NG: Why is America running out of water?

[LD0506]

[China]

‘Biblical’ drought likely to lead to more water restrictions in Southern California

 

The Metropolitan Water District has declared a drought emergency for all of Southern California after officials announced that conditions on the Colorado River, the Southland’s primary water supply, are dire and getting worse.  

 

Mandatory water restrictions could be implemented as early as next year for an estimated 19 million residents.  

 

“The western North America is in a drought we haven’t seen in 1,200 years. So, it’s not overstating things to say that we’re in a drought of biblical proportions,” said Brad Coffey, a water resource manager with MWD.  

 

Coffey, who represents the nation’s largest water supplier, said that if residents don’t start conserving water now, all of Southern California could experience difficult days this coming spring and summer.  

 

Despite the recent rain and snow, experts say the past three years have been the driest in California history, leaving reservoirs critically low as the state enters its fourth year of drought.  

 

“Think of it as a deficit to a bank account,” Coffey told KTLA’s John Fenoglio. “We’ve spent down our bank account for the past three years, and though we’ve got a little coming in now, we’ve still got a long way to go to make up for what’s happened over the last three years.”  

 

MWD supplies water to 26 agencies that will deliver it to major population centers like Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.  

 

The emergency declaration calls on all MWD’s member agencies to immediately reduce imported supplies and for the public to do their part by limiting outdoor irrigation to one day a week for no more than 10 minutes while using water-efficient appliances.  

 

“The Colorado River supply is the lowest it’s been in years, which is our main water supply. So, we just all have to do our part,” he said.  

 

MWD gets about half its water supply for Southern California from the Colorado River and the Northern Sierra.  

 

Click on the link for the full article

Edited December 16, 2022 by China

[China]

Growing fears of 'dead pool' on Colorado River as drought threatens Hoover Dam water

 

The Colorado River's largest reservoirs stand nearly three-quarters empty, and federal officials now say there is a real danger the reservoirs could drop so low that water would no longer flow past Hoover Dam in two years.

 

That dire scenario — which would cut off water supplies to California, Arizona and Mexico — has taken center stage at the annual Colorado River conference in Las Vegas this week, where officials from seven states, water agencies, tribes and the federal government are negotiating over how to decrease usage on a scale never seen before.

 

Outlining their latest projections for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the nation’s two largest reservoirs, federal water managers said there is a risk Lake Mead could reach “dead pool” levels in 2025. If that were to happen, water would no longer flow downstream from Hoover Dam.

 

“We are in a crisis. Both lakes could be two years away from either dead pool or so close to dead pool that the flow out of those dams is going to be a horribly small number. And it just keeps getting worse,” said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

 

He said there is a real danger that if the coming year is extremely dry, “it might be too late to save the lakes.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[GhostofSparta]

You know what? Fine. I'm tired of pretending to care when these people don't. It's time to make "The Villages: Arizona Edition" where we build a bunch of ****ty houses, sell them for a lot of money to dumb Trump/DeSantis Boomers with more money than sense, and then once they all move in cut off the water and let them die because THEY BOUGHT HOUSES IN THE ****ING DESERT DURING ONE OF THE WORST DROUGHTS IN WESTERN US HISTORY.

 

I'm tired of these ****ing idiots that always talk about "Durrr, why we do need warning labels on everything? Just let people die!" moving where the environment clearly wants them dead and then crying to the rest of us and appealing to our basic humanity to save them from their own stupid decisions. There's a reason that most of the humans to ever live in deserts have been nomads and not suburbanites, and it's time for a hard lesson in historical reality.

[China]

‘The brink of disaster’: 2023 is a critical year for the Colorado River as reservoirs sink toward ‘dead pool’

 

Deep uncertainty looms over the Colorado River and the 40 million people who depend on it for their water supply as the basin enters a critical year that could determine its future stability.

 

Plagued by decades of overuse and human-caused climate change, demand for the river’s water has vastly outpaced its supply. In 2023, federal and state officials must find a way to keep as much as 4 million acre-feet of water in Lakes Mead and Powell – 30% of what the Colorado River states have historically used.

