This is it, warns one water advocate, “it really does (make critical) the fact that we have to start changing.” Lake Mead water levels have sunk to their lowest levels on record (below the levels when the dam was built) at 1075 feet. This is a major problem, as USA Today reports, since Las Vegas water authority’s current “straws” glean water from 1,050 feet and 1,000 feet – leaving the first straw just 25 feet away from pulling in air. With the drought only set to get worse as the summer begins, the water wars are just beginning as Lower-basin states are still taking more than the river system can sustain.
Bad and getting worse…
Lake Mead sunk to a record low Tuesday night, falling below the point that would trigger a water-supply shortage if the reservoir doesn’t recover soon.
…in the long run, as a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman said, “We still need a lot more water.”
The reservoir stores water for parts of Arizona, Southern California, southern Nevada and northern Mexico — all of which have endured a 15-year drought that continues.
…
But Tuesday’s record low signals that Colorado River water users consume more than the river provides, said water-policy manager Drew Beckwith of the Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit environmental law and policy organization.
“This is the check-engine light,” Beckwith said. “It really does (make critical) the fact that we have to start changing.”
For Las Vegas, the record reinforces the need for a nearly $1.5 billion project to tap deeper into Lake Mead. The Southern Nevada Water Authority soon will complete a 3-mile tunnel that will suck water from an 860-foot elevation level. The plan also includes a pumping station.
…
The water authority’s current “straws” glean water from 1,050 feet and 1,000 feet. Lake Mead hovers around 1,075 feet Wednesday — leaving the first straw just 25 feet away from pulling in air.
Leaders launched the third intake project about 10 years ago, seeking to reach better-quality water at deeper depths. Water closer to the surface is warmer and requires more treatment to bring it to drinking quality, said Bronson Mack, a spokesman for the water authority.
* * *
Drought or no drought, the Colorado River is over allocated, Beckwith said.
Lower-basin states take more than the river system can sustain.
Get real. The important problems are being solved by CONgress, our Liar-in-Chief, and the Unsupreme Court.
Who needs water !
A century of technological hubris,with its belief in the “magic” of technology to make laws of nature irrelevant, comes to this. Not to mention the “magic” of the government to make miracles happen just by throwing enough concrete and machinery and taxpayers’ funds at the “problem” of how to make it possible to bring water in unlimited quantities to places where it is in short supply.
If it were not for the Burea of Reclamation, which was the agency that made it possible hundreds of thousands of people to think they could cut out a living on 160 to 320 acres of arid scrubland far from civilization, we might not now have 50 m people living in an area that has, is, and likely always will be critically water short, and always short of what it needs to support 50M thirsty mouths who like to shower on a regular basis, never mind the farm operations whose profits are predicated on being able to buy water at depression era prices, far below the cost of damming and conveying it to them.
Time for the first, and largest, welfare program every promulgated by the federal government, and and one that has been gamed and corrupted by large growers and other corporate interests ever since, to come to a close. Time to recognize that resources are finite and that you may be stuck with those native to your region.
As I was telling Westcoast (idiot) on another post. I’m out here in Santa Maria , Ca .Took a shit at this place and got up to flush the toilet : drum roll ….no flushing . Try to wash my hands : drum roll …no water. The next sink did have a trickle of water coming out.
They are still watering the crops .Guess farmers do have all the water rights.
I was in Vegas 4 years ago, and took a tour of the Hoover Dam. I was absolutely blown away by the size of the com stock pipes (10 foot diameter) that literally shook you as you stood on the platform above the pipes. It was a display I will never forget, thinking of how much water was rushing through those pipes to run the turbines. (And that was just the Nevada Side) Back then it was already a low year, at Lake Mead and they were getting concerned about the lack of rainfall to fill Lake Mead. I was commenting to the tour guides that if the water goes too low, there would not be enough pressure to operate all the turbines at once, so there would have to be rolling blackouts for LA and surrounding areas. It’s a double whammy, cause you need drinking water for the desert, and power for the people, and irrigation for the farmers downstream.
Not a good situation to be in. Mind you this has happened before in history of towns disappearing when the rivers dried up naturally.
You are all a bunch of fucking worry warts. Everything is going to be fine. Arizona, in particular, has been managing water in the desert for longer than you’ve been alive. We know how to manage water. Tucson has implemented state of the art water conservation controls for many years now, and frankly, we’ve got this thing dicked.
There is enough water now, there has always been enough water, and there will always be enough water.
Now, go find something worth worrying about.
We don’t need water, we have gay marriage and obamacare!
Raise the license fee to get gay married. They’d be awash in cash and could build the desalination plants they need.
We’re not worried, SSS. We don’t live there.
Article doesn’t mention the very heavy May spring rains and snow in western Colorado. Forecasts of disaster now delayed until 2017, maybe later. Water level in Lake Mead and Lake Powell will increase through the summer.
