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Kevin Murphy / Reuters
A sprinkler is in use near Dodge City, Kans., on Nov. 26.
The drought that crippled many communities across the nation last year shows little sign of retreating, and the threat of persistent water scarcity is spurring efforts to preserve every drop.
As the drought of 2012 creeps into 2013, experts say the slow-spreading catastrophe presents near-term problems for a key U.S. agricultural region and potential long-term challenges for millions of Americans.
"Everyone is wondering whether this dry weather is the new norm ... or an anomaly that will soon pass," said Barney Austin, director of hydraulic services for INTERA Inc, an Austin, Texas-based geoscience and engineering consulting firm. "We all hope for the latter, but it's hard to tell."
The signs of distress and the search for answers are most prevalent in the Plains, where historic drought blankets much of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and parts of Texas.
This month the small Oklahoma farming town of Wapanucka lost water completely when the spring-fed wells the community relies on ran dry. Officials closed the town's school and residents had to do without tap water until the town could run a line to a neighboring water district.
In Texas, state lawmakers are pushing for a $2 billion fund to finance water infrastructure projects as numerous communities face their own shortages. But it won't be soon enough to help rice farmers, who were told this month that there is not likely to be enough water to irrigate their fields this spring.
Meanwhile, in the big wheat-growing state of Kansas, penalties for exceeding water use limits for irrigation were doubled this month and Gov. Sam Brownback has launched a task force to come up with strategies to counter statewide shortages.
"It's going to be dry again this year," said Lane Letourneau, water appropriations manager for the Kansas Agriculture Department. "We consider this a really big deal."
Drought conditions plague much of the United States after a summer of scorching temperatures and a lack of rain. The dryness is affecting America's farmland, threatening crops like soybean and corn.
Searching for solutions
Water use is already tightly curtailed in many states. Years of low rainfall and high heat - last year was the hottest on record for the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - have diminished surface waters even as population and water demand expand.
As well, agricultural and oil and gas interests are pumping the precious commodity from underground aquifers at a pace that often cannot be matched by natural replenishment.
"Water has been viewed as a basic commodity, a basic right," said Les Lampe, a water expert with consultancy Black & Veatch. "You turn on the tap and water comes out and you don't pay very much for it. That has to change."
Farmers are feeling the pain of water shortages most acutely. After multibillion-dollar crop and livestock losses tied to last year's drought, they fear more losses are coming.
Texas rice growers who depend on the lower Colorado River valley for survival are eyeing the fluctuating levels of two key lakes used for irrigation when river levels are too low.
State officials said this month that without enough rain by spring, rice farmers could be completely cut off from irrigation, jeopardizing about 2 percent of the U.S. crop and about $1 billion for the Texas economy.
"We've got a shortage of water," said Ronald Gertson, a rice grower and chairman of the Colorado Water Issues Committee. "People are going to be both hungry and thirsty before they wake up to this problem."
Forecasts show drier-than-normal weather likely prevailing in the Plains and western Midwest for the next few months at least. But even normal rainfall levels would not be enough to fully recharge resources.
Three to five times more rain than normal is needed in key corn-growing areas that include Nebraska and Kansas, for instance, to ease soil dryness after last summer's drought, according to Don Keeney, an agricultural meteorologist with Cropcast weather service.
Roughly 60.26 percent of the contiguous United States was in at least moderate drought as of January 8, according to a "Drought Monitor" report issued by a group of federal and state climatology experts. Severe drought still blanketed 86.20 percent of the High Plains.
"This drought certainly has gotten people's attention," said Joe Straus, speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. "Regardless of whether it starts raining now or not, long-term water planning is essential. We need to be responsible."
For some, it's already an emergency. Persistent dry conditions in north-central Oklahoma led officials in Payne County to declare a state of emergency this month as the reservoir providing water to nearly 16,000 residents in seven counties fell to record low levels.
The approximately 500 residents of Wapanucka are talking of higher rates to fund a permanent pipeline to a new water source. But running out of water has shown how harsh doing without water can be, said Julie Wallis, Wapanucka's city water clerk.
