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T. Boone Pickens wants your water | Timothy P. Carney | Op Eds | Washington Examiner (http://washingtonexaminer.com/node/207036 - broken link)
Ahhh, I remember now hearing things about the water tied to the wind farms in the Pickens Plan. I didn't have details and the Carney article was great! Those articles were in 08', and I'll have to dig around and see if I can find any updates on this. I hadn't followed it.
A good book on it is Cadillac Desert. Its not that we don't have enough; its that its a mismanaged scam with the worst kind of political favoritism. Fortunes were lost and made by diverting water. Hydroelectric subsidized completely inefficient irrigation projects that whimsically created millionaires with water "rights". Tax payers were robbed. Some of the best salmon fisheries in the world(then considered cat food) were ruined to irrigate cattle fodder. We could have nearly had salmon on every table but now we subsidize water and corn for nutritionally imbalanced beef. What a joke water is in the Western US.
Cadillac Desert is probably the most informative book I've ever read. Actually, I'm still reading it; had to set it down when I got busy with other things but it's on my nightstand!
That book alone has confirmed what I (and many of us, I presume) suspected about government, politicians and how politics operate. It's an amazingly well researched and informative book. Every person in America should read Cadillac Desert to see just how people get screwed over by big money and big money people.
MOD: I don't know where to put this thread, because the subject matter is really no longer debatable. Hope this is OK.
I found this article, which is yet another study on our impending water crisis. Granted a lot of us will be gone by the 2070s, but this is a fascinating study on the progression of where we will be in another few decades.
I read once that 85% of the world's population lives within 100 miles of an ocean. I am among the 15% of those who do not. I do however live within 20 miles of the nations second largest river (Missouri River) which is facing 100-500 year flooding this summer due to heavy rains and 400%+snowpack upstream.
I understand that desalinization plants are supposed to be quite expensive. Is cost the only reason they are not utilized more and that we do not have pipelines leading from the major water sources in this country to outlying areas in need of water? We have pipelines for natural gas and oil, why not water instead of draining aquifers? Shouldn't the auifiers be for emergency back-up?
Don't even get me going on major metropolitan areas built in the middle of deserts. I'll never understand why people believe if a reservoir is built that they can never run out of water. Same goes for agriculture in the desert.
Here's a neat webpage on the Netherlands water management. I've not yet fully read through it, but the Dutch are well renowened for great water management. It's darned interesting.
I read once that 85% of the world's population lives within 100 miles of an ocean. I am among the 15% of those who do not. I do however live within 20 miles of the nations second largest river (Missouri River) which is facing 100-500 year flooding this summer due to heavy rains and 400%+snowpack upstream.
I understand that desalinization plants are supposed to be quite expensive. Is cost the only reason they are not utilized more and that we do not have pipelines leading from the major water sources in this country to outlying areas in need of water? We have pipelines for natural gas and oil, why not water instead of draining aquifers? Shouldn't the auifiers be for emergency back-up?
Quote:
Don't even get me going on major metropolitan areas built in the middle of deserts. I'll never understand why people believe if a reservoir is built that they can never run out of water. Same goes for agriculture in the desert.
No kidding! I read in the book, Cadillac Desert, that during the early phase of manifest destiny that they marketed the movement West by with the phrase, "The rain follows the plow". Early on the West had a few years period of very wet winters, so it was an easy sell, but the normal weather patterns returned and many of the homesteaders failed when the dry conditions returned.
Dams also have an end of life with silt build up in the reservoir being a major problem. A lot of these were built with cheap depression era labor. Now we think we can afford luxuries and amenities while we live off the slave labor of the past.
I have also seen New Deal cheer leaders talking about water projects of this sort in malaria country. I think its neat that you can irrigate water melon in the desert and all but you know, a taste for cactus might make more sense.
Stuff happens when you move water. I laughed when someone in the neighborhood decided to remove a silver maple tree in their yard. Its a river tree. They suck up lots of water. After its removal, the basement began to flood. Its the same kind of thinking on a smaller scale that does not consider consequences and how things can change very badly. I remember the same thing in reverse when trees were brought to southern Africa cause it was like back home and they dried up the river. So they cut them down to help the environment. We don't seem to care how far away we move from it or if we are 100 feet below sea level within walking distance to it. Yet everything depends on it.
Another amusing anecdote was the guy who told me about it used a broad leaf herbicide on his lawn that leached into his garden beds and he couldn't plant in ground the whole year. He knows me a little and figured I was good for admitting and laughing about short sighted environmental sins, even his own.
Dams, if made to mimic the only long term surviving irrigation culture known as Egypt, could be a big benefit. But that would mean "wasting water" in the short term that would flush out the salt accumulation. That is why Egypt survived because the Nile flooded enough to leach out the salts. Too bad they hired the Russians to screw that up too.
The problem is man-made and thus totally debateable.
Did you know the Mississippi river dumps 3.3million gallons per SECOND into the gulf of mexico?
Hi Mathguy,
Some in California think its a sin how much water makes it to the ocean from the Colombia river. Those in the Columbia river water shed just as in the Great Lakes knows not to let anyone touch it. What would the delta be like without it? I wonder what it might be like as a sea food resource without the dead zones as it is because of the algae blooms.
Some in California think its a sin how much water makes it to the ocean from the Colombia river. Those in the Columbia river water shed just as in the Great Lakes knows not to let anyone touch it. What would the delta be like without it? I wonder what it might be like as a sea food resource without the dead zones as it is because of the algae blooms.
My comments are intended to highlight that there is PLENTY of fresh water out there and thus any shortage problems globally are man-made. Eventually drought, disease, famine etc. rectify the problem.
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Ahhh, I remember now hearing things about the water tied to the wind farms in the Pickens Plan. I didn't have details and the Carney article was great! Those articles were in 08', and I'll have to dig around and see if I can find any updates on this. I hadn't followed it.
