Conservation of Water is Critical to our Future
Secure more water, curb pollution, end interior flooding and create jobs through a national project that will correct our sin of neglect, abuse and waste to our most precious resource. It is not gold, oil or even food. It is the substance that makes up most of our human body: water. In this short format, I cannot begin to convey the gravity of our water problems, so I used our largest state by population and the world’s eighth largest economy as a an example.
Water may cover 71% of the earth’s surface, but only 3% is freshwater and that small percentage is shrinking due to population, agricultural usage and pollution. My idea is to collect nature’s bounty by working with the topography in relationship to farming, storm water runoff and treatment to curb pollution into our water bodies. The main concept is to place a national network of connecting pipes into the bed of our rivers and large water bodies. We pump the added water from rainfall or snowfall along these pipes to retention reservoirs when needed.
There is something here for each state like Mount Waialeale, Hawaii which receives 460 inches of rainfall yearly. Bring an umbrella. Back on the mainland Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan gets 113 inches of snowfall. Why waste this abundance or would you rather have the thinking of our present scientist? Science offers two solutions with desalination and urine recycling. Have you ever tasted desalinated water? Forget about it! It works poorly with agriculture and industry. Urine recycling for our kitchens? Ew! We need freshwater or we die. We can’t wait for the crisis because our system is slow due to gridlock which to me is a euphemism for weak leaders who respond more to lobbyists and maintaining office rather than taking a principle stand. This meme will stop the decline of available drinking water, curb pollution, end interior flooding, provide jobs in every state, educate the public of the dangers of the toilet, help farmers with more water and curb their pollution with runoff from their farms, lower utility costs, provide jobs in every state and help our progeny pay for all the crushing debt that we leave them. (I will continue the concept below under – describing my idea – with more water facts and information. This is just one idea from my unpublished book, “The Evolution of Democracy: the Book of Multiple Ideas and Predictions.” I need an agent and America needs this idea.
Usage: The US population has grown by over 200% since 1900 and our per capita water consumption increased 500 to 800% depending on region. It takes a lot of water to produce the products we use like a glass of beer which needs twenty gallons of water to make. No! You say. Keep in mind that there are many ingredients that make up the product beer. Bottom line it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain. Top five in the Golden State: alfalfa, cattle ranchers, cotton farmers, rice farmers and the city of Los Angeles.
Water is a two-sided problem. The need to find it and the pollution of it after it is used. Agriculture uses 75% of the world’s freshwater. California accounts for 10% of our nation’s water use.
Pollution: Agriculture runoff of pesticides, fertilizers, GMOs causes 60% of our water pollution. We have legislated another 500,000 tons daily from our toilets and industry. Storm water runoff completes the picture. Sadly, storm water runoff was not included in the Clean Water Act. This needs to be addressed. My plan will help farmers along with the recycling of water. Education will help at our homes, however I have no sympathy for industry who use economic pollution to limit changes that would test water and curb pollution by adding treatment plants. Big Pharma is the zombie polluter. The only thing that I got right in chemistry class was NACL – salt, but today chemical reactions within our water system is uncountable. Do you know what an endocrine pharmaceutical does? It secrets directly into blood and the industry makes millions of pounds and it is now in our water supply. Ever hear of warfarin? It is an ingredient in rat poison. The Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation District said the concentrations found from a local company drain were safe. Yeah, the rats weren’t drinking it. How about the Love Canal? A terrible tragedy where neglect, abuse and economic pollution caused suffering, disease and death. It led to the Superfund. Can water burn? Yes! After the Cayahoga River set itself on fire for the thirteen time in 1969 the EPA was founded. Hollywood raised awareness with “ERIN BROCKOVICH and A CIVIL ACTION,” but our system is too slow especially with todays enemy: PCBs. Tomorrow’s movie is another nightmare. Crops are collasping, groundwater is disappearing, some rivers fail to reach the sea and because of seepage, some previously thought safe aquifers are being polluted. Have you ever noticed your water bill? You will like in 2009 in Longwood, Florida where residents thought that their monthly bill of $900 dollars or more was a typo. Pick your poison. A bill you can’t afford to pay or tainted water that you are afraid to drink. The scarcity of water in the San Joaquin Valley caused farmers in 2009 to leave fallow thousands of acres of land which resulted in the loss of 35,000 jobs and caused $959 million in lost revenues according to Richard Howitt, chairman of Agricultural and Research Economic at the University of Californis at Davis. What will the farmers of the southwest do who plant a million acres of crops, the tens of million people and the half-million homes including Las Vegas who get their electricity and water from Lake Mead do when it goes dry? It will happen by 2021 in a paper, “When Will Lake Mead Go Dry?” according to the Scripps Institute of Oceanograghy. It has to be the saddest vision to view the Hoover Dam and notice the stained ring around the walls of Lake Mead due to the declining capacity, now at 46%. There is less water in the lake because less water is flowing into the Colorado River due to less water runoff from less snow in the mountains that resupply it. This is one aspect of global warming and it is one of the reasons for the outbreak in wildfires in our western states. In fact, 36 of our states suffer from water shortages and 10 western states have been in drought conditions for the past decade. Another problem with global warming is the melting of the glaciers which produces rising seas which cause salt water intrusion into our fresh water bodies and destroys our coastal environmental areas. When you add the stress of water pollution to these water bodies we are developing dead zones in our coastal areas. It is sad to report that we now import 80% of our seaford. This is doubly wrong. One, we should not have to import what we can produce ourselves and we are destroying jobs, respect for life and the love of beauty in natural recreation in America. Finally, in one example of our yearly spring flooding the Red River in 2009 caused $2 billion dollars in damage and hardship. With my plan interior flooding will never happen again. We will work with farmers to provide water and with their topography reduce runoff pollution of it. With our national system of connecting pipes we will ensure fresh, safe drinking water for our nation, provide jobs in every state, reduce our utility bills and cure the zombies of their deadly concoctions to our water supply.In high elevation states the moving water could generate hydo-electric plants as a by-product of this plan. In the future we can sell our excess water to other nations and in this way our progeny will be able to pay off the crushing debt that we leave them. Space limits the full concept of the plan, but all the ingredients to its implication are expressed. It is my further hope that historians in the year 2020 on the fiftieth anniversity of Earth Day say, the US had many good and bad points, but their water contribution saved humanity. JFL