Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I haven't been able to get some nagging thoughts out of my mind about how Idaho could be affected (not in a positive way) by the impending and possibly doomsday scenario of California and other Southwest states running out of water.
How many people could be looking at our lakes and rivers, with the understanding that we have the most essential commodity for human existence?
It is very easy to find online, scientific articles and photos to support an argument that they may be less than a year from panic. Or does anyone think I am overstating this?
Is it important to start this discussion here?
People came here for land and railroad jobs and mining. Why wouldn't they come for water? And if so, how will the citizens of Idaho respond? Will some go into the business of transporting water to needed areas in trucks as a way to capitalize? What are the laws around such a business?
As a long time SoCal resident, it's been painfully obvious this was coming for a long time. How long? Well, following J. W. Powell's explorations of the Green and Colorado rivers he noted that the region was too arid to support large populations of people. He also recommended that states be set up to align with watershed boundaries to try to avoid some of the "tragedy of the commons" issues that currently occur over water management.
Rather than building a train to nowhere at an eventual cost of over $100B, California would have been much better served by building desalinization plants along the coast. This is the only long term solution that will allow anything close to the current population of the American southwest to continue to live here.
As far as supplying water from the northwest, there are a number of challenges there. The first would be finding someone with the rights to water in the northwest that would be willing to sell/give the southwest rights to some of that water. Just because water is sitting there in a lake doesn't mean anyone can put it in a truck and haul it down south. Beyond that, building an effective means of transporting the water over such a long distance is no small task. Trucking the water would be like moving a drop in the bucket.
Will people move to the northwest to get out of the arid southwest? Some might. Moving somewhere with adequate long term water supply as a consideration for us when we chose to retire in north Idaho, and we did reject other areas based primarily on that consideration. Retirees can make those sorts of decisions without considerations about employment. Most people will still have to live where they can find work, which means many will not be able to make the decision to move to north Idaho.
I suspect people will see the light eventually down here and make the necessary changes. However, even if that happened tomorrow it will take a good ling time to build the needed infrastructure, so I think the water situation will get worse before it gets better.
I agree with all except the last paragraph. I find it hard for people in CA to open their eyes and see a change is needed. But trying to obtain water from other states is nothing new.
Las Vegas is eyeing billions of gallons of water that sits underneath Nevada and Utah, but the state of Utah jinxed the idea to take their water rights to keep the fountains running in LV. Likely be a long drawn out future court battle over this, so stay tuned.
It has always amazed me how people move to the desert and then spend thousands of dollars a year keeping up a green lawn and then complain about the lack of water.
I see it all around me in Moab. Green lawns where there used to be dry desert (not me, I have rocks and all natural bushes) and Moab draws no water from the CO river for drinking. There is water drawn for drilling and there will be more in the future, but no where near their actual water rights.
I haven't been able to get some nagging thoughts out of my mind about how Idaho could be affected (not in a positive way) by the impending and possibly doomsday scenario of California and other Southwest states running out of water.
How many people could be looking at our lakes and rivers, with the understanding that we have the most essential commodity for human existence?
It is very easy to find online, scientific articles and photos to support an argument that they may be less than a year from panic. Or does anyone think I am overstating this?
Is it important to start this discussion here?
People came here for land and railroad jobs and mining. Why wouldn't they come for water? And if so, how will the citizens of Idaho respond? Will some go into the business of transporting water to needed areas in trucks as a way to capitalize? What are the laws around such a business?
There are a lot of other places looking at idaho water!
It will require more than trucks to provide Las Vegas with water. And sadly for us, Utah gets a lot of our water as the Salt Lake Valley's own ground water is depleted. Underground water flows down hill just as it does above ground, and water always seeks it's lowest point. Northern Utah water partly originates here and in Wyoming.
Our water comes from one major source throughout the state: snow melt. Idaho is unlikely to ever dry up as much as Arizona or California, because we are more mountainous than any other state in the lower 48, but a series of dry winters can cause water shortages here, for sure. Mountains are our true water source, and they act as short-term reservoirs, as snow doesn't move around like water does.
S. Idaho has an enormous aquifer lying underneath the Upper Snake River Valley. The aquifer is the size of Lake Erie, but unlike the other big aquifers in the west, is very fast flowing, as it's comprised almost entirely of a lava layer that goes very deep. Most of the western half of the aquifer ends up draining back into the Snake at 10,000 springs, located on one side of the Snake River canyon south of Twin Falls. This area is shallower than the upper area.
It's enough built-in storage to keep plenty of water here in the state for a long time, but has dropped considerably from what it once was 50 years ago. The lakes in the north act as natural reservoirs, but they too, raise and lower depending on the snowfall.
Water rights on private property have long been part of land sales, and land can be sold with or without water rights assignment and transfer. Traditionally, once a well is sunk, the water belongs to the property owner first, but that is not always true now.
Major water use rights from rivers and other streams are settled by agreements. Water companies who own irrigation canals in the south own a lot of water shares, as do municipal well owners. Relatively little water from the Snake is used for city usage now, although at one time, most towns along the Snake depended on the river for their water supply.
North Idaho's lakes present great problems, as there is a lot of very toxic stuff like lead, arsenic and other heavy metals on their bottoms from when the mines were going full blast for decades. It's covered up by a layer of silt now, but the bad stuff could get stirred back into the water if the lakes drop their levels drastically or get pumped from by big pumps.
