Water wars

[JimD]

The Salton Sea is the result of a man-made oops. There was no historical era "sea" there before we started monkeying with the Colorado River.

More please. A gap in my understanding appears again

[Jester Fish]

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea :

"The modern sea was accidentally created by the engineers of the California Development Company in 1905. In an effort to increase water flow into the area for farming, irrigation canals were dug from the Colorado River into the valley. Due to fears of silt buildup, a cut was made in the bank of the Colorado River to further increase the water flow. The resulting outflow overwhelmed the engineered canal, and the river flowed into the Salton Basin for two years, filling the historic dry lake bed and creating the modern sea, before repairs were completed."

That said, the area now referred to as the Salton Sea is actually the northern extent of the Gulf of California and was cutoff from the sea by Colorado River deposition (alluvial fan).  Not to worry- sea level rise will reclaim it unless we do something stupid like build a dike - which the irrigation district and landowners will likely clamor for - assuming there is still water to irrigate with....

[icefest]

Why do you want to refill the salton sea? AFAIR there was little lake effect precipitation due to it anyway?


There's been suggestions like this in the past regarding filling of Australia's central desert with water, but it was decided that there would be little economic benefit.

[ritter]

The Salton Sea is the result of a man-made oops. There was no historical era "sea" there before we started monkeying with the Colorado River.

More please. A gap in my understanding appears again

Jester Fish beat me to it. And as he indicates, most areas on Earth, including the Salton Sea, were covered in water if one goes back in time far enough. But the Salton Sea in the historic era is  a man-made water body. Western water is really complicated stuff!

[Laurent]

Changing the Way We Think About Water: Q&A With Peter Gleick
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-tercek/changing-the-way-we-think-about-water_b_6746816.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green

[JimD]

The Salton Sea is the result of a man-made oops. There was no historical era "sea" there before we started monkeying with the Colorado River.

More please. A gap in my understanding appears again

Jester Fish beat me to it. And as he indicates, most areas on Earth, including the Salton Sea, were covered in water if one goes back in time far enough. But the Salton Sea in the historic era is  a man-made water body. Western water is really complicated stuff!

Very interesting!

On an optimistic note.  At least sea level rise will solve one problem

[Sigmetnow]

Why do you want to refill the salton sea? AFAIR there was little lake effect precipitation due to it anyway?


There's been suggestions like this in the past regarding filling of Australia's central desert with water, but it was decided that there would be little economic benefit.

In a word:  Dust.
From the article:

In a recent report, the Pacific Institute projected that without action to address the Salton Sea’s deterioration, the long-term social and economic costs — in higher health care costs, lower property values and other costs — could range between $29 billion and $70 billion over the next 30 years. The organization estimated that as the lake shrinks, as much as 150 square miles of lake bed is likely to be exposed, giving off large amounts of dust.

In its current form, the Salton Sea was created between 1905 and 1907, when the Colorado River broke through irrigation canals and flooded into the basin. The lake has since been sustained by agricultural runoff, but it has recently been shrinking and growing saltier, threatening millions of fish.

State and federal officials plan to build wetlands along portions of the dry shorelines to preserve habitat for fish and birds and to help control dust.

But those projects will cover up only a tiny fraction of the exposed lake bed. The Imperial Irrigation District has for the past year been promoting a plan to develop more geothermal energy plants near the Salton Sea. The agency, which owns portions of the lake bed, proposes to generate money through leases and use the funds for dust control projects.

http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2015/02/03/qsa-settlement-imperial-county/22829969/

[icefest]

Was there as much dust before the creation of the salton sea?

[jbatteen]

I'm not sure but I imagine so.  The entire desert southwest region is prone to dust storms when the wind kicks up.

[Tor Bejnar]

A desert that has been a desert for a long time has fairly little available dust to blow around as silt and clay sized particles are blown away (to wetter places) and get replenished fairly slowly.  A "new" desert, such as a dry lake bed that recently had water will have a great deal of silt and clay sized particles to get picked up by the wind.  Because of 20th century agricultural practices, there may be extra toxins in new lake bed sediments.  North Africa sends a great amount of fine grained particles (silt and clay sized 'dust') to the Atlantic and the Americas (recent study of African duest in the Amazon http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100809/full/news.2010.396.html); I wonder how much of this has to do with agricultural practices and how much this has to do with the vast source area and the extreme shifts between (short) wet and (long) dry seasons in the Sahel. Quote from article:

The basin, known as the Bodélé depression, is the site of a once-massive lake in Chad. Bodélé is thought to be the dustiest place on Earth.

I grew up in New Mexico (and studied geology) and know there is plenty of dust to go around, even in areas 'disturbed' only by grazing, but dry agricultural fields and recently dried lake beds offer more than 'plenty'!  (Sand dunes, for example, are mostly sand, and wind mostly only tumbles the grains, rather than making 'dust clouds'.)  the Dust Bowl (Midwest USA in 1930s) got its name from the sand, silt and dust blowing off dry recently plowed fields.

