
Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink - nherment
http://www.propublica.org/article/message-from-mexico-u.s.-is-polluting-water-it-may-someday-need-to-drink
======
peterwwillis

      For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that 
      it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water 
      well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, 
      plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers 
      below it could only contain poor-quality water, led 
      regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 
      200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day 
      into the underground reservoirs.
    

_WHAT THE FUCK_

~~~
gwern
What in rural Wyoming would ever justify spending half a million dollars for a
single water well? I do not think an example like the massive urban
conglomeration of Mexico City (greater area: 21.2 million people) naturally
analogizes to such areas.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
They redirect water from Northern to Southern California. Why not from rural
Wyoming to, say, Colorado? We may have 5M people here, and are chronically
short of water.

The water from Colorado (via the Colorado River) also supplies Utah, Arizona,
Southern California, Nevada, and Mexico with water. All of those areas need
more water; even if Colorado stays at its current demand level, you could
imagine one or more of those areas funding a well in Wyoming to divert water
to Colorado to either send directly down the river or to take the place of
water that would otherwise be removed from the river, so that their allocation
could be correspondingly increased. (Pretty much every drop of the Colorado
River is owned by someone. [1])

Water is life. :)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River)

~~~
cbr

        Pretty much every drop of the Colorado River
        is owned by someone.
    

The river is actually overcommitted:

    
    
        When the Colorado River Compact was drafted in
        the 1920s, it was based on barely 30 years of
        streamflow records that suggested an average
        annual flow of 17.5 million acre feet past Lee's
        Ferry. Modern studies of tree rings revealed
        that those three decades were probably the
        wettest in the past 500 to 1,200 years – and
        that the natural long-term annual flow past
        Lee's Ferry is probably closer to 13.5 million
        acre feet, as compared to the natural flow at
        the mouth of 16.3 million acre feet.  This has
        resulted in more water being allocated to river
        users than actually flows through the Colorado.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
I had heard that, but I didn't find the reference quickly, and I had to post.
Didn't want to make unsubstantiated claims. Thanks for the follow-up. :)

As a result we've been in violation with a treaty with Mexico over the lack of
promised water volume over most of that time as well. Again, too busy to find
the link.

------
pilom
Funny for this to come up now. I'm reading Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner now
which is all about water policy in the western US.

The short answer is that we consume WAY more water than all of the
precipitation on the entire region can support so we end up depleting the
aquifers. Eventually (likely within my lifetime) those will dry up and they we
will have to either start diverting water from Canada and Alaska, or decrease
the population in the west.

Edit: Changed entire country to entire region. The Great Lakes area will do
just fine for a very very long time.

~~~
schiffern
…or switch away from insanely inefficient (90% evaporation) center-pivot
irrigation.

Not to mention our practice of shunting rainwater off fields as fast as
possible. This high-speed, high-runoff condition leads to soil erosion,
failure to recharge aquifers, and really gives rise to the need for
irrigation.

Dynamically unstable monocultures are neither sustainable nor efficient.
They're not even cost-optimal or land-optimal, merely labor-minimizing (most
of the arable land in the US is controlled either directly or indirectly by
conglomerates, who generally view labor as messy and undesirable).

Again, dynamically unstable monocultures are neither sustainable nor
efficient. Fortunately this means that when they _inevitably_ collapse, we get
wealthier as more efficient systems replace them.

~~~
maxerickson
Can you point to an interpretation of the data here:

[http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/agriculture/farm...](http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/agriculture/farms_and_farmland.html)

that supports your 80%?

Because when I interpret the data I end up at 'most acreage is owned by
families, families that may have done some sort of incorporation'.

I guess if you throw in some of the big forestry outfits you buy a lot of
acres, but that perhaps indicates the need for a more precise phrasing or more
interesting measure than arable (like, land used to produce food in the last
50 years, or something like that).

~~~
jessaustin
I think what 'schiffern means to say is that 80% is farmed in corporate
fashion, even if not literally by corporations. The families you're talking
about have generally taken big loans to buy (or hire) big machinery and big
fertilizer for their big farms. Some of that is the market talking, but much
of it is big ag companies like Monsanto ensuring that corn and other subsidies
stay in place [0], and their sharecro^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers can only farm
in the manner that funnels all profits to the ag company.

(Of course there are other family farmers who aren't like that, but they farm
a small fraction of the acreage.)

Apparently the Farm Bill that just passed the House is supposed to change this
situation somewhat, but I'll believe that when and if I see it over the next
decade or so.

[0]
[http://www.yale.edu/sustainablefood/S9256YSF_farm_bill_s.pdf...](http://www.yale.edu/sustainablefood/S9256YSF_farm_bill_s.pdf.pdf)

~~~
schiffern
Yep, that's exactly what I meant. Thanks for explaining it better than I
could. ;)

------
logfromblammo
If you have the capability to inject pollutants into the aquifer, don't you
already have 80% of what you need to use it as a water source--namely, the big
pipe connecting it to the surface? You just need to add pumps, right?

If someone needs a big hole to store poisons in, I'd sort of prefer that it
not already be filled with nature's favorite nearly-universal solvent. The
water got down there somehow, and geology makes you no guarantees that it will
never move that water again.

Also, professional polluters sometimes cut corners on measures to ensure that
their pollutants don't actually end up somewhere other than the planned and
approved place.

------
cjensen
It seems to me that if you need to dig a well that deep you have utterly
failed to address the real problem: you are using MUCH more than falls on the
ground. Wait a few more years and you'll just have to dig an even deeper well.
It's just postponing the inevitable. [1]

With that principle in mind, I'm not sure I care if deep resources are
polluted for a few hundred thousand years.

