The State of Play - September 9, 2023

In this edition: America's water crisis, A climate change report card, Alaska's oil leases, Canada's wildfires, and my favorite chart of the week.

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America’s water crisis

Source: The New York Times

The New York Times recently did an extensive analysis on groundwater levels in the US. They found that “[m]any of the aquifers that supply 90 percent of the nation’s water systems…are being severely depleted. These declines are threatening irreversible harm to the American economy and society as a whole.”

This isn’t just a West Coast, Middle America or East Coast problem either. Groundwater depletion is an issue across the 48 contiguous states.

28 August 2023 - America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow (Mira Rojanasakul, et al, NYT):

Groundwater loss is hurting breadbasket states like Kansas, where the major aquifer beneath 2.6 million acres of land can no longer support industrial-scale agriculture….in New York State, overpumping is threatening drinking-water wells on Long Island…Around Phoenix…the crisis is severe enough that the state has said there’s not enough groundwater in parts of the county to build new houses that rely on aquifers. In other areas, including parts of Utah, California and Texas, so much water is being pumped up that it is causing roads to buckle, foundations to crack and fissures to open in the earth. And around the country, rivers that relied on groundwater have become streams or trickles or memories.

“There is no way to get that back,” Don Cline, the associate director for water resources at the United States Geological Survey, said of disappearing groundwater. “There’s almost no way to convey how important it is.”

And even when heavy rain arrives, our infrastructure is not set up to absorb the water quick enough to take advantage.

Even in places experiencing more violent rainstorms because of climate change, the heavier rainfall only helps so much. That’s because much of the water from extreme downpours races away quickly to the ocean, before it can sit and soak into the aquifer below.

It adds up to what might be called a climate trap. As rising temperatures shrink rivers in much of the country, farmers and towns have an incentive to pump more groundwater to make up the difference.

Experts call that a self-defeating strategy. By draining aquifers that filled up over thousands or millions of years, regions risk losing access to that water in the future when they might need it even more, as climate change makes rainfall less predictable or droughts more severe.

“From an objective standpoint, this is a crisis,” said Warigia Bowman, a law professor and water expert at the University of Tulsa. “There will be parts of the U.S. that run out of drinking water.”

How can we fix this? One way is not being so particular about what our potatoes look like (or maybe eating less french fries…).

3 September 2023 - Big Farms and Flawless Fries Are Gulping Water in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (Dionne Searcey and Mira Rojanasakul, NYT):

Potato farming is not the only big agricultural user of groundwater in Minnesota. The state is one of the nation’s top producers of corn, another heavily irrigated crop. But potato farming in particular shows how a host of seemingly unrelated factors — the demands of industrial French fry production, for example, or the fact that people will spend more money for fries with fewer unappetizing dark spots — can send water use soaring.

…One important variable is French fry coloring: Those with dark markings have little chance at being called “Grade A” fries. For farmers, that means making sure potatoes don’t have lumps, which can cause uneven coloring….Watering is important…A potato can end up shaped like a bowling pin if it doesn’t get consistent water. That matters to growers because an oblong spud can produce more fries, and more profit.

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The Global Climate Report Card

In preparation for COP 28 this fall, the UN produced a report on the “technical dialogue of the first global stocktake.” Basically, the report is the first real progress report on how countries have responded to the Paris Agreement in 2015 and where improvements need to be made.