[solartim27]

Incredible show that shows how people interact with nature.  The episode titled Water has very dramatic video of the shrinkage of the Aral Sea to 1/10th of it's size.

http://video.pbs.org/program/earth-new-wild/

[jbatteen]

I just watched that over the air the other night solartim27.  It's a great episode!  Definitely recommend you watch it if you have time.

[Sigmetnow]

Greg Laden writes about Peter Gleick's paper and the "Hydraulic Hypothesis”.  Trading in different types of food should take into account the amount of water required to produce it. 
(Also: Vulcans. )

Thousands of years of technological adaptation and cultural evolution to address the problem of growing grains and orchards in dry country together with modern technology to the extent it has been applied have been insufficient to allow the system to continue in some localities, and everything we know about climate change strongly suggests that this is going to get worse, eventually encompassing the entire region.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/03/02/the-hydraulic-hypothesis-and-the-end/

[LRC1962]

This is a Doc about who thinks they own water, and of course the ones who are the poorest get the priviledge to pay the highest percentage of their income. Unfortunately the "owners"  have failed to read and understand history. If you oppress people enough so that they have no other options, they "owners" may discover they have grabbed a snake from the wrong end.
It is a long one called 'A World Without Water', but well worth every minute.

[Laurent]

This City Could Become The Next Detroit
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/04/04/3642935/baltimore-water-shutoffs/

Starting this week, 25,000 households in Baltimore will suddenly lose their access to water for owing bills of $250 or more, with very little notice given and no public hearings.

[Laurent]

Damming Tibet: China's destruction of Tibet's rivers, environment and people
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2828701/damming_tibet_chinas_destruction_of_tibets_rivers_environment_and_people.html

[Laurent]

Our public water future - closing out the corporate profiteers
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2834139/our_public_water_future_closing_out_the_corporate_profiteers.html

Private water companies have never been more aggressive in their sabotaging of efforts to 'make water public', writes Satoko Kishimoto, with legal threats and challenges launched under 'free trade' agreements. But as citizens worldwide reject corporate water profiteering, the trend of water re-municipalisation has gathered unstoppable momentum.

TTIP won't stop public services being run for ordinary people? Tell that to Argentina
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2834004/ttip_wont_stop_public_services_being_run_for_ordinary_people_tell_that_to_argentina.html

Now it's Argentines turn to be sued in a secret 'free trade' court run by the World Bank, writes Nick Dearden. After bringing a profiteering water company that was missing all its service and quality targets back into public ownership, the country has been ordered to pay $405 million 'compensation'.

[JimD]

And....Organized crime.  Of course!

Down by the sandy banks of the Yamuna River, the men must work quickly. At a little past 12 a.m. one humid night in May, they pull back the black plastic tarp covering three boreholes sunk deep in the ground along the waterway that traces Delhi’s eastern edge. From a shack a few feet away, they then drag thick hoses toward a queue of 20-odd tanker trucks idling quietly with their headlights turned off. The men work in a team: While one man fits a hose’s mouth over a borehole, another clambers atop a truck at the front of the line and shoves the tube’s opposite end into the empty steel cistern attached to the vehicle’s creaky frame.

“On kar!” someone shouts in Hinglish into the darkness; almost instantly, his orders to “switch it on” are obeyed. Diesel generators, housed in nearby sheds, begin to thrum. Submersible pumps, installed in the borehole’s shafts, drone as they disgorge thousands of gallons of groundwater from deep in the earth. The liquid gushes through the hoses and into the trucks’ tanks.

Within 15 minutes, the 2,642-gallon (10,000-liter) containers on the first three rigs are full. The pumps are switched off briefly as drivers move their now-heavy trucks forward and another trio takes their place. The routine is repeated again and again through the night until every tanker is brimming with water.

The full trucks don’t wait around. As the hose team continues its work, drivers nose down a rutted dirt path until they reach a nearby highway. There, they turn on their lights and pick up speed, rushing to sell their bounty. They go to factories and hospitals, malls and hotels, apartments and hutments across this city of 25 million.

Everything about this business is illegal: the boreholes dug without permission, the trucks operating without permits, the water sold without testing or treatment. “Water work is night work,” says a middle-aged neighbor who rents a house near the covert pumping station and requested anonymity. “Bosses arrange buyers, labor fills tankers, the police look the other way, and the muscle makes sure that no one says nothing to nobody.” Tonight, that muscle—burly, bearded, and in tight-fitting T-shirts—has little to do: Sitting near the trucks, the men are absorbed in a game of cards. At dawn, the crew switches off the generators, stows the hoses in the shack from which they came, and places the tarp back over the boreholes. Few traces of the night’s frenetic activity remain.......

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/17/at-the-mercy-of-the-water-mafia-india-delhi-tanker-gang-scarcity/

[JimD]

If this occurs it actually 'is' justification for war.  Not to mention it could be considered an act of genocide as it could easily cause the deaths of large numbers of people.  The Vietnamese produce a lot of food and much of that would be lost.