"We are not going to be the only ones who this happens to," said Wallis. "It's coming."
From the archives, Aug. 2012: Drought: the 'new normal'?
Leave a Comment:
"...long-term water planning is essential. We need to be responsible." +++++ I've been preaching that on these pages for years. When Georgia tried to get its border changed with Tennessee so it could grab more of a river, it should have instead put a tiny fraction of 1% of it's budget into cheap fresh water from salt water research at places like Georgia Tech, along with improved irrigation techniques (75% of America's fresh water is used in tremendously inefficient irrigation where 50% of the water's lost to evaporation) and plans for interconnected district water systems. So should the whole country. We're letting in so many LEGAL immigrants (to keep wages down) that the country will triple it's population this century. What will they drink?
Water Wars!
It takes 250 Billion Gallons of water to grow 1 billion pounds of rice in the (former)deserts of California. They laser level the fields then flood them 5 inches deep for months. 10% of this is added into beer and a lot is exported. This is one of the stupidest wastes of water I have come accross. Perhaps a lower water use crop should be grown there instead of the highest water use crop.
Like everything else in America we will address it after it has become an emergency, planning is bad for re-election. Growing anything in a dessert is stupid unless you provide the water outside of the normal replenishment rate.
This was written in 2008! Texas is still pumping from them with a negative replenishment rate. How much longer can they do that before the Mexicans go back to Mexico for water? The only solution is desalination of ocean waters.
It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce only one pound of meat, while growing one pound of wheat requires only 25 gallons. More water is saved by not eating a hamburger than by not showering for six months!
The animal food industry places a serious strain on our water supply by watering the crops that farmed animals eat, providing drinking water for billions of animals each year, and cleaning away the filth in factory farms, transport trucks and slaughterhouses. Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food. John Anthony Allan, a professor at King's College London and the winner of the Stockholm Water Prize, urged people worldwide to go vegetarian because of the tremendous waste of water involved with eating animals.
Our next wars will be over fresh water.
bull kansas doesn't have any water. They only scramble for Dollars.
The deniers would attribute this to a natural cycle that's been going on for millions of years. Good luck to them if they insist on believing that. And good luck to the rest of us who, along with our descendants, will be forced to live with the consequences of these global warming-related events.
"These drought cycles have gone on pretty consistently throughout the last 4,500 years," said Jim Clark, an ecologist at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences in Durham, North Carolina. "They are pretty severe, so they have a large impact on the full set of ecosystem processes."
Many climatologists believe that devastating droughts like the 1930s Dust Bowl are not abnormal when viewed in larger historic context. Physical evidence of the cycle was found in sediment deposits at the bottom of North Dakota's Kettle Lake. Core samples taken there revealed layers of charcoal, plant fragments, and seeds. Scientists used a form of radiocarbon dating to determine the ages of the layers.
The new study reports that northern Great Plains droughts have recurred at roughly 160-year intervals... references - news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0614_050614_drought.html & June 2005 journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
For a more in-depth review using another form of physical data read -
North American Droughts of the Last Millennium from a Gridded Network of Tree-Ring Data,
by CELINE HERWEIJER, RICHARD SEAGER, EDWARD R. COOK, AND JULIEN EMILE-GEAY
of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, New York.
(Manuscript received 18 November 2005, in final form 19 June 2006). Reported by usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/17/16570470-as-drought-persists-town-dries-up-and-states-scramble-to-save-every-drop-of-water?threadId=3649020&commentId=73486159#c73486159
Yes, there's a natural cycle. It's probably affected in some part by what we're doing to the planet. As for the drought, we just need to adjust our usage and sources (desalinization). In desert areas, they need to quit using more than is available. In the plains, it's horrible for crops, but the native plants have evolved to deal with cycles of drought. We just need to adjust what we're doing, and not expect nature to do the same thing every year.
Indeed. And to top it all off, FRACKING uses gross amounts of fresh water and turns it into a catastrophic chemical stew containing arsenic, benzene, and heavy metals leeched from earth during the process. Cattle are dying in fracking areas--our canaries.
