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I know how to get large amounts of water but no one wants to listen to you. I have called a bunch of the governors offices in the Southeast states and they just blow you off. The only one that did listen is a environmental guy from South Carolina. You would think that being as desperate for water as they are in the Southeast that they might take the time to listen, but that is the problem with big government. They don’t want to take a few minutes of their time and listen to the public. But yet when it is a election year they come around kissing your butt trying to get your vote. Once voted in they go about doing their thing and totally ignore you.

Some people might call in joking around or pranking them wasting their time but I am serious. I am from Michigan and right now we are doing pretty good for rain and have large amounts of water. In fact it might be a benifit for us here in Michigan to see the Southeast have water shortages because your business can’t run without water and might close down and come up here where we have lots and lots of water. But I am trying to help you out down there and no one will give you the time of day. So if you do run out of water, blame your governors for not listening to real ways to solve your water problems.

Imagine Atlanta with millions of people running out of water. It would spell disaster. They say on the Weather Channel that you only got 60 days of water left. Well it is actually less because once you reach the 2 week mark everyohe and their grandmother is going to be filling all kinds of containers with water so they have a supply of water once the taps go dry. So that will cut the supply by a number of days.

Imagine all of your business shutting down because they have no water. That would put a lot of people out of work. With no work, it means now money coming in and you will have major problems when all of this happens. They are not talking about this right now on the news, but I am letting you know up front what is going to happen.

So agian you might want to give you legislatures a call and tell them to get off of their rear ends and listen to people who have ideas and ways to get water.

Thanks for your time,
Kevin

Kevin: “I am from Michigan and right now we are doing pretty good for rain and have large amounts of water. “

Kevin, thank you for your concern and efforts to make a difference.

It’s funny, my wife and I have had talks about transporting water. She’ll see a report on the news about flooding in Texas or somewhere, and wonder “why can’t some of that excess be loaded on tankers and shipped to drought stricken areas?”

First off, they’re usually too busy dealing with the local negative effects of a flood to turn it into a positive for some distant place. Secondly, I have to wonder about the logistics and cost of moving large volumes of water for short term benefit. I haven’t had much luck in the short amount of time I’ve tried to research it, but I found this interesting:

A recent survey of 14 countries indicates that average municipal water prices range from 66¢ per cubic meter in the United States up to $2.25 in Denmark and Germany. Yet consumers rarely pay the actual cost of water. In fact, many governments practically (and sometimes literally) give water away for nothing.

The average American household consumes about 480 cubic meters (127,400 gallons) of water during a year. Homeowners in Washington, DC, pay about $350 (72¢ per cubic meter) for that amount. Buying that same amount of water from a vendor in the slums of Guatemala City would cost more than $1,700.

So, as is often the case, we Americans pay an amazingly low price for commodities that are far more expensive elsewhere in the world (e.g., while we whine about $3/gallon gas, Europeans often pay twice as much). It would appear that in your (or my wife’s) move-the-water scenario, you could simply say the water itself is essentially “free.”

The problem becomes the fact your kindly donated water is 700-800 miles from me. Suppose you decided you might not be able to ship me enough water for a whole year, but you could at least send me a week’s worth to help out.

According to the above, the “average American household” requires 2450 gallons per week. Suppose our conservation attempts have cut that by 20% to a nice round 2000 gallons per week. Water weighs 8.33 pounds per gallon. One week’s worth is 16,666 pounds. That’s over eight tons to get me and the wife through one week.

Oh, and we have about four million neighbors. 4,000,000 × 16,666 pounds pretty much breaks my calculator … and most transport systems. For one week of supply.

The sad and silly fact is that a gallon of oil that is drawn from far under the ground on the other side of the world, then processed and refined, then shipped halfway around the world, then driven to your neighborhood gas station … is in the end cheaper than any gallon of water you might try to ship me from Michigan.

I think things will have to get really desperate before that becomes economically feasible.

“They say on the Weather Channel that you only got 60 days of water left.”

I think that’s an exaggeration. There are allegedly something like 80-90 days left that water can be drawn from Lake Lanier via the usual outlets. But once it drops below those intakes, they use hoses and barges to draw from the water below those inlets. That brings the numbers up closer to 200 days.

But that basically buys us enough time to hope for lots of rain in the winter and spring to build the lake level back up before the dry months of next summer come around again. That is no sure thing. We’ll likely be in these straits again this time next year, or earlier. At this time, people seem to be looking for short term solutions to what is clearly a long term issue.

It’s not going away.

“So agian you might want to give you legislatures a call and tell them to get off of their rear ends and listen to people who have ideas and ways to get water.”

I appreciate your suggestion, but you have to understand, this is the same legislature that has failed in multiple attempts to find and build some state reservoirs to augment what are actually federal flood control dams. I believe three times in the past seven years, they have failed, sometimes due to fights over who will get to develop this new “lake front property.”

Hopefully they will be unable to ignore it and can get past their political BS when the legislature meets again … next year.

If you are talking about a pipeline from the great lakes, that was already talked some years back for the Southwest. I believe all the great lake states and Canada got together and put a stop to that. Which I agree as the great lakes are at there lowest levels.

Water shortages are only going to get worse. Glaciers in the Rocky Mountains are expected to be gone in 20 years. The Great Lakes levels are dropping down to new lows.

