Water Problems

It seems obvious but we seldom hear evidence of it, but Australia is not the only country in the world that is having water troubles. Obviously there are plenty of problems in the Middle East (especially the Palestinian state but that's another post) but you rarely hear of major water problem from the US. Below is a link to a press release from the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. Some of the researchers there put out a paper titled "When will lake mead go dry?"

http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=876

Lake Mead was created by the Hoover Dam's blockage of the Colorado River. The river is fed by snow pack from Rockies, which has been decreasing. The dam, of course, was one of the prototypical megaengineering efforts of the 20th century and a symbol of how human ingenuity could conquer any obstacle, including supplying water to a city the size of Las Vegas in the middle of the desert.

But the sheer amount of water that natural and manmade climate changes and human usage is drawing out of the Colorado River system is staggering. The researchers estimate that 1 million acre-feet, or 326 billion gallons, of water are being leached out of the system each year. They say that's enough to supply 8 million people.

Based on models constructed from the analysis of historical records from the Federal Bureau of Land Reclamation, the researchers, Tim Barnett and David Pierce, say there is a ten percent chance the reservoir will be dry in 2014, and a 50 percent chance no water will be left by 2021.

Obviously this could put a big dampener on any plans to expand city's in that area. Ha Dampener get it........ well if you don't have humour in the face of these type of things it could drive you to despair.

L.