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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

#121

Post by lostapathy »

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.

How does flushing my toilet from water drawn from a river ... and then pumped back into the same river slightly downstream hurt anything?

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

#122

Post by mikepurvis »

triceratops wrote: post #82
plutonorm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great idea. Then when the air gets dirty we can just charge people for purified air.

I get that you're being facetious. But if purified air became sufficiently expensive, and it was the only way to breathe, everyone really would get serious about polluting less.

Would they? The whole point of a polluted commons is that no one actor is able to make an impact from their own choices. Only collective action can make a difference, and that requires an enforceable agreement to cooperate plus enforcement to make sure that no one cheats.

In a world of unbreatheable air, the most rational individual action is not to reduce polluting; rather, it's to pollute as hard as possible in order to make lots of money with which to buy purified air.

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

#123

Post by LargeWu »

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.

I think it takes something on the order of 2+ million gallons of water to frack a single well, once. Some wells need multiple fracks.

I will say, though, that in North Dakota, they get a significant amount of their fracking water from Lake Sakakawea, i.e. Missouri River. The amount of water used for fracking is a rounding error compared to how big that lake is. Might be more of a concern in more arid areas, though.

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

#124

Post by LargeWu »

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...

When I was in the Palm Springs area about 10 years ago they were watering their sand to keep the amount of dust down.

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

#125

Post by nshepperd »

halfeatenpie wrote: post #97
quotemstr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are so many water researchers opposed to letting the price of water vary and drive market-based conservation?

Great question! There's really no simple answer to this unfortunately also I don't think I'm the best person to answer this question, but I'll try my best! Water is a basic human right. In most countries, water is a public good that the government subsidizes and, to some extent, the market is adjusted to allow vulnerable households to afford the resource as well. If we have a 100% free market-based solution then in m…

Surely water security is also a basic human right, and that is directly impacted by destructive consumption subsidies.

> If we have a 100% free market-based solution then in many locations the poor and underprivileged have a considerably less access to this vital resource (some won't get any).

If we set water prices to something sane, how much cash do we have to give the poor to leave them in the same financial position?

Surely it can't be much: domestic water usage is but a fraction of agriculture and industry, and the number of poor which couldn't afford water is but a fraction thereof.

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

#126

Post by Spooky23 »

ip26 wrote: post #55
Amezarak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people outside of cities have their own groundwater wells, which is at least part of what the article is talking about. How do you price water people are pulling directly from the ground with their own equipment?

Aren't water wells permitted? In that case, you simply require a meter, ideally the cellular or zigbee sort. I'm sure there would be water bandits but it doesn't seem totally impossible.

It's one of the applications for zoning in rural areas.

My parents live in an area where there is no municipal water system. Due to the geology for both water supply and septic systems, they mandate a minimum lot size of 4 acres.

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

#127

Post by VBprogrammer »

lostapathy wrote: post #121
VBprogrammer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does flushing my toilet from water drawn from a river ... and then pumped back into the same river slightly downstream hurt anything?

That water is cleaned to within an inch of its life. Pumped for miles and then treated before being returned to the river. The same goes for the gallons of water which is used for showering.

Grey water could easily be reused for flushing or watering plants.

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

#128

Post by codingdave »

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.

I'm not going to keep a green lawn just because I can name things that are even more wasteful. We need to solve all our problems, not just the biggest ones.

As far as "recycled infinitely", that may be true, but out here in the West that is a yearly timeline. We get most of our water from the melting snowpack. Once we use it, it is gone until it snows again next winter, and melts again next spring.

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

#129

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#130

Post by pkaye »

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…

I've heard though in Europe it is more common to have sparkling water in restaurants while in the US its plain water (maybe filtered tap water)
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