Got Water?
Commentary: An update on our national water policy. Oh wait, other than sandbags and firehoses, we don't have one.
July 22, 2008
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[Introduction by Tom Engelhardt]
Call it a bizarre water season or think of it as our future. In the Midwest, 500-year level floods. That means hydrologists believe that "a flood of this magnitude has a 0.2 percent chance (1 in 500) of happening in a given year in a specific location." Of course, the last 500-year Midwestern floods happened only an uncomfortable 15 years ago in 1993. In the Southwest and Southeast, there have been droughts that, in the last year, have threatened to outrun recorded history, and then, of course, there's California. That state has received a "record lack of rainfall"—state capital Sacramento got only 0.17 of an inch of rain this spring, thoroughly wiping out the previous record set in 1934. The result, of course, has left the state burning up well before its normal fire season officially begins about now.
You might think that Mother Nature, acting like some vengeful goddess, was sending a message to our legislators, but, as former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega points out below, don't count on them paying much attention. We seem, in short, to be up a swollen creek without a paddle. (Or is it a dry gulch with lots of tinder and too many matches?) De la Vega "indicted" George W. Bush at this site back in November 2006 and wrote the popular book—a TomDispatch spinoff—United States v. George W. Bush et al.. She now returns focused on a remarkably crucial long-term problem—water—and a remarkably consistent, do-nothing Congress. Tom Engelhardt
Got Water?
An update on our national water policy. Oh wait, other than sandbags and firehoses, we don't have one.
By Elizabeth de la Vega
"Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time. Just like that rainforest scare a few years back. Our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn't they?"—Homer Simpson
On June 24, 2008, Louie and I curled up on the couch to watch seven of the nation's foremost water resources experts testify before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.
This was a new experience for us. For my part, the issue to be addressed—"Comprehensive Watershed Management Planning"—was certainly a change of pace from the subjects I ordinarily follow in Judiciary and Intelligence Committee hearings. I wasn't even entirely sure what a "watershed" was. I knew that, in a metaphorical sense, the word referred to a turning point, but I was a bit fuzzy about its meaning in the world of hydrology. (It's the term used to describe "all land and water areas that drain toward a river or lake.")
What was strange from Louie's point of view was not the topic of the day, but that we were stuck in the house. Usually at that hour, we'd be working in the backyard, where he can better leverage his skill set, which includes chasing squirrels, digging up tomato plants, eating wicker patio chairs, etc. On this particular afternoon, however, the typically cornflower-blue San Jose sky was the color of wet cement, and thick soot was charging down from the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains. Sitting outside would have been about as pleasant as relaxing in a large ashtray.
It would have been difficult, on such a day, not to think about water.
June 24, 2008: Water on the Brain
In California, of course, it was the lack thereof. Thanks to the driest spring on record in many areas—including in San Jose, where recordkeeping began in 1875—the whole state was parched. Far worse, large chunks of it were burning. To be precise, on June 24th, there were 842 wildfires blazing, the result of "dry lightning," which—I've now learned—happens when conditions are so dry that the rain never makes it to the plain. It evaporates in mid-air.
In the Midwest, on the other hand, water was everywhere, cascading across the land and through towns; or, it was threatening to do so, as terrified homeowners and volunteers desperately hoisted sandbags onto levees that were failing, due to forces as powerful as the mighty Mississippi and as seemingly innocuous as burrowing muskrats. The flooding had been ongoing for weeks, killing dozens of people, displacing thousands, and causing billions of dollars of crop, building, and other damage. With California burning and Iowa underwater, the Red Cross national disaster relief fund for 2008 was already entirely depleted, although six months of potential weather devastation of various sorts still lie ahead. The balance, its finance director had announced, was "zero."
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Weekly News was reporting that the deluge had swept record amounts of storm-water into lakes and rivers, "bringing along pollutants from urban streets, farm fields and construction sites." To make matters worse, as of late June, Wisconsin communities had already identified 164 "overflow events"—a polite term for the release of untreated sewage into the state's waters.
Where were all these chemicals and all that muck ultimately headed? Some of it would be spewed into the Great Lakes, already beset by a host of problems. To name a few: slimy Eurasian water milfoil that clogs boat propellers, fish viruses, chemicals that cause glandular disturbances (think: intersex fish), Asian carp that eat everything in sight, zebra mussels by the trillions, and—not to be forgotten—lots and lots of chicken manure. (This is a huge and serious issue, but I can't resist mentioning that it was the topic of the recent Great Lakes Manure Handling Expo, which you may have missed.)
The quality of water in the Great Lakes was not the only challenge; there are also myriad ongoing conflicts about quantity—about the right to use the 6 quadrillion tons of water the five lakes contain. Ironically, on June 24th, Nestlé Corporation, a party to an infamous Great Lakes water dispute, was also facing a water quality problem. That very day, the Federal Drug Administration notified Northeasterners that Nestle's Pure Life Purified Drinking Water was not as pure as might be imagined. After filling its bottles with Lake Michigan water, Nestle had managed to contaminate some of that very same bottled water with cleaning compound.
But back to the June floods. Where else will the pollution from them be heading? For one thing, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. When it gets there, the nitrogen and phosphorus swept into the current from upriver farmers' fields will do what those farmers intended it to do: make things grow. Unfortunately, it will be fertilizing algae, which sucks oxygen out of its surrounding waters as it decomposes, adding to an already existing "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can no longer live.
Even before the relentless late spring rains, scientists had predicted that, in the summer of 2008, this barren area off the Louisiana coast would grow to be a Massachusetts-sized 10,000 square miles. Post-flood, with even more fertilizer and freshwater pouring into the Gulf, that estimate was increased to 12,000 square miles or more, the equivalent of the state of Maryland.
