Too little, too late...

"I think it would be prudent for President Trump to hold a water summit with all fifty governors. Come prepared to discuss each states problems and/or anticipated problems as they pertain to water. Then get ready for some out of the box thinking. Not only thinking, but viable solutions." 

The Bird has been chirping about this issue for years now. Specifically, since 2011 and 2012 - http://veryangrybird.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-slow-passing-of-ogallala.html. Then today, in an article which is years too late making it to press, the local newspaper finally addressed it. What issue is that? Water. It has been the best kept secret in America (save UFOs and Bigfoot). We are running out of water, and fast.

This is a perfect example of reactive crisis management. To those poor folks who sold everything, packed up and moved to the sunny desert southwest, I am afraid you might have bought a pig in a poke. According to NASA, as bad as things are in the southwest right now, we might just be entering an historic 50 year mega-drought. 

So what does all this mean? It means the Colorado River Basin, which for years allowed the desert southwest to "cheat" nature, is falling short on what it can deliver. Really? Yes - just look at the current level of Lake Meade for example. Soon it will just be nothing more than a puddle. Since the water which comes down from the mountains due to snow melt is plan "A" for desert southwest, what then is plan "B"? Nada.

The paper addressed a very hair-brained idea to help ameliorate this crisis. Pipe about 50 billion gallons a year or so out of the Great Lakes, to the Colorado River Basin, and then down to the desert southwest. Great plan except for some very "minor" issues. The Great Lakes states would never allow it. Canada, who we have a Great Lakes treaty with, would never allow it. Our federal government would need to sanction it. And (here is the big one), the power needed to pump that much water to the elevation required to reach the Colorado River basin outstrips the power Minnesota currently produces - by a hundred times or so. One postscript - even if it were possible, 50 billion gallons of water would barely make a dent in what the desert southwest will need.

We have seen this coming for a long time, and have done nothing. We are coming up on a water crisis of almost biblical proportions. It is not just the southwest - the mid-west also. We have about pumped the Ogallala aquifer dry. This once massive body of underground water has allowed us to become the breadbasket of the world. Once it is no longer able to produce enough water to irrigate the crops in a dry year, we, and a hungry world, will be in big, big trouble.

If you can handle being a bit depressed, our water situation in this country is something all should read up on. Especially, if you are considering a move to a location which is living on borrowed time. If we don't come up with a viable plan "B" (and fast), the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and parts of Texas will start to look like an over-sized Death Valley.

I think it would be prudent for President Trump to immediately hold a water summit with all fifty governors. Come prepared to discuss each state's problems and/or anticipated problems as they pertain to water. Then get ready for some out of the box thinking. Not only thinking, but viable solutions. 

It seems odd when over 70% of our planet is water, we should have this problem. We have known for generations that of that 70%, over 95% of it is ocean water. Some arid counties have figured out to survive, they need to tap that resource via desalination. We have not, except to the smallest degree.

Get ready folks. The times they will be a changing. I remember one trip down to Tucson on a business trip driving past a golf course when it was 105 degrees. The course was emerald green. I asked my customer how it is possible to have such a lush course in weather like Tucson has in the summer. "We water the s**t out of it, that is how", he replied. And ergo - we have part of the problem.