Lake Mead Could Dry Up by 2021 (water for Vegas, L.A., San Diego...)

[villager]

Source: Live Science

Lake Mead Could Dry Up by 2021

Andrea Thompson

Lake Mead, a key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern United States, could go dry by 2021, a new study finds.

The study concludes that natural forces such as evaporation, changes wrought by global warming and the increasing demand from the booming Southwest population are creating a deficit from this part of the Colorado River system.

Along with Lake Powell, which is on the border between Arizona and Utah, Lake Mead supplies roughly 8 million people in the cities of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego, among others, with critical water supplies.

The system is currently only at half capacity thanks to a recent string of dry years, researchers say.

The study’s findings indicated that there is a 10 percent chance that Lake Mead could be dry by 2014 and a 50 percent chance that reservoir levels will drop too low to allow hydroelectric power generation by 2017. There is a 50 percent chance the lake will go dry by 2021, the study says.

Researchers say that even if water agencies follow their current drought contingency plans, those measures might not be enough to counter natural forces, especially if the region enters a period of sustained drought or if human-induced climate changes occur as currently predicted.

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Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080212/sc_livescience/lakemeadcoulddryupby2021

[Hulk]

1. Serious...run a big aquaduct from TX to NV and CA.

What the F, the Incas did it over 500 years ago.

[karlrschneider]

3. Huh?

:eyes:

[DRoseDARs]

4. I get what you're saying, but it's significantly more difficult than you think.

There's about 400 miles between the western tip of Texas and the eastern borders of Nevada and California, most of it uphill from Texas, plus a continental divide crossing north-south through New Mexico. Then there's the interstate politics of organizing a joint project between Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada, as well as the federal government (nevermind Bush is still in office and regardless of who gets in in November). And then there's the cost, which could easily top $1,000 billion (that's a trillion you silly Brits ;) ). There's also the time it would take to build such an aqueduct, Lake Mead will have dried up looong before it's complete, possibly even before all the environmental studies are completed to allow digging to begin.

The Incas (who were a South American civilization, not a North American one just so everyone's clear) had fewer challenges facing their construction: Less ground to cover, all of it sloping from glaciers in the east to the Pacific ocean in the west, no environmental or labor laws, monarchy rule versus a federal system of government.

It's a nice idea, but very unlikely to happen.

[Tyler Durden]

14. And it KILLED the Mayan civilization.

The latest theories on what destroyed the Mayans was overbuilding of CITIES, and over irrigation.

"...everything old is new again...."

[End Of The Road]

15. Texas is short on water, too. eom

[Ilsa]

19. End of the Road is correct: we have enough fights over water rights here.

we certainly can't be sending ours to CA or NV. Water rights regarding rivers, underground, lakes, etc are being fought over in many areas of texas. I'm trying to get hubby to plant more xeno-whatever garden and more rocks. It is hot and dry here for much of the year.

[devilgrrl]

2. After attending Burning Man 9 times, I've learned that you can live off 1 1/2 gallons of water a day

Shower, cooking, drinking, cleaning.... it can be done.

[villager]

5. It may have to be done, Devilgrrrl!

Soonish!

[devilgrrl]

9. I conserve NOW.

When I do the dishes, I went them down, turn off the tap, wash them, rinse, turn off the tap.

In the shower, wet down, turn off, soap up, rinse.

Unfortunately, I'm only one person. :-(

People will have to sacrifice their landscaping, that's for sure.

[villager]

16. hell, I haul bath water out to the garden, and get another "pass" that way....

My sons think dad's a bit of an "old hippie," I guess....

(good! ;-)

[Xenotime]

6. I love burning man

[lpbk2713]

7. BushCo will run a pipeline from Paraguay.

You think the price per gallon of gasoline is high now?

Just wait. :eyes:

[BrotherBuzz]

8. Can't be, the concrete in the damn dam is still curing

:shrug:

[orleans]

10. well, to quote an old phrase: there goes the neighborhood. n/t

[ProdigalJunkMail]

11. oh yeah...well Lanier could be dry by midsummer...

at least as far drinkable water is concerned! We are 18'+ below normal full pool and this is the time of year when the Army Corps is supposed to be refilling the lake for the summer...yesterday (even with rain) the lake came up only .05' ... and no more rain for several days in the future according to local weather forecasters. If the Army Corps does no restrict downstream flow soon, ATL will be effectively parched by mid to late summer...

sP

[Orwellian_Ghost]

12. K&R n/t

[windoe]

13. Desalienation plants

would be a good investment for the Western US. They can depend on the Pacific Ocean and Gulf Of Mexico for water. Expensive, yes, but with more R & D, it would provide the most sustainable sources of water during droughts, which will definitely get worse.

[Tesha]

17. Desalinization trades energy for water, and the trade-off doesn't come cheap.

The real answer is that we have millions of people
living where life is becoming unsupportable.

This will probably have to change.

Tesha

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

18. Info for lake mead

[img src=""

[DangerDave921]

20. Let them drink Coke! eom

[Duppers]

21. Kick. nt

nt

[Initech]

22. If they'd stop building those damned gigantic monstrosity hotel-casinos...

Maybe we wouldn't be in this mess.

[TankLV]

30. umm - tell that to LA - they get over 80% of the water & they're just as much a desert as Vegas or

Phoenix...

it's hardly vegas' fault at all...

[Initech]

32. I live in LA. There are way too many fucking people here.

Hell where I live, they're out of land, which has all been sold to retail America, yet somehow the developers found enough to build not one, but two new 400-home neighborhoods. Yeah, which means more of our resources are going to be dried up. Assholes.

[KansDem]

23. When I was a kid growing up in southern California...

...I used to sit and look at a Rand/McNally map of California. It seemed like the entire southern part of the state was littered with dry lakes. Now Lake Mead?

I guess you shouldn't build huge metropolises in desert areas...

[loser_user]

24. Too many golf courses, swimming pools are to blame

[Jennicut]

25. I thought about desalientation plants as well

but I guess it is trading energy for water. Maybe in states like Nevada, California, and Arizona the climate just is not conducive to more and more people living there. This is only going to get worse with climate change. We will have more and more people problems like this and eventually a population that will have to just move to the northeast or the south. I live in CT and there is no water shortage here. In fact we are getting hit with major flooding in some parts of the state. Just massive amounts of rain all day long today.

[MadHound]

26. What do you expect, you're building metropolises in desert/arid areas

Exceeding the carrying capacity of the area, but instead of trying to live within nature's bounds, we've diverted water from elsewhere, and are sucking those sources dry at a prodigious rate. The only sensible thing to do would be to abandon these areas as uninhabitable, but sadly we won't. Instead we'll keep diverting more and more water resources to these areas until the entire country is sucked dry.

Mandkind wasn't meant to live in the desert, much less build immense cities there. Let's put a stop to this madness before it destroys us all.

[TankLV]

31. all too true...

[Orwellian_Ghost]

27. Kicking

Far more important than the election spectacle.

[roamer65]

28. Don't even think of Great Lakes water diversion.

The lakes are at some of lowest levels in recorded history. Diversion is a political dead duck.

[BadgerLaw2010]

29. Nevermind that it logistically doesn't work.

You are going to build five side-by-side Alaska Pipelines from Lake Michigan to the other side of the Rockies? I think not.