[1] Mexico is rapidly improving economically; it may make sense for them to
postpone the real solution until such time as they can afford to desalinate
and ship water long distance.

~~~
huherto
Just a note in Mexico. It can be divided two parts with different water
problems. In central and southern Mexico, there is abundance of rain, and it
is more populated. The main problem is managing the rain. Northern Mexico is
like the American Southwest, sparsely populated, great extensions of land and
very little rain.

------
dpedu
> ... analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a
> water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves ... led regulators
> to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and
> radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs.

Wow. The stupidity and nearsightedness exposed in this article is astounding.

------
spikels
There is absolutely no shortage of drinking water in the US.

(1) Both US freshwater (surface + groundwater) and groundwater usage in the US
has been flat for 40+ years despite the population growing by 50%.

(2) Less than 2% for freshwater and 5% of groundwater is used for domestic
uses (shower, washing, drinking, etc).

(3) Less than 1% of domestic water is used for drinking.

So of the 350 billion gallons of freshwater used in the US every day only 250
million is used for drinking. That is 0.07%! We could easily double the amount
of drinking water with only a miniscule decrease in the water used for
farming. And it is not like this problem is getting worse as usage is flat.

There is no reason to worry about a shortage of drinking water in the US.

------
kmfrk
If you live in NYC, you might want to do a spit take, too - but for different
reasons: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/nyregion/inside-citys-
wate...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/nyregion/inside-citys-water-tanks-
layers-of-neglect.html).

------
thehme
Ignorance is definitely bliss because unless we know the facts about how we
dispose of waste and what the limits of our natural resources are, we tend
believe they are infinite. However, the sad part is also that even when people
do KNOW, some don't seem interested in what will happen 100+ yrs from now and
instead live the moment. I was shocked to read that we "allow a uranium mine
to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day
into the underground reservoirs", it's troubling.

What we do to this Earth needs to be evaluated on a regular basis by our Gov.
officials and in this case, hopefully we can all agree that "deep, unknown
potential sources of drinking water [DO] matter" and matter right now.

------
TehCorwiz
Why is it so difficult for people to understand that regional borders are more
often than not a human concept? You do not live in the United Bubble of
America!

That having been said, wasn't there an article yesterday about how 30% of
Californian pollution comes from China? Or a few weeks ago that radiation from
Japan is hitting our shores? This is not what they meant with "Think locally,
act globally."

~~~
JonFish85
It's not difficult to understand, it's difficult to enforce. Mexico can set up
laws about polluting their own water, but how are they going to enforce it in
the USA? Same with CA--we can ask China to cut down on pollution, and they'll
apparently promise it, but who's to enforce it? Ask more nicely?

Or is it on the factories / companies themselves? Is a factory in China going
to sacrifice economic growth so that a Californian can breathe cleaner air? Or
is a US drilling company going to buy more expensive formulas so that Mexico
city can have clean water someday? These things won't happen on their own.

Ultimately that's the problem, in my opinion.

~~~
pilom
Actually Mexico threatened to take the US to international court during
Nixon's presidency because the water coming out of the Colorado River into
Mexico was so salty it was killing crops and un-drinkable.

The US agreed to make one of the biggest De-salination plants in the world
just before the border and now the US pays about $300/ton to clean up the
Colorado River before it flows into Mexico.

~~~
jeffdavis
[http://www.usbr.gov/lc/yuma/facilities/ydp/yao_ydp.html](http://www.usbr.gov/lc/yuma/facilities/ydp/yao_ydp.html)

That says the plant is not currently operating. It also says that it's only
"included" in the water sent to Mexico. I don't see any indication that it's
used for anything close to the full volume of the Colorado River.

~~~
pilom
Thanks for the link! Didn't know it wasn't operating. My understanding is that
the treaty says that the salt content should be less than X parts per million
and when the Colorado River gets saltier than X, they can turn the plant on.
This diverts some of the water out and returns it in with significantly less
salt, thus reducing the total salt content of the river as a whole to a level
less than X.

Basically, imagine you have a glass of chocolate milk. You take a teaspoon of
chocolate milk out and put a teaspoon of regular milk back in, you will reduce
the chocolate content of the glass. The glass is the river as a whole, the
plant only treats the teaspoon.

------
abalone
Confusing headline. Does "it" refer to Mexico or the U.S.?

------
buckbova
Message to Mexico. Tend to your own backyard and stop dumping sewage in our
ocean.

[http://www.sandiego6.com/story/county-issues-
contamination-w...](http://www.sandiego6.com/story/county-issues-
contamination-warning-for-beaches-near-tijuana-river-20140130)

------
rbanffy
Has anyone tried desalination with geothermal sources?

~~~
dredmorbius
Two challenges off the top:

⚫ Geothermal is available in limited areas. Few of those are proximate to salt
water (though in Japan, Hawaii, and the Philippines this might be the case).
I'm not aware that freshwater supplies are critically limited in any of those
areas, however.

⚫ Geothermal itself tends to have substantial water requirements as a heat
transfer / working fluid. Replenishing groundwater liberated through
generating activities is a concern in many fields.

~~~
chc
I love that you went to the trouble of using a Unicode black circle character
(⚫) rather than a bullet (•). That's some dedication to your circles.

~~~
dredmorbius
I went hunting for a useful bullet character some time back, and that's what I
found. It's downloaded and I use xclip to copy it to my Xorg clipboard from
command history ("^Runic<return>" generally brings it up:

    
    
        $ xc < ~/Downloads/unicode-medium-black-circle
    

But it'd sure be nice if HN had a real fucking Markdown library.

