Zonie63
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Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
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I was just reading this article about the Colorado River basin and how the drought could lead to shortages and cutbacks which could affect the Southwest:
quote:
The Colorado is suffering from a historic drought that has exposed the region's dependence on a single, vulnerable resource. Nearly 40 million people in seven states depend on the river, a population some forecasts say could nearly double in the next 50 years.
The drought, now in its 16th year, has made one fact brutally clear: The Colorado cannot continue to meet the current urban, agricultural, hydroelectric and recreational demands on it — and the point at which the river will fall short could come sooner than anyone thought.
That is true even after an unusually wet spring in the Rocky Mountains, where runoff feeds the Colorado and its tributaries.
In the decades to come, federal officials say, significant shortages are likely to force water-supply cutbacks in parts of the basin, the first in the more than 90 years that the river has been managed under the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
In Arizona, which would take the steepest cuts, officials are warning that the elaborate conservation measures and infrastructure put in place in the 1980s to guard against shortages will probably not be sufficient. As the drought continues, serious shortages and more severe cutbacks have become more likely.
Farmers who grow cattle feed and cotton in central Arizona could be forced to let fields lie fallow, maybe for good, and cities like Phoenix might have to begin reusing wastewater and even capping urban growth, the region's economic engine.
Here in Yuma, though, there may be no cuts at all. Thanks to the seemingly endless idiosyncrasies of the rules governing the Colorado, much of metropolitan Phoenix could theoretically become a ghost town while Yuma keeps planting lettuce in the desert.
California has been in a drought situation. Las Vegas depends on Lake Mead, which is also reaching low levels. Unless they can build some kind of aqueduct from Lake Superior to Arizona, I might have to move to some area where there's a lot of lakes.
There's not much left of the Colorado by the time it gets into Mexico and empties into the Gulf of California.
Another possibility is desalination, which is still viewed as too cost prohibitive to be a viable solution.
quote:
Desalinated water typically costs about $2,000 an acre foot -- roughly the amount of water a family of five uses in a year. The cost is about double that of water obtained from building a new reservoir or recycling wastewater, according to a 2013 study from the state Department of Water Resources.
And its price tag is at least four times the cost of obtaining "new water" from conservation methods -- such as paying farmers to install drip irrigation, or providing rebates for homeowners to rip out lawns or buy water-efficient toilets.
"We look out and see a vast ocean. It seems obvious," said Heather Cooley, water director for the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Oakland. "But it's cost prohibitive for most places in California."
In Carlsbad, two gallons of seawater will be needed to produce each gallon of drinking water. And to remove the salt, the plant will use an enormous amount of energy -- about 38 megawatts, enough to power 28,500 homes -- to force 100 million gallons of seawater a day through a series of filters. The process, known as reverse osmosis, removes salt and other impurities by blasting the water at six times the pressure of a fire hose through membranes with microscopic holes.
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Colorado River Drought in 16th year; possible shortages... - 
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