Water: Life’s most precious possession

By Susan Williams

• In northwest California, a 10-year water management policy in the Klamath River Basin was implemented to determine the amounts of water farmers would receive for crop irrigation, while balancing the amount of water necessary to sustain Coho salmon spawning activity in the Klamath River. Right now, the farmers are getting the water, while the bodies of dead fish line the river banks—biologists counted 9,500 in the five days between Sept. 20–25—because water levels have been too low to maintain appropriate flow and the cool temperatures salmon need.

• Elsewhere in California, federal officials say they will cut the state’s use of Colorado River water, which is causing angry reaction from residents, especially those in the 450,000 acre farm–rich but irrigation dependent Imperial Valley. With rampant growth of western cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver and Salt Lake City, the supply of water needed to sustain new populations will run out by 2030 unless something is done to enforce the limits established long ago regarding California water entitlement.

• Cotton is a thirsty crop, as anyone who grows it in Texas or elsewhere can tell you. But despite farmers’ successful efforts to conserve the amount of water they use, the water level in the Ogallala, the huge aquifer beneath eight U.S. states, is falling fast. In some areas of Texas, the aquifer, originally just 95 feet below the land surface, now is 335 feet underground with only another 65 to go. The population in that state is expected to grow from 21 million in 2000 to 40 million in 2050.

The list of issues doesn’t even touch upon the pollution problems in Eastern and Midwestern groundwater, lakes streams and rivers. Or upon international issues.

• Consider Iraq, Syria and Turkey. If each country were to accomplish its plans for water delivery systems installation, the Euphrates River would need to hold half again the amount it already does in order to meet the demands. In China, the Tang River has dried up from overuse, and as many as 300,000 people will be uprooted as canals and aqueducts are constructed to divert water from the Yangtze River to Beijing and Tianjin in the drier northeast.

• The Aral Sea in Central Asia was once one of the world’s largest inland bodies of water. Located in the area of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, the sea bed is largely a salt desert now, an ecological disaster that started when engineers in the former Soviet Union anchored huge irrigation canals into the sea. Agricultural chemicals and industrial waste that spilled into the rivers leading to and from the Aral Sea have contaminated the sea bed as well. The carcasses of cattle, poisoned from eating the salty grasses, litter the sand along with the remains of old fishing boats.

It seems as if there should be enough water for all of us. After all, water in some form covers about 80 percent of the earth. Unfortunately, less than 1 percent of it is accessible, and according to estimates from the United Nations and the U.S. government, by 2015 at least 40 percent of the world’s population will live in countries where it is difficult or impossible to get enough water to satisfy basic needs.