FRC Forums highlighted post

This this time i would like to present a series of articles that were posted on Frc Forums this week, all with a comman theme. Water Shortage. As you can see the guys in our forums all all over the situation.

Much of U.S. Could See a Water Shortage « Posted on: April 11, 2009,
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Another reason for practicing Solomon’s modified and dry garden techniques. Irrigation will simply be too expensive, restricted and maybe even illegal for their privet gardens. 230gr

Much of U.S. Could See a Water Shortage
Oct 26 02:27 PM US/EasternBy BRIAN SKOLOFFAssociated Press WriterWEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn't have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York's reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year. Across America, the picture is critically clear—the nation's freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst. The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess. "Is it a crisis? If we don't do some decent water planning, it could be," said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the Denver-based American Water Works Association. Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development. "We've hit a remarkable moment," said Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The last century was the century of water engineering. The next century is going to have to be the century of water efficiency." The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years. "Unfortunately, there's just not going to be any more cheap water," said Randy Brown, Pompano Beach's utilities director. It's not just America's problem—it's global. Australia is in the midst of a 30-year dry spell, and population growth in urban centers of sub-Saharan Africa is straining resources. Asia has 60 percent of the world's population, but only about 30 percent of its freshwater. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists, said this year that by 2050 up to 2 billion people worldwide could be facing major water shortages. The U.S. used more than 148 trillion gallons of water in 2000, the latest figures available from the U.S. Geological Survey. That includes residential, commercial, agriculture, manufacturing and every other use—almost 500,000 gallons per person. Coastal states like Florida and California face a water crisis not only from increased demand, but also from rising temperatures that are causing glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise. Higher temperatures mean more water lost to evaporation. And rising seas could push saltwater into underground sources of freshwater. Florida represents perhaps the nation's greatest water irony. A hundred years ago, the state's biggest problem was it had too much water. But decades of dikes, dams and water diversions have turned swamps into cities. Little land is left to store water during wet seasons, and so much of the landscape has been paved over that water can no longer penetrate the ground in some places to recharge aquifers. As a result, the state is forced to flush millions of gallons of excess into the ocean to prevent flooding. Also, the state dumps hundreds of billions of gallons a year of treated wastewater into the Atlantic through pipes—water that could otherwise be used for irrigation. Florida's environmental chief, Michael Sole, is seeking legislative action to get municipalities to reuse the wastewater. "As these communities grow, instead of developing new water with new treatment systems, why not better manage the commodity they already have and produce an environmental benefit at the same time?" Sole said. Florida leads the nation in water reuse by reclaiming some 240 billion gallons annually, but it is not nearly enough, Sole said. Floridians use about 2.4 trillion gallons of water a year. The state projects that by 2025, the population will have increased 34 percent from about 18 million to more than 24 million people, pushing annual demand for water to nearly 3.3 trillion gallons. More than half of the state's expected population boom is projected in a three-county area that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, where water use is already about 1.5 trillion gallons a year. "We just passed a crossroads. The chief water sources are basically gone," said John Mulliken, director of water supply for the South Florida Water Management District. "We really are at a critical moment in Florida history." In addition to recycling and conservation, technology holds promise. There are more than 1,000 desalination plants in the U.S., many in the Sunbelt, where baby boomers are retiring at a dizzying rate. The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant is producing about 25 million gallons a day of fresh drinking water, about 10 percent of that area's demand. The $158 million facility is North America's largest plant of its kind. Miami-Dade County is working with the city of Hialeah to build a reverse osmosis plant to remove salt from water in deep brackish wells. Smaller such plants are in operation across the state. Californians use nearly 23 trillion gallons of water a year, much of it coming from Sierra Nevada snowmelt. But climate change is producing less snowpack and causing it to melt prematurely, jeopardizing future supplies. Experts also say the Colorado River, which provides freshwater to seven Western states, will probably provide less water in coming years as global warming shrinks its flow. California, like many other states, is pushing conservation as the cheapest alternative, looking to increase its supply of treated wastewater for irrigation and studying desalination, which the state hopes could eventually provide 20 percent of its freshwater. "The need to reduce water waste and inefficiency is greater now than ever before," said Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the Environmental Protection Agency. "Water efficiency is the wave of the future."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... t=breaking

