
In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes - jseliger
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/wells-are-getting-deeper-as-groundwater-gets-depleted/
======
40acres
A local groundwater management agency in Ventura County, CA recently started a
pilot program that established a groundwater market among farmers in the
county.

Following the early 2010s drought in California, laws were enacted to cap and
eventually reduce the amount of groundwater that can be extracted. Recent
advancements in water usage tracking infrastructure, combined with the law has
led to a natural environment to create a cap and trade system.

Interestingly, farmers view water usage as a trade secret, and so the pilot
marketplace is using block-chain to provide an anonymous marketplace.
Groundwater management in California (and I assume across the nation) is
regulated by a patchwork of different local government agencies and laws, but
there is an awesome opportunity to provide a unified software based
marketplace to establish a groundwater commodity market.

A market also facilities conservation as farmers now have incentive to lower
their water usage and sell excess water on the market. A big challenge however
is transportation of water across vast distances.

~~~
scribu
> Interestingly, farmers view water usage as a trade secret

I wonder why. Do slight changes in irrigation patterns have a significant
effect on crops?

~~~
TheHegemon
Definitely! If someone is able to figure out how to use less water to grow the
same amount of crops they could totally outcompete and undercut other
producers.

There's an interesting Planet Money episode about it:
[https://www.npr.org/2019/06/12/732147345/the-water-
marketpla...](https://www.npr.org/2019/06/12/732147345/the-water-marketplace)

~~~
lightedman
>If someone is able to figure out how to use less water to grow the same
amount of crops

We've already had that for years. Farmers don't want to make the structural
investments required to get there. Water for farming needs to become
prohibitively expensive for them to even consider moving away from their
wasteful large fields. Tax the hell out of the land, too.

What takes an acre of land and 100,000 gallons of water (a crop of wheat
grass) can be done in a building 1/8 of an acre, 90% lower water requirements
if not more, and produce 6x more than what the open plot of land does, on a
yearly basis, on average.

I did and proved that almost a decade ago. Looks like nobody still wants to
listen.

------
jxcl
When some aquifers are drained, they take many thousands of years to
replenish, a heavy rain season doesn't really help with these depleted
aquifers.

Here's a great video on Cody'sLab that explains how confined aquifers work and
why they take so long to replenish:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4iCgxsZX4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4iCgxsZX4)

~~~
madez
It even shows why some aquifers may never replenish. The layer of the aquifer
is not tightly compressed and can hold water. When the water is released and
the layer starts to compress from the weight from above, its ability to hold
water is permanently diminished.

~~~
Haga
Happens to Teheran and many Indian cities. Viewable via satellite.

~~~
gonzo
Las Vegas has a lot of subsidence due to ground water use.

~~~
Gibbon1
In the Santa Clara valley. Used to be the water table was so high in a lot of
places you could drill artesian wells. When orchard farms got going they
pulled so much water that by the 19920's some places sunk 12 feet. The fix was
irrigation systems and replenishment.

I read my great grandfathers diaries and water was a big deal in the 1880's.
One spring after dry winter he had to slaughter all of his calves and the
older dairy cows. Later that year his older brother shot himself in despair.
Next year his sisters and younger brother went up to Oregon to live with
relatives and never returned.

Water has been a big deal my whole life in California. That's unremarkable.
What's new is it's becoming a big deal in a lot of places.

------
srameshc
The same phenomenon is happening is happening in China & India and probably
many other parts of he world as well. As we become more a more affluent
society, our on water consumption increases. We need to raise awareness at a
global level about preserving and saving water.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/28-000-riv...](https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/28-000-rivers-
disappeared-in-china-what-happened/275365/)

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/photos/rivers...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/photos/rivers-
run-dry/)

~~~
hombre_fatal
Why not just price water to reflect supply realities?

Why would anyone care about saving water when it's so dirt cheap? "Awareness"
seems like a waste of time in comparison.

~~~
r00fus
Does market economics work if there's no way to prevent the tragedy of the
commons?

~~~
ip26
That's a confusing question. The tragedy of the commons happens specifically
when a resource is under- or un-priced.

~~~
jbay808
If a free market is left alone to set prices, do any resources end up under-
priced?

~~~
ip26
No- but that presupposes the existence of a well functioning free market,
which everyone agrees we do not have with water.

