I spent months talking to the most essential experts on water in the west and southwest. This is your essential 5 minute executive briefing on the emerging Megadrought.
I’ll be posting more, much more, of what those experts told me in coming days.
5 thoughts on “New Video: Understanding the Megadrought”
Hi Peter. Good – but why wasn’t agriculture mentioned in the water demand? It’s far and away the largest user of the Colorado (70-90%, depending on place). The cities and suburbs can increase their efficiency many times over, but if they’re only 10-30% of the total water use, it won’t make much of a dent. What really needs to happen is either turn a good percentage of the arid region farmland fallow and/or force/subsidize the farmers to use vastly more efficient watering methods like drip irrigation.
Human usage far outweighs evaporation in terms of the water levels dropping, and agricultural usage far outweighs city/suburb usage. Cutting the amount of irrigation would extend the Colorado’s usage elsewhere and keep up Lake Mead’s levels for years, despite the drought.
Folks, there is an excellent solution to Megadroughts and that is desalinizing seawater. The leading technology for this, reverse osmosis (RO), has improved significantly the last 10 years, and can produce drinking water for a very reasonable cost. It can be powered by PV. San Diego already has a large plant in operation. Large parts of Spain and Israel depend on RO for their drinking water and more.
But there are major drawbacks – massive power usage, how to handle the brine, impacts to sea life, the cost is still about double what other sources would be, etc. – and desalinated water is mostly used for city supplies rather than agriculture, which is far more water consumptive (and inefficient).
Hi Peter. Good – but why wasn’t agriculture mentioned in the water demand? It’s far and away the largest user of the Colorado (70-90%, depending on place). The cities and suburbs can increase their efficiency many times over, but if they’re only 10-30% of the total water use, it won’t make much of a dent. What really needs to happen is either turn a good percentage of the arid region farmland fallow and/or force/subsidize the farmers to use vastly more efficient watering methods like drip irrigation.
https://www.watereducationcolorado.org/fresh-water-news/report-colorados-farm-water-use-exceeds-national-average-despite-efforts-to-conserve/
Human usage far outweighs evaporation in terms of the water levels dropping, and agricultural usage far outweighs city/suburb usage. Cutting the amount of irrigation would extend the Colorado’s usage elsewhere and keep up Lake Mead’s levels for years, despite the drought.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2020/05/12/colorado-river-overdrawn-retire-farmland-can-solve/3109406001/
will have more on that in coming days. It’s tough to keep a video to 5 minutes on such a sprawling topic.
look for Peter Gleick’s interviews today and tomorrow.
Folks, there is an excellent solution to Megadroughts and that is desalinizing seawater. The leading technology for this, reverse osmosis (RO), has improved significantly the last 10 years, and can produce drinking water for a very reasonable cost. It can be powered by PV. San Diego already has a large plant in operation. Large parts of Spain and Israel depend on RO for their drinking water and more.
It’s already being done to some degree:
https://www.wired.com/story/desalination-is-booming-as-cities-run-out-of-water/
But there are major drawbacks – massive power usage, how to handle the brine, impacts to sea life, the cost is still about double what other sources would be, etc. – and desalinated water is mostly used for city supplies rather than agriculture, which is far more water consumptive (and inefficient).