Funny how Mother Nature fucks up the gloom of the Doomers, ain’t it, Sticky?
Human lives (mostly western humans) are all about living beyond their means in every way possible. Just don’t fuck with SSS and his green golf courses in the DESERT of southern AZ and everything will be fine.
Fuck! I can’t wait for the pockylips to get underway in earnest! Even if it means I perish in the process……..let’s get it on!
SSS said:
“There is enough water now…”
Only because previous generations of irrational, greedy humans built systems to allow them to live beyond their means.
Who/what is there enough water for now? How about the now extinct ecosystem that thrived in the former Colorado River Delta? What about the humans that eeked out a living from that delta/estuary?
@Iska +10,000!
SSS ,you better not say that to loud. Next thing you know California will pressure the Feds to steal water from Arizona. You know they will.
As long as the west keeps its mitts off the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, I’m fine.. though the water systems of the west are major welfare recipients at the federal teat as it is.
They have no water? Meh. Let them drink sand.
Signed,
your owners
Not sure how the “SSS” at 8:02 pm got a unique avatar, but that wasn’t me.
The genuine article is my lipstick-smeared avatar at 8:08 pm.
Nice try, doppel-SSS.
Probably the work of Stuck.
This is the real SSS. Want proof? I hate Green Day.
Suck it.
“Next thing you know California will pressure the Feds to steal water from Arizona. You know they will.”
—-bb
Already done. I hate California.
Nice try, doppel-SSS. Probably the work of Stuck. This is the real SSS. Want proof? I hate Green Day
We’ll let Admin decide.
Stuck or llpoh
Water, shwater. Who cares? HOWZ THE BAITFISH DOIN?
I am the real SSS. Sorry I’m late, I just got done smoking a doobie and eating three bags of Doritos. Now… where was I …. no, seriously fellas.
Texas, meanwhile, is getting drenched, looking at this NOAA sat I age you can see why http://www.goes.noaa.gov/ECIR3.html
And then there is this el nino http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/enso.shtml
And on the east coast, Florida is made doable with steeply subsidized flood insurance, which would make that insurance unaffordable to most people there if the subsidies were ended. Would Miami real estate prices be anywhere near where they are now, without that, given that non-seasonal salt-water flooding is becoming more prevalent and sea levels are rising? There may be “climate change” or there may not be, but whatever the cause, the sea level. is. rising and FL is at sea level, sitting atop very porous land. The Biscayne Aquifier, which supplies this area with drinking water, is threatened by sea water intrusion, and the loss of that aquafier would intensify the competition for water from the overtapped rivers of the southeast, on which hundreds of other communities large and small already have longstanding senior claims.
We will see what the implementation of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 will do to property values in threatened coastal communities. The National Flood Insurance Program has, for decades, provided low-cost flood insurance for properties that would be otherwise uninsurable, but many legislators are perhaps getting enough sense to realize that the taxpayers cannot afford to continue to insure properties in impossibly hazardous locations…. locations that would have remained undeveloped were it not for these subsidies. Unfortunately, the Act was watered down substantially by frantic lobbying by those affected, but it will still eliminate or substantially reduce subsidized coverage for many properties.
For 60 years, there was enough surplus sloshing through our economy that we could pretend to afford to hand out astonishing largess to help people pretend that they could live in places intrinsically unlivable, enjoy economic security with no work, retire at age 50 at 80% of their salaries and full medical coverage, and in general, rip through money and the resources that underlie all wealth, with no recrimination. The mid-20th Century was a time with no sense of limits, and the people who gave us the cornucopian mentality and the notion that we were somehow entitled to endless, and endlessly increasing affluence with no regard to cost, have long since gone to their graves and will not have to deal with the consequences of their ill-conceived policies. A lot of people posting in here are nostalgic for the “golden” 50s, but it was the very optimism of the era that has produced the situation we find ourselves in here.
For those of you who might be affected by Biggert-Waters, here is the Act:
http://us.stormsmart.org/2013/01/07/what-flood-insurance-reform-means/
Hmmm… took less time than even I thought it would to pretty much eviscerate Biggert- Waters
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/25/3418323/flood-insurance-program-reforms/
Our idiot-in-chief, never known in his life for his financial smarts, is doing his best to sustain the unsustainable.
Chicago – Did you ever consider Florida may be subsiding due to aquifer depletion? It’s happened elsewhere.
Roy, land subsidence is a major factor, from what I have read, but the coast has always been vulnerable to flooding, as FL is dead at sea level. That is why flood insurance has always been steeply subsidized there, and why developers and politicians lobby ferociously to keep the subsidies in place. The fight to keep water out of the place has been going on for as long as whites have settled the area, and it was no way possible without a lot of federal money.