 

Failing to do so means either of these lakes, the largest manmade reservoirs in the country, could reach “dead pool” in the next two years, where the water level is too low to flow through the dams and downstream to the communities and farmers that need it.

 

The cuts that are needed are on an unprecedented scale, and officials will be fighting an uphill battle against a deep, multi-year drought to get them done. State officials tried drastic measures to cut their usage this year, but the river’s continued decline was an alarming reality check.

 

Western state officials wrote a letter in May agreeing to leave 1 million acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Then, they watched as the same amount of water disappeared due to system losses and evaporation.

 

“Everything we tried to do through the May 3 letter was wiped out by mother nature,” top Arizona water official Tom Buschatzke told CNN. “We have to understand that could happen to us again. It’s been happening to us almost every year for the past few years.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Great Salt Lake will disappear in 5 years without massive ‘emergency rescue,’ scientists say

 

The Great Salt Lake in Utah is facing “unprecedented danger,” experts say, as it has fallen to an alarmingly low level amid a climate change-fueled megadrought that’s tightening its grip in the West.

 

Less than two weeks away from Utah’s 2023 legislative session, nearly three dozen scientists and conservationists released a dire report that calls on the state’s lawmakers to take “emergency measures” to save the Great Salt Lake before drains to nil.

 

Without a “dramatic increase” in inflow by 2024, experts warn the lake is set to disappear in the next five years.

 

“Its disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah’s public health, environment, and economy,” the authors wrote in the report. “The choices we make over the next few months will affect our state and ecosystems throughout the West for decades to come.”

 

The Great Salt Lake, plagued by excessive water use and a worsening climate crisis, has dropped to record-low levels two years in a row. The lake is now 19 feet below its natural average level and has entered “uncharted territory” after losing 73% of its water and exposing 60% of its lakebed, the report notes.

 

“The lake’s ecosystem is not only on the edge of collapse. It is collapsing,” Benjamin Abbott, a professor of ecology at Brigham Young University and lead author of the report, told CNN. “It’s honestly jaw-dropping and totally disarming to see how much of the lake is gone. The lake is mostly lakebed right now.”

 

With the climate getting hotter and drier, many lakes across the West will only see more evaporation, more demand for water, and just ultimate decline in levels. The grim climate reality already unfolding in the Great Salt Lake, Abbott said, is a “microcosm” of what is happening or is set to happen around the world on a warming planet.

 

“This is a bellwether for what’s going on in the larger river basins,” he said. “We need to lay out some very clear language about where we’re headed.”

 

Dry lake bed is exposed at the Great Salt Lake in September.
 

Click on the link for the full article

 

[Xameil]

Hmmm people building houses in a desert.

 

I think we all need to watch Sam Kinisons okd skit about World Hunger

 

Oh..NSFW

 

 

 

[China]

On 1/7/2023 at 6:30 AM, Xameil said:

Hmmm people building houses in a desert.

 

I think we all need to watch Sam Kinisons okd skit about World Hunger

 

Oh..NSFW

 

 

 

 

The funny part about that skit is where he says we have deserts in the US, but we don't live in them.  Apparently we do.  Americans are that stupid.

[Xameil]

2 hours ago, China said:

 

The funny part about that skit is where he says we have deserts in the US, but we don't live in them.  Apparently we do.  Americans are that stupid.

Lol i know. The irony. 

Too bad he died...we need him.

[China]

No, all that rain hasn't eliminated the drought.

 

 

[China]

Hobbs reveals West Valley current water supply cannot support planned development

 

Every new home built by a developer in Arizona must be able to show that it has 100 years of assured water supply.

 

On Monday, in her State of the State address, Governor Katie Hobbs revealed a large area of the far West Valley is far short of that requirement and accused former Governor Doug Ducey's administration of keeping the information secret from the public.

 

The area is the Hassayampa sub-basin which sits underneath much of the Buckeye city planning area about 50 miles west of Phoenix.

 

It's also where the city gets all of its water.

 

A study conducted by the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) released on Monday concluded that the sub-basin is 4.4 million-acre feet short of water for future development.

 

For context, a one-acre foot provides a year of water for three families.