But what I fail to see across North America is wise use of water. Stop watering golf courses. Stop filling pools. Stop planting plants that require large amounts of water. Shut off the tap when you brush your teeth – don’t leave it running for your entire procedure. Take short showers and not every day. Wear your clothes more than one time. Stop preening over your car and keeping it so shiny clean.

North Americans are the largest consumers of water and yet we are what I like to call environmental PIGS. We need to use our water wisely and we must conserve it and ration it.

I am 100% against transferring waters out of such places as the Great Lakes. Withdrawals from the Great Lakes to parched regions will only cause the levels of the Great Lakes to drop further and cause further environmental degradation. The Great Lakes are like any body of water – they can dry up completely.

We must stop thinking of water as a renewable resource because clearly it is NOT. Look at Las Vegas – it’s source of water is Lake Mead. Lake Mead is at historic lows and is unlikely to reach high levels again.

What I see are areas running out of water and then cries go out to let more water out or bring it in from somewhere else. But what I don’t see is a clear plan on conserving water and using it wisely. We just can’t continue to waste water as we have for decades. We must conserve and reuse.

From Minneapolis:

The Canada – Great Lakes States compact forbids cities drawing water out of the Great Lakes IF the city is outside of the Great Lakes watershed. Most of Minnesota, for example, is not in the Great Lakes watershed. Large parts of other states located on one of the lakes are likewise not part of the watershed.

Borrowing water from other people does happen here too. Sioux Falls gets some or all of its water from the MIssouri River. Look on the map – the Garrison Dam is long drive from Sioux Falls. And the Missouri serves a lot of other people.

You probably wouldn’t be too interested in Mississippi water at the southern end – considering how many farm fields, toilets, and feed lots each drop of water has been through. Its pretty fertile water before it gets to New Orleans.

In 1988 parts of the upper midwest were in a severe but short lived hot drought. The metropolitan Minneapolis – St. Paul area gets most of its water from the Mississippi. By the end of the drought the flow in the Mississippi was very diminished (The Mississippi really isn’t all that big up here).

I think flow restriction fixtures are pretty much the rule here.

One of the problems I see here, and just about everywhere, is that our practice is to put very clean water in the mains (Minneapolis uses reverse osmosis!), use it once, then send it to the sewage treatment plant. Does one really need drinkable water to flush the toilet with, wash the floor or the car, water the garden, and so forth?

Given the energy it would take for even one city to lay a second set of pipes to carry undrinkable water for toilets, it seems like diverting “pretty clean” water for a second use would be possible on a house by house basis.

One kitchen sink and drain could be reserved for “clear water” tasks – washing food, rinsing dishes, etc. Ditto for showers. That water could then be tanked and reused for watering the garden or like tasks.

Ain’t it AMAZING?

We can spend a BILLION dollars a WEEK to somehow make Iraq-water flow & be dependable and yet our own Great Lakes … fully 1/5 of the World’s Fresh Water … are in trouble?

I post this from Georgia, Atlanta Metro to be specific, where we are told we have about 61 days of potable water left.

O, the rant I could go off on from here!

Woah, woah woah, DanS! Stop right there! We’re spending billions on people over there, so we don’t have to spend billions on people over here.

Paul:

I LIKE what you posted!
I’ve never heard it like that before.

Yes, Paul, you put it very succinctly. Very economically. You are to be commended.

Or, put differently, The rich get richer by the poor getting poorer.

Yes, it’s the fault of the poor. They are forcing the rich to get richer, those dastardly people!

Back on topic, today our Governor has called together people to help solve this drought.

They’re praying for rain.

Me, I’m praying for leadership.

But I think both prayers will come up empty.

HI from Denmark.

I thought I would let you know that my wife and I live in a normal danish house with a garden which we also give some water. Out total consumption per week is less than 8.000 gallons. And we both get a bath everyday and have a dishwasher, washing machine and other stuff as well.

Best of Luck, Torben, Denmark

Hi Again.

I made a mistake converting between gallons and cubic metres.
Our consumption is not 8000 gallons per week but 500 gallons. Sorrry for the mistake.
Best of luck, still
Torben

Water shortages and lack of rain occur from high charge air particle density and air emissions from car/trucks locally and carryover from adjoining states.

Atlanta has major air emissions and carryovers air emissions from its southwest adjoining states.

Las Vegas’s Lake mead is fed by Colorado River and US Bureau of Reclaimation controls water out west. The evaporation loss at Lake Mead, Lake Tahoe and Texas lakes is about 4 feet from May to Sept each year and for 110,000 to 125,000 lakes that is 440,000 to 500,000 acre feet of water or 325,800 gallons x 110,000=35.8-40.7 billion gallons.

The US government in west and state governments in east have no clue how to solve problem and will not pay for the technology that can solve the problem. Just look at ict4help.tripod.com for answers.

I know that not all of us can do this, but I save water by going outside. I have done that for years. Less water in my septic tank. ( we live on 40 acers in the woods.) I can’t get my wife to save water that way, but I do my part. LOL We use our shower water to water our garden. Never do we let the water run for no reason…If we don’t watch out, water will cost more than gas….in the future…with globle warming, a lot of weather patterns will change. The Sierria Desert was a tropical forest at one time. Georgia could be like Arizona in the future. Who knows??? Ron