Water

ABC News recently carried a story on its website about how Celine Dion’s estate-under-construction in Florida consumed 6.5 million gallons of water last year, despite a drought in the southeast, despite the strain South Florida’s freshwater supply, and despite the fact that Celine doesn’t even live there.

Included in the article was this bit of trivia:

Experts estimate that at least 50 percent of Florida’s water is used for landscaping.

Fifty percent?!

I’m not a fan of seeking regulatory or legislative involvement to govern personal behavior or the enjoyment of one’s private property…but I’m finding hard not to think that some folks up in Tallahassee might want to start looking into what could be done in that regard.

In my two visits to Las Vegas, I have been somewhat disturbed by the excesses of The Strip, including just how much water is wasted in the Nevada desert.

Maybe the days of such excess are numbered.

From Reuters:

The study by two researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego calculates a 10 percent chance that Lake Mead will run dry in six years and a 50 percent probability it will be gone by 2021 absent other changes.[...]

The uncertainty about when and if the lake will run dry stems from the natural fluctuations of the Colorado River, which feeds the lake, the researcher said. In recent months the flow has been above average, he said, after years below average.

I wonder if Las Vegas will begin to race Los Angeles, to see which metro area can tap Lake Tahoe first.

Seen in the Orlando Sentinel:

Several fast-growing northeast Florida communities could tap into the Atlantic Ocean for drinking water by anchoring a desalination ship 2½ miles off the coast.

If completed, the floating water factory could become the first major ocean-desalination system in the United States. The idea is to retrofit an oil tanker with filters and powerful pumps that would make up to 25 million gallons of drinking water a day, enough for more than 150,000 people.[...]

Without the ocean option, the communities may have to draw from the more fragile St. Johns River, now the focus of a budding water-rights battle between Orlando, Jacksonville and cities in between.

Desalination is already relatively common in the Middle East and Australia, but it hasn’t caught on to any great extent in the U.S. due to the expense. Population growing beyond the availability of groundwater to support it, aggravated by drought, is apparently shifting the balance.

The apparent reason for building the plant offshore is to reduce expense (no need to build both the intake and exhaust pipelines, if the plant is already where it would want to exhaust to), as well as perhaps to address cat risk (when a hurricane approaches, the plant can disconnect and steam out of harm’s way).

Of course, I can’t help but think that if the expense is a big concern, they could always bottle the desalinated water, slap a fancy label on the stuff, and sell it as a premium bottled beverage. Considering how much Americans are willing to pay for bottled water….

I’ve been meaning to writes something from my soapbox about the water situation in metro Atlanta, where poor planning appears to have lead to the region having less than a 3 months’ supply of easily accessible water, and less than 9 months’ of any water at current usage rates, triggering an old-west water rights squabble among the states of Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and environmental advocates acting on behalf of an endangered mussel.

However, considering the size and magnitude of the mess, I haven’t really been able to think of anything too insightful to add to the noise.

However, there is an article in the Charlotte Observer about the water woes of Orme, Tennessee that did catch my eye.

The situation in Orme has deteriorated to the point where the town trucks in water thrice weekly, and water is provided to residents’ homes only three hours a day. However, there is a solution on the horizon:

The town has received a $377,590 emergency grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that Reames hopes will be Orme’s salvation. A utility crew is laying a 2 1/2-mile pipe to connect Orme to the Bridgeport, Ala., water supply. The work could be finished by Thanksgiving.

The image of guerrilla water department folks, quickly and surreptitiously running piping from Birmingham, Nashville, and Charlotte to connect into Atlanta’s water mains just flashed through my brain.