 

Kathleen Ferris of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University told ABC15 the report confirmed something she has long suspected and worked to convince stakeholders to act on.

 

"There is not enough, not nearly enough groundwater in the Hassayampa sub-basin to support the massive level of homebuilding that people want to go on there," she said.

 

Ferris, one of the architects of Arizona's 1980 Groundwater Management Act, has been sounding the alarm over the past several years about the growth and groundwater in the Buckeye area.

 

She said she is happy the information is being brought to light.

 

"I am thrilled that Governor Hobbs has recognized right out of the box, the need to really be transparent on groundwater issues. And this Hassayampa sub-basin model report needed to be released," Ferris said.

 

But during her State of the State address, Hobbs said former Governor Ducey's office instructed ADWR to keep the report under wraps from the public.

 

Click on the link for the full article and video

[China]

A suburb outside of Scottsdale, Arizona has had its water shut off due to the drought, in a 'worst-case scenario'

 

Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, a community of around 1,000 residents outside of Scottsdale, has had its main water supply shut off due to the extreme drought affecting the region, The New York Times reported.

 

Until recently, Rio Verde Foothills purchased all of its water from Scottsdale, Arizona, since it did not own a water reservoir of its own. However, Scottsdale shut off the flow of water to the suburb earlier this month, citing its own water supply needs during this historic drought period.

 

This decision meant that the roughly 500 to 700 homes in the community must now purchase water on an open, expensive market, and are left without a regular supply for their pipes. If another town is not willing or able to supply water to the unincorporated community, the longterm value of the residents' homes is in jeopardy.

 

According to the report, residents have been trying to conserve water in any way they can, from eating on paper plates and skipping showers to installing rainwater collection systems on their homes.

 

Many of the community's problems also stem from a 1980 Arizona law that requires subdivisions with six or more lots to show proof that they have a 100-year water supply. Many Arizona developers skirted around this regulation by splitting large lots into groups of four five properties, creating the feeling of suburbia without being beholden to these regulations.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

How long before we start seeing a new bunch of ghost towns out west?

[Xameil]

I honestly have no sympathy for those people. In order to get water in the first place they had to have it trucked in. That right there should be your first red flag. They found loopholes and exploited them knowing water was going to be an issue. 

 

Only houses that should be going there are ones that are 100% sustainable, including harvesting water from the air.

[Jabbyrwock]

12 minutes ago, Xameil said:

I honestly have no sympathy for those people. In order to get water in the first place they had to have it trucked in. That right there should be your first red flag. They found loopholes and exploited them knowing water was going to be an issue. 

 

Only houses that should be going there are ones that are 100% sustainable, including harvesting water from the air.

 

The yield per energy requirements of air cooling to promote condensation is generally on the order of 1-4 liters/kWh (strongly dependent on atmospheric conditions).  Desiccant harvesting is in the range of 0.1-1 liters/kWh.  To put that in perspective, large scale SWRO desalination is around 300 liters/kWh (give or take).  Now, of course, this assumes active harvesting.  There are passive techniques (so the energy is provided by off grid sources), but for the most part these require significant area to achieve any sort of significant harvest.

[Xameil]

49 minutes ago, Jabbyrwock said:

 

The yield per energy requirements of air cooling to promote condensation is generally on the order of 1-4 liters/kWh (strongly dependent on atmospheric conditions).  Desiccant harvesting is in the range of 0.1-1 liters/kWh.  To put that in perspective, large scale SWRO desalination is around 300 liters/kWh (give or take).  Now, of course, this assumes active harvesting.  There are passive techniques (so the energy is provided by off grid sources), but for the most part these require significant area to achieve any sort of significant harvest.

I would ha e to look more into it, i just am going off the premise of some of the 100% sustainable houses I saw on TV where they walked people through them and discussed how they work.

 

Of course there could have been some omitted info.

 

But my initial thought stands. Those houses in AZ never should have been even built as permanent residences.

Edited January 17, 2023 by Xameil
Fat finger typing

[China]

Why hasn’t recent rain helped Lake Mead much?

 

 Southern Nevada has been in the path of repeated rain systems for the last week. But has the recent rain affected Lake Mead’s water levels?

