Are We Running Dry? (Southwest US water shortage documentary)

[SoCalDem]

http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=15738

First Air: 1/12/2009
56 minutes

The Urban Water Research Center at UCI presents this documentary by James Thebaut which chronicles the use of water in the southwestern U.S. and ultimately, asks the question, "Are We Running Dry". This compelling program, narrated by Jane Seymour, takes a serious look at water policy in the Southwest and what changes may be in store in the future. (#15738)

[yorgatron]

1. I don't need to watch it.

if you want to live in the desert you don't need a fucking lawn or a fucking golf course.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[yorgatron]

4. excuse me your Majesty

rationing,get used to it.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

6. It's okay to

tell us off - we are so used to it.

I believe we have options. I am working on legislature to build desalinization plants here.

Sorry - but I am a bit thin skinned - It is not easy having people tell me that I deserve to die in a wild fire while flames are within a mile. It would be like me telling the people of The Gulf to just suck it up during Katrina... but, that is what people wrote here during the SC wild fires.

I grew up here. It is my home. Just like people who grew up in areas beset with ice storms. We all have our problems, it's how we solve them. :)

[cali]

8. Tell it to Stephen Chu, queenie.

And great swaths of the SW absofuckinglutely are desert, dear.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/126281/stephen_chu:_%22we're_looking_at_a_scenario_where_there's_no_more_agriculture_in_california%22/

[QueenOfCalifornia]

3. Oh you will be flamed

for this OP. It is so popular to tell us off here.

I know that every place where humans live there is a problem or problems. Be it cold, heat, energy, storms etc. - What I do not appreciate is people telling me that I don't have a right to discuss the problems of our region.

Water is a problem here. There are ways to make it better. We need to conserve and we need to use desalination plants.

[yorgatron]

5. BTW,I was including Las Vegas.

there's also a lot of really fucking stupid farming practices that need to be shut down too.

[SpiralHawk]

9. Ahhh, and you have chosen, and have the means, to live in an environmental paradise, yorgatron

Pray, tell all the rest of us low-life scum how we may attain to your rarefied state of environmental and economic enlightenment.

P.S. I do not have a lawn or a golf course, either. I have an arrary of solar panels, a roof, a catchment system, a big honking cistern, a low-flow toilet, and a hundred other environmental tweaks. But what the Hell, yorga, you seem to feel that when you are puking out your hate, scorn and bile, you might as well puke on everyone to make yourself feel somehow 'superior.'

[MadHound]

7. Running dry? SW U.S. has always been dry,

Yet we have been foolish enough to establish major urban areas in desert and semi-desert areas, thinking that we could solve the problem by sucking down a couple of rivers.

Now that the population has sucked down rivers, and the problem has grown to a disaster, people think that we can solve the problem by desalinization. Ah yes, let us use even more massive quantities of energy, cause even more massive amounts of pollution so that people can live in desert and semi-desert areas. Perhaps that massive decline in environmental quality that comes with desalinization will finally wake people up, but I doubt it. When you start sucking rivers dry, it's a sign that you need to get the hell out of the desert. Instead the choice is going to be to stay, and destroy the environment even more.

Screw the environment, screw the health of the ocean and land. We want to live in really, really dry areas and nothing is going to stop us:eyes:

[notesdev]

11. Yep

At some point we're going to have to face the fact that building enormous cities in the middle of the desert is an unsustainable situation.

[Igel]

12. It's always been dry, true.

Some places more so than others.

One series of reports I remember from a couple of years ago looked at long-term trends in the SW: Apparently for the last century or so the area had above-average rainfall. If you go back to conditions in the 16th-18th centuries you'd have seen much less water, less snowpack. Our baseline for all water planning was wrong.

Don't know if the conclusions have been amended or not by later research.

My wife wants to move back to Arizona, where she grew up. I'm resisting the idea, simply because while I love the flora and the desert, I don't want to live in one.

[baldguy]

10. What do you mean "we", pale face?

[placton]

13. my home is in the middle of all that water

the Great Lakes levels are rising - soon the rust belt will be the water belt

[NickB79]

14. Where did you hear that? Lake Superior has been seeing falling water levels

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/us/14lakes.html

"Water Levels in 3 Great Lakes Dip Far Below Normal "

Though I have read that this year's heavy snowfall is expected to bring the levels back up to more normal levels.

[blue_onyx]

16. Here's an article

"Great Lakes water levels are on the rise again after a decade of losses, giving hope to property owners with shrinking beaches, charter fishing operators wanting more room to roam and shipping companies eager to load up their freighters.

Officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predict levels in the Great Lakes will be higher in the first half of 2009 than they were in 2008 -- the second year in a row the water will have risen, if estimates prove true. The predictions provide the first insight into what this year's boaters will face on the water. And while it's too early to call the increase a trend, the inches gained in the last 24 months are the first turn back toward the lakes' traditional levels in years."


http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090107/METRO/901070400

[blue_onyx]

15. That's the good thing about the past several snowy winters.

It helped the Great Lakes a lot. I'm glad the states in the area finally signed the Great Lakes Compact...we need to provide our greatest resource.