------
mjevans
Lets stop wastefully watering lawns as a starting point. Some places are
probably already doing that, but the use of native landscaping needs to spread
further.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
The largest water user, at least in California, is agriculture. Fortunately
they're now planting fewer acres of low-value crops such as cotton. But other
crops use an insane amount:

    
    
       1 walnut     4.9  gallons
       1 almond     1.1  gallons
       1 pistachio  0.75 gallons
    

And it looks like Palm Springs is a big water user. Must be all those golf
courses?

[https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-
calif...](https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias-
water-going/)

~~~
r00fus
I heard meat/milk production uses a significantly larger amount of water (in
addition to the crops eaten by the animals).

~~~
lostlogin
It’s the waste from cattle that’s a bigger problem. And areas with little
rainfall seem to be particularly bad at handling all the excess nitrogen.

------
cardamomo
For those interested in exploring the political and social consequences of
this in a near-term (albeit fictional) world, I highly recommend reading "The
Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi. From the Goodreads description:

> In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for
> dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez,
> leg-breaker, assassin, and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel "cuts" water
> for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her luxurious developments can
> bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet while the poor get dust.

~~~
et-al
And if anyone prefers non-fiction, _Cadillac Desert_ by Marc Reisner describes
the (completely fucked) water supply situation out in California.

~~~
hyperbovine
One of my all-time favorite non-fiction books, perhaps even more topical today
than it was when it came out in 1986. It's a shame that the author died in
2000 at the young age of 51; the book deserves a sequel or two.

------
jschwartzi
When I was a kid, we owned a house out in a small farming community in western
Washington State. One of the things we had to do is drill the well a solid 100
feet below the water table, because the upper 60 feet had measurable levels of
fecal coliform bacteria. This was fairly rural. Our nearest neighbor was a
quarter mile up the road, and we were surrounded by livestock pastures with
cattle herds.

I would imagine the current owners of the property have had to re-drill the
well at least once as population density in the area increased.

------
ajross
Unpopular (or at least unconventional) opinion: depleted aquifers are a good
thing, because it's turns one of the externalities of outrageously exploited
agriculture into a true cost. More expensive food means less land use and less
energy spent irrigating what we do grow.

(I felt the same way about "peak oil" 20 years ago, but alas fracking messed
that guess up.)

~~~
rabidrat
That's the issue, I've found, with hoping that calamity will make the problems
visible enough to shock us into making systemic changes. Humans are very good
at inventing clever short-term "solutions" that ameliorate the symptoms but
wind up making the long-term problem worse. I have no doubt that if/when
global civilization fails due to global warming, we'll wind up burning
everything in sight to power our air conditioners for a few minutes of
respite.

~~~
Moru
GMO is supposed to save us this time, if we have to pay for it some other way
is still being discussed.

------
LinuxBender
Have any more improvements been made in the process of removing salt from
ocean water in large volume? Is anyone actively still working on this?

~~~
Aaronstotle
Did a quick google search and found that Israel launched a large desalination
plant back in 2015 (uses reverse osmosis). Here's the source:
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534996/megascale-
desalina...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534996/megascale-
desalination/)

~~~
LinuxBender
Thankyou. That would suggest it is feasible on a large scale. Hopefully more
countries will start to invest in desalination plants. With ocean levels
rising, now should be a good time to optimize that process even further.

~~~
jedberg
Desal works fine, but uses a lot of energy. With ever cheaper solar panels,
there will soon be a point where it makes sense to power a desal plant on just
solar power.

But there is still the small matter of the salt that is left over. There is so
much salt on this planet that no one wants it. You could dump it back in the
ocean, but wherever you do so becomes too salty, which would be really bad if
you dump it back right where you're doing your desalinization.

Which means we either need to ship it to the middle of the ocean (which maybe
you can do with autonomous solar powered boats) or you need to figure out some
other use for all that salt.

~~~
LinuxBender
Perhaps that could augment or replace our existing salt mining.

------
rb808
Its just amazing to look at population growth in the desert states, Nevada,
Arizona, Utah should be barren wasteland, not with rapidly growing cities of
millions. Running out of water seems inevitable.