Tool of His post this one a few weeks ago
Fast-growing Western U.S. cities face water crisis
By Tim Gaynor and Steve Gorman Tim Gaynor And Steve Gorman – Wed Mar 11, 4:54 am
LAS VEGAS/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Desert golf course superintendent Bill Rohret is doing something that 20 years ago would have seemed unthinkable -- ripping up bright, green turf by the acre and replacing it with rocks.
Back then "they came in with bulldozers and dynamite, and they took the desert and turned it into a green oasis," Rohret said, surveying a rock-lined fairway within sight of the Las Vegas strip. "Now ... it's just the reverse."
The Angel Park Golf Club has torn out 65 acres of off-course grass in the last five years, and 15 more will be removed by 2011, to help conserve local supplies of one of the most precious commodities in the parched American West -- fresh water.
But Rohret's efforts have their limits. His and many other golf courses still pride themselves on their pristine greens and fairways and sparkling fountains, requiring huge daily expenditures of water.
Aiming to cut per capita use by about a third in the face of withering drought expected to worsen with global warming, water authorities in the United States' driest major city are paying customers $1.50 per square foot to replace grass lawns with desert landscaping.
Built in the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas leads Western U.S. cities scrambling to slash water consumption, increase recycling and squeeze more from underground aquifers as long-reliable surface water sources dry up.
From handing out fines for leaky sprinklers to charging homeowners high rates for high use, water officials in the U.S. West are chasing down squandered water one gallon at a time.
Nowhere is the sense of crisis more visible than on the outskirts of Las Vegas at Lake Mead, the nation's largest manmade reservoir, fed by the once-mighty Colorado River. A principal source of water for Nevada and Southern California, the lake has dipped to below half its capacity, leaving an ominous, white "bathtub ring" that grows thicker each year.
"We are in the eye of the storm," said Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. "As the realities of climate change began to manifest themselves at the beginning of this century, we had to get serious about it."
For now, policymakers have emphasized the need to curb water use rather than urban growth, though the U.S. recession has put the brakes on commercial and housing development that otherwise would be at odds with the West's water scarcity.
GETTING TOUGH
Warm, dry weather has long made the American West attractive to visitors, but piped-in water has created artificial oases, luring millions to settle in the region. Las Vegas has ranked as one of the fastest-growing major cities.
But scientists say climate change is shriveling the snow pack in California's Sierra Nevada, the state's main source of fresh surface water, and in the Rocky Mountains that feed the Colorado River, whose waters sustain seven states.
Further pressure from farming and urban sprawl is straining underground aquifers, placing a question mark over the future growth of cities from Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona.
"There is going to have to be a big adjustment in the American Southwest and in California as we come to grips with limits in this century -- not just limited water, but also limited water supply," said James Powell, author of the book "Dead Pool," exploring challenges facing planners in the West.
Reactions among local water authorities differ.
In Phoenix, the United States' fifth-largest city, authorities say sustainable groundwater and ample surface water allocations from the Colorado and Salt rivers meet the city's needs, even factoring in growth through a moderate drought. The city is also recycling waste water and plans to pump some back into the aquifer as a cushion.
Tucson will require new businesses to start collecting rainwater for irrigation in 2010.
California requires developers of large housing projects to prove they have sufficient water.
In Las Vegas, where rain is so infrequent that some residents can remember the days it fell in a given year, front-yard turf has been banned for new homes.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority also has hired "water cops" to fan out into the suburbs to identify violations of mandatory lawn irrigation schedules and wasteful run-off. Repeat offenders get $80 fines.
Major hotel-casinos such as the MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment have adopted "green" building codes, including modifications designed to slash water use by 40 percent.
Those measures are starting to pay off, with daily water use down 15 percent per person in the greater Las Vegas area.
BUYING TIME
In a wake-up call to California, water officials there recently announced that prolonged drought was forcing them to cut Sierra-fed supplies pumped to cities and irrigation districts by 85 percent.
That has led many California cities, topped by Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest, to plan for rationing, including price-enforced household conservation and tough new lawn watering restrictions.
"The level of severity of this drought is something we haven't seen since the early 1970s," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in unveiling his city's drought plan, which also would put more water cops on the beat.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month called on the state's urban users to cut water consumption 20 percent or face mandatory conservation measures.
The California drought, now in its third year, is the state's costliest ever. Complicating matters are sharp restrictions on how much water can be pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in northern California, which furnishes much of the state's irrigation and drinking supplies, to protect endangered fish species.
Moreover, the severe dry spell is leaving the state more vulnerable to wildfires, which last year consumed some several Los Angeles suburbs. The previous year, fires forced a record 500,000 Southern Californians to flee their homes.
PLANNING FOR THE WORST
Conservation will buy time, experts say. But bolder steps are needed in anticipation of longer droughts and renewed urban expansion once the recession ends.
Cities like Los Angeles and San Diego are revisiting an idea once abandoned in the face of staunch political opposition -- recycling purified sewer water for drinking supplies.
Disparaged by critics as "toilet-to-tap," such recycling plans have gained new currency from the success of the year-old Groundwater Replenishing System in Orange County near Los Angeles.
That system distills wastewater through advanced treatment and pumps it into the ground to recharge the area's aquifer, providing drinking supplies for 500,000 people, including residents of Anaheim, home of Disneyland.
Water specialists also see a need to capture more rainfall runoff that otherwise flows out to sea and to change the operation of dams originally built for flood control to maximize their storage capacity.
The situation in Las Vegas has grown so dire that water authorities plan to build a $3 billion pipeline to tap aquifers lying beneath a remote part of Nevada, a project critics call the greatest urban water grab in decades.
Southern Nevada water czar Mulroy says a broader national conversation about water is needed -- but not happening.
"We are talking about investing in public infrastructure, we are looking at building projects, but I get frustrated because we are doing it in complete denial of the climate change conditions that we are facing," she said.
"We are not looking at where the oceans are rising, where the floods are going to occur, where things are going to go from that normal state to something extraordinary."
(Additional reporting by Deena Beasley in Los Angeles, editing by Alan Elsner)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090311/us_nm/us_water_cities


