DRAINING AMERICA DRY

...The relatively modest "Texas Water Plan" to bring water from the Mississippi to west Texas and western New Mexico demands tremendous amounts of power to lift water to the Great Plains: seventy-one pumping stations using fifty billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year...

...In the second half of the Nineteenth Century, piped-in water raised this household use to unusual levels...

...But today I wonder what would have happened if there had been no alternative to Riverside's dry well...

...Chicago water" tasted terrible...

...New Yorkers judge a loss of almost 20 per cent, while in Pittsburgh the figure is 14 per cent...

...In 1860, only the sixteen largest cities in America had their own reservoirs, waterworks, and grids of water mains...

...In California, farmers in the Owens Valley dispute Los Angeles's rights to their water...

...If we eat less beef, which is corn-fed, we will be improving not only our health but the state of the nation's water supply...

...The extremely dry Great Plains, like other western regions, should never have been intensively farmed...

...We took our water for granted, like air," said one resident, "until it ran out...

...Yet the sort of energy the Federal Government and corporations want to produce uses water (and pollutes it): synfuel production, oil shale development, coal slurried in pipelines, electric power plants...

...I remember the day we switched from the fresh, cool well water to water which Chicago "purified," chlorinated, and piped to us from Lake Michigan...

...In North Carolina, there was an acrimonious conference in April 1981 over whether the Piedmont, moderately affected by drought, should shunt precious water to the drought-stricken coastal Tidewater region...

...As different parts of this vast linkage run dry, the entire machine begins to disintegrate...

...Compounding the problems of these failing urban water systems is an apparent change in America's climate patterns...

...Then the population of the suburb began to exceed the ability of the wells to supply water...

...Other highly industrialized and heavily populated nations in Europe, including the Soviet Union, prosper on half of our per capita water consumption...

...Thousands of miles of pipelines and canals would link the reservoirs to thousands of small surface reservoirs...

...Historians maintain that one of the major achievements of this country has been its large geographical unity, secured in mid-Nineteenth Century by transcontinental telegraph and railroad networks, and tested by the war of 1860-1865...

...And wherever water has been drawn from the ground—on High Plains farms or Arizona deserts or in midwestern towns—water levels are falling...

...Farmers equipped with appropriate technology—drip irrigation instead of open-air sprinkling-need not use nearly so much water...

...The lower the water tables, the more fuel or electricity is needed to pump the water from deeper wells...

...The question in Boston is not whether good fresh water is being lost, but whether the loss amounts to half of the city's entire supply...

...The water used on a medium-sized 2,000-acre irrigated farm in the West would serve a city of 50,000 people...

...Then water becomes the source of serious political conflict...

...But the interests of railroad and other land speculators dominated historic Government decisions to open up arid lands: Now they are farmed intensively...

...But now the major waterworks that support the habits of large eastern cities are showing their age...

...Virtually all streams in that part of the Southwest are dry for more than 300 days a year, so the only reliable water source is groundwater...

...But as population grew precipitously, the water level in Tucson's 250 wells began declining, on the average, two feet a year...

...Originally planned in 1968 for construction in 1975 and reservoir filling by 1985, the plan was killed because of high energy costs...

...The Ogallala aquifer is being so rapidly consumed by agriculture that some areas may approach the end of their water by the year 2000 and most others by 2020...

...washing machines and dishwashers, once thought of as luxuries, are considered necessities today...

...but when the project begins operation, demand on the Colorado will have already exceeded the flow available...

...And in cities, individual daily water consumption can be reduced drastically...

...Corn is the most water-sensitive of major crops...

...Bittinger and E.B...

...As they fall, they cause problems other than water scarcity...

...by 1856, Chicagoans averaged thirty-three gallons daily each, and by 1882 the demand had reached 144 gallons...

...These divisions are likely to be exacerbated if we look to large-scale projects to meet our water needs...

