Prolonged drought aka desert
[Water] Levels in Lake Mead – the largest US reservoir by volume – fell to historic lows on Thursday, as the region continues to face the effects of a devastating prolonged drought.
Stationed on the main stem of the Colorado River in the Mojave [desert] along the Arizona-Nevada border, Lake Mead was formed with the construction of the Hoover dam, which generates electricity for areas in Arizona, California and Nevada. It provides water for urban, rural and tribal lands across the south-west.
It’s approaching its lowest level ever and it will get lower over the summer.
In normal years, the dam produces enough electricity for 8 million people, but the water shortage will slow energy output while adding additional pressure on the increasingly water-starved systems across the west.
And this part of the west is desert. It’s already desert and now it’s a desert in a drought. The problem is, millions of people live there. I’m not sure we thought this through.
Roughly 75% of the American west is currently mired in “severe” drought, according to the US Drought Monitor, but the region has been strained by drought conditions for decades. The climate crisis has amplified effects of the dryness, as rising temperatures obliterated the already sparse snowpack and baked even more moisture out of the landscape.
And [arms flailing in the effort to get the point across] this was already desert country. Why anybody thought it would be a good idea to fill it up with people is beyond me.
I could see it in Arizona, and especially crossing over into California (over the Colorado) and seeing it was as dry as the Salt River is in Phoenix. The Valley of the Sun gets it’s water from the Colorado, and I was surprised to see the ditches along Central Avenue filled with runoff from people wanting to have green lawns in the desert.
Why live in the desert if you want to have a lawn from suburban Chicago? More people continue to move there, trying to escape the winter cold, and I understand the temptation. But then they complain about the heat, so, they air condition. And, before Air Conditioning, Phoenix was a very small city.
Maybe we could fix this by changing the moon’s orbit.
GW:
Don’t be silly. We should change the Earth’s orbit, it’s closer.
As someone who is moving to Arizona when I retire next year, the house my wife and I own there is going to be remodeled so it uses less electricity and water. Probably we’ll add solar panels too, although there’s a 20 megawatt solar power station near us too. I expect water rights from what agriculture there is in Arizona to be bought up for human use, but that’s just a stopgap that buys only a decade or so.
@1 I remember having a high maintenance lawn in California, having to water the damn thing all the time. The real issue is the agricuture there, the water infrastructure is the reason it produces such a high percentage of the food in the US. Since I’ve moved to Georgia I haven’t had to water my lawn once, it just stays green. Also the human population; it’s mostly water, not air conditioning that has been responsible for the growth in the Southwest. AC just made it more comfy. So get ready for higher food prices, drought effects are always passed on to the consumer.
States like Arizona, Utah, and Nevada are among the highest per capita water users in the US. People move to states without much water, then use water like there is a huge supply. The states with the lowest per capita usage are mostly in New England, where there is a better supply of water. I don’t have too much sympathy with people who move to the desert and then consume water they are usually stealing from somewhere else. And there is a water fountain in Phoenix that shoots water up to 560 feet (though the average is 300 feet). Most of that will evaporate in the desert air.
Also, Lake Mead should not have been built. The lake is evaporating more than 600,000 acre-feet every year. The Colorado River has so many dams that it no longer reaches the mouth for several months each year.
None of this is acceptable. Deserts are inappropriate places for intensive development. I realize some people like it hot, and don’t want winter cold, but if there isn’t enough water to sustain the lifestyle you require, you need to live somewhere else.
And may of the lawns are based on eastern US ideas of a lawn, which were carried over here from England. So we are trying to build lawns in a desert where rain is scarce modeled on lawns from a country with regular rainfall.
If the human species goes extinct, we may be the first species to be extincted by its own stupidity.
@6 Also golf courses where water is at a premium. Because elitist pastimes are that important? Grr. :P
It’s a sort of ostentatious status symbol with multiple negative effects on the environment. I bought a house in Minnesota and many homeowners are transitioning from grass lawns to native plant gardens. I am going to transition to other ground cover options, and it takes a few years. But it will be helpful because it will attract bees and butterfles, hence birds, and all that.
Perhaps we should start thinking of “overdeveloped countries.” This sounds like one of them.
Why change your habits when you can just fix the resulting damage? That’s why god created antacids. Just don’t ask what happens when the fixing no longer works because the damage is so extensive.
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Hey, all those abandoned gated Scottsdale subdivisions will be awesome scavenging country for the roving gangs of biker outlaws a la Mad Max. I just want to be HUMUNGOUS (IN CHARGE!)