Miami, founded by a farmer woman and local landowner from Ohio named Julia Tuttle, who wanted to grow citrus there, and talked oil & railroad magnate Henry Flaglar into expanding his railroad into the area- started out strictly as an agricultural outpost. It wasn’t till the roaring 20s that enterprising souls decided to market Miami as a tropical paradise and the explosive development boom- and subsequent crushing bust- of the 20s made Miami into a tourist mecca and trendy place for rich folk to winter. Miami’s core was about the only buildable land around- it has taken a lot of draining of swamps to make most of Florida’s low-lying coastal areas habitable, and this, too, has contributed to land subsidence over decades.
Insurance has been expensive even at the steeply subsidized rates pre-Biggert Waters. For example, a $200K house cost about $8,000 a year to insure against flooding before the Act, and removing the subsidies means it costs more like $24K a year, making it unaffordable to the likely buyer of such a house. By contrast, a $250,000 SF house here in the non-flood prone parts of Chicago costs about $2000 to insure The Act, however, will make it prohibitive to insure certain waterfront properties here, and in communities across the country, too, but the liberals who scream that removing the subsidies will make these properties unaffordable to their current owners ought to consider that if, indeed, there is “climate change” resulting in more flooding and more violent storms, the most sensible thing we can do is adapt, and get out of harm’s way as much as possible… and that encouraging people to live in high-hazard areas by subsidizing their insurance is not adaptive, to say the least.
Chicago, stop it. Your facts are garbage. First, miami and every other port city in the country don’t really have a choice. They are where the natural harbor/ river mouth just happened to be. Probably every coastal city of any size is a port city, and they are all low. The problem with insurance is that it has been expanded to include supporting the legal profession, which could not at it’s present size survive without insurance carveouts. In the last 50 years, miami has had one significant payout for flood, hurricane andrew.
The idea of raising insurance rates on coastal properties to unaffordable levels has nothing to do with fairness, quite the opposite. The idea is to break the legacy owners and force them out, opening that property up for redevelopment and higher taxation. Look what happened in Thailand after the tsunami.
What is unfair about making coastal dwellers pay their own costs? Why is it a good idea to subsidize people to live high-risk, high-cost lifestyles? Why should I and other taxpayers who are living affordable, sustainable lives be forced to subsidize insurance for people who live in high-hazard e past 100 years, and especially the past 50, we have subsidized nearly every unaffordable thing that people want to do, just because enough people want to do it but can’t pay for it. If enough connected, powerful people, or pressure groups, want something, it will be provided, no matter how costly and unjustified it is. Our politics long ago became a war between pressure groups and lobbies. You name it- programs for “special needareas?
Sorry, but this is WELFARE, and like all welfare, encourages bad behavior, which is building and living in areas where there is especially elevated risk of loss. Is the family mentioned in the second article I linked anymore worthy of a $15,000 yearly subsidy than some dumb poor family is worthy of SNAP benefits and Section 8 subsidies? For owners of more expensive properties, the subsidies have been much larger. I feel very sure this couple would not have bought the property at all if the true hazards and costs of ownership had been made clear at the outset.. and were clearly the responsibility of the owner.
Consider that the only way that these property owners can get insurance AT ALL is through a federal program, because no private for-profit carrier will touch property in these high-hazard areas. Consider also that the NFIP was bankrupted by Katrina and Sandy.
Wish this site had an editing function- accidentally deleted a sentence I wanted, and kept one I didn’t.
Chicago, should tax dollars subsidize you living in a city full of africans? Cost tons of taxpayer money to keep you semi-safe. Sustainable my ass. You’re always worried about someone somewhere else. There are hazards everywhere. Earthquakes, floods, fires, droughts, tornados, blacks, whatever.
Last month you hated the farmers that feed you, now it’s the people living in port cities. Haters gotta hate.
stflkr, are you really as stupid as you sound?
FYI, the state of IL is still a net taxpayer, paying more in federal taxes than it takes in.
Furthermore, Chicago is not “full” of African Americans, and about 16% of the overall population is on welfare. However, let it be said that the ONLY reason our northern cities are so full of these descendents of illiterate black southern share croppers, was because of the demand for labor during WW2, which lured hundreds of thousands of illiterate rural people ill-suited to urban life to our northern industrial cities during the war. After the war ended, we were all stuck with hundreds of thousands of unskilled people who could not cope in an urban environment, and while the white laborers, or at least their descendents, assimilated, the blacks did not.