The Mekong Delta is Vietnam's most important agricultural area. Each year, the area produces the most rice and fruit in the country. This region also nurtures many freshwater fish species, which are an important source of protein for local people.

However, this key food production could be jeopardised by large water management projects upriver, Vietnamese experts have warned.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha voiced plans to use water from the Mekong and Salween rivers to fill dams that have run low because of drought and poor water management. But the PM's remarks have caused shockwaves in the Mekong Delta, which would be directly affected if such a project was to go ahead.......

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Vietnamese-plea-to-Thailand-Dont-divert-the-Mekong-30266710.html

[oren]

If this occurs it actually 'is' justification for war.  Not to mention it could be considered an act of genocide as it could easily cause the deaths of large numbers of people.  The Vietnamese produce a lot of food and much of that would be lost.

The Mekong Delta is Vietnam's most important agricultural area. Each year, the area produces the most rice and fruit in the country. This region also nurtures many freshwater fish species, which are an important source of protein for local people.

However, this key food production could be jeopardised by large water management projects upriver, Vietnamese experts have warned.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha voiced plans to use water from the Mekong and Salween rivers to fill dams that have run low because of drought and poor water management. But the PM's remarks have caused shockwaves in the Mekong Delta, which would be directly affected if such a project was to go ahead.......

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Vietnamese-plea-to-Thailand-Dont-divert-the-Mekong-30266710.html

Come to think of it, all nations downstream of major rivers coming from elsewhere are at very significant risk in the coming decades.

[Sigmetnow]

Middle East faces ‘extreme’ water stress by 2040

About one-fifth of all countries will experience chronic water scarcity by 2040, with the Middle East the worst affected, according to a report.

http://www.rtcc.org/2015/08/27/middle-east-faces-extreme-water-shortages-by-2040/

[Sigmetnow]

EPA Moves Ahead With Water Protection Rule Despite Court Ruling
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/epa-moves-ahead-water-protection-rule-despite-court-ruling-n418066

[Anne]

The Rain Barrel Is Only the Beginning of the West’s Water Wars
Colorado is about to let residents collect rainwater, but the debate is far from over.
What happens when there isn't enough water to go round?

More than three-quarters of the Western population live in cities, which are expected to grow by over 10 million people over the next 30 years. Farmers are rightly wary that urban centers will hold increasing sway over the region’s scarce water. Prior appropriation is a lifeline to traditional livelihoods like farming, but agricultural areas in Colorado are already facing a strain on water sources: There’s not enough water to divvy among all residents with legal claims. By 2030, Colorado is expected to have a water shortfall of 118,00 acre feet (one acre foot is enough water for a family of four for one year).

With the new Colorado law, rain barrels may provide some relief where Western tributaries cannot. The Colorado River, one of the most critical water sources in the West, supplies water to 30 million people. But climate change, in the form of rising temperatures, has reduced flows in recent years. These changes will continue to reduce water accessibility in the Upper Colorado River Basin, which encompasses parts of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. According to environmental law professor A. Dan Tarlock, prior appropriation “may be further undermined by the uncertainties of the regional and watershed impacts of global climate change.” Kenney, though, doesn’t see prior appropriation going away any time soon, even in areas where water is even scarcer, like California. “If that drought were to continue another year or two and the cities were to get really desperate, then maybe some reforms that people always assumed were totally inviolable, then maybe they become possible,” he said. “I just don’t see it happening.”

Colorado is just now catching up to other states that have incorporated progressive rain conservation with prior appropriation. Arizona allows rainwater catchment, and since 2008 Tucson has required it for new commercial projects. New Mexico offers incentives for rainwater catchment. Washington legalized barrels in 2009 and Utah in 2010.

“If every little reform is going to be that big of a fight, then we have problems,” Kenney said. “You can’t spend years fighting over rain barrels.”

Full story and links to citations here: https://newrepublic.com/article/132478/rain-barrel-beginning-wests-water-wars

[AbruptSLR]

The linked reference discusses newly documented deep groundwater sources in California's Central Valley.  If used wisely this could help with drought conditions; if used unwisely exploiting this resource could damage the environment, infrastructure and might constitute inter-generational theft associate with "Tyranny of the Contemporary":

Mary Kang and Robert B. Jackson (June 2016), "Salinity of deep groundwater in California: Water quantity, quality, and protection", PNAS, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1600400113


http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/06/21/1600400113

Significance
Groundwater withdrawals are increasing across the United States, particularly in California, which faces a growing population and prolonged drought. Deep groundwater aquifers provide an alternative source of fresh and saline water that can be useable with desalination and/or treatment. In the Central Valley alone, fresh groundwater volumes can be increased almost threefold, and useable groundwater volumes can be increased fourfold if we extend depths to 3,000 m. However, some of these deep groundwater resources are vulnerable to contamination from oil/gas and other human activities. Our findings provide the first estimates, to our knowledge, of underground sources of drinking water depths and volumes in California and show the need to better characterize and protect deep groundwater aquifers.

