use of native landscaping needs to spread further.

I believe the amount of water used for lawns is an order of magnitude smaller than the water used for fracking. The water for fracking is definitely lost, while the water we use even for bathing is recycled infinitely.

In many places graywater is not recycled. So we have improvements that can be done there.

However, industrial uses of water definitely outpace consumer usage.

Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#44

Post by r00fus »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #41
mjevans wrote: post #18

Lets stop wastefully watering lawns as a starting point. Some places are probably already doing that, but the use of native landscaping needs to spread further.

The largest water user, at least in California, is agriculture. Fortunately they're now planting fewer acres of low-value crops such as cotton. But other crops use an insane amount: 1 walnut 4.9 gallons 1 almond 1.1 gallons 1 pistachio 0.75 gallons And it looks like Palm Springs is a big water user. Must be all those golf courses? https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-calif...

I heard meat/milk production uses a significantly larger amount of water (in addition to the crops eaten by the animals).

Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#45

Post by 40acres »

A local groundwater management agency in Ventura County, CA recently started a pilot program that established a groundwater market among farmers in the county.

Following the early 2010s drought in California, laws were enacted to cap and eventually reduce the amount of groundwater that can be extracted. Recent advancements in water usage tracking infrastructure, combined with the law has led to a natural environment to create a cap and trade system.

Interestingly, farmers view water usage as a trade secret, and so the pilot marketplace is using block-chain to provide an anonymous marketplace. Groundwater management in California (and I assume across the nation) is regulated by a patchwork of different local government agencies and laws, but there is an awesome opportunity to provide a unified software based marketplace to establish a groundwater commodity market.

A market also facilities conservation as farmers now have incentive to lower their water usage and sell excess water on the market. A big challenge however is transportation of water across vast distances.

Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#46

Post by stunt »

srameshc wrote: post #14

The same phenomenon is happening is happening in China & India and probably many other parts of he world as well. As we become more a more affluent society, our on water consumption increases. We need to raise awareness at a global level about preserving and saving water. https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/28-000-riv... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/photos/rivers...

It’s happening everywhere and one of the reasons is probably population. Earth was never crowded as it’s today.

Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#47

Post by swimfar »

stirfrykitty wrote: post #40
wrong_variable wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to "price" something requires existence of a functional market. Markets can only exist when contracts can be enforced. Being able to enforce a contract requires monitoring and ability to issue fines, you also needs appropriate laws. All of the above does not exist when it comes to ground water harvesting - especially in India and even in a police state like China.

Yet companies build plants on the Great Lakes, hoover up all the water, filter it, bottle it, and sell it to the unsuspecting, who happily buy it. I never ever saw bottled water as a kid in Europe. It wasn't until I moved to the US where it appeared to be commonplace. When I went back home to England last year, they've got it in every supermarket I visited. Sad, really. I still just drink out of the tap here in Texas…

What you wrote about bottled water not being a thing in Europe is definitely country specific. When I lived in Germany none of my German friends drank water from the tap. They would buy packs of bottled water for drinking at home.

Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#48

Post by neonhomer »

chewz wrote: post #36
quotemstr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like lawns. So do lots of other people. It's okay to expend resources on things that aren't bare essentials. The price mechanism, not social control, is what allows for efficient allocation of scarce resources. Let people who want to pay for the water water their lawns.

> Lawns in US take 41 million acres. That figure makes lawn the most widespread plant under irrigation in the contiguous US. https://healthylandethic.com/2013/11/17/why-prairies-matter-... Pretty wasteful use of limited resource - water.

But how much of that is irrigated? As I understand it in California there is a lot of irrigated lawns. But I doubt the majority of lawns in the US is irrigated or watered.

Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#49

Post by chewz »

neonhomer wrote: post #48
chewz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lawns in US take 41 million acres. That figure makes lawn the most widespread plant under irrigation in the contiguous US. https://healthylandethic.com/2013/11/17/why-prairies-matter-... Pretty wasteful use of limited resource - water.

But how much of that is irrigated? As I understand it in California there is a lot of irrigated lawns. But I doubt the majority of lawns in the US is irrigated or watered.

Do you own a lawn? Scotland is perhaps the only place I know where you can not water lawn in summer.

Re: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

#50

Post by RandallBrown »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #19
quotemstr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, and build lots of desalination plants. We can engineer our way out of this problem without compromising our quality of life.

At what cost? Desalination is not cheap in terms of the energy it uses or even the environmental cost of what to do with the left over brine. We can certainly be less wasteful at home. Flushing toilet waste with potable water and even to some extent using potable water to bath in are incredible wastes of a precious resource.

Israel gets like half of their drinking water from desalination. With solar/wind/nuclear/tidal energy, it could be very inexpensive.
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