This one was posted by Grog just yesterday

No water in Mexico City
Posted on: April 12, 2009,--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, Apr. 11, 2009
Dry Taps in Mexico City: A Water Crisis Gets Worse
By Ioan Grillo / Mexico City
The reek of unwashed toilets spilled into the street in the neighborhood of unpainted cinder block houses. Out on the main road, hundreds of residents banged plastic buckets and blocked the path of irate drivers while children scoured the surrounding area for government trucks. Finally, the impatient crowd launched into a high-pitched chant, repeating one word at fever pitch: "Water, Water, Water!"
About five million people, or a quarter of the population of Mexico City's urban sprawl, woke up Thursday with dry taps. The drought was caused by the biggest stoppage in the city's main reservoir system in recent years to ration its depleting supplies. Government officials hope this and four other stoppages will keep water flowing until the summer rainy season fills the basins back up. But they warn that the Mexican capital needs to seriously overhaul its water system to stop an unfathomable disaster in the future. (See pictures of the world water crisis.)
It is perhaps unsurprising that the biggest metropolis in the Western hemisphere is confronting problems with its water supply — and becoming an alarming cautionary tale for other megacities. Scientists have been talking for years about how humans are pumping up too much water while ripping apart too many forests, and warning that the vital liquid could become the next commodity nations are fighting over with tanks and bombers. But it is hard for most people to appreciate quite how valuable a simple thing like water is — until the taps turn off. (See pictures of the contentious politics of water in Central Asia.)
Housewife Graciela Martinez, 44, complains that the smell of her bathroom — used by her family of eight — had forced them all outside. "We have got no toilets, I can't wash my children, I can't cook, I can't clean the mess off the floor," Martinez says, trying to find shade from the sweltering sun. "And the worst thing is, we have got almost nothing to drink."
Paradoxically, the thirsty city was once a great lake, where the Aztecs founded their island citadel Tenochtitlan in 1325. When the Spanish conquerors took control they drained much of the water, laying the basis for the vast expansion of the metropolis across the entire Valley of Mexico. However, as the growing population continues to suck water out in wells, Mexico City is sinking down into the old lake bed at a rate of about three inches a year. This downward plunge puts extra pressure on water distribution pipes, which are now so leaky they lose about 40% of liquid before it even reaches homes.
With its own supplies evaporating, Mexico City relies on the Cutzamala system, a network of reservoirs and treatment plants that pump in water from hundreds of miles around. However, this year Cutzamala itself is running dry amid low levels of rainfall in the area. Its main basin is only 47% full, compared to an annual average of 70% for early April. "This could be caused by climate change and deforestation. These are difficult factors to understand and predict," says Felipe Arreguin, under director of the National Water Commission. "We had to have the stoppages now to make sure that some supply can continue until the rain in June." The first two partial stoppages in February and March cut off water to hundreds of thousands. In the April action, the entire Cutzamala system will be shut down for 36 hours, before gradually resuming water pumping over several days.
Martinez is particularly anxious because this means there will be no water in her taps this entire weekend. She is also enraged that the blight is mostly hitting poor neighborhoods like hers. "The rich are still swimming in their pools while we are dying of thirst," she says. Playing up to the class war theme, Mexican newspaper Reforma showed a photo of a woman using a public tap in a poor area next to another woman hosing down her lawn in a rich suburb. (See pictures of crime fighting in Mexico City.)
Ramon Aguirre, director of Mexico City's water department, says the government has tried to distribute supplies as fairly as possible but the Cutzamala system is hooked up to many of the unplanned communities on the city outskirts. The city has, however, sent out of fleets of water trucks, and Mayor Marcelo Ebrard — who built urban beaches and a winter ice rink for the poor — is personally handing out free bottled water. Aguirre says the long-term solution involves teaching people to ration their water much better. "We need to educate people from when they are children that water is valuable and needs to be used wisely," he says.
Few Mexico City residents currently heed such advice. Keen on long showers and washing their cars, homes and clothes well, the average Mexico City resident uses 300 liters of waters per day compared to 180 per day in some European cities, says Arreguin. Furthermore, on Easter Saturdays, residents traditionally have huge water fights, in which everyone from grandparents to young children join in hurling bucket loads over each other. Piet Klop, an investigator at the Washington-based environmental think tank World Resources Institute, says that people will not learn to ration water unless it hits their pockets. "We need to understand that it is a more valuable commodity than oil and prices must reflect that better," Klop says. "Cheap subsidized water is not helping people. It is giving them a bad service." However, radically hiking the prices of any basic commodity would be a tough sell for any politician, especially in a turbulent democracy such as Mexico.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1890623,00.html