Abstract
Deep groundwater aquifers are poorly characterized but could yield important sources of water in California and elsewhere. Deep aquifers have been developed for oil and gas extraction, and this activity has created both valuable data and risks to groundwater quality. Assessing groundwater quantity and quality requires baseline data and a monitoring framework for evaluating impacts. We analyze 938 chemical, geological, and depth data points from 360 oil/gas fields across eight counties in California and depth data from 34,392 oil and gas wells. By expanding previous groundwater volume estimates from depths of 305 m to 3,000 m in California’s Central Valley, an important agricultural region with growing groundwater demands, fresh [<3,000 ppm total dissolved solids (TDS)] groundwater volume is almost tripled to 2,700 km3, most of it found shallower than 1,000 m. The 3,000-m depth zone also provides 3,900 km3 of fresh and saline water, not previously estimated, that can be categorized as underground sources of drinking water (USDWs; <10,000 ppm TDS). Up to 19% and 35% of oil/gas activities have occurred directly in freshwater zones and USDWs, respectively, in the eight counties. Deeper activities, such as wastewater injection, may also pose a potential threat to groundwater, especially USDWs. Our findings indicate that California’s Central Valley alone has close to three times the volume of fresh groundwater and four times the volume of USDWs than previous estimates suggest. Therefore, efforts to monitor and protect deeper, saline groundwater resources are needed in California and beyond.



Also see:
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/water-windfall-drought-stricken-california-20481

Extract: "California’s Central Valley has three times more freshwater in underground aquifers than previously thought, drinking water that could help the state weather future drought and fortify itself against a changing climate, according to a new Stanford University study.
But tapping that water, locked thousands of feet beneath the ground, will be expensive and comes with an enormous risk  — it could cause the valley floor to sink, according to the study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sinking land in the Central Valley is threatening roads, homes and other infrastructure, and reduces the amount of water some aquifers can hold.

...

“We're not advocating running out and drilling lots more groundwater wells,” Jackson said. “The Central Valley's been in denial about groundwater overdrafts for years. We need to consider ground subsidence. We also need to think about oil and gas activities directly in and around freshwater aquifers. Is that the best use of the resource long term?”

California’s water agency, the State Department of Water Resources, is concerned about the long-term implications of possibly using — and using up — a newly found reserve of freshwater.

“Understanding the total aquifer capacity is valuable from a technical standpoint, but a more useful estimate would be how much of the aquifer can we truly utilize before we experience significant impacts to surrounding agricultural, urban and domestic water users, to public infrastructures, to the environment and to the aquifers’ ability to recharge in a reasonable time frame,” said Lauren Hersh, spokeswoman for the California Department of Water Resources’ Sustainable Groundwater Management Program."

[Sigmetnow]

A plan is being developed to voluntarily reduce water allocations from the Colorado River to Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico. They hope to have it in place in time to avoid steeper, mandatory cuts that could begin as soon as 2018.

Facing historically low levels, Lake Mead officials are fending off a water war. Here's how
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sej-colorado-river-20160703-snap-story.html

[sidd]

Skirmishes on the edges of the largest battleground to come:

" withdrawals from Lake Superior and its four sister lakes are regulated by a hard-won eight-state protective agreement called the Great Lakes Compact and a companion document that provides oversight in Ontario and Quebec."

"  the compact, aimed at keeping Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes, was approved by the legislatures of all eight states bordering the Great Lakes, Congress and the Canadian provinces and signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 3, 2008."

"prohibits new or increased diversions outside the Great Lakes basin with limited exceptions for communities and counties that straddle the basin boundary"

"The lakes are the largest system of fresh surface water on Earth. They hold 84 percent of North America’s surface fresh water and about 21 percent of the world’s supply"

"‘Wait a minute folks, you’ve got 20 percent of the world’s freshwater? Why would you be able to contain and restrict it in the manner that you have?"

“It’s a nice law,” Hall says, “but it’s just a law.”

https://truthout.org/articles/can-the-great-lakes-continue-to-fend-off-an-increasingly-thirsty-world/

sidd

[bligh8]

Yup....all that fresh water and still we have Flint.

[sidd]

"a neighbor, age 86, beat her husband, 82, with a shovel."

When they pick up guns, it gets serious. Whiskey's for drinkin, and water's for fightin.

https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2018/10/08/water-thieves-sherriff-deputy-montezuma-county-colorado/

sidd

[bligh8]

Tri-State Water Wars (AL, GA, FL)

"Advocating for the Long-Term Health of Two Major River Basins
For decades, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been battling over the future allocation of water in two major river basins that cross their borders (the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa and the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint basins).  The dispute has involved several local, state and federal agencies, as well as numerous courts and mediators, and its outcome is one of the most important environmental issues facing the region today.
Each state has its own concerns about the proper allocation of water"

https://www.southernenvironment.org/cases-and-projects/tri-state-water-wars-al-ga-fl

[sidd]

Poisoned waters: 3M poisons its home town

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-3M-groundwater-pollution-problem/

sidd

[sidd]

First we took their land. Now we take their water:

" ... the water-saving plan favored by Pinal farmers is not only unfair, but will cost the tribe close to $200 million. Plus, it will slow the tribe’s efforts to heal its own agriculture economy, one wiped out 150 years ago when its water was “stolen” by non-Indian farmers living upstream, Lewis said."