Fracking has to stop. It's past time we started investing in renewables with a vengeance. We all know that within 10, 20, 50 years at most, the last fossil fuels will be gone. Not planning for it now will mean the environment will be completely polluted, wars will be fought over water even as the seas rise--and all electrical systems will cease. Millions will die in this scenario, and people are just flatly in denial.
There's abundant solar and wind energy available for free--and because it's free, no corporation is going to build America a smart electrical grid to store and transmit it in a more sophisticated manner than hanging wires from vertical logs. We need a grid protected from extreme weather events, because extreme weather events are the new norm.
We also need to begin limiting population growth--instead, local governments in states with fetal right to life laws are jailing pregnant women to force them to give birth.
Everything we're doing as a nation is exactly the WRONG THING.
Dee Turner wrote:
Good grief. Name one state, name one local government with "fetal right to life laws" which is jailing pregnant women and forcing them to give birth. Name just one. We'll wait
(It seems Newsvine has become a magnet for whackadoodles.)
The fracking process uses water only during the initial fracking of the well. This drilling mud is then collected for reprocessing and injecting into other wells, for disposal or reused...
At least complain about the real hazards; leaking holding ponds, broken drill casings that are leaking into the water tables, etc. Not about a process that has been used for DECADES, around the World...
Why not complain about water usage as well? That is what we are talking about.
Robert - I believe Dee is attempting to refer to the "personhood" initiatives where a fetus is given recognition by the state. Fortunately, all of these initiatives have failed.
Back to the real topic. Unfortunately, our aquifers are being depleted. I also fear (and it's just a personal belief/concern) that the introduction of fracking chemicals will eventually make their way into the water supplies.
I totally agree with the comments that we need to look into desalinizaton. We also need to have an adult conversation about conservation. Unfortunately the adult conversation is not possible because people and corporations tend to believe that they have the God given right to use as many resources as they deem necessary.
We may be out of water but we are at least not breathing the same air the Chinese are breathing or are we but in just smaller amounts? China already knows water is going to be a problem and is buying it from countries before it is all used up. A tribe of Indians in Alaska are at this very time selling water from a lake on their land to China. We on the other hand are giving our water away to countries in Africa. What is our government doing? They are fighting over who is the president and how to keep us from killing ourselves over a bottle of water. Our Government should be protecting our natural resources rather than selling it!
The local village has run out of well water two years ago @ the end of the NORMAL dry season (March). This year it was @ the start of the dry season Dec 2012. We are now drawing water from rice patty run-off storage ponds, for bathing & toilet only. Drinking/cooking water has relied on bottled/processed water for decades. The ground water is too salty for drinking or irrigation and in central Thailand, there is the Atrazine & other farming chemical contamination...
Almost EVERY house has large storage containers for rain water during the rainy season. Western flush toilets are not common because, they use too much water. The same goes for the western style automatic clothes/dish washing machines and most household water treatment systems...
According to the temple records this is just another period will few tropical storms. These are what normally supplies the rain water to this elevated region, Apr to Nov. These records are 5+thousand years old...
"These drought cycles have gone on pretty consistently throughout the last 4,500 years," said Jim Clark, an ecologist at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences in Durham, North Carolina. "They are pretty severe, so they have a large impact on the full set of ecosystem processes."
Many climatologists believe that devastating droughts like the 1930s Dust Bowl are not abnormal when viewed in larger historic context.
The new study reports that northern Great Plains droughts have recurred at roughly 160-year intervals... references - news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0614_050614_drought.html & June 2005 journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
Many countries around the world have either polluted water or limited water supplies. They have adapted and STOPPED wasting water, decades ago, unlike the USA...
The corn for ethanol, spreading the use of Atrazine, has polluted many US aquifers. This coupled with the(now decreasing) use of irrigation, as depleted the usable aquifers, through-out the USA. The EU has banned Atrazine for DECADES due to; human fetus damage and changing of male frogs to functional females. Not the USA or Asia...