...Vast surface reservoirs, larger than those that have already been built for flood control in the Upper Missouri Valley, would cover thousands of square miles—inundating some farms so others could survive...

...Such a system would cost billions of dollars and make enormous energy demands...

...Aquifer water, aside from minute amounts of modern seepage (ours is a far drier epoch than Pleistocene times), is thousands of years old— 25,000 years in some parts—and the formation itself goes back some million years or more...

...In the early Nineteenth Century, most city dwellers used only two or three gallons of water per person daily...

...Farmers and ranchers oppose use of their scarce water for energy projects...

...Typically, Lamb County, Texas, will have used up two-thirds of its share of the aquifer by 2020...

...By mid-April, The Wall Street Journal reported, Eldorado had only twelve days of water left, water rationing was in effect, and a five-minute shower could cost $5...

...Activists in the Pacific Northwest dislike the prospect of "water mining" by California and Arizona...

...A recent study by M.W...

...like many of the aquifers we are draining, it will not be replenished by nature except over more thousands of years...

...New Yorkers used 190 gallons of water a day per person in 1980...

...On a smaller scale, the farmers of Nebraska's groundwater-rich Sand Hills don't want to supply water-poor regions of the Great Plains just when irrigation is taking hold in the Sand Hills...

...Any of several such projects already being contemplated would become America's largest construction venture, surpassing even the interstate highway system...

...siana, Texas, and California, with virtually permanent damage to freshwater supplies...

...One place where water levels are falling drastically is the Ogallala aquifer, which may be the largest underground reserve of fresh water in the world—three times larger than New York State, with the water capacity of Lake Ontario...

...The conversion of privies to flush toilets more than doubled household water use...

...Even in the upper Middle West, one of the few regions not profoundly affected by the widespread drought of 1980 to 1981, the rural Illinois town of Eldorado (population 4,800) found itself in March with only enough water in its reservoir to carry it through another month...

...Such severe swings of climate seem to have returned in the 1970s, and may again become commonplace...

...We seem to have laid a trap for ourselves: To get more water to keep our water-logged world afloat, we would need more energy...

...Self-metering shower heads and faucet aerators could cut water use 30 to 70 per cent at home...

...Instead of grand attempts to increase supply, we would do better to limit consumption...

...Tucson hopes for delivery by the Central Arizona Project, which will bring water from the Colorado River by 1985...

...If we made a commitment today to such a vast water project, it would not be completed until 2020 at the earliest...

...Although agriculture irrigation, mainly in farms west of the 98th meridian, accounts for nearly half of our annual water consumption, America's cities are also moving toward water crisis and some are already there...

...by 1880, 600 cities and towns had built such facilities...

...American cities settled into heavy water use during a period when rainfall levels may have been unusually consistent...

...Tucson will run out of water...

...The overwhelmingly massive North American Water and Power Alliance would conservatively consume a third of its own power to lift water at crucial places...

...It is not entirely coincidental that our water and energy are drying up at the same time...

...More serious in the long run is seepage of ocean water into lowered inland groundwater along the coasts of North Carolina, LouiJohn Opie, professor of history at Du-quesne University and editor of Environmental Review, is currently a Fellow at the National Humanities Center at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina...

...Our drinking water, we were told, came from an underground shelf of rock that extended north all the way to Lake Superior...

...but without cheap energy, many farmers will go out of business, or at the least be forced to make sharp changes in their way of farming...

...But such changes of habit will only moderate depletion, not stop it...

...The larger 1967 "R.W...

...We are using up this major natural resource at an unthinking pace...

...Green reported that irrigation scheduling—tighter control of flow to farmers' fields—could cut Ogal-lala depletion by 15 to 25 per cent a year, and that farmers can be expected to shift to crops with lower water requirements...

...Such costs may put such projects beyond the capacity of local authorities and tax structures...

...The threat water shortages bring to the economy of the Great Plains—and to the world food supply—may demand a more extravagant solution: construction of a massive water-moving system...