" ... the historical diversions of the Gila River carried out by non-Indian farmers upstream, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, that stripped the tribe of the river’s water and its agricultural heritage ..."

“Is this their version of vengeance?”

" “We see ourselves as a moral conscience in this overall discussion,” Lewis said. "

Read the whole thing. Next we'll take away their air.

https://tucson.com/news/local/colorado-river-drought-plan-jeopardized-by-pinal-county-water-battle/article_0daa298e-2d74-56c3-b6e6-6f233188b57a.html

sidd

[sidd]

Surprise ! Ferguson et al. find a lot less potable than previously thought in the USA:

"Fresh-brackish transitions occur at relatively shallow depths of just a few hundred meters, particularly in eastern US basins. We conclude that fresh groundwater is less abundant in several key US basins than previously thought"

"Based on the average depth to the transition between fresh and brackish groundwater of 550 m found here, compared to the greater depths of 1000–2000 m used in previous global groundwater assessments [28–30], there is substantially less fresh groundwater than previously estimated. Further, because shallow (<100–200 m) groundwaters tend to be comprised disproportionately of recently recharged waters, a fraction of these shallow fresh groundwaters contain contaminants derived from the intensive use of land over the past ∼100 years [31]"

open access. check it out.

doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/aae6d8

coverage at

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181128141856.htm

sidd

[vox_mundi]

Jordan To Drill Fossil Water Wells a Half-Mile Underground – “After This, We Are Out of Options”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/jordan-drill-fossil-water-wells-half-mile-underground-n930426

Jordan has struggled with its water supply for decades. The arid nation receives roughly 20 days of rain per year and climate change is making conditions worse just as water demands from the growing population increase.

...  the rainy season appears to be getting shorter and now starts in mid-November instead of September... “The amount of rain, it’s declined in the last 10 years. This is climate change, it is fact.”

At the center of the government's efforts to obtain more of this precious resource is a patch of desert swirling with dust devils about 32 miles south of Amman.

Seven new wells are scheduled to be built here to tap the Disi, a deep aquifer that contains so-called fossil water that accumulated 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. It's the last source of fresh groundwater for the country, experts say.

The Disi is vast, extending from Jordan through Saudi Arabia. Wells near the border, where the water is not as deep, have depleted it since the 1980s, reducing its expected lifespan from 100 years to about 50.

"After this, we are out of options," said Marwan Al-Raggad, a hydrogeology professor at the University of Jordan.

... “It means huge energy is needed to extract this water,” said Ali Subah, general secretary of Jordan's water and irrigation ministry. “It will be expensive.”

Specialized drills and equipment are required to access the water, Subah said. A treatment facility and complex series of pipelines and pumping stations are also required to elevate the water from at least 3,281 feet underground to Amman, which is 3,084 feet above sea level.

It’s a technically challenging and expensive system, with power accounting for 90 percent of its operating costs, according to Haitham Al-Kilani, the plant's production director.

Jordan's Radioactive Water Problem
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/jordans-radioactive-water-problem

After the Disi pipeline is built, 100 million cubic meters of water will travel from the desert to two reservoirs each year. About 40 million cubic meters will go to the Abu Alanda reservoir (1) and mix with some surface water from Wala (2) and treated brackish water from the Zara Ma’en desalination plant (3). The other 60 million cubic meters will go to the Dabouq reservoir (4) and blend with Wala surface water and the output of the Zai Treatment Plant (5), which treats water from the King Abdullah Canal (6). Amman’s used water is sent to the As Samra Wastewater Treatment Plant (7) and later used for irrigation.

A critical $1 billion engineering project in Jordan could be complicated by radium

Policymakers and water experts had been debating the merits of draining Disi through much of the project’s planning. But in February the debate suddenly shifted, when Vengosh published a report in the journal Environmental Science & Technology describing the Disi water as highly radioactive.

He and his coauthors collected samples from 37 wells in the Disi area used mostly for agriculture and mining activities. They found that in all but one well, the concentrations of radium-226 and radium-228 isotopes exceeded the levels considered safe by the World Health Organization and even the more relaxed European Union and U.S. water standards. In some spots, the radiation levels were observed to be 30 times the WHO’s thresholds. Long-term exposure to radium is believed to increase the risk of developing bone cancer.

The Ministry of Water and Irrigation contends that the radiation is not a problem. ... ”availability of water takes precedence over radioactivity.”



What's a little fallout, huh? Have a nice day!

[gerontocrat]

Jordan and the Middle East.

