By Sandra P.<\/p>\n
For at least three decades, Americans have talked about our uncertain energy future, but we\u2019ve mostly ignored another environmental crisis \u2013 water.<\/p>\n
Cheap and seemingly abundant, water is so common environmental natural resource that it\u2019s hard to believe we could ever run out of it. Ever since the Apollo 8 astronauts photographed Earth from space in 1968, we\u2019ve had the image of our home as a strikingly blue planet, a place of great water wealth. But of all the water on Earth, only about 2.5 percent is fresh \u2013 and two-thirds of that is locked up in glaciers and ice caps. Less than one hundredth of 1 percent of Earth\u2019s water is fresh and available<\/p>\n
Across the United States and around the world, we\u2019re already reaching or overshooting the limits of Earth\u2019s natural replenishment of fresh water through the hydrologic cycle. \u00a0The Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers are now so over-tapped that they discharge little or no water into the sea for months at time. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the massive Ogallala Aquifer, which spans part of eight states, from southern South Dakota to northwest Texas, and provides 30 percent of the groundwater used for irrigation in the country, is steadily being depleted. In much of the world, we\u2019re growing food and supplying water to communities by over-pumping round water.\u00a0 This creates a potential crisis in the food economy. We are meeting some of today\u2019s food needs with tomorrow\u2019s water.<\/p>\n
The Changing Climate<\/p>\n
Due to climate change, we may no longer be able to count on familiar patterns of rain and snow and river flow to refill our urban reservoir, irrigate our farms, and power our dams. While farmers in the Midwest were recovering from the spring flood of 2008 (in some areas, the second \u201c100-years flood\u201d in 15 yearrs) farmers in California and Texas allowed cropland to lie fallow and sent cattle to early slaughter to cope with the drought of 2009.<\/p>\n
In the Southeast, after 20 months of dryness, Georgia\u2019s then \u2013Governor, Sonny Perdue, stood outside the state capitol in November 2007 and led a prayer for rain. Two years later, he was pleading instead for federal aid, after intense rainfall near Atlanta caused massive flooding that claimed eight lives.\u00a0 Then in 2011, again we saw record regional precipitation, this time producing epic flooding in the Mississippi and Missouri river basins.<\/p>\n
Water For People and Nature<\/p>\n
Thus a vanguard of citizens, communities, farmers and corporations are thinking about water in a new way.\u00a0 They\u2019re asking what we really need the water for and whether we can meet that need the water with less.\u00a0 The result of this shift in thinking is a new movement in water management that focuses on ingenuity and ecological intelligence instead of big pumps, pipelines, dams and canals.\u00a0 These solutions tend to work with nature, rather than against it, making effective use of the \u201cecosystem services\u201d provided by healthy watersheds and wetlands. Through better technologies and informed choices, they seek to raise water productivity and make every drop count.<\/p>\n
Communities are finding that protecting watersheds in an effective way to make sure water supplies are clean and reliable plus, they can do the work of a water treatment plant in filtering out pollutants at a lower cost.\u00a0 New York City is investing 1.5 billion to restore and protect the Catskill Delaware Watershed, which supplies 90 percent of its drinking water, in lieu of constructing a $10 billion filtration plat that would cost an additional $300 million a year to operate.\u00a0 Research published in Natural Resources Forum further shows that a number of other US cities–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 from tiny Auburn, Maine, to Seattle\u2014have saved hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and operating costs of filtration plants by instead opting for watershed protection.<\/p>\n
Communities prone to excessive storm water runoff can turn existing structures into water catchments. Portland, Oregon, invested in \u201cgreen roofs\u201d and \u201cgreen streets\u201d to prevent sewers from overflowing into the Willamette River. Chicago now boasts more than 200 green roofs\u2014including a top City Hall\u2014that collectively cover 2.5 million square feet, more than any other US city.\u00a0 The vegetated roofs are providing space for urban gardens and helping to catch storm water and cool the urban environment. Parking lots, too, can be harnessed.<\/p>\n
Many communities are revitalizing their rivers by tearing down dams that are no longer safe or serving a useful purpose, thus opening up habitats for fisheries, restoring healthier water flows and improving aquatic quality. In the 10 years since the Edwards Dam was removed from the Kennebec River, near Augusta, Maine, populations of alewives and striped bass have returned in astounding numbers, reviving at recreational fishery that adds $65 million annually to the local economy.<\/p>\n
Water crisis requires us to pay attention how we value and use water. Across the country, it\u2019s essential that communities work to take care of the ecosystems that supply and cleanse water to live within their water means, and to share water equitably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Sandra P. For at least three decades, Americans have talked about our uncertain energy future, but we\u2019ve mostly ignored another environmental crisis \u2013 water. Cheap and seemingly abundant, water is so common environmental natural resource that it\u2019s hard to believe we could ever run out of it. Ever since the Apollo 8 astronauts photographed Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[53,38,56,661,1],"tags":[655,656,653,652,654],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1551,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/1551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}