Future US-Canada Water disputes due to Global Warming?

[Greymatters]

Would that be this link?

http://www.recordholders.org/en/records/vegetables2.html

 

[Kirkhill]

That's not the report I was thinking of but it'll do.

 

[tomahawk6]

Since global warming is a non-issue I dont see the US-Canada coming to blows over water. Far greater liklihood of having problems over potential oil deposits in waters the US-Canada dispute.

 

[foresterab]

Tomahawk,

Don't underestimate the power of water.  In Alberta legistation has been around for close to a century restricting activities in the mountains due to the need to ensure drinking water for the cities on the plains.  If they were worried about water in the 1930's and given today's population...well things aren't much easier.

Also given the amount of water used in residential, agriculture, and industrial use currently and we've got serious issues.  Many of the underground aquifers are having trouble recharging due to the constant drain and yet we keep placing more pressure on them. 

The offshore oil rights are a more simple dispute and are better understood.  But what makes more sense?  Fighting over 2 million barrels of oil which may or may not be developed versus a source of water for 4 million people and a large portion of Alberta's industry?

Each province has twists and local variations on thier value of water but I've used Alberta as that is the province I'm most familiar with.

 

[GAP]

In doing Agri Surveys for Stats Can......I found, a couple of years ago when everything was pretty dry in Ab & Sask., that people were complaining about not being able to plant water hog crops (eg: beets) because the snow cap was thin, and they were being restricted in their availability to water for the irrigation systems.

There is an unreasonable high expectation of water availability by the farmers (and probably industial users), just because because they can make more $$ from this crop over this other crop....that is going to have to change.

 

[foresterab]

GAP,

You hit it on the head there.  Not only are there going to have to be tough choices made on crop selection but also upon residendential development/usuage and industrial usuage.

When it takes the equavialent of 6 barrels of steam to produce one barrel of oil from the oil sands....we've got a lot of water going underground.  Citing the one post earlier where they were talking about urban infrastructure losing 40% of it's water due to leaky pipes....we've got another major water loss.

Unfortunately to make those decisions you're now getting into some pretty nasty political realms.

 

[a_majoor]

I remember reading that the huge aquifer under the US midwest was being depleted at a furious rate, until a price mechanism was put in place for drilling and water usage. Farmers suddenly smartened up, started using moisture indicators in the soil to irrigate with just the right amount of water, switched to more efficient irrigation methods and turned to different crops that required less water. They could have done this at any time, but since water had been subsidized and farmers could treat it as essentially "free", there was no incentive for them to do so.

You can consider why other industries don't swithch to more efficient production methods or cities do not police their infrastructure better, but the answer is usually the same; there is no real cost for them to continue as they are and thus no incentive to change.

Of course there are also perverse incentives, such as subsidizing corn to create ethanol. Corn (maize) is a very water and "input" intensive crop, so the subsidies to create "environmentally friendly" fuel will end up using more fossil fuel (to power trucks and farm machinery, create fertilizer and pesticides and power the distilleries) as well as put higher demands on available water supplies.

 

[AJFitzpatrick]

I wonder how much of industrial water use is cooling and how much is "process" water. Presumably the cooling water can be recovered and reused, preferably with some sort of heat recovery. Such water probably doesn't have to be at the standard of drinking water either. However I can't see  municipalities developing an "industrial" water distribution systems to meet this need.

 

[Greymatters]

Some numbers for you from a 1995 report on USA water use...

http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/pdf1995/pdf/abstract.pdf
Total freshwater withdrawals are an estimated 341,000 Mgal/d for 1995, or about the same as in 1990.
Estimates of withdrawals by source indicate that during 1995, total surface-water withdrawals were 324,000 Mgal/d, which is about the same as during 1990
The use of reclaimed wastewater is estimated to have been 1,020 Mgal/d during 1995, which is 36 percent more than the 750 Mgal/d used during 1990.
Offstream water-use categories are classified in this report as public supply, domestic, commercial, irrigation, livestock, industrial, mining, and thermoelectric power.
The two largest water-use categories continue to be thermoelectric power (190,000 Mgal/d, of which 57,900 Mgal/d was saline) and irrigation (134,000 Mgal/d).