The Dead Sea is dropping by about 1.2 metres a year, mostly due to the over extraction of water from the River Jordan (often now just a series of muddy puddles) and over extraction from aquifers in Jordan and by its neighbours. Just another indication of  the perennial problem of water demand greater than water supply that plagues all of the Middle East.

When I was there in 2003 and 2004 there was a lot of discussion about how much was down to bad agriculture. Instead of crops suitable for semi-desert, (e.g. olives) - banana plantations everywhere.  But these estates were owned by powerful families - nothing could or can be done.

I produced a business plan for the water and waste water for the Northern Governorates of Jordan. Much of the plan was about reducing water losses, thereby delaying the inevitable. But agriculture use was inviolate. As part of the research for the plan I also looked at water resources and water use in the entire region - Iraq, Israel, Syria, part of Turkey, Saudi Arabia. It was not good.

The only surprise about Jordan now going for the DISI aquifer water is that it has taken so long.
Other Middle East countries increasingly rely on desalination - but that can only take you so far, and even reverse osmosis is not cheap in cost or energy. News from Iran on water and agriculture is not good. In a few years demand for oil and gas will reduce as the water resources gap yawns wider and wider. The only question is - when. Climate change? Just nudges things along a bit quicker. There is a horrible inevitability about it all.

[Red]

Eighteen lawmakers representing constituencies from the central Iranian province of Esfahan, where water scarcity has reached an alarming state, have resigned collectively in a symbolic move against what they believe is an unfair distribution of water resources. In response, their counterparts from three other provinces, which share the same water supplies, hit back. They demanded in a public letter that the heads of the three branches of the Iranian state — president, parliament speaker and judiciary chief — as well as the country's powerful Supreme National Security Council intervene to bridge the widening divide over who should have more water.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/12/iran-water-crisis-parliament-lawmakers-infighting-share.html#ixzz5bU20fAxw

[vox_mundi]

... the water resources gap yawns wider and wider. The only question is - when. Climate change? Just nudges things along a bit quicker. There is a horrible inevitability about it all.

For those who do not learn from the past - everything old is new again ...

How Climate Change Caused the World’s First Ever Empire to Collapse
http://theconversation.com/how-climate-change-caused-the-worlds-first-ever-empire-to-collapse-109060

Akkadia (Acadian) was the world’s first empire. It was established in Mesopotamia around 4,300 years ago after its ruler, Sargon of Akkad, united a series of independent city states. Akkadian influence spanned along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from what is now southern Iraq, through to Syria and Turkey.

It appears that the empire became increasingly dependent on the productivity of the northern lands and used the grains sourced from this region to feed the army and redistribute the food supplies to key supporters. Then, about a century after its formation, the Akkadian Empire suddenly collapsed, followed by mass migration and conflicts. The anguish of the era is perfectly captured in the ancient Curse of Akkad text, which describes a period of turmoil with water and food shortages:

… the large arable tracts yielded no grain, the inundated fields yielded no fish, the irrigated orchards yielded no syrup or wine, the thick clouds did not rain.

-------------------------------------------------

Red Dead Redemption - Not the Wild West Video Game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea%E2%80%93Dead_Sea_Water_Conveyance

The Red Sea–Dead Sea Conveyance, sometimes called the Two Seas Canal, is a planned pipeline that runs from the coastal city of Aqaba by the Red Sea to the Lisan area in the Dead Sea. It will provide potable water to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, bring sea water to stabilise the Dead Sea water level and generate electricity to support the energy needs of the project. The project is going to be carried by Jordan and is entirely in Jordanian territory. The project will be financed by the government of Jordan and a number of international donors.

The project costs $10 billion in all of its phases, with the first phase, which is slated to begin construction in 2021, will cost $1.1 billion. The Jordanian government is currently in the process of shortlisting consortiums and waiting for the final feasibility study, for which international funding would follow.



The word to focus on is 'Empire Collapse'

------------------------------------

... Eighteen lawmakers representing constituencies from the central Iranian province of Esfahan, where water scarcity has reached an alarming state, have resigned collectively in a symbolic move against what they believe is an unfair distribution of water resources. ...

Not only water but subsidence and Tehran is sitting on several active faults.

Tehran Is Sinking Dangerously
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-12/ggph-wti120618.php

Iran has a water problem. The reserves in many groundwater basins there have been severely depleted. For the last forty years, the country has invested a lot in the agricultural sector and has been striving to be independent in its food supply. In order to cover the increased water demand, groundwater basins have been exploited to a considerable extent in a hardly state-regulated way.

In addition, the government built a lot of dams to store water for specific purposes, particularly in agriculture. However, this restricted the natural inflow into the country's groundwater basins in the downstream, in turn contributing to desertification and serious environmental issues like shrinkage of Lake Urmia, the world's second-largest salt lake in northwest Iran, and frequent dust and sand storms in recent years in the Khuzestan province in the southwest.

