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Borrego
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# Posted: 3 Sep 2018 09:11pm
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Hello All - Thought I would share an issue which came across just recently....even though I live in the SW, I didn't realize the gravity of the situation and how much our Govt is hiding/ignoring the issue.
It started with a family trip to the country's largest lake (manmade) a couple weeks ago, Lake Mead....we have been renting houseboats on the Colorado river lakes for 25 years now since our boys were 4 & 7, now they're 28 and 31! We haven't been for 11 years so have not paid attention to the water level (although I obviously know it has been receding)
When doing research on the Lake before the trip, I discovered articles on the water level that astounded me. It is currently down 150 ft from our first trip 20+ years ago! The Marina that we used to rent from is now closed, along with several others.....
Even worse, the water level at Lake Mead is now barely above the top of the Hoover Dam. Less than 100 ft. When (not if) it drops below that (it can go down 60 ft/yr and we are in a drought), 7 states and northern Baja Mexico would be without water....and power to some extent. A population of about 50+ million people...
Yet there is very little mention of this anywhere, almost like they are trying to cover it up  .......I can see why.....Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tuscon, LA, San Diego, and much more would be shut down. Talk about a SHTF situation!
This kinda relates to our cabin forum, at least for me...I have a well out there that is on an endless aquafier, so I could survive, but I can't imagine what most people would do....
Well just thought I'd share...any thoughts? I sure hope i'm imagining this whole thing, but I don't think so.......
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ICC
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# Posted: 3 Sep 2018 09:53pm - Edited by: ICC
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Ditto, Lake Powell. Not at all the same place I first saw in the 60's. BTW, Mead is rated biggest man made lake by its 28 million acre-feet CAPACITY to Powell's 27 million, both calculated when at full level. Powell has more surface area though, which is maybe bad (evaporation). No idea which holds more usable water today.
The water issue is a biggie in the SW. I have friends who have had 5 to 600 foot deep holes go dry. There is a 1000 foot hole near me. A nearby county has done some extensive test drilling to thousands of feet deep levels where there is apparently a huge slightly brackish aquifer. Just brackish enough to be unusable as is. They ran tests and have determined the area is a good one for desalination plants. Not too bad if they can power desalinating off abundant SW solar or maybe wind. Sometime in the future; how distant is anyone's guess.
It's one reason I began building rainwater catchment about six years ago. Now the well here at home is seldom used. All the water we use in the house and shop is rainwater or snowmelt. The well pump is used a few times a month for livestock or ag-irrigation. By next summer I hope to be able to rely on rainfall and snow 100% .
Friends in the nearby city pay the water utility more for their water (incl. sewage treatment) per month than they pay the natural gas and electric utilities. Combined. Of course, they run refrigerated A?C many months of the year, but do not irrigate much at all outside.
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toyota_mdt_tech
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 08:39am - Edited by: toyota_mdt_tech
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Yes, demand is outpacing the supply. Its going to come to a head sooner than many think.
Article on just this showed up today:
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/09/03/lake-mead-lake-powell-drought-colorado-river/
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Borrego
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 09:47am
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Quoting: ICC It's one reason I began building rainwater catchment
Nice if you have rain, we don't where I am......SoCal gets only 10 in per Yr.....some of you get that in one nice rainstorm I'm guessing.... 
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Borrego
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 09:56am
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Good article! Wow, Mead is only 38% full and Powell 48% ?
That's not good....because it ain't gonna get better, not without a bunch of rain/snow for years, and I suspect that will not happen. I guess they never saw, back in the 1930's, that millions of people would want to move into a desert...
And the article doesn't even address the water level dropping below the dam, which could happen in a year or so....
Guess I need to start putting away some water......
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paulz
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 10:11am
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Same article in the local news here (NorCal). Also in the news today, severe flooding in the Midwest. We have and aqueduct to send water to SoCal..Hmm...
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Borrego
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 10:19am
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Quoting: paulz We have and aqueduct to send water to SoCal
Yeah, you guys shouldn't have to send your water down here. This area was overbuilt with them knowing full well that it would be over-populated. They need to split this state IMO.
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ICC
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 10:39am - Edited by: ICC
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Quoting: Borrego Nice if you have rain, we don't where I am......SoCal gets only 10 in per Yr.....
My area of NM has a historical average of 12.4" annually. I have lots of roof area, house, shop, barn and at this point a maximum capacity of 24K gallons of water, mostly in concrete underground storage. Right now it looks like it's 90% full. We had a few good rains in August, but are still on the short side.
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Borrego
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 10:57am
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Ah, good to know.....do you get your rain scattered throughout the year, or all in a couple months like we do?