------
hairytrog
This is poor reporting and possibly poor science. It's not enough to say that
it will vanish. We need to know on what timescale it will vanish. I suspect
that it will last at least several centuries at current extraction rates.
Several hundred years from now, the climate may be completely different,
energy might extremely cheap, new continental water distribution might be
constructed, etc.

~~~
jcrawfordor
Aquifers are a local resource, you can think of them as somewhat like lakes
that rest in depressions in geological strata rather than in depressions in
the ground. There is not one large aquifer which spans the US. As a result,
the details of the situation depend greatly on the area. In the Southwest,
where aquifer depletion has been a major concern, there are concerns that some
aquifers may deteriorate in quality due to overextraction to the point that
expensive water processing is necessary over a scale of one to two decades
(e.g. along the Mexico border). It's also somewhat difficult to give a year
range because there is generally not actually a cut-off point where you
completely "run out" \- instead, the cost of extracting and processing the
water increases as overextraction continues, due to a lower water table and,
worse, increased salinity. Alamogordo, NM has already initiated the
construction of a desalination plant because of this problem - a very
expensive proposition, and one the public rarely thinks of inland.

Concern about aquifer depletion is increasing across the nation, not just in
the desert southwest, but the severity of the problem varies. What is
reasonably consistent is that the situation is getting worse in most places.

The USGS has general information here:
[https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-103-03/](https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-103-03/)

------
DoreenMichele
It doesn't have to be this way.

Off the top of my head:

Fresno County, California is a quiet and overlooked pioneer in water rights
and water development. They are a modern "Hanging Gardens of Babylon" in that
about 150 years ago or so, it was essentially desert with greenery growing
only near the rivers. That changed drastically when they built canals.

After building canals, they found that some low-lying areas turned into ponds.
It was a side effect of the canals raising the groundwater level.

From there, they actively created groundwater recharge systems. In the last
100 years, while most aquifers in the US only went down, groundwater levels in
Fresno actually improved at times, helping to protect the area's water supply.

I lived in Fresno for over two years while homeless. I considered staying in
part because I expect it to be a quiet haven of secure water supplies in
coming decades as our water supply issues spiral into ever deepening crises
globally. I bet some systems could borrow best practices from them and at
least slow the problem.

 _Water for a thirsty land: the Consolidated Irrigation District and its canal
development history_ is a history of water development in Fresno. It's a
fascinating read. I highly recommend it.

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/water-for-a-thirsty-land-
the-...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/water-for-a-thirsty-land-the-
consolidated-irrigation-district-and-its-canal-development-
history/oclc/36954078&referer=brief_results)

Earthships can provide adequate residential water supplies via rain catchment
in areas with as little as 8" of annual rainfall.

One of the arguments for eating vegetarian is that beef uses a lot of water to
produce. You don't have to go full on vegan to reduce the amount of water
burden your diet represents. Just cutting back on your consumption of beef can
have an impact.

As a child, I grew up with a set of encyclopedias at home. One article that
really stuck in my mind was about successfully growing trees in the desert for
agricultural purposes by shaping the ground to be a local catchment system to
extend the usefulness of natural rainfall.

You make a square or rectangular catchment area with one corner being the low
point. It's not very different from designing a shower with a low point for
the drain.

You plant your tree in the low point corner so it is downhill from the rest of
the catchment area. When it rains, the catchment fills up and the tree has its
own personal water supply for at least a few days.

The interesting and technical part is that you need to develop standards for
how large of a catchment to build based on plant species and rainfall levels.
Too large of a catchment can cause root rot and kill the tree. Too small and
it won't get enough water to thrive.

There are many ways we can work on maintaining a high quality of life while
reducing our use of water. We don't have to throw our hands in the air and
accept that it is inevitable that we will just hurtle towards some doomsday
scenario until we get some mass die-off event for humans, in essence.

------
6c696e7578
It hasn't "vanished", it is just hiding in the ocean and the atmosphere. Same
as the (vanished) water at the icecaps.

As the Earth heats, the water evaporates. When that happens it adds to heat
retention. Expect the water to make a bold reappearance as we experience
tropical storms.

~~~
jedberg
The _ground_ water has vanished and become _sky_ water, which is much less
useful to a farmer.

------
padseeker
On the flipside the great lakes are nearly at an all time high. Maybe the
growth in those places requiring deeper wells have exceeded what they can
support?

~~~
yardie
The Great Lakes sources their water from glaciers melting. Too little and too
much of a thing it’s still worrying.

~~~
omosubi
Do you have a source for this? I thought they were sourced was almost all
rainfall both directly into the lake and from the streams and rivers that
surround them

~~~
cronix
Glaciers formed them, but probably have little to do with sustaining them
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes)

------
romaaeterna
If this were actually a serious issue, we would be discussing NAWPA again for
real.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance)

The original blueprint used nukes to dig the trenches, but conventional
explosives work just fine.