Obama's largest thermal/panel solar facility, that was pushed through in Blythe, CA (2009). Millions of US Tax dollars going to a German Company, to build & out-fit the facility. Above the environmentalist & the American Indians objections. The construction of the facility uses 10+years of rainfall out of the high desert aquifer and will result in lowering the desert water tables. Water will now be, beyond the reach of many endangered plants/animals (desert tortoise) that live in the area. We will forget the 2+thousand year old geoglyphs that will also be DESTROYED...
How many solar facilities does Obama own?
Oct 2010 - WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has approved a thousand-megawatt solar project on federal land in southern California, the largest solar project ever planned on U.S. public lands.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar hailed the $6 billion Blythe Solar Power Project, to be built in the Mojave Desert near Blythe, Calif., as the start of a boom in solar power on federal lands.
"Today is a day that makes me excited about the nation's future," Salazar said Monday at a news conference. "This project shows in a real way how harnessing our own renewable resources can create good jobs here at home."
To expedite environmental review and bureaucratic red tape, the Interior Department identified 14 of the most promising solar projects among the more than 180 current permit applications covering about 23 million acres of federally owned desert in the Southwest.
Those 14 "fast-track" projects alone would produce more than 6,000 megawatts, enough to power 4 million homes for a day at peak usage, officials said.
Final approval by the end of the year qualifies the solar projects for federal funds under the economic stimulus law approved last year. Solar Millennium is eligible to secure $1.9 billion in conditional loan guarantees from the Energy Department for the Blythe project... see - huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/25/biggest-solar-project-in-_n_773655.html
BTY - The solar refectors & panels service life is 30+years. Then they have to be REPLACED...
Another FAILURE by Obama's Team
April 3, 2012 - In what will come as a surprise only to members of the administration, the company which proudly held the rights to the world's largest solar power project in Blythe, CA, the hilariously named Solar Trust of America (STA), filed for bankruptcy.
And while one could say that the company's epic collapse is more a function of alternative energy politics in Germany, where its 70% parent Solar Millennium AG filed for bankruptcy last December, what is relevant is that last April 2011 STA was the proud recipient of a $2.1 billion conditional loan from the Department of Energy (DOE), incidentally the second-largest loan ever handed out by the DOE's Stephen Chu.
reference - thedailycrux.com/Post/39959/The-taxpayer-funded-solar-boondoggle-continues--World-s-biggest-solar-plant-just-went-bankrupt
A company failed, not Obama. If we don't try, we will never succeed. You Republicans just keep burying your heads in the sand, while denying the findings of scientists.
Water is the staff of life, not oil.
RalphH,
You miss the part about the construction - using 10+years of rain-fall out of the high-desert aquifer??? BTY - Rain-fall is the only water this aquifer receives...
Or the endangered animals & plants???
Or the 2,000+year old geoglyphs that will also be DESTROYED???
Or that the collectors & panels will have to be replaced every 30+years???
Keep chasing these ECO DREAMS at the cost of the environment and HIGHER energy requirements to produce electricity. Your ART degree, obviously did not teach you any science/economics or APPRECIATION of historical artifacts...
We need larger reservoirs and a national water distribution system. We may have fresh water shortages, but we also have floods and too much water in other places. Municipalities need to fix leaking distribution systems.
The world does not have a water shortage. It may have a shortage of desalinated water. The first step in solving a problem is defining it accurately. I am fed up with hearing people say that the "world is running out of water."
As for population growth, that will resolve itself in about 50 years or so as the women in developed countries become educated and have access to birth control. The children born today will see a decline in world population before they die, and not because of anyone forcing people to have fewer children.
Drought is a judgment sent by God. It is a consequence of sin.
So you're saying God can't stand the tea party either?
Lucille - I hope the sins you are referring to are greed and indifference. The good Lord gave us this planet and instructed us to be stewards of the planets. I tend to see things differently, I see the Lord allowing us to take responsibility and live with the mess that we created.
Until recently persons who profess themselves as Christians were more concerned about what people do with their bodies as opposed to what we as a collective are doing to our planet, our island home in the universe.
It has been disturbingly ironic that a lot of the super wealthy in this country will pour tons of money in to anti-choice and anti-gay initiatives in the name of their religion. These same people turn a blind eye to the environment that they will be handing down to their own great-grandchildren.
