Prepare for the coming battle for water

Due to its agriculture industry and far-flung suburbs, California has long been at the mercy of the water gods, and lately they've not been very friendly. With the Governor calling a water emergency, dramatically reducing output to the state's farms and with Nevada's Lake Mead at its lowest level ever, new development in outlying areas will be just as dependent on energy prices as it will be on the availability of water. Future conflicts between countries are expected to hinge on water supplies, and I expect we'll see similar ones here in the West. While we can in theory turn to converting sea water to fresh water, that will be far more expensive and drive up the cost for a natural resource most people in the U.S. have always thought of as almost free.

First, from an L.A. Times article on the Governor calling a water emergency:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today proclaimed a state of emergency because California is in the third year of a drought. His declaration sets the stage for additional steps to conserve water. Although precipitation is about 75% of normal for the year, key reservoirs, including the one in Oroville, are down to 35% of capacity.

In his proclamation, the governor uses his authority to direct all state government agencies to utilize their resources, implement a state emergency plan and provide assistance for people, communities and businesses affected by the drought...

The governor's order directs actions including:

* That all urban water users immediately increase their water conservation activities in an effort to reduce their individual water use by 20%.

* That the Department of Water Resources expedite water transfers and related efforts by water users and suppliers.

* That the department offer technical assistance to agricultural water suppliers and agricultural water users, including information on managing water supplies to minimize economic impacts and implementing efficient water management practices.

Next, from a Bloomberg News article on the serious water shortage hitting Lake Mead and what that means for those states which depend not only on its water, but the cheap electricity provided by Hoover Dam:

The crew is in a hurry. They’re battling the worst 10-year drought in recorded history along the Colorado River, which feeds the 110-mile-long reservoir. Since 1999, Lake Mead has dropped about 1 percent a year. By 2012, the lake’s surface could fall below the existing pipe that delivers 40 percent of the city’s water...

There’s no global marketplace for water. Deals for property, wells and water rights, such as the ones Mulroy must negotiate to build the pipeline, are done piecemeal. As the world grows needier, neither governments nor companies nor investors have figured out an effective and sustainable response...

Water upheavals are intensifying because the population is growing fastest in places where fresh water is either scarce or polluted. Dry areas are becoming drier and wet areas wetter as the oceans and atmosphere warm...

Yet local governments that control water face unyielding pressure from constituents to keep the price low, regardless of cost. Agricultural interests, commercial developers and the housing industry clash over dwindling supplies. Companies, burdened by slowing profits, will be forced to move from dry areas such as the American Southwest, Udall says.

“Water is going to be more important than oil in the next 20 years,” says Dipak Jain, dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who studies why corporations locate where they do...

Over the Sierra Mountains from Las Vegas, Shasta Lake, California’s biggest reservoir, is less than a third full because melting snow that fed it for six decades is dwindling. A winter as dry as the previous two may mean rationing for 18 million people in Southern California this year, says Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District...

Robert Glennon, a University of Arizona law professor, says governments must provide enough water for human survival. Beyond that, only freely functioning markets can allot it to people who need it most, he says.

Fast-growing cities should buy from farmers who use water on marginal land, says Glennon, author of “Unquenchable” (Island Press, 2009). That would cut inefficiency caused by irrigating deserts, such as those around Las Vegas, to raise alfalfa or beef, he says.

Worldwide, about 60 percent of fresh water goes to irrigate crops through flooding, losing 70 percent of the moisture to evaporation, Lux Research says...

In 2005, after 19 years of negotiations, Los Angeles’s Metropolitan Water District signed a 35-year “dry year option” with the Palo Verde Irrigation District south of Las Vegas in California. Los Angeles pays 7,000 farmers to leave land fallow during droughts and ship their water to city residents. The city gives a one-time payment of $3,170 an acre (0.4 hectare) to farmers who sign up and then $630 per year for every acre not farmed..

Finding the water for casinos is one reason crews are working around the clock at Lake Mead.

In 2002 alone, lack of rainfall lowered the deep-blue waters by 24.6 feet, leaving white bathtub-ring-like marks on the brown cliffs and stranding docks half a mile from shore.

Today, the lake is 1,112 feet above sea level. Should it fall to 1,075 feet, the federal government would cut the water to seven states that depend on the Colorado River, according to an agreement they all signed in 2007. If that happens, the states would likely renegotiate a 1922 pact that divided up the river’s water rights in the first place, Mulroy says. Mexico’s allocation under a 1944 treaty could also change.

If the drought persists and more water is diverted from the Colorado, the lake could drop to 1,050 feet. That would prevent water from flowing into the intake pipe and cut 40 percent of Las Vegas’s supply -- the disaster Mulroy is trying to head off. Hoover Dam, completed in 1935 to regulate the river and form Lake Mead, wouldn’t be able to produce electricity for the 750,000 people it supplies in Los Angeles...

At 1,000 feet, the remaining intakes and the rest of the Lake Mead water would go. Because of climate change and population growth, chances of this are as great as 50 percent by 2026, the University of Colorado’s Udall says...

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