~~~
halfeatenpie
Actual water resources researcher focusing on climate change here. My job is
focused on what can we do to continue to deliver water to society under future
scenarios (and what steps we can take to get there) from policy to
infrastructure investments. The article doesn't present anything new for us
but the problem is that the general public isn't informed.

While we're the oldest engineering discipline, remember that even until around
the 80s people didn't think or know about groundwater contamination. They've
always thought that sticking contaminated water back into the ground would
filter it naturally like magic. In the late 80s more and more people started
to understand that's not how it works. Even then, these policies and ideas are
still in the process of being accepted in developing countries almost 40 years
later and even then "what else can we do? My son needs water now and he could
get hit by a car tomorrow so this is a problem I'll deal with later."

The problem (as the article states) is that the issue is so distributed. We're
talking about traditionally individualized solutions for a problem that needs
a more coordinated solution. However, noone is willing to pay for that or
considers other investments as "more critical" than major water projects (also
many environmental groups aren't as risk averse as water utilities). I mean
the biggest cost in water isn't the actual product but the transportation
costs. We have water, we just don't have enough funds to deliver them
everywhere in a sustainable manner at a price that people are willing to pay.

NAWPA idea was conceived even before we understood our environment. It's the
wrong solution. I mean even 10 years ago we had a landmark article that
changed the paradigm of how we decide policy and build infrastructure[0]. I'd
never take NAWPA for anything now than the "grandiose-ness of the 50s",
especially since that was during a "water resources renaissance" in the United
States where even crazy ideas were taken seriously.

[0]
[https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/CLEE/Milly_2008_Science_S...](https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/CLEE/Milly_2008_Science_StationarityIsDead.pdf)

~~~
quotemstr
Why are so many water researchers opposed to letting the price of water vary
and drive market-based conservation?

~~~
halfeatenpie
Great question! There's really no simple answer to this unfortunately also I
don't think I'm the best person to answer this question, but I'll try my best!

Water is a basic human right. In most countries, water is a public good that
the government subsidizes and, to some extent, the market is adjusted to allow
vulnerable households to afford the resource as well. If we have a 100% free
market-based solution then in many locations the poor and underprivileged have
a considerably less access to this vital resource (some won't get any). An
example of this can be seen in India. Many districts there suffer from
intermittent water supply (where the local piped water comes at irregular
intervals instead of continuously). These people might not be able to shower
regularly and they aren't given a schedule of when the water will come, so
they can't schedule their day or week. Many of these people might even have to
leave work for a day (losing that income and economic productivity) and jump
out to fill up their water tanks in their homes. As they don't know when the
water comes (no regular scheduling), this uncertainty can be nerve racking and
(even if you're trying to stretch it out to last) may not be enough to last
your family until the next "supply". In these cases, you call in a water
tanker to refill your tank but even then you don't know if it'll come.

On the tanker truck company's side, they don't want irregular domestic
clients, they want more regular commercial clients (because the total customer
value is much higher, you get more money from those clients than a household
that needs a one-offer). So those companies aren't really incentivized to
service residential clients. So if another call comes in, those commercial
clients would take higher priority than those vulnerable households.

Those solutions don't really help this problem, and this problem is just going
to grow for the foreseeable future. Not exactly what I'm talking about, but
IWA recently published an article about how many cities are shifting from 24/7
to intermittent water supply solutions [0], and if this becomes irregular and
the system starts to fail, then this will just keep that problem growing. One
of the projects I'm involved in works on trying to solve this exact problem
and we recently got some support from the US National Science Foundation as
well as the Gates Foundation. However, there's still a long way to go.
(Sidebar: Anyone want to give us more funding or help? Send me a message!)

[0]: [https://iwa-network.org/running-out-of-water-cities-
shifting...](https://iwa-network.org/running-out-of-water-cities-shifting-
from-24x7-to-intermittent-water-supply/)

~~~
nshepperd
Surely water security is also a basic human right, and that is directly
impacted by destructive consumption subsidies.

> If we have a 100% free market-based solution then in many locations the poor
> and underprivileged have a considerably less access to this vital resource
> (some won't get any).

If we set water prices to something sane, how much cash do we have to give the
poor to leave them in the same financial position?

Surely it can't be much: domestic water usage is but a fraction of agriculture
and industry, and the number of poor which couldn't afford water is but a
fraction thereof.

