bushcraft - Water water every where...

Login

Quick Links

Site Blogs

Water water every where...

Written by bushcraft uk

Climatewire: Colonia Bórquez, MEXICO — Adaptation, or the matter of adjusting to climate change, is sometimes called a cheaper, easier way to deal with some of the consequences of a warming world. But consider the battle between the United States, Mexico and Canada that was triggered here amid the vegetable farms near the California border.

For more than 60 years the family of Geronimo Hernandez has raised watermelons, peppers and other crops in the rich, irrigated soil of Mexicali Valley, but within the next five years it could begin to dry up.

That would leave Hernandez, 62, and 400 other farmers in a desert with no jobs, victims of new efforts by the United States to plug some of the leaks in the Colorado River system that provides water to much of the drought-stricken Southwest. That issue, in turn, has raised the hackles of Canada, where groups worry that the next U.S. move will be to come after Canada’s ample supplies of fresh water.

While politicians in the United States focus on what Congress might do to curb greenhouse gases in the future, many scientists worry how nations will respond to climate changes that are already under way.

In the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate scientists concluded that conserving water will be essential and that North America may find it easier to adapt than other parts of the world because it has “responsive” governments and more robust economies.

“The literature provides high agreement and much evidence of many options for achieving reductions of global GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions at the international level through cooperation,” the panel found. But if the mess that involves Hernandez is any guide, adaptation will be slow, shrill, expensive and politically ugly.

The prospect of turning this rich farming region into dust has already sparked a tangled feud involving farmers, politicians, lawyers, businessmen and water experts in Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada. There is no resolution in sight.

“Water is going to be the next big issue that all of us are going to have to think about,” explains Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, author of a pending White House-sponsored study on the subject. “It can be an extremely sensitive issue.” He knows because his study has already produced tremors in Canada, where some groups predict that a 10-year drought in the rapidly growing U.S. Southwest will present Ottawa with a major national security threat.

Meanwhile, Hernandez is determined to enjoy what he has while he has it. “Our water is numero uno in the valley. It is like champagne,” he boasts as he bounces a visitor over the rutted roads on his farm in a battered Chevrolet pickup truck. His basic problem is that he lives at the very end of the Colorado’s long and quirky distribution system.

The aquifer under his farm is fed by water leaking from the 82-mile long “All American Canal.” It was built in the 1940s just above the U.S. border to carry Colorado River water to farmers in California’s Imperial Valley. The fact that it has an earthen bottom that leaks 67,000 acre-feet into the ground every year didn’t matter much then, but it does now. (An acre-foot of water amounts to 325,851 gallons or about as much as a suburban family of four uses in a year.)

The seven U.S. states that draw water from the Colorado River are limited by a quota system established in 1922. California, which exceeded its quota for decades, was forced by other states in 2003 to agree to reduce its demands. As part of the reduction, San Diego will pay for a new canal with a cement bottom that won’t leak and get the water that is saved. Although Mexico has protested, construction is under way.

Two other moves could also hasten the end of Hernandez’s long career as a farmer. Nevada is building a new reservoir just north of the border to send some Mexican-bound water to the exploding population of Las Vegas. In April the U.S. states that draw from the Colorado River ended years of feuding with an historic decision that they will deal with the drought in the Southwest by allocating cutbacks among themselves and Mexico to force reductions in water demands. Under its treaty with the United States, Mexico has been getting 1.5 million acre-feet a year.

Mexicans complain that the combination of these restrictions will not only affect farming but diminish the water supplies of Mexicali and Ensenada, two of their fastest-growing cities. “It is going to be like diabetes,” explains Victor Hermosillo a former mayor of Mexicali (pop. 650,000), who sits on the city’s Economic Development Advisory Council. “It won’t kill you right away. You will start to have problems with your circulation.”

Mexicans, Hermosillo believes, will deepen their wells and draw the aquifers down further and eventually salt water will begin to intrude. “After that you can’t use the water any more,” he explains, “so people will start to lose their jobs.” Malissa McKeith, president of a U.S. group called Citizens United for Resources and the Environment, says one outcome is predictable. “When Mexico’s economy is destabilized, there will be more migration to the United States.”