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drb777
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 12:46pm
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All that historical data just confirms that the SW US is most definitely overpopulated, and has been in that direction for many years. And it's not just water, air quality, sewage, ability to move about freely have all seen declines when too many people exhaust the ability of the natural resources.
Too bad, my dad's home area of So-cal used to be like a paradise. 'Doubt it will ever be again.
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paulz
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 01:40pm
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Ah yes, paradise. Even NorCal has changed. I've been in the same area my whole life (north of GG bridge a bit), and up until about 20 years ago swore it was paradise. But housing developments, traffic, congestion has changed that. Which is why I bought my land and built my cabin off the beaten path. Every time I pull up to my gate I breath a deep sigh of relief. Leave me alone!
Back to the aqueduct. We almost needed water from Oregon a couple years ago, saw something about bringing it down (course if we weren't sending water south might not have needed it). Seems to me if there are areas of the country that have too much water, and we can move fuel, cargo etc. around, why not water? Not that I condone over population, I think it sucks, but something will need to be done.
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drb777
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 02:10pm
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Quoting: paulz Seems to me if there are areas of the country that have too much water, and we can move fuel, cargo etc. around, why not water? Not that I condone over population, I think it sucks, but something will need to be done.
I agree, aqueducts have been used for thousands of years, the brilliant engineering from ancient times. But when sources themselves become exhaustible/depletable, and efficient transportation is impossible, something will have to adjust/change.
SoCal is a bit ahead of the rest of us, the next 20 years will be interesting.
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ICC
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 02:29pm - Edited by: ICC
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Quoting: Borrego do you get your rain scattered throughout the year, or all in a couple months like we do?
May and June have some rain, July through September usually has monsoons; lots of rain in a short period, but also scattered. It might pour at the house but have no rain at all a mile away. Winters are driest part of the year; some snow. Normally not a lot. The 80's and 90's had above normal precipitation. The last 10 years have been hotter and dryer.
Spring and early summer of this year we went 96 days with no precipitation at all.
Our precipitation year runs Oct 1 thru Sept. 30. This year we are almost on track for total inches but much of that has been poorly distributed with too much at one time and not enough in winter or spring.
Earth is overpopulated, IMO. Not just the SW US. Without Willis Carrier and his invention of modern air conditioning, the SW would have never grown so much. It's sort of odd that he invented it when in NY state. It was designed to control humidity in a printing plant. The idea was to stop the paper from curling. A/C proved to have many other benefits though.
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Borrego
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# Posted: 4 Sep 2018 09:16pm
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Quoting: ICC Earth is overpopulated, IMO. Not just the SW US
There are many parts of the US that are still wild and free. Including many states like Oklahoma, Texas, most of the South, much of the West. Well anywhere there isn't a big city. Plenty of room, although I hope and pray at least the US gets ahold of it's growth (which in large part it has with population growth at 7%) Northern Europe, Canada, Etc.. also have gotten control of this. The rest of the world is still way behind and to blame for massive over-population of our planet...
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rockies
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# Posted: 5 Sep 2018 05:34pm
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It's not entirely the fault of over population. The United States only has about 360 million people in it. It's the fact that the citizens of the US use far more natural resources than most other countries. In fact, they've used so much more of the world's resources for SO LONG that the vast majority of the US population has a sense of "entitlement" to the world's resources.
The irony is that the US is blessed with an abundance of just about every type of natural resource, whether it's cereal crops, farm animals, vegetation, minerals, or energy sources, etc and yet it STILL has to import more just to maintain itself.
If the rest of the world should decide to stop shipping the US raw resources it would cause a dramatic decline in the US economy.
The best solution is for the people of the US to simply use less of everything, but most people would just laugh in your face.
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Borrego
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# Posted: 5 Sep 2018 09:53pm
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rockies - I think you're mostly right......but I would include all of the entire First World countries as the 'spoiled' ones. And I don't believe it's because we're bad people, it's just what we're used to and grew up with, we don't even think about how good we've got it....
But yeah, speaking of water, which is the topic, we sure use a lot of it. Everybody here probably uses a dishwasher, right? 50 gallons per load. Clothes washing machine? Ditto. Are you all going to stop using them? I'd wager not.
And moreover, the largest wasters of water in SoCal are the Government by far, there are some good articles about the leaking pipe infrastructure in LA and SF (in particular). They use the tax money dedicated to fix the infrastructure on their pet projects and let the pipes leak....
It's all so sad but I don't expect it to change....until the SHTF and the water is all gone.