About forty years ago I was in a bar in Boston, and overheard a conversation in which one of the gentlemen was trying to make the point that water rights would be the future investment gem.
With corporations not under any federal regulations as to the chemicals they use for fracking, and the EPA showing no interest in the matter of drinking water being polluted by their methods under this administration.
I'll predict that the effects of our government not protecting one of our most valuable resources (water), will make the Love Canal debacle appear totally harmless in comparison.
Tons of water here in Saskatchewan. Actually with all the snow around here it might be another flood in the spring.
Most, but not all of the states hit by drought are Red States. Why don't they get their head Bible Thumpers out there and get them to start praying for rain? You said God left the schools, that's why the kids got shot. Well God must have left the drought states, right?
Guess it's payback for all those "family value" things the pukebags did. Diaper boy Vitter, wide stance Craig, pizaza man Cain, etc etc.
We had over 7" of rain in Dec, and will probably get more before this month is over. Drought, what drought? But then, this isn't a red state either.
That time of the month is it, Sally?
Jason - are you asking this because Leviticus dictates that you can not interact with a woman during that time.
I don't know if you're experienced in that department yet, but that's some extremely good if not obvious advice there from Leviticus. Listen to your elders; save yourself some heartache. If you prefer to learn by your own experience, there's nothing wrong with that so go ahead. Knock yourself out.
Now all them Repub farmers who want government to go away will be banging on the White House door demanding money !!!!
This is why, despite the cold winters, I live in the Northeast. The only time people run out of water is when a main breaks, and they usually fix that in a day or two, unless it is a huge main. Being out of water for the foreseeable future is not an option.
I want everyone to read the post I replied-to. This type of head-in-the-sand attitude is a large part-of-the reason-why we are faced with water-shortages. Where, exactly, do you think the water, in your 'water-main', originates-from? Hhhmm? The faucet? A very large, never-empty water-tank, somewhere, just-outside-of-town? Hhhmm? We are all talking-about WHERE THE WATER COMES-FROM. You WILL be faced with water-shortages, despite your unwavering-faith in the all-powerful water-main. The water doesn't come-from there, it just runs through there. (my apologies to all who may be reading and thinking: why is he writing like he is talking to an idiot?).., because, apparantly, 'Mymomdidnotraiseafool's' mom.., did raise a fool after-all, and I am talking to an adiot.
The Tennessee River was originally supposed to have been slightly in Georgia. HOWEVER, centuries ago when that line was being surveyed, the State of Georgia provided the surveyors with SUBSTANDARD equipment. Oops!
The greater Atlanta metropolitan area is a water hog! Their unsustainable demands upon the Chattahoochee River is the subject of a long standing legal battle.
The greater Atlana metropolitan area should look to the future and build a desalination plant, pulling water from the Atlantic Ocean to provide for the needs of the Georgia residents.
If this 'drought' is the new-norm.., then water-conservation HAS to be the new norm as-well: Agriculture? Get with the program people.., stop spraying your irrigation through the air.., too-much evaporation. Use trickle irrigation, some-of-the southern states have been doing that successfully, for-some-time now. Also, try 'cover-farming', that is: leaving plant-matter, left-over from previous harvests, to lie on the soil after harvest. This will help prevent evaporation, thus holding the water longer in the soil, and provide natural fertilizer, thus putting less water-polluting chemicals into the watershed. Consumers? STOP running, and running, and running your water when you: brush your teath, wash your hands, take a shower, wash the dishes, etc. These practices alone waste LOTS of water. Stop washing your car so-often, watering your lawn (as-a-matter-of-fact.., loose the lawn altogether). Install shrubs and perrenials that need less water, or go full-bore, and xeriscape (the use of rock and non-plant ornamentation). And Vegas? STOP spraying water all-over-the-place for show and aesthetics. All the above-mentioned, and much-more NEEDS TO HAPPEN (actually, probably needed to happen about 50-years ago). If we aren't past a 'tipping-point' already, we soon wil be, and then, it will be too late.
I have invented some systems that can help in drought.
I need funding to develop them.
bit.ly/Tv8Ams