[Infowarrior] - Peak Water: Aquifers and Rivers Are Running Dry

[Richard Forno]

WIRED MAGAZINE: 16.05

Peak Water: Aquifers and Rivers Are Running Dry. How Three Regions Are
Coping
By Matthew Power Email 04.21.08 | 6:00 PM


That the news is familiar makes it no less alarming: 1.1 billion people,
about one-sixth of the world's population, lack access to safe drinking
water. Aquifers under Beijing, Delhi, Bangkok, and dozens of other rapidly
growing urban areas are drying up. The rivers Ganges, Jordan, Nile, and
Yangtze ‹ all dwindle to a trickle for much of the year. In the former
Soviet Union, the Aral Sea has shrunk to a quarter of its former size,
leaving behind a salt-crusted waste.

Water has been a serious issue in the developing world for so long that dire
reports of shortages in Cairo or Karachi barely register. But the scarcity
of freshwater is no longer a problem restricted to poor countries. Shortages
are reaching crisis proportions in even the most highly developed regions,
and they're quickly becoming commonplace in our own backyard, from the
bleached-white bathtub ring around the Southwest's half-empty Lake Mead to
the parched state of Georgia, where the governor prays for rain. Crops are
collapsing, groundwater is disappearing, rivers are failing to reach the
sea. Call it peak water, the point at which the renewable supply is forever
outstripped by unquenchable demand.

This is not to say the world is running out of water. The same amount exists
on Earth today as millions of years ago ‹ roughly 360 quintillion gallons.
It evaporates, coalesces in clouds, falls as rain, seeps into the earth, and
emerges in springs to feed rivers and lakes, an endless hydrologic cycle
ordained by immutable laws of chemistry. But 97 percent of it is in the
oceans, where it's useless unless the salt can be removed ‹ a process that
consumes enormous quantities of energy. Water fit for drinking, irrigation,
husbandry, and other human uses can't always be found where people need it,
and it's heavy and expensive to transport. Like oil, water is not equitably
distributed or respectful of political boundaries; about 50 percent of the
world's freshwater lies in a half-dozen lucky countries.

Freshwater is the ultimate renewable resource, but humanity is extracting
and polluting it faster than it can be replenished. Rampant economic growth
‹ more homes, more businesses, more water-intensive products and processes,
a rising standard of living ‹ has simply outstripped the ready supply,
especially in historically dry regions. Compounding the problem, the
hydrologic cycle is growing less predictable as climate change alters
established temperature patterns around the globe.

One barrier to better management of water resources is simply lack of data ‹
where the water is, where it's going, how much is being used and for what
purposes, how much might be saved by doing things differently. In this way,
the water problem is largely an information problem. The information we can
assemble has a huge bearing on how we cope with a world at peak water.

That data already shows the era of easy water is ending. Even economically
advanced regions face unavoidable pressures ‹ on their industrial output,
the quality of life in their cities, their food supply. Wired visited three
such areas: the American Southwest, southeastern England, and southeastern
Australia. The difficulties these places face today are harbingers of the
dawning era of peak water, and their struggles to find solutions offer a
glimpse of the challenge ahead.

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http://www.wired.com/print/science/planetearth/magazine/16-05/ff_peakwater