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ICC
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# Posted: 5 Sep 2018 11:41pm - Edited by: ICC
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had trouble with duplicate posting
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ICC
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# Posted: 5 Sep 2018 11:49pm
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Borrego, I'm glad you are concerned about water use, but you are off the mark on how much water a dishwasher uses. My LG that is about 2 years old, on the standard setting, does a load of dishes with 3.2 gallons of water, total. That is a full load, plates, cups, some pots or pans, baking dish, whatever. I run about every other day. I use more water if I hand wash one day's worth of dishes.
Ditto the efficiency for the LG clothes washer, only a couple of years old. It not only weighs the load you toss in and adjusts the water level accordingly, it has a rating of 2.8 gallons(IWF). That means it uses a maximum of 2.8 gallons per cu. ft. loaded. Being 4.5 cu ft capacity that works out to just over 12-1/2 gallons for a standard full load.
Everything that uses water and electricity in my home is less than 4 years old. The propane furnace is 96% efficient, uses a plastic pipe for a chimney.
My toilets are pressure assist types; 0.8 gallon per flush and I have never had to double flush for any reason.
My household water use is 1000 gallons a month, one person. I have the previously mentioned large rainwater storage capacity as I do have some livestock, a garden, some fruit trees, and some of the water is earmarked for fire suppression should that need arise. Plus I do not expect the present drought conditions to lessen in my lifetime. So the overcapacity is some insurance of sorts.
Older appliances are bigger water and electricity users. The 15 year old dishwasher I used to have used 12 gallons per load. Not 50. Maybe an old wringer washer would use 50 per load. I remember Mom using one decades ago. Seems to me she used a lot of water; the pump ran a lot.
European countries use less energy and water than the US does. A figure that sticks in my mind is that the US uses 11 times the energy as does the UK, but we have only 5X the number of people. That's more or less that the average American uses 2x as much energy as the average Brit. That starts with the US driving many more miles and using vehicles that are still gas guzzling when compared to the UK and the EU.
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ILFE
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 06:24am - Edited by: ILFE
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Quoting: Borrego Guess I need to start putting away some water......
Borrego, have a look here, for an idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llI8nR_r3KM
Mr. Kniffen lives in Menard County, Texas. He stated they only get about 9" of rain per year.
Here in Cambodia (you may know me as Asia_Off_Grid on other forums), our rainy season delivers more rain than we can use for an entire year. Yet, we still don't use all of the collection surfaces that we have available.
Still, I want to slowly expand our collection, because, even in a tropical environment, we too suffer droughts.
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Borrego
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 10:39am
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Quoting: ICC Borrego, I'm glad you are concerned about water use, but you are off the mark on how much water a dishwasher uses.
I was using the numbers from an article in our local paper on this subject. I'm sure the newer models are as you say, but most people have older models......
And I'm sure US uses more energy than the Brits, we have lots more roads and bigger cars, and trucks. The average guy in my neck of the woods has at least one full-size truck, and we use them daily for work/ranch chores. I doubt there is a Chevy Silverado in England.
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Borrego
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 10:45am
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Quoting: ILFE Here in Cambodia (you may know me as Asia_Off_Grid on other forums)
Yes, I thought that was you from Survival Monkey. Thanks for that video, good one. It seems like a daunting task to do what that guy did, wow....
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hueyjazz
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 11:49am
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I've often told my children that maybe not in my lifetime but likely in yours, living next to the worlds largest source of fresh water is going to become a valuable asset. The Great lakes. We live next to Lake Ontario.
And oh, for those of you the think we are crowded in the US need to take a trip to India. Now that's crowded.
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rockies
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 05:19pm
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It's not just water usage, but also electricity, oil, natural gas, raw minerals, etc.
To use one example, the US imports about 25% of its softwood lumber from Canada. The US Govt wants to slap tariffs on softwood lumber because they say that the Canadian Govt unfairly subsidizes the lumber industry.
What would happen if Canada stopped selling softwood lumber to the US? Well, some people think that the US will simply buy it from someone else, such as Germany or Russia. Trouble is, those countries don't like the US much these days.
SO! If there is a 25% drop in the amount of softwood lumber coming into the US then the possible outcomes are:
1. Decrease the amount of construction using softwood lumber by 25%
2. Pay to ship softwood lumber from halfway around the world.
3. Make up the 25% loss from your own forests.
4. Jack up the price of softwood lumber.
Of course, if the US is forced to rely on their own forests to make up the 25% loss from imports then your forests get depleted faster, and in time you won't have any left. Then the rest of the world can step back in and sell it to you (at a greatly inflated price).
Whether water or lumber or oil or gas or coal or electricity this underlying fact remains: the average US citizen WILL NOT conserve, and yet just 2 generations ago it was common to conserve. Today the US must import more of practically everything just to stay status quo. Try telling an American today that they can't have a new car, or buy a new cell phone, or to eat less.