 

The good news is that it has helped, but only a little. According to Bureau of Reclamation Public Affairs Specialist Doug Hendrix, as of Wednesday, Jan. 11, “Lake Mead (was) about 28% full, with the elevation today at about 1,045.04. Overall, we currently stand at about 0.3 ft higher than originally projected in December.”

 

One day later, Lake Mead had risen another .2 feet to 1,045.25 feet above sea level. The last time Lake Mead was at 100% capacity was in mid-1999.

 

 

Hendrix said, however, that storms alone have little impact on overall water levels.

 

“Over the past few weeks, recent storm events and runoff into the tributaries that enter Lake Mead as well as reduced releases from Hoover Dam — due to a decrease in downstream demand — have had some impact on the lake’s elevation,” Hendrix told Nexstar’s KLAS. “While the amount of precipitation received in the lower basin and from tributary inflows helps, rainfall from recent winter storms, alone, isn’t enough to offset the decades-long reservoir declines.”

 

The National Weather Service office in Las Vegas also said the storm’s impact on Lake Mead was “a drop in the bucket” compared to other sources.

 

“Rain in the Las Vegas valley does help with Lake Mead’s water levels. However, it is more like a drop in the bucket compared to the contribution from the snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin in E Utah, W Colorado, & SW Wyoming.”

 

The majority of water in Lake Mead comes from snowpack melt from the Colorado Rockies. Those snowpack levels have been rising over the past week as storms hit the Rocky Mountains. Dec. 27 measurements of 102% snowpack in the region — just above normal — had risen to 149% as of Thursday in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Bang]

On 12/27/2022 at 8:05 PM, GhostofSparta said:

You know what? Fine. I'm tired of pretending to care when these people don't. It's time to make "The Villages: Arizona Edition" where we build a bunch of ****ty houses, sell them for a lot of money to dumb Trump/DeSantis Boomers with more money than sense, and then once they all move in cut off the water and let them die because THEY BOUGHT HOUSES IN THE ****ING DESERT DURING ONE OF THE WORST DROUGHTS IN WESTERN US HISTORY.

 

I'm tired of these ****ing idiots that always talk about "Durrr, why we do need warning labels on everything? Just let people die!" moving where the environment clearly wants them dead and then crying to the rest of us and appealing to our basic humanity to save them from their own stupid decisions. There's a reason that most of the humans to ever live in deserts have been nomads and not suburbanites, and it's time for a hard lesson in historical reality.

 

 

Just so it can be repeated.

 

Cheers. 
 

~Bang

[China]

A Small Arizona Community Is Suing Scottsdale Over Newly Dry Taps

 

The Southwest’s water crisis has reached a new, desperate benchmark. For the first time, more than 500 households in Maricopa County, Arizona have had their water cut-off.

 

Since January 1, residents of the Scottsdale, Arizona suburb, Rio Verde Foothills, have been without any reliable water supply. The secluded, unincorporated community—built like a boom town in the middle of the desert— was constructed without its own municipal water source.

 

The oversight was made possible via a plot size loophole that flouts Arizona’s development laws, which technically require any new subdivisions to have a 100-year water supply. Some of the houses have their own, struggling wells. But for years, the ever-growing cluster of mansions and more modest single family homes had mostly relied on water trucked into the surrounding hills from Scottsdale, about 40 miles away.

 

The arrangement was only ever supposed to be temporary, and city officials had been warning Rio Verde residents to search for an alternate solution for almost 10 years. But clearly, the community got used to it. Then Scottsdale entered its own water crisis, spurred by years of drought in the Colorado River Basin. To manage its shortage and comply with state and federally mandated use reductions, the city told Rio Verde Foothills that their deal would have to end. With a year of forewarning, Scottsdale vowed to cut the suburb off. And it did.

 

“There is no Santa Claus,” Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega said in a December statement, according to local outlet 12News and Scottsdale Progress. “The mega-drought tells us all—Water is NOT a Compassion Game,” he added.

 

In the absence of Scottsdale’s generosity, the Rio Verde residents haven’t settled on a good substitute. There is a deep divide within the community between those who want to form their own water district to purchase water from elsewhere, and those who want to sign a contract with Epcor, a private utility that supplies neighboring areas, according to a report from the Washington Post.

