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<h1 class="">
Water wars loom as the US runs dry
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13 February 2013
by
<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Sara+Reardon"><b>Sara Reardon</b></a>
and <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Hal+Hodson"><b>Hal Hodson</b></a>
</li><li>Magazine issue <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2904">2904</a>. <a href="http://subscribe.newscientist.com/bundles.aspx?prom=6005&term=1Y&intcmp=SUBS-nsarttop&promcode=6005"><b>Subscribe and save</b></a></li>
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<img src="http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg21729043.900/mg21729043.900-1_300.jpg" alt="Lake Michigan's receding waterline <i>(Image: Alessandro Co/Contrasto/Eyevine)</i>" title="Lake Michigan's receding waterline <i>(Image: Alessandro Co/Contrasto/Eyevine)</i>">
<p class="">Lake Michigan's receding waterline <i>(Image: Alessandro Co/Contrasto/Eyevine)</i></p>
<p class=""><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/articleimages/mg21729043.900/1-water-wars-loom-as-the-us-runs-dry.html" target="ns">1 more image</a></p>
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<p class="">THE blizzards that hit the north-east US may have dominated the headlines last weekend, but across much of the country the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/drought/index.html">most widespread drought in more than half a century</a> is still biting – especially along the nation's iconic waterways (<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2904/29043901.jpg">see diagram</a>).</p>
<p class="">Last week, lakes Michigan and Huron <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/02/06/lake-michigan-lake-huron-record-low-levels-drought/1896603/">hit their lowest levels on record</a>. In Illinois, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/rock-blasting-puts-mississippi-river-ship-shape">dredging the Mississippi and blasting away rock formations</a> on the riverbed in a bid to maintain the 3-metre depth that barges need to ferry exports to the coast.</p>
<p class="">Growing urban water demands have long
clashed with the needs of agriculture and navigation, and climate change
is expected to ratchet up the tension, causing wilder swings between
drought and flood even in regions that may not get drier overall. Water
shortages are only likely to intensify, setting states at one another's
throats. "There isn't and never will be enough water," says <a href="http://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profile.jsp?id=87">Douglas Kenney</a>, a specialist in water-resources law at the University of Colorado, Boulder.</p>
<p class="">The US's "water wars" are being fought in the courtroom, rather than on the battlefield (see "map"),
but only lawyers stand to gain if states and water districts sue to
maximise their share of this precious resource. Can science and
technology come to the rescue, in the form of "smart" water distribution
and better modelling of supply and demand?</p>
<p class="">Previous big droughts of the 1930s and 50s saw conflicts settled by huge engineering projects like the <a href="http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/">Hoover dam</a>
on the border of Arizona and Nevada. Engineering solutions are still
being considered in some places. Dredging the St Lawrence river to open
shipping channels from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic has contributed
to the lakes' lowering levels, and now the <a href="http://www.ijc.org/en_/">International Joint Commission</a>,
which manages waters shared by the US and Canada, is putting together a
recommendation on how to improve things. This could include weirs and
gates to control how much water drains away.</p>
<p class="">Elsewhere, budgetary constraints and
concerns about the environmental impacts of big engineering projects
have taken such options off the table. The stalled Lewis and Clark
Regional Water System is a case in point. In 1989, leaders from 20
cities in Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota proposed a system of
pipelines that would draw water from the Missouri-Elk Point aquifer in
South Dakota. Nine of the cities involved have little hope of ever
getting the promised boost to their water supplies, now that federal
funds, which covered 80 per cent of the $550-million price tag, <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-02-27-water-project_N.htm">have dried up</a>. "We have no way forward," says project director Troy Larson.</p>
<p class="">So states will have to produce better
estimates of future supply and demand – and work out how to conserve
what nature provides. Leading the way is the US Bureau of Reclamation's <a href="http://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/crbstudy.html">Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study</a>,
which has modelled a watershed that supplies some 40 million people
across seven western states. It suggests an annual average <a href="http://www.usbr.gov/newsroom/newsrelease/detail.cfm?RecordID=41645">mismatch of supply and demand of about 4 trillion litres by 2060</a>.</p>
<p class="">Faced with numbers like that, finding
ways to save water is a top priority. New techniques must go beyond
asking people to water their lawns less frequently, and instead deploy
smart delivery systems to cut wastage.</p>
<p class="">There are big opportunities to cut demand in agriculture. <a href="http://www.usbr.gov/research/projects/researcher.cfm?id=15">Tom Gill</a>,
a water engineer with the Bureau of Reclamation in Denver, is working