And in 2000...

http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1268/
Estimates of water use in the United States indicate that about 408 billion gallons per day were withdrawn for all uses during 2000.
Withdrawals have stabilized for the two largest uses—thermoelectric power and irrigation.
About 195 Bgal/d, or 48 percent of all freshwater and saline-water withdrawals for 2000, were used for thermoelectric power. Most of this water was derived from surface water and used for once-through cooling at power plants. About 52 percent of fresh surface-water withdrawals and about 96 percent of saline-water withdrawals were for thermoelectric-power use.
Irrigation remained the largest use of freshwater in the United States and totaled 137 Bgal/d for 2000. Since 1950, irrigation has accounted for about 65 percent of total water withdrawals, excluding those for thermoelectric power.  The number of acres irrigated with sprinkler and microirrigation systems has continued to increase and now comprises more than one-half the total irrigated acreage.
Public-supply withdrawals were more than 43 Bgal/d for 2000. Public-supply withdrawals during 1950 were 14 Bgal/d. During 2000, about 85 percent of the population in the United States obtained drinking water from public suppliers, compared to 62 percent during 1950. Surface water provided 63 percent of the total during 2000, whereas surface water provided 74 percent during 1950.
Self-supplied industrial withdrawals totaled nearly 20 Bgal/d in 2000, or 12 percent less than in 1995. Compared to 1985, industrial self-supplied withdrawals declined by 24 percent. Estimates of industrial water use in the United States were largest during the years from 1965 to 1980, but during 2000, estimates were at the lowest level since reporting began in 1950. Combined withdrawals for self-supplied domestic, livestock, aquaculture, and mining were less than 13 Bgal/d for 2000, and represented about 3 percent of total withdrawals.
California, Texas, and Florida accounted for one-fourth of all water withdrawals for 2000. States with the largest surface-water withdrawals were California, which had large withdrawals for irrigation and thermoelectric power, and Texas, which had large withdrawals for thermoelectric power. States with the largest ground-water withdrawals were California, Texas, and Nebraska, all of which had large withdrawals for irrigation.

Apparently they are still rying to total up the water usage for the 2005 report...

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act, is an interesting article from today’s Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070622.wusdrought0622/BNStory/International/home/?pageRequested=1

The Dehydrated States of America
Like other regions across the southern United States, Arizona's water supply is dwindling while its population grows like wildfire

JOHN IBBITSON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
June 23, 2007 at 1:14 AM EDT

NEAR FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Standing on the top of Deadman Butte, the damage spreads as far as the eye can see.

Across the broad, parched plain below, stands of dead pinyon pine trees mingle with still-living junipers, grey death amidst green life.

"This used to be a pinyon and juniper woodland," Neil Cobb, an ecological research scientist at Northern Arizona University, remarks sadly. "Now it's just juniper."

To the south and west, the San Francisco Peaks are slashed and even denuded from forest fires, which have been increasingly intense and numerous in recent years.

Two items on the inventory of a decade of drought in northern Arizona: stressed trees that are succumbing to beetle infestations — die-off, it's called — and tinder forests at risk of fire. Every year it gets worse.

This is not simply a question of a local ecosystem at risk. These dead, scrubby Arizona pines are ecological mine canaries, early warning of the consequences of an imminent, permanent water shortage threatening all of the southern states, which are the very magnets of the country's population and economic growth.

Nor is it just the Southwest that could be drying out. The U.S. Drought Monitor reports that 50 per cent of the United States is currently experiencing unusually dry or drought conditions.

More than anything else, lack of water could define the limits to America's future growth.

Cyclical droughts are an ancient feature of the U.S. Southwest. They come and go in 20- to 30-year cycles, and within each cycle there are good years and bad years.

But scientists such as Prof. Cobb have accumulated convincing evidence that this latest drought is worse than its mid-20th-century predecessor.

The region's pinyon pine population has been essentially eradicated. Ponderosa and other species are dying off in places where die-off has never been seen before.

"It's a plausible hypothesis that man-made global warming is contributing to worsening drought in the Southwest," Prof. Cobb proposes. "The thing is, we might not know for sure until the end of the century. And by then it might be too late."

The southeast, where drought has traditionally been much less frequent, has suffered through the driest spring on record.

All Alabama farmland is drought-stricken. Forty per cent of it has been classified as experiencing D4 or "exceptional drought," the worst possible kind. Streams have disappeared, ponds dried up.

In Florida, the vast waters of Lake Okeechobee — second in size only to Lake Michigan among the freshwater lakes of the contiguous states — have receded so severely that parts of the lakebed recently caught fire.

