New Studies Produce Projections Worse Than Thought For Southwest, Esp. For Groundwater Withdrawals

[hatrack]

The glum projections of the growing gap between demand for water in the Southwest and the dwindling supplies have never been optimistic, but two new studies— one a research report based on satellite data, and the other an analysis of rainfall, water use and the costs associated with obtaining new water — make earlier forecasts seem positively rosy.

The United States branch of the Stockholm Environment Institute, based in Somerville, Mass., just released an extended analysis of water demand and future supplies that estimates that the cumulative shortfall over the next century in the Southwest, without the adoption of adaptation strategies, will be 1.815 billion acre feet. (At the top of the graph above, that’s the green and yellow bars combined.) And that’s without factoring in a climate-change-driven reduction in supply.

Add that extra climate-change impact, based on mild and moderate projections, and the next century’s total shortfall would increase by another 282 million acre feet (orange bar) to 439 million acre-feet (orange and red bars combined).

EDIT

Using 78 months’ worth of Grace data, his team found that the total loss of groundwater from the Sacramento and San Joaquin River basins in California’s Central Valley from 2003 to 2010 was just under 16.5 million acre-feet — approximately the volume of the Lower Colorado River reservoir, Lake Mead, when it is full. About 80 percent of that loss, the study estimated, came from the San Joaquin basin. A multiyear drought began in the region in 2006. “Given the naturally low rates of groundwater recharge in the San Joaquin Valley, combined with projections of decreasing snowpack and population growth, continued depletion of groundwater at the rates estimated in this study may become the norm in decades to come, and may well be unsustainable on those time scales,” Dr. Famiglietti and his co-authors write.

EDIT

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/southwestern-water-going-going-gone/

[tularetom]

1. As city councils in the Central Valley

jump backwards through their own assholes to approve residential development upon development, potentially adding hundreds of thousands of new residents to the area, and refuse to even consider metering water services until forced to do so by the state.

Water isn't the only thing in short supply around here. Politicians cojones are awfully hard to find as well.