...Government officials at all levels are now making decisions that will shape our water future as surely as they have shaped our water past...

...Our modern water crisis is due not only to increased population, food, and industrial demand, but also to that simple convenience, the flush toilet...

...John Opie When I was growing up in Riverside, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, the dominant landmark was a five-story tower housing the pumps for the community well...

...Forty per cent of America's beef is fed by this production...

...Every snowstorm and heavy rain of the region had, freakishly, skipped over Eldorado...

...There is no known way to speed up the agonizingly slow trickle of water to recharge deep underground aquifers as they are drained...

...Inexorably, Americans committed themselves to previously unthinkable levels of water consumption...

...Underground water may move only dozens of yards a year...

...After decades of neglect due to declining tax bases and weakening economics, water mains and sewer systems of eastern cities are close to failure...

...As debates over water become more intense and more specific, fears grow about balkanization of the United States...

...Since the mid-1950s, production of feed grains has tripled in the Great Plains...

...Energy costs to pump water from Tucson's deepening wells will soon become prohibitive...

...But as water becomes the nation's major problem in the immediate future and as regions compete for consumption, serious divisions can occur...

...Only a few of the 5,900 irrigation wells in that county will by then be producing enough water to support farms...

...In early 1981 they were only 34 per cent full, the lowest level since 1963...

...Beck Plan" to divert water from the upper Missouri through the middle of the Great Plains almost to the Mexican border faces what may be an insurmountable obstacle in the energy required to pump water upstream 200 miles on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska...

...They drew water from public pumps, private wells, local streams, neighborhood ponds, and rainwater cisterns...

...The water table at Grant County, Kansas, in America's "new" corn belt, has dropped more than a 100 feet since 1940...

...And instead of burning or collecting wastes, cities flushed them away with water...

...The aquifer once formed the bed of large rivers draining east from the Rockies during the Pliocene and early Pleistocene geological eras...

...In New York, water from broken and leaking pipes in deteriorating buildings is left running for days...

...drinking it, we felt vaguely reprehensible and demeaned...

...City engineers there recently unearthed some wooden water mains with iron bands...

...New York's reservoirs are usually at 80 per cent of capacity in late winter and early spring...

...The spectacular sinkholes in Florida resulted from a falling water table...

...The water may be there, still—deep down—but the cheaper energy isn't there to pump it up...

...Made up of water-permeated sand, gravel, and silt, the Ogallala covers 160,000 square miles under the middle Great Plains states from west Texas to northern Nebraska...

...We have, in short, created a vulnerable interlocked system of intensive water and energy consumption...

...Changing our diets would help...

...Here Tucson is blessed—with an aquifer of fourteen cubic miles of water, one-and-one-half times the capacity of Lake Mead, accumulated over centuries...

...Tucson, Arizona, is accustomed to dry weather...

...Chicago began piping in its water in 1842...

...Water, America's single most important resource, can no longer be taken for granted...

...To replace and upgrade the Pittsburgh water system would be the city's largest public project by far, costing more than $1 billion...

...The existing aquifer water is not literally "fresh" water but fossil water, just as much as oil or coal are fossil resources...

...Existing water systems cannot respond effectively to such extreme variations, which can last for a decade at a time...

...Edward Cook, a Columbia University climatologist, says studies of 300 years of tree rings suggest that rainfall amounts were remarkably stable between 1900 and 1960, while the preceding 200 years experienced radical cycles of wetness and extreme dryness...

...Their record thus far is one of reckless disregard for the limits on America's most precious resource...

...There was talk about trucking in water, but no idea where the tank trucks or water would come from...

...But we cannot, as citizens on our own, make lifestyle changes sufficient to create a more water-conserving world...

...Toilets alone consume 45 per cent of all indoor household water...

...Changes in climate are making rainfall unpredictable...

...Pittsburgh's water system is a hundred years old...

...The rising costs of energy are likely to make major water transport projects an unacceptable solution to water shortages...