'Water shares' are assigned as part of ownership rights. Owners have first use of a certain number of inches of water, if it comes up from a a stream or canal. Pumped water is lightly regulated, and regulation comes more from the expense of pumping than assigned rights.
Those who buy canal shares are guaranteed their water inches. First use means those with it get water first and whenever it is most needed.
Commercial Idaho power companies contested first rights about 30 years ago, resulting in the Swan Falls agreement, which was a not-so-good compromise, depending on who's side a person is on.
Swan Falls allows both power and farmers a certain amount every year; neither got all they wanted, both got some, so it's always being contested in some way or other, depending on the location and the water shortage. So far, the power producers have won more, because more people depend on electricity, but once in a while, the farmers win because they create a lot of jobs for the folks who use that electricity.
The water wars in the west have been going for some time, and have only just begun in their seriousness.
The fact is, the Colorado River can no longer supply Las Vegas and the L.A. Basin. None should have ever grown as large as they have become, but all believed Lake Mead would be a reservoir so large as to never dry out. i don't know where most of Phoenix' water comes from, but they may get some of the Colorado, too.
But Lake Mead has depleted much more than ever believed. Most of the water left from the bottom of the lake to refill all the surrounding huge areas as local groundwater sources became depleted. As i mentioned, water always seeks it's lowest level, and Lake Mead is a high spot in the west's water level.
Phoenix' ground water is so salty now it cannot be used for irrigation. It would have to be desalinized for human use, even if the water reaches a full recharge.
For sure, when millions of people start going thirsty, and the U.S. begins to lose the crops grown in California when it comes down to farm or city, Idaho will certainly be looked at hard and heavy. So will Montana, and western Canada. All have a fraction of the population, and something will give, somewhere, some way. It all depends on the reliability of the water supply.
What happens in the end depends a lot on global warming. The south west will only become hotter, if global warming persists. Idaho, due to it's elevation, it's northern latitude, and it's way of trapping water, won't ever get as dry. Our geological history shows Idaho was once warmer than it is now and colder than present, depending on the particular time period.
What is our worst-case scenario? Personally, I think we would see a huge influx of people before we would ever see a water pipeline going south. The big overheated metros can quickly learn to conserve water, but they can't change quickly enough to keep from getting hotter. There's far too much concrete in all of them, acting as enormous heat sinks. Tearing up the pavement would destroy the way people live in all of them. That kind of change takes generations to achieve.
If push comes to shove, Idahoans will be able to hold out for long. We simply don't have enough population or clout to prevent our water from going to where more people need it.
Last edited by banjomike; 07-26-2014 at 08:53 PM..
Are you talking about "iminent domain", by the government? I am asking because I am trying to buy a house on 35 acres of forest that has well water. Would like to know if this is going to be a problem later.
If climate change goes the way most seem to think, water will become more challenging in the west and I'm sure that will attract people to the Northwest where we tend to have quite a bit of the stuff. I don't think you'll see our water taken away, though, because the people of the northwest simply wouldn't stand for it. Plus there are enormous engineering challenges. One nice thing about Idaho is the vast majority of the state drains into the Snake River basin, so we capture most of the snowfall we get in the central mountains (and we get a lot of snowfall there).
Anyway, I think the main impact on the northwest will be from population growth.
It's doubtful that Idaho's water is in peril from outside acquisition anytime soon.
Take a look at a map of the major rivers in the west. Of the major western rivers, the Colorado is the single river that services the most population with water, and none of the Colorado drainage lies within the Idaho drainages. Utah would take a big hit, as there are several rivers there that feed the Colorado.
Moving water from where it is to where it's most needed is a huge problem with 2 big factors. One is the Continental Divide. The other is the cost of pipelines. The cheapest way to move water by pipeline is from one river to another, as the rivers themselves are already moving water most efficiently to where it's needed. Bridging one river to another via pipeline can't be done crossing the Divide without incredibly enormous cost. Since Idaho lies almost completely west of the Divide, fighting gravity is prohibitively costly for the foreseeable future.
Like the controversial fracking pipeline, moving water south from Canada over the Great Plains is much more do-able, but it would be an international issue.
As far as I can see, Phoenix and Las Vegas simply are no longer sustainable for water needs. The Los Angeles basin and Imperial Valley are, but ocean de-salinization is the only way they can stay sustainable.
Denver is closer to headwaters. It will be where the big fight will take place, and I expect Colorado will be the winner in such a fight.
Idaho is going to be affected only when folks start moving out of Arizona and Nevada. Until then, water worries will be local but persistent. Our water levels are steadily dropping along with the rest of the intermountain west, and a 10% population increase here would cause our levels to drop faster, along with all the other social needs and problems such a huge increase would bring.
Thanks for the information. Just freaked a little there for a minute. Was remembering the Geology video about underground water surplus in Idaho; which I have started to consider "my" well water.
I also talked to the lead PR person on the Superfund cleanup who confirmed and did not diminish the severity of the issues.
Considering I would tend to believe the Indians over a miner I am now not moving to greater CDL...I also talked to many long time residents and quite a few activists who are against and fighting the miners. the bottomline is there is gold and silver in the hills and the extraction of man has and continues to create pollution in the water tables and in the dirt around the region.
it really sucks as it is in so many ways a great area....people are certainty very cool..just cant deal with raising my kids in the shadows of the rape and pillage capitalists that pollute, destroy and deny.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