Worst of all for some, the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, Tenn., has warned it may have to reduce or suspend production, because the iron-free spring waters on which it relies are flowing as much as two-thirds below normal.

Earlier this month, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue asked the people of his state to pray for rain.

"We don't need government's help, we need God's help," he declared.

If global warming, manmade or otherwise, is contributing to a drying out of both the Southeast and the Southwest, then that's trouble, because those regions are where people are headed: older people, in search of cheap land and dry heat, and younger people chasing jobs in high-tech industries that are shifting south, attracted by lower taxes and laissez-faire state governments.

Arizona is the fastest-growing state in the union. Its population increased by 3.6 per cent last year. Nevada is No. 2: Its population grew by 3.5 per cent. Both are mostly desert.

Tuscon and Phoenix — with populations of a million and four million, respectively — are sprawling toward each other, and are expected to merge in the next decade. Planners project a Phoenix-Tucson population of 10 million within 30 years. Even without worsening drought, that will exceed the capacity of existing water supplies — and Phoenix has supplemented its groundwater supplies by diverting rivers, such as the Colorado. Further increasing Phoenix's water capacity could mean impoverishing water supplies elsewhere.

Los Angeles, another major centre of population growth, is experiencing the driest year on record, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa„© has asked residents to reduce their water consumption by 10 per cent. The population of California is expected to grow by 30 per cent over the next two decades: That would mean adding three cities the size of Los Angeles to the state.

The long-term prospects for Southern California are deeply troubling. A recent study by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University warns that global warming, though it will actually increase precipitation overall, will entrench current dry conditions in the American southwest permanently within a couple of decades, by forcing an early snowmelt that feeds the river systems that supply water to the southwestern states, including California. This spring, the snow pack in the Sierra Nevadas was a pathetic 29 per cent of normal, prompting warnings of possible water rationing across the state this summer.

Yet in many places, local politicians continue to assume water is, and always will be, plentiful. In certain Florida municipalities, as Cynthia Barnett, author of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern United States told National Public Radio, recently, "many homeowners associations in Florida not only require sod, but they have guys in golf carts driving around measuring the shade of green. And if you don't have the right shade, you get a nasty letter from the homeowners association and a fine." Such practices continue even as overuse of aquifers in some parts of the state have caused seawater to seep in, contaminating the water supply.

Part of the problem is age-related. Retirees, who are behind so much of the south's population growth, are often the most skeptical of long-term projections and the most unwilling to conserve.

Part of problem is economic. Developers press local councils relentlessly to grant zoning exemptions for new subdivisions and condominiums, and both local and state politicians are instinctively averse to limiting growth for the sake of something as intangible as future water availability. Some developers even get away with what are known as "wildcat subdivisions," built in defiance of local authorities through clever exploitation of legal loopholes.

Part of the problem is scientific skepticism. As Prof. Cobb observes, "There is a lot of pressure on ecologists to determine what linkages might exist between natural disasters like droughts and storms and climate change, because of concern over the potential ecological impacts if what we suspect might be happening actually is happening."

But that pressure to reach conclusions leads politicians, and even some scientists, to complain that governments are being asked to limit growth based on incomplete data and what could turn out to be unsubstantiated fears.

What is real, however, is the drought, and the shift in population, and the stress on regional water supplies. Global warming or no, there will be future droughts, and no one expects anything other than continued growth in the southeast and southwest.

Some Canadians fear that the shrinking domestic water supplies in the United States will tempt the Americans to ask for, and tempt Canadians to sell, water from our abundant supply of lakes and rivers, through some sort of diversion scheme. Such concerns are far-fetched. In most cases, the engineering obstacles alone would price such water out of any conceivable market.

But local and state governments are taking more practical action. For California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, that means a controversial $4.5 billion project to construct two new dams. (Too expensive, say some critics; bad for the environment, say others.) In southern Florida that means proposals, which are being hotly contested, to impose year-round restrictions on lawn watering, a first step in encouraging a culture of water conservation.

In Nevada, which is adding new residents at a rate of 80,000 a year, that means a daytime watering ban in Los Vegas, bans on new artificial lakes, water recycling plants at the big resorts, and incentives to get people to rip up their lawns and convert to desert landscaping.

But it also means plans to pipe in water from rural Nevada, prompting howls from farmers and local communities, who see their future starved of water to slake Las Vegas' thirst.

