Water conservation is a constant issue in the east coast these days, as I understand it has long been on the west coast. Water conservation measures have been introduced (in NJ) in each of the past few years, and I recently heard that there is talk of making them permanent. My question is whether these have a long term or short term impact.
I would have to think that the total amount of water on the planet is somewhat constant, regardless of the level of consumption. All the water that gets used goes somewhere - eventually it should purify itself and return to the water supply. Or, if evaporated, return to Earth as precipitation. So as I see it, the effect of water conservation may only be a short term one. But, possibly, the water supply remains constant, but used water is not as accessible as unused water. Or possibly, the water may evaporate or drain in one place and return to accessiblity in another place that needs it less. Or possibly, I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Water conservation measures are introduced by looking at the historical levels of a prominent source of water in the area. If the level just keeps on falling, then the restrictions are imposed. Eventually, the water may return but maybe not to your area or it may not be retained long enough before it returns to the sea via rivers.
I am not sure I understand the OP. The great reservoir of water is the sea but that water is not useful. It is only useful to you when it is taken from there and deposited in the form of rain in your area. If it rains less then you have a water shortage, if it rains more then you have abundance of water. Water conservation measures conserve water when there is a shortage. but that is really only a short term solution because with increasing population more water is needed and has to be brought in from farther and farther away.
What follows is rather long and rambling. More of just comments than an answer.
It seems to me that the problem isn’t so much with water as it is potable water. Making water usable for Americans (as opposed to say someone from Rwanda who would be happy if the larger turds are sifted out) is expensive and time consuming.
You are probably correct in saying that the total amount of water on earth is constant - or close enough to make no real difference. But all water is not created equal. Seawater is of limited use without very expensive desalination, and that’s 99% of the water on earth. Almost all the fresh water is tied up in the ice caps on Greenland and Antarticia. I think I’ve seen an estimate some place or another that fresh, liquid water comes to only about .1% of the water on earth.
So appearances notwithstanding we are dealing with something of a limited resource.
A lot of municipal water comes from wells which tend to give cleaner water than most rivers. Continued use of these wells drops the water tables, sometimes this can be rather significate and not always easily reversed. The water in the Oglala aquifer in the great plains has been dropping very quickly all this century (this century of course being LAST century). I remember reading that it takes as long as 600 years for a drop of water falling on the surface to make its way to the aquifer. Most water, I suspect, we use flows rather quickly on to the sea where it becomes unusable, more or less.
Sailor made the comment that you will have to go further afield to get water when it gets short in your area. Living in a part of Nevada where it typically doesn’t rain from May to November and water rights issues are fairly big news, let me say that ain’t so. Water rights in the west are jealously guarded and you can’t just come and get some of it if you need it over there yonder some place. Las Vegas has about reached the limit of their growth. I understand that you can’t put in a yard there now if you build a house.
What do you mean you can’t get water from farther away? Where do you think Southern California gets its water from? You think it is all local? The fact that others have claims to the water does not mean you cannot buy it or negotiate it. There are huge transfers of water in many places of the world.
You understand wrong.They’re still putting in grass all around every new project I’ve seen.
I remember reading in the LV paper around’77 that LV’s water supply would only be good to support 750k people.Well the district is nearly double that now with plans,from what I read,to eventually go to 2.1 mil.
As sailor said,this suddenly discovered new water has come from other districts’allotment,since some of them don’t use more than a fraction of their total.(talking here Colo.river),since LV’s aquifer is mostly depleted.
And as you said,those water use wars will start to brew somewhere down the line when every district drawing from the river has no partner with any reserve in their allotment.
It won’t be pretty for somebody,eventually.First Walker Lake,soon the whole state.Not enough snowfall,IIRC,to replenish those areas that depend on it.
Impact on what? Conservation reduces demand. So in this context, conserving water is really conserving time, in that eventually increased production will be necessary. It’s delaying future costs of finding additional water and/or increasing the capacity of the treatment plants. Which necessarily costs lots and lots of money.
Yeah it is. Oceans, lakes, rivers, glaciers, the atmosphere, underground aquifers - it’s in all of those places. And it moves from one to anther all the time.
I think you have this backwards, if I understand what you’re trying to say. High quality source water is less accessible than low quality, relatively impure water. Any water can be treated sufficiently enough for consumption. It’s a cost issue. It simply costs less to treat water that is relatively clean to begin with.
You made a lot of good observations, but this is the key over the relatively short term, and any water “conservation” scheme is a relatively short term endeavor. It’s more a question of locality, and how fast usable water in a given locality is consumed, compared to how fast it is replenished.
If it were possible for us to just stop using fresh potable water, in time it would all return to pretty much where it was before we arrived. This is not, of course, an option, so we use “conservation” measures to ration what we have in a given locality, or, if we’re the avaricious Southern California types, we go get it, by hook or by crook, someplace else. (Lest we forget, at the mid-point of the nineteenth century, LA was a little shit town in the middle of the desert; San Francisco, with ample water supplies, was the bustling metropolis.) [End Rant.]