They'll laugh in your face.
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Borrego
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 09:25pm
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Poor example, and you forgot a possible outcome:
#5 - Make up the 25% loss from your own forests and then plant more to make up the difference. Actually plant so much more that we can start to undercut Canada. They can keep their lumber.
We can use the jobs anyway.
https://www.businessinsider.com/r-update-1-us-finds-canada-dumped-lumber-sets-duties- 2017-11
"James Brochu, co-chair of the U.S. Lumber Coalition and president of Pleasant River Lumber Company, said U.S. lumber companies can now expand production to meet demand in the United States."
"The massive subsidies the Canadian government provides to their lumber industries have caused real harm to U.S. producers and their workers," said Brochu.
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Borrego
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 09:30pm
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Or #6 - Take over Canada and just take the lumber......
But this was about water and how it possibly relates to us as off-grid cabin builders....can we keep it there?
At our cabin (about 100 miles east of where we live during the week) we are sitting on a huge aquafier, they say endless...but we know how that could go. At least for now i feel safe.....I could even run out to the desert and bring water back if I had to......
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ICC
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 09:36pm
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Water, population, food, etc. is a very interesting topic to me. Lots of controversy possible too. When I stated I thought there are too many people, I meant too many people in total on earth and, even though there are wide open spaces in many parts of the US, I believe there are too many people in the US. Too many people to be sustainable. I believe we passed the point of sustainability decades ago.
Everything we do seems to be connected to fossil fuels; oil, natural gas, coal. Ag fertilizers, which make it possible to grow bountiful harvests, come from natural gas to a large degree. The US imports a large amount of the nitrogen-based fertilizers we use.
Almonds are good food. Over the past 20 years improvements have been made to reduce the amount of water used in California to grow almonds. But it still takes 1.1 gallons of water to produce a single almond; something like 960 gallons of water to produce a gallon of almond milk. Cows are worse; about 2000 gallons of water to make a gallon of milk. Of course, cows can also be eaten, too. California has been pumping water out of the aquifers for a long time. There are places in the central valleys where the earth is subsiding at the rate of 11 inches a year as the water is removed.
If the earth did not have so many people we would not have to grow so much food. The food waste in the US does not help matters.
Because of the past apparent abundance of resources we, the US, in particular, has made virtually no effort to rein in our consumption. We are living beyond our means. The creditors have just not foreclosed on us yet.
I don't have an answer, a solution. Just a bitch list of wrongs as I see them.
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ICC
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 09:39pm
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And I recognize I have been a part of the consumption problem. I have tried to reduce what I use, have increased what I recycle to the point where my recyclables, including compost, exceeds the trash component by a large portion.
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Borrego
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# Posted: 6 Sep 2018 09:59pm
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Quoting: ICC I don't have an answer, a solution. Just a bitch list of wrongs as I see them.
Yeah, there is no answer..... we're past the point of no return, just take care of you and yours.....
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naturelover66
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# Posted: 7 Sep 2018 12:30pm
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Good thread... Great reading.
I can honestly say i recycle everything possible and use rain barrels for my gardens. Grow as much of my own food as possible and ofcourse share with neighbors family and friends. We can all do more.
Lisa
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rockies
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# Posted: 7 Sep 2018 05:35pm
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Borrego, in response to your #5 suggestion that the US plant more trees than they harvest, thus increasing the amount of forested area in the US and eliminating the need to import any softwood from Canada is unrealistic.
if the US could do that then they already would have, but where is all this land going to come from? If it's raw land then shouldn't it already have a forest on it? Should farmland be returned to a forested environment? Trees tend to grown on land that is well suited to having a forest (ie climate, water conditions, soil type, etc).
Instead of replanting, the US Govt seems to have decided that importing lumber from Germany is a better idea.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/us-imports-of-german-softwood-up-t enfold-as-duties-weigh-on-canadian-industry/article36049782/
It seems ironic that in order to "save" the US softwood lumber industry (and all those jobs) the Govt chooses to impose tariffs on its foreign suppliers, thus causing the price of the product to rise. But this is just one import in a sea of imports coming into the US.
As to water, when the aquifers in California were full decades ago it was considered a good idea to plant almonds. Almonds were a nice big cash crop. Now growers are plowing under their almond trees because they can't afford the water.
The big challenge for California will be what happens with the Colorado river.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-colorado-river-runs-dry-61427169/
I predict in the near future that there will indeed be a return to a more natural landscape but it won't be with replanted forests. It will be the land turning back into desert, the way most of California used to look. The question remains how much of the rest of the US will join it?
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