That's something Americans can expect more of: competition within states for control over scarce water resources; competitions among states for a greater share of regional watersheds.

Optimists place their hopes on new technologies to recover water, especially desalination plants, which convert salt water to fresh water. But desalination is expensive (though getting cheaper) energy intensive (more greenhouse gases) and the leftover salt injected back into the sea can have severe impacts on local marine life.

For Gregg Garfin, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona, the real question is whether governments should be pursuing new sources of fresh water, or instead considering limits to growth.

"The questions for me are: Where is the public debate about whether to grow at any cost, or to adopt lifestyles that may require some pain?" he asks. "If we retire agricultural lands to save the water they use, will these lands become more housing subdivisions? Do we, as a society, want to make such trades? Do we all want to live in a world where we accept the fact that we've depleted our water supplies to such an extent that we are willing to accept desalination as a fact of life, even if it means that our ecosystems are more vulnerable to drought, insect infestations and fire?"

Until Americans are ready to have that debate, in earnest, they will simply have to cross their fingers and hope (or in Georgia's case pray) that the droughts end, that temperatures don't rise too much.

They will have to hope that the pinyon pine is just a sad little story in northern Arizona, and not a harbinger of the great dry to come.

A couple of observations:

1. Despite near record rainfalls this spring the largest reservoir in the Dallas region still needs years of much above average rain to bring them to a situation which will allow the Dallas area municipalities to permit something like regular lawn watering – restrictions have been in place for two or three years.  Dry, brown lawns are the ‘norm’ – year round; and

2. A few residential subdivisions in the North Dallas area are eschewing lawns in favour of desert landscapes and oriental style gardens.

For the conspiracy theorists: I think this is the key paragraph –

Some Canadians fear that the shrinking domestic water supplies in the United States will tempt the Americans to ask for, and tempt Canadians to sell, water from our abundant supply of lakes and rivers, through some sort of diversion scheme. Such concerns are far-fetched. In most cases, the engineering obstacles alone would price such water out of any conceivable market.

I think that is a fair representation of the current engineering consensus, but there are compelling reasons to consider some water diversion – most of North America’s water is in places where most people cannot live and where crops cannot be grown.  We might consider huge hydroponic operations in Canada’s North but it may, eventually, be cost effective to move the water to drought ridden but otherwise ‘good’ land where the sun shines.

China also has severe and growing drought problems – in their case the abundant water is in East and Central Siberia.

 

[GAP]

Is it the Columbia River or the Colorado River that is piped to LA? Huge project.

 

[LakeSup]

Is it the Columbia River or the Colorado River that is piped to LA? Huge project. 
_________________________________________________________________
Colorado R supplies a lot of the SW.  Las V, Phoenix (I believe) and others.  San Diego and So Cal  ground water is almost too saline to support agricultural irrigation and most drinking water comes from reservoirs on the Colorado and others.  When you read about the water problems around the world, it is really quite revealing....wars for oil are not hard to belive but fighting over water is something ppl don't think about.  The 67 war in the ME was partially based on water needs and the ground water situation in the Gaza and West Bank are a major (not widely reported) irritant.
Some of this may or may not be a result of Global warming... a lot is new demands for irrigation and damming of rivers resulting in disruption downstream.

 

[a_majoor]

There are many reasons to believe that simple economics can resolve the situation without diverting the Columbia or Colorado rivers (much less the Mackenzie river as envisioned by the 1960 era NAWPA plan). Allowing the utility companies to charge market prices for water will serve to discourage more people from moving to droubt stricken or water poor regions. People who are currently there will certainly become enthusiastic converts to conservation (or leave for damper climates).

At the same time, the attraction of high economic returns will attract new suppliers to the market. In places like Arizona, the solution might turn out to be recycling waste water (i.e. extracting drinkable water from the "grey" and "black" water currently flowing into the sewers). In Florida and California, distillation of sea water makes the most sense, since the ocean is right there, eliminating the cost of transportation. In any case, conservation, waste water recycling and distillation can be accomplished far more quickly and cheaply than massive diversion schemes.

The stumbling block (and the reason for the problem in the first place) is the inability of people to get over the idea that water should be "free".

 

[Kat Stevens]

Vapour compression distillers are HUGE energy whores, and the electricity required would be horrendous.  Cal has an inexhaustible water supply literally at its doorstep.  Initial cost of RO desal plants is huge, but the benefit would be almost immediately felt.  The technology exists, it's more a matter of the will, and of course, the cash, to use it.