on a project in Imperial valley, a former desert in southern California
that has been turned into rich agricultural land. His simple goal is to
turn off irrigation as soon as a field is fully watered.</p>
<p class="">To do this, a box is buried halfway
across the field. Sensors detect when it fills with water and send a
radio signal back to another unit that controls the flow, allowing the
same amount of water to be applied again before automatically shutting
off. Studies run with <a href="http://ucanr.edu/?facultyid=95">Khaled Bali</a>
at the University of California's Desert Research and Extension Center
in Holtville show that the method reduces water use by about 10 per
cent. "We're freeing up water through efficiency, rather than dams or
pipelines," says Gill.</p>
<p class=""><a href="http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1344/pdf/c1344.pdf">The US Geological Survey found in 2005</a>
that there were about 12 million hectares of farmland across the US
irrigated using the methods that Gill is improving. Achieving the same
savings nationally could cut 1.5 per cent of the country's total demand –
but results will vary with soil type.</p>
<p class="">Gill is also working to prevent
spillages in channels that move water around. The Maricopa-Stanfield
Irrigation and Drainage District in Arizona recently replaced manual
channel gates with motorised ones that are opened remotely before water
backs up and spills out. It has cut its losses through spills from about
10 per cent to almost zero.</p>
<p class="">Cities are similarly starting to use
smart distribution to cut their consumption. Charlotte, North Carolina,
plans to reduce the amount of water its business district uses by 20 per
cent over the next five years by giving building managers real-time
information about their usage, using smart water meters with flow
monitors.</p>
<p class="">Water use for cooling in power generation is another target for cuts. A <a href="http://waterplan.state.wy.us/BAG/green/briefbook/Final_Augmentation_Study.pdf">study conducted for the seven states of the Colorado river basin</a>
indicated that switching the region's power plants to air cooling could
save 200 billion litres of water per year – 5 per cent of the shortfall
predicted by 2060.</p>
<p class="">All of these approaches, and more, may
be needed to avert shortages and costly legal battles. "The cheapest
water is going to be the water we can save, and we have a long way to
go," says <a href="http://lawschool.unm.edu/faculty/fort/index.php">Denise Fort</a>, an environmental lawyer at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.</p>
<p class=""><i>This article appeared in print under the headline "Water wars loom as US runs dry"</i></p>
<div class="">
<h3 id="bx290439B1">Pressure points</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2904/29043901.jpg"><b>See diagram</b></a></p>
<h3 class="">Catawba river</h3>
<p><b>South Carolina vs North Carolina</b><br>Concerned
that North Carolina's proposed hydropower plant on the Catawba river
would reduce flow, and harm water quality and wildlife, neighbouring
South Carolina objected. The US Supreme Court ruled in South Carolina's
favour in 2009, blocking construction of the plant.</p>
<h3 class="">Lake Michigan</h3>
<p><b>Multiple cities and states</b>States bordering
the Great Lakes have drawn up a legal compact to share the water that
feeds the lakes. Now the city of Waukesha in Wisconsin wants to divert
more water to its supply, citing drought. If that application gets the
go-ahead, and too many other cities follow suit, tensions are likely to
mount.</p>
<h3 class="">Rio Grande</h3>
<p><b>Texas vs New Mexico</b><br>Texas and New Mexico
are in dispute over their shares of water in the Rio Grande, governed by
an agreement dating from 1938. The Lone Star state, which is downstream
from New Mexico, has asked the Supreme Court to intervene.</p>
<h3 class="">Missouri & Mississippi rivers</h3>
<p><b>Northern plains states vs shipping interests</b><br>The
shipping industry wants Congress to order the release of more water
from the Missouri river into the Mississippi, to keep navigation
channels open in the face of drought. That could trigger lawsuits from
upstream states including North and South Dakota, which rely on high
water levels in the Missouri for agriculture.</p>
<h3 class="">Red River</h3>
<p><b>Texas vs Oklahoma</b><br>The Supreme Court has
agreed to hear a case from the Tarrant Regional Water District in
northern Texas, which wants Oklahoma to supply it with water from
tributaries that flow into the Red river, on the border between the two
states. Success for Texas could spark further lawsuits between
neighbouring states.</p>
<h3 class="">Chattahoochee river</h3>
<p><b>Georgia vs Alabama and Florida</b><br>Atlanta's
ever increasing demands for water from the Chattahoochee river in
Georgia have angered downstream Florida and Alabama. Since 1990, there
have been multiple lawsuits. Currently, the US Army Corps of Engineers
is studying how best to allocate water among the three states. Expect
more tension in future.<br clear="all"></p></div></div></div></div>____<br></div>Note: Georgia is now suing Tennessee to change the two states' boundaries in order to claim more water from particular watersheds.<br>
<br><a href="http://www.wsbradio.com/news/news/bill-change-georgias-border-tenn-moves-forward/nWT8z/">http://www.wsbradio.com/news/news/bill-change-georgias-border-tenn-moves-forward/nWT8z/</a> <br><div><br><br>______<br>
<br></div><div>And where will the money come from?<br></div><div>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br>
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