In the region around Tehran, the capital city of eight million inhabitants, the demand for water has also risen sharply due to the influx of many new inhabitants over the last four decades. The number of wells there rose from just under 4000 in 1968 to more than 32.000 in 2012. In addition, there was a lack of rainfall in periods of drought, which have occurred more frequently in recent years. All of this has greatly lowered the groundwater level - in Tehran, for example, by twelve meters between 1984 and 2011

.

[sidd]

Another kind of water war: they dug a big hole, but it ain't big enuf

https://slate.com/business/2019/01/chicagos-deep-tunnel-is-it-the-solution-to-urban-flooding-or-a-cautionary-tale.html

Chicago is learning that they cant build their way out of trouble.

sidd

[oren]

The Red-Dead canal+hydroelectric+desalination is the only solution that can save Jordan (and the Dead sea?). I'ts been discussed for decades, but nothing happened as of yet.

[vox_mundi]

Tehran isn't the only mega-city sinking due to water removal ...

Mexico City, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/17/world/americas/mexico-city-sinking.html

Climate change is threatening to push a crowded capital toward a breaking point.

... The whole city occupies what was once a network of lakes. In 1325, the Aztecs established their capital, Tenochtitlán, on an island. Over time, they expanded the city with landfill and planted crops on floating gardens called chinampas, plots of arable soil created from wattle and sediment. The lakes provided the Aztecs with a line of defense, the chinampas with sustenance. The idea: Live with nature.

Then the conquering Spaniards waged war against water, determined to subdue it. The Aztec system was foreign to them. They replaced the dikes and canals with streets and squares. They drained the lakes and cleared forestland, suffering flood after flood, including one that drowned the city for five straight years.

“The Aztecs managed,” ... “But they had 300,000 people. We now have 21 million.”



... the government acknowledges that nearly 20 percent of Mexico City residents — critics put the number even higher — still can’t count on getting water from their taps each day. For some residents, water comes only once a week, or once every several weeks, and that may mean just an hour of yellow muck dripping from the faucet. Those people have to hire trucks to deliver drinking water, at costs sometimes exponentially higher than wealthy residents pay in better-served neighborhoods.

“Climate change is expected to have two effects,” ... “We expect heavier, more intense rains, which means more floods, but also more and longer droughts.”

If it stops raining in the reservoirs where the city gets its water, “we’re facing a potential disaster,” ... “There is no way we can provide enough trucks of water to deal with that scenario.”

“If we have the problems that California and São Paulo have had, there is the serious possibility of unrest.”

-----------------------------

Mexico City Goes Days Without Water During Maintenance Shutdown
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/31/662786981/mexico-city-goes-days-without-water-during-maintenance-shutdown

10-31-2018 The 72 hr. water shut-off will hit as many as half of the city's 8 million-plus residents.

... Workers are making much-needed repairs to Mexico City's so-called Cutzamala system. It's a 200-mile-long complex water delivery system composed of several huge lines, reservoirs and pumping stations that send water up and over the mountains ringing Mexico City.

The system is highly inefficient and in dire need of repairs. As much as 40 percent of the water coming into Mexico City is lost to leaks.

[gerontocrat]

Tehran isn't the only mega-city sinking due to water removal ...

Mexico City, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/17/world/americas/mexico-city-sinking.html

This story is over 30 years old (shows how long I was on and off in the water business).

These cities ( Karachi, Shanghai, Calcutta Bangkok, Jakarta, Dhaka, Amman, Manila .........the list is very long) stagger from one crisis (too much or too little water) to another and yet somehow keep going.

I am still waiting for the first real water war - it must come, sometime or other. Maybe between countries, maybe internal unrest. Of interest will be how this also happens in the developed countries (e.g. Phoenix, Arizona).

[vox_mundi]

... I am still waiting for the first real water war - it must come, sometime or other. Maybe between countries, maybe internal unrest. Of interest will be how this also happens in the developed countries (e.g. Phoenix, Arizona).

I lived in Phoenix for 8 years and the problem there is that most of the citizens are retirees or recent migrants from water rich states up north. They have no perception of the value of water - or its scarcity.

Plight of Phoenix: How Long Can the World’s 'Least Sustainable' City Survive?
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/20/phoenix-least-sustainable-city-survive-water

... This winter, snow in the Rocky Mountains, which feeds the Colorado, was 70% lower than average. Last month, the US government calculated that two thirds of Arizona is currently facing severe to extreme drought; last summer 50 flights were grounded at Phoenix airport because the heat – which hit 47C (116F) – made the air too thin to take off safely. The “heat island” effect keeps temperatures in Phoenix above 37C (98F) at night in summer.

... “There are plans for substantial further growth and there just isn’t the water to support that,” says climate researcher Jonathan Overpeck, who co-authored a 2017 report that linked declining flows in the Colorado river to climate change. “The Phoenix metro area is on the cusp of being dangerously overextended. It’s the urban bullseye for global warming in north America.”

... despite the federal Bureau of Reclamation reporting in 2012 that droughts of five or more years would happen every decade over the next 50 years, greater Phoenix has not declared any water restrictions. Nor has the state government decided its official drought contingency proposal.