 

[LakeSup]

You may be referring to the North American Water and Power Alliance Plan (NAWAPA), which seems to be the US Army Corps of Engineers saying they can do things bigger and better than the Soviet Union (divert rivers fron the Arctic Ocean? HA! We will reverse the entire flow of the North American Continent!)
_____________________________________________________________________________

Not to mention the (rapidly disappearing) Aral Sea.

 

[time expired]

I find it very heart warming to read the IMHO naive belief that technology
will find a way to solve all the multitude of problems facing us,energy,water
and other disappearing resources.And no one from either side of the political
spectrum will even discuss the real problem,which is overpopulation,too
many people chasing our fast disappearing resources.
Enter the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse ,stage right.
            Regards

 

[Kat Stevens]

Absolutely right! Fire the ovens up, and lets cull the herd.  Who gets to pick?  The population is out of control, no question about that, but we can't undo that part of the equation. Water is not disappearing,  It's becoming unusable and inaccessible, not the same thing at all, and the technology does exist to fix water quality.  I know this because I do it for a living, but thanks all the same for calling my opinion naive, makes me feel all warm and fluffy to know that a well informed genius like you is watching out for me.



edited for clarity only

 

[Edward Campbell]

I find it very heart warming to read the IMHO naive belief that technology
will find a way to solve all the multitude of problems facing us,energy,water
and other disappearing resources.And no one from either side of the political
spectrum will even discuss the real problem,which is overpopulation,too
many people chasing our fast disappearing resources.
Enter the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse ,stage right.
             Regards

It is not technology, per se, that will solve pour problems; it is the simple and immutable law of supply and demand.  As long as we can afford to buy technology rather than 'sell' lives we will do so - for better or worse.

Now, it may eventually happen, that we will be unable to afford any 'solution' to some of our problems and allowing millions, maybe tens or even hundreds of millions to die - maybe year after year after year will be the only tolerable answer.  I rather hope not, despite my oft expressed distaste for about 97.5% of my fellow humans.

 

[Kirkhill]

The real problem is that quaint 1648 concept of an immutable world that permitted the establishment of permanent borders with an expectation of unchanging populations, technologies and resources.

When the Chinese experienced the same problems as the Romans and the Americans they adopted the same solutions: create walls to keep out the nomads.  The Europeans and the rest of the Indo-Aryans adopted the same strategy but on a smaller scale.  They built city walls.

In all cases though the walls were overwhelmed by the nomads.  The country wide walls were just too long to defend effectively indefinitely.  The city walls were ignored and the nomads cut the city dwellers off from their supply base - at least until the nomads renegotiated trade deals favourable to themselves and became the ruling classes.  The men on horseback, or camels.

The nomads came from cultures that constantly adapted to the world as they found it.  The city dwellers have expectations of permanence and are much slower to accept change and adapt.  They either die (witness the number of cities available for archaeologists to explore), or move on (like wise) or are forced to adjust their world to continue to survive (irrigation and the rise of central authority).

We have had a relatively stable 5000 years or so and the last 300 years have been particularly stable.  Now that we are entering a period of instability the question is still one of fight (stay in place and change), flee (move and don't change) or die (stay in place and don't change).

Our permanent borders work against the flee option but they seem to have been ineffective in the past so they might just as easily be ineffective in the future.  They seem to be ineffective at present.

That leaves us with change or die - or become forced nomads ourselves.

I don't believe in the apocalypse - the world will survive and so will mankind and so will our technology.  However history is replete with examples of individuals and communities that bet on the wrong horse.

Back to the question at hand - it is not inconceivable to me that the first pressure that we are likely to see is American companies moving north to follow the sun and the water and American tourists buying up lakefront property.  This will slowly put pressure on Americans, with cities that are being hollowed out to follow the money to where the jobs are.  A prime example of this just now is Alberta.  Similar circumstances exist on the Mexican-American border, the Guatemalan-Mexican border, the North African-European border and the East European borders.

My sense is that the change is happening at a manageable rate - the time-scale seems to be one of decades and generations.  Frictions are evident but adjustment is happening.

 

[Kirkhill]

A Michael Yon tale of a rich Bedu.  He chooses to wander rather than trade in his camels for a house and cars.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/death-or-glory-part-iv.htm