When the aquifer runs out of aqui
Speaking of no it’s not a matter of if, it’s already happening, Mendocino is running out of water.
For the past century, misty, forested Mendocino – despite being nestled along a number of major rivers, creeks and springs – has relied on shallow wells for water. But amid a historic drought dessicating the US west, the aquifers beneath the town’s damp fog layer have rapidly declined, threatening to sink the region’s tourism industry and the residents who rely on it.
Café Beaujolais, which normally draws all its water for cooking and cleaning from two small wells on its property, has already been shelling out thousands of dollars to have water trucked in from nearby towns and cities.
Restaurants trucking in water: not sustainable. (Also, of course, simply adds its bit to the problem.)
A few minutes from Lopez’s restaurant, the Good Life Café and Bakery recently closed its restrooms. The throngs of tourists who line up down the block to sample the café’s quiches, cappuccinos and organic salads are directed instead to the portable toilets set up in the back parking lot. The owners of the local Harvest grocery market have brought in portable toilets as well.
Few things enhance the tourist experience quite like a visit to one of those smelly tin cans.
There many overdeveloped areas that are the equivalent of “restaurants trucking in water.” These areas are going to find out, once they can no longer rely on being able to pull resources from other places, once those erstwhile hinterlands realize that those resources are more importatant to them than the money they would get from selling to outsiders. That is assuming that these resources are not in the hands of the outsiders, or under the control of local elites who are willing to sell it out from under their neighbours for outsider’s money. I think things like this will lead to the breakdown of “globalism”, and the instability of many export-reliant countries as resistance to resource extraction becomes serious.
I live in the desert southwest near a large military base, which has left much of our groundwater contaminated with rather unhealthy amounts of chemicals from their activities throughout the 20th century (they no longer use these materials). As a result, we pipe in the majority of our city water from the Colorado River, which is just bought time. Meanwhile I’m surrounded by golf courses that run their sprinklers every day. Choices made decades ago are hurting us now yet republican-controlled legislatures in the region still acts as if it is business as usual. Phoenix for example is booming in size, particularly due to Californians and others fleeing high cost of living. It’s ridiculous.
I look forward to the day where I am out of an apartment and can begin rainwater harvesting to save on use, but of course that strategy is only so helpful when precipitation oscillates between extremes. Last year was a record-breaking July for drought, this year a record-breaking July for rain, most of which ran off as floods. At least the mountains are looking green!
Reckless exploitation of ground water plays a part as well.
In the 20s, houses is Visalia California could not have cellars, any excavation would flood with ground water.
By the 60s, wells were being dug to 300 feet and oak trees were dying for lack of water.
Yes, and that’s true all over the western part of the US. That water is gone.
And here in the central part of the country, we are recklessly draining the aquifer that underlies almost all of Nebraska and stretches north and south for a long distance. When it’s gone, we won’t have anything.
When we lived in Southern California, we would occasionally look around and just say, “none of us should live here. This is the next thing to a desert.” Our house that we sold 13 months ago is worth about $125k more than the price we sold at.