... Greater Phoenix is good at recycling waste water, but most of it is used for cooling the Palo Verde nuclear power plant to the west of the city, the largest in the US and the only one not on its own body of water. Conversely, the water department is Arizona’s biggest electricity consumer, because it has to pump the water uphill from the Colorado along miles of canals into Phoenix and Tucson. And most of that electricity comes from the heavily polluting, coal-fired Navajo Generating Station in the north of the state.

Meanwhile, despite enjoying more than 330 days of bright sunshine a year, Holway estimates that Arizona only derives 2-5% of its energy from solar power.

-------------------------------

With Colorado River Water Shortage Looming, Phoenix Votes Down Water-Rate Increase
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2018/12/12/colorado-river-shortage-looming-phoenix-city-council-kills-water-rate-hike/2287381002/

The Phoenix City Council rejected a two-year water-rate increase that would have supported $1.5 billion in new drought-contingency projects and repairs to the city's aging water-delivery system.

About $500 million generated from the rate increase would have gone toward a Colorado River resiliency project, and $500 million would have gone toward fixing aging pipelines. The rest of the money would have paid to replace pumps and update water-treatment facilities and equipment.

That proposal amounts to an increase of $1.98 per month in 2019 and an additional $2.35 per month in 2020 for the average customer, according to the city.

-----------------------------

Water Wars: Are Hundreds of Residents Going To Go Thirsty North of Phoenix?
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2017/09/28/phoenix-cracks-down-water-haulers-new-river/691673001/

... Hundreds of residents are slated to lose affordable access to privately hauled drinking water at the end of the year because of a city of Phoenix crackdown on water haulers refilling from city fire hydrants.

Meanwhile, families who own wells are anxiously watching groundwater levels drop as population growth sucks the already shallow aquifer dry.

"What would happen if 1,000 people just suddenly have no water available?" ... "There's going to be a big problem. I don't think the people (in government) making the decisions are looking at the greater picture."

... Phoenix accuses private water haulers of hooking up illegally to its hydrants, which are designated for firefighting and construction only, to draw water for residents outside the city. "Water in the hydrants is intended to put out fires, not to be potable," said Wes Harris, a member of the Phoenix Water and Wastewater Citizens' Rate Advisory Committee.

Sounds like India.

[vox_mundi]

Here’s Where the Post-Apocalyptic Water Wars Will Be Fought
https://earther.gizmodo.com/here-s-where-the-post-apocalyptic-water-wars-will-be-fo-1829793126

A United Nations report published last week said we have about a decade to get climate change under control, which—let’s be honest—isn’t likely to happen. So break out your goalie masks and harpoon guns, a Mad Max future awaits! Now, as new research points out, we even know where on Earth the inevitable water wars are most likely to take place.

Published today in Global Environmental Change, the paper identifies several hotspots around the globe where “hydro-political issues,” in the parlance of the researchers, are likely to give rise to geopolitical tensions, and possibly even conflict. The authors of the new report, a team from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), say the escalating effects of climate change, in conjunction with ongoing trends in population growth, could trigger regional instability and social unrest in regions where freshwater is scarce, and where bordering nations have to manage and share this increasingly scarce commodity.



Looking at the results, the researchers found that conflicts are more likely to arise in areas where a “transboundary” to water is present, such as a shared lake, basin, or river, and when freshwater is scarce, population density high, and power imbalances and climate stresses exist. A number of potentially problematic areas were identified, including five hotspots: the Nile, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Indus, Tigris-Euphrates, and Colorado rivers.

[Sigmetnow]

Beyond Drought: 7 States Rebalance Their Colorado River Use as Global Warming Dries the Region

On Thursday night, Arizona joined other states that share the river basin in agreeing to voluntary water conservation plans. Its legislature approved a plan that helps balance the state's competing water rights with of those of California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, along with Native American tribes and Mexico. The states faced a Jan. 31 deadline for completing interstate contingency plans on water rights; without them, federal officials could order mandatory cuts later this year. Only a California water district had yet to agree.
...
A 2018 study used hydrology models to tease out what was causing the reduced runoff. It blamed a little more than half of the decline on unprecedented regional warming, which melted the snowpack and increased water use by plants. The rest was due to lower snowfall in four key pockets of Colorado where most of the water originates.

Model simulations run by Keith Musselman of the University of Colorado for a 2017 study indicated that some Western mountains could be expected to lose 10 percent of their mountain snowpack for every 1 degree Celsius of warming. (The models simulated flows in the Southern Sierra Nevada.)

A third application of advanced models across six mountainous regions of the West saw global warming driving the snowline — the altitude where snow falls above, but rain below — significantly higher up the slopes. Rain runs off immediately, while snow is stored until spring or summer.

The results "overwhelmingly indicate" the vulnerability of snowpack to a warmer climate," wrote the authors, from the University of Utah. ...

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31012019/colorado-river-water-crisis-climate-science-state-conservation-plans