According to Mexican officials, 30 percent of the homes in Ensenada (pop. 500,000) already have water shortages. Two Mexican presidents, Vincente Fox and Felipe Calderon, have complained to President Bush about the All American Canal and related issues.

Canada is awash in water angst

The White House asked the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private Washington research group, to do a study. Last April Peschard-Sverdrup, a senior associate with the center, brought a team of Mexican and U.S. experts to Calgary, Canada, along with a position paper suggesting that the three countries might consider “water transfers and artificial diversions of fresh water” to head off future water disputes.

The Council of Canadians, a nationalist group, leaked the paper to the press calling it “damning evidence” of “secret talks” aimed at getting access to Canadian water. Maude Barlow, chairman of the group, sees a plot. “It [water] will be taken from the North. It will require a great engineering feat to build pipelines. There will be very big opposition to this when it happens.”

Peschard-Sverdrup said this is nonsense. “They do that for fund-raising purposes,” he asserts, referring to the council. But the Council of Canadians’ move rattled the Canadian government, which refused to participate in the study or to send federal officials to participate in the Calgary talks.

The Conference Board of Canada, a private Ottawa research group similar to the CSIS, refused to be a cosponsor of the study. Instead it released its own, noting that while Canada has about 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, much of it is locked up in glaciers in the far north. Gilles Rheaume, a vice president of the conference board, said: “We’re looking at the question, ‘Do we really have a lot of water to sell?’ The answer is no.”

One of his group’s concerns is that if, somehow, Canadian water was fed to the thirsty and rapidly growing cities of the U.S. Southwest, there will be no end to the demand. The U.S. Census Bureau, the Conference Board notes, expects the population of Nevada and Arizona to double by 2030. “Our question is whether there should be limitations on continuing this development. It’s a harsh reality, but it has to be considered,” Rheaume said.

The struggles of Phoenix, San Diego and Las Vegas to cope with growing water demands are also creating economic angst among U.S. farmers. “The consumers are going to pay for this, one way or another,” predicts Mike Abatti, who raises vegetables in California’s Imperial Valley, just across the border from Hernandez’s farm.

Abatti points out that 20 percent of the nation’s lettuce and other fresh winter vegetables come from the Imperial Valley. Turning the land across the border into a dust bowl, he said, will increase air pollution north of the border and deposit dust on crops, which impairs their growth. “You also want their [the Mexican] economy to be strong,” he said. “They trade here and our growers farm in Mexico.”

‘Your courts aren’t worth a damn’

Abatti is sympathetic with Hermosillo’s Mexicali Economic Development Advisory Council, which joined in a lawsuit to protest the construction of the new, leakproof All American Canal. The Mexicans argue that under U.S. law the government must consider the environmental impact of suddenly depriving water to farms, wildlife and wetlands in Mexicali Valley that have relied on it for more than half a century.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued a temporary injunction to stop work on the canal. But in December 2006, U.S. senators from the Southwest slipped a little-noticed provision in a 279-page tax reform bill. It ordered canal construction to begin “without delay” and took jurisdiction away from the court.

“This will set the precedent for negotiations with Mexico on water issues for many years,” grumbles Gaston Luken, president of Mexico’s National Water Advisory Council. The Senate’s move, he said, “means that your courts aren’t worth a damn.”

“Water is just too precious to have it not be fully utilized by an area that needs it so much,” explains Maureen Stapleton, general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority, which will get most of the water resulting from stopping the leakage. Her authority is involved in U.S.-Mexico talks aimed at finding ways to help Mexican farmers conserve other sources of water.

Meanwhile, the Southern Nevada Water Authority is sponsoring a new “Drop Two Reservoir,” which will hold Colorado River water that California is authorized to draw out of the river but is sometimes in excess of the needs of the farmers in the Imperial Valley. Because Nevada is paying, each year Las Vegas will get up to 40,000 acre-feet of the water, which previously flowed into Mexico.

“It’s simply water that was lost in the system. There’s no room for those kind of over deliveries any more,” explained Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

As for Geronimo Hernandez, he is trying to be philosophical. He pulls a small green pepper from a basket to show to a visitor. “When it’s wet these are mild. When it is dry the jalapenos are hot. When they seal the All American Canal, they’re going to be very, very hot.”