None of this is to defend BAU in Chicago, which is unsustainable and is going to end very soon, whether we want it to or not. As usual, most people are in stone denial and scream with rage at the mere suggestion that the services and benefits they are getting- the inflated salaries and early retirement for city employees, the multi-million dollar subsidies for businesses, and the special programs for various segments of the population, are going to have to be scaled back steeply or ended altogether because they are unaffordable, and therefore unsustainable. We can either be proactive and choose to make the cuts we need to make now, or we can wait until the inevitable defaults occur. We will see how Rahm handles the impending BK of the school system. If I had my way, the city would BK right now, while it still has a huge, healty tax base, before that tax base flees to other places- and get rid of the current labor contracts, and roll back hundreds of millions in business subsidies- and be presided over by a court-appointed manager. We will see if Emanuel can make his proposed 7% paycut for CPS teachers fly. There will be a real showdown this summer as the debt payments triggered by our bond downgrade must be made, and the CPS teaches strike.
Chicago, let me stop ragging at you, not really my point. I am going hard after the arguments you have bought into. They are bogus. Let me try to make an example. Citizens (state run) windstorm in florida. Hasn’t paid out since 2005. Collects billions in premiums every year. And the reserves don’t budge. Where does that money go? Berkshire hathoway was built by investing insurance premiums
All we hear is the state shouldn’t be subsidizing homeowners. Where does that money go? Who are we subsidizing?
Well, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) went deep into the hole after the Katrina and Sandy storms, and had to have a tax-funded $28 Billion bailout. It is this federal program that underwrites flood insurance in flood prone areas, because private insurance simply will not write it at all, or charge premiums that make it very prohibitive to build in high-hazard areas.
You are subsidizing all the people who keep rebuilding in these high- hazard areas, and these two major storms ripped right through the reserve funds. Another similarly devastating storm could not be absorbed. So, Biggert-Waters proposed to end the subsidies for these super-high-risk areas, and not insure anything that did not meet certain threshholds of insurability. Structures built before 1975 were “grand-fathered” into their old subsidized rates, but a subsequent buyer of the property would confront steeply higher rates, or be unable to obtain insurance at all, as would people building new or making improvements that were more than 30% FMV. The idea was to reduce the exposure to taxpayers and discourage occupancy and development of high risk areas.
New orleans sits at the mouth of mississippi river for a reason. That river is the largest cargo artery in the country. That’s the reason new orleans exists. You need people to make commerce happen. There is no high ground anywhere near new orleans. Stop being utopian
You do realize who the waters in biggert/waters is, don’t you? Not a very bright bulb. No thank you.
I don’t really care who authored an idea that actually makes sense, which is making people eat their own risks and pay their freight, no matter who they are.
You are right to point out that NO is a major port city, and has been an important port since 1718, when the city was founded, and before. It will remain a port and there will always be people there, and it’s certainly better to manage flood risk than do without water, or water transportation. But they will have to build differently and they will have to make other adjustments to mitigate and manage the flood risk there. We know how to build to minimize it, we know how to manage it, but subsidies have made it too easy to defer the necessary work and costs into a foggy future we hope never comes. Well, it’s here.
2nd homes may be off the menu, but most people never had any damn business owning those anyway, and few people in the future will be able to afford them no matter what. As for permanent residents, in many cases, the only adjustments necessary are to build the house on higher supports, or move it inland. And, of course, avoid building right on the water to begin with, which should have suggested itself all along.
We will ALL have to make radical adjustments going forward, as it becomes more obvious that the ways we’ve been doing things and managing our finances and resources for the past century simply will not work The costs of our ways have been kicked down the road from one generation to the next, silently multiplying, and now the bills are due and we can’t pay them. And if there’s anything we won’t be able to afford to do, it’s pay people to take large financial risks that they would not take if they knew they would end up paying the full cost. And that goes for every activity we engage in.
You must love kunstler and all his new urban utopia bullshit. A beehive for every bee. Screw that. Ever live on the water? It’s great. If you are on a floodplain, moving inland won’t do you any good. Think new orleans can put all it’s houses 15 feet in the air? You’re dreaming. ‘we’ aren’t all going to go beehive. Plenty of us will continue to have secong homes. As soon as they are paid for they aren’t a big deal to afford
Yes, I lived a block from Lake Michigan for years, and still live very close. I love being close to our great beaches.
But it’s plumb stupid to build 40 unit buildings whose backsides are damn near in the water, and that have experienced repeat flooding throughout their lives. Shouldn’t the people who choose to inhabit these places so they can launch their kayaks from their personal docks, be required to pay the cost of the additional flood risk they could have avoided just by building a block back? Yet I know of one association in a lakefront buildings that has had water in it in the past, that wants to CXL ITS FLOOD INSURANCE!. I don’t mind the cost of basic flood control infrastructure such as breakwaters on LM and flood control dams in the south, to mitigate the flood risk. But when you place yourself right in front of the hazard that you could substantially reduce just by locating a block back, you should have to pay the cost of the additional risk yourself.
The subsidies aren’t as excellent as you might think. What used to cost 300. to insure 25 years ago now costs 7 grand. Most of us down here try to pay off our stuff and self insure. For flood and windstorm. The costs are too high vs the benefits. You can harden properties considerably with that kind of money every year.