But it lets you kick the can further down the road!
So I was involved in the design discussion with a water reclamation project that began in a drought period. At first management was all gung-ho and very interested in pursuing it aggressively. But these projects take time, particularly in government - pre-planning, design, and permit-hunting can literally take years. Costs can bloom. A year or so into the project, on which no ground had yet been broken, it was “temporarily” shelved (temporarily often is code for abandoned in these situations). When I asked why, it was because after one good rain year we were no longer in a drought. But…but…, I said, another drought is inevitable and sooner rather than later. We’re in a state where multi-year drought cycles were normal even decades back before global warming started accelerating the issue. Yeah, but we’re not in a drought this year, so it isn’t currently a problem and we can shift the funding to this other non-critical project instead.
Current climate models indicate that rising temperatures will intensify the Earth’s water cycle, increasing evaporation. Increased evaporation will result in more frequent and intense storms, but will also contribute to drying over some land areas. As a result, storm-affected areas are likely to experience increases in precipitation and increased risk of flooding, while areas located far away from storm tracks are likely to experience less precipitation and increased risk of drought.
This one isn’t even about climate change, our dumb asses just started using up aquifers and diverting water to make money growing cows at an unsustainable rate. We’d be fucked at this point even if Thanos could snap away the CO2.
I don’t know about Lake Mead specifically, but if it’s anything like our situation here in Corpus Christi, the problem is one of excess demand rather than lack of supply. I started a thread earlier this year about how Corpus Christi was a few months away from running out of water barring a deluge of rain in the watershed. Well, we got lucky and the deluge happened. Lake Corpus Christi is sitting at 92% capacity. Despite that, the city projects were still going to run out of water around 9/2028. Why? Too many users. It’s a problem of excess demand rather than lack of supply. I’d guess this is the underlying issue in most places (at least in the developed world) where running out of water is a concern.
Sure, but that’s why I specified tight water supply in the developed world specifically. The problem of low fresh water supply, where it occurs in the developed world, is a lot more likely to be due to overuse by activities like oil refining, almond farming, cattle ranching, data centers doing AI, etc., rather than strictly due to lack of rain.
From what I understand, it’s primarily a long term drought in the Rockies in general compounded by climate change, and human driven demand just makes it worse.
Lake Mead is HUGE, and it’s only at 28% capacity. It’s been a nearly three decade drought that’s causing most of the problem- it was overflowing in 1983 and full in 1999, but it’s gone down more or less steadily since then.