 

In response to the chaos, some homeowners have filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County for its blockage of the water district, according to WaPo. Another, larger group of residents have directed their anger and litigation at Scottsdale and sued the city, demanding for their former water supply to be restored.

 

Click on the link for the full article

Edited January 20, 2023 by China

[Cooked Crack]

Maybe don't buy or build houses in the middle of the desert without a water source?

[Captain Wiggles]

When I lived in Colorado we had all kinds of water restrictions. No watering lawns or washing cars n such. Meanwhile Arizona was all...

 

 

 

[GhostofSparta]

Oh no, you built a community in the ****ing desert and now you might have to either pay a lot for water in the middle of a mega drought because of a complete lack of planning and foresight on your part or lose all your money you spent on stupid homes in a stupid location?

 

Oh, sorry, a sub-division of McMansions in Arizona is probably prime MAGA country. Let me rephrase that in a way they're more likely to understand.

 

[China]

Scientists fear a Great Toxic Dustbowl could soon emerge from the Great Salt Lake

 

Like the rest of the West, Utah has a water problem. But megadrought and overconsumption aren’t just threats to wildlife, agriculture and industry here. A disappearing Great Salt Lake could poison the lungs of more than 2.5 million people.

 

When lake levels hit historic lows in recent months, 800 square miles of lakebed were exposed – soil that holds centuries of natural and manmade toxins like mercury, arsenic and selenium. As that mud turns to dust and swirls to join some of the worst winter air pollution in the nation, scientists warn that the massive body of water could evaporate into a system of lifeless finger lakes within five years, on its way to becoming the Great Toxic Dustbowl.

 

“This is an ecological disaster that will become a human health disaster,” warned Bonnie Baxter, director of the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. “We know about dust storms, we know about particulate pollution, we know about heavy metals and how they’re bad for humans,” she told CNN. “We see a crisis that is imminent.”

 

Satellite images show the water levels of the Great Salt Lake in 1987, left, and 2022.
 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Looks like some golfers with big money bought some politicians:

 

Utah lawmakers say more information on golf course water might lead to ‘uninformed’ conclusions

 

Utah lawmakers have shut down a measure that would have mandated transparency around water applied on Utah golf courses, arguing the public might draw “uninformed” conclusions if these facilities were required to reveal how much water they use.

 

Even after HB188 sponsors agreed to dramatically water down the bill, on Friday the House Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee declined to advance the measure for a vote on the House floor. Republican members said the bill unfairly singled out one water-intensive industry for scrutiny and sends a message that golf courses waste water.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Here's why Arizona says it can keep growing despite historic megadrought

 

Drive traffic-clogged Interstate 10 through Phoenix's West Valley suburbs and you'd hardly know the Southwest is as dry as it's been in 1,200 years.

 

Water gulping data centers, large warehouses and distribution centers have sprouted in the barren desert. Housing development after housing development is slated for construction.

A two lane highway is being widened in the former farming town of Buckeye, at the edge of the Phoenix sprawl, to make way for an 800 home "master planned community." A sign advertises new homes coming soon with the offer of joining "the VIP interest list."

 

City officials proudly promote Buckeye as one of America's fastest growing cities. In 2000, the population was around 6,500. Today it's north of 111,000, according to the city's mayor Eric Orsborn. His city's master plan calls for future growth encompassing a staggering 640 square miles of open land to the south, west and north.

 

But where are they going to get the water? The answer is complicated.

 

Phoenix is now America's fifth largest city. And the growth and economic boom particularly in its West Valley is continuing unabated despite larger questions about the future of water supplies amid a 23 year megadrought on the Colorado River.

 

Winter temperatures at the river's headwaters in the Rocky Mountains have risen by an estimated 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1980, meaning less water for the region's snow fed reservoirs.

 

Arizona has some of the lowest priority rights to the river water of any of the seven basin states. So Phoenix and its suburbs are increasingly turning to groundwater as the state has endured big cuts to Colorado River water.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

These people are insane for continuing to build when they don't have the water to support the population.