The World's Looming Water Gap

Marc Gunther of GreenBiz writes about the World's Looming Water Gap.  Says Gunther of the good news, the bad news, and the challenge surrounding humanities fresh water supplies:

The bad: Global demand for water already exceeds supply -- about 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean water -- and the so-called water gap is increasing at an accelerating rate.

The good: Cost-effective, sustainable solutions are available to close the gap, particularly if governments and business focus on reducing demand rather than trying to generate additional supply.

The challenge: Getting beyond the nostrum that water is a "human right" so that water, which is obviously a scarce resource, can be priced in a way that drives conservation.

Between the disappearance of glaciers that supply billions with drinking and agricultural water and the rising human population, we're in a world of trouble when it comes to fresh water.  The good news, of course, is that we have both the technology and the capability to improve agricultural, forestry, grazing and other land use practices in a way that will help protect and conserve water supplies.

Do our sluggish governments have the political will to drive -- and mandate -- a smooth transition to more water efficient and conserving practices in time to avoid a major global water crisis?

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Consevation is Seen As Key to Dealing with California's Water Woes

One thing many of us know well in California -- due to droughts and water restrictions -- is the value of water conservation.

The L.A. Times offers a nice summary of the state's current situation, in which conservation is really the main immediate solution.

In a warming world, the Sierra snowpack is predicted to gradually shrink as a key water reservoir.  With it melting earlier in the spring, more of the water that it releases into reservoirs will be lost to evaporation.  This impact will be further exacerbated by poorly planned logging operations that aren't designed to maximize shading of logged sites (e.g., by planning cuts in east-west facing strips that reduce exposure to solar radiation).

For homeowners and municipalities, our water supplies are only going to become more uncertain, and we're best off preparing now.

That SHOULD mean that something serious is going to have to be done about all the golf courses, green grass lawns, and swimming pools in hot, deserty southern California.

What do we do?

• We have an energy efficient dishwasher, which we run only when full and only late at night -- usually about once every 5 days (fortunately, ours has a setting that allows us to set it to go on in 3 or 6 hours, so it goes on at 2AM and we are greeted to fresh dishes in the morning)
• We take relatively short showers
• We rent our home, and have to deal with a small lawn in our front yard.  So we set the timer to go on for 15 minutes per week at 2AM, when evaporation is lowest.
• Being a rental, we also can't install rain barrels. However, we have set up a tube from one of our gutters to direct rainwater down a hill into an extra plastic garbage bin can we have.  We use this water all winter to water our house and garden plants.
  
• Our fairly large back yard is not landscaped, and while we have a garden, it is composed of four 4x4-foot raised beds that we plant with a square foot grid, as well as barrel planters for our cooking herbs (about 12 different kinds).  These are highly space-efficient, and with no plant more than two feet from the edge, they are easy to water directly on to the base of each stem.  Of course, I usually water early in the morning (for food plants, watering at night can lead to mold issues).  A future goal is to add drip irrigation, but with square foot beds, it isn't entirely necessary.
  

I can't wait to have a home of my own so we can redirect our gray water to our garden and fruit trees, and add rain barrels that will likely last us well into the summer.

I find that conservation is actually not only money saving, but is FUN!
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Water Use in U.S. Less in 2005 Than In 1975

Well here's a bit of good news.  According to a new report, water use in the U.S. was less in 2005 than in 1975, in spite of a 30% increase in population during this period.

The report shows that in 2005 Americans used 410 billion gallons per day, slightly less than in 2000. The declines are attributed to the increased use of more efficient irrigation systems and alternative technologies at power plants. Water withdrawals for public supply have increased steadily since 1950--when USGS

began the series of five-year trend reports--along with the population that depends on these supplies.

Nearly half (49 percent) of the 410 billion gallons per day used by Americans was for producing electricity at thermoelectric power plants. Irrigation accounted for 31 percent and public supply 11 percent of the total. The remaining 9 percent of the water was for self-supplied industrial, livestock, aquaculture

, mining and rural domestic uses.

I honestly had no idea that this much of our fresh water is used to produce electricity.  Given that water is the next oil, this is yet another reason why we need a massive effort to advance wind, solar and energy efficiency technologies.  We just can't afford to be using this much fresh water to produce electricity (which is an issue with solar thermal plants as well -- though they can use alternative fluids).

On irrigation, we can do far better still, and the amount of water that gets sucked out of rivers to feed crops and livestock in deserts is still pretty obscene. 

But findings like these serve as a nice reminder that our efforts to improve the efficiency with which we use resources are working.  We've got a long way to go though -- including to reduce public consumption, which is an area of water use that continued to rise...

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