The Coming Water Wars

Sounds like a science fiction topic but it really isn’t.  It doesn’t take much imagination to guess what would happen if Lake Mead dried up and the Colorado River system turned into a creek.  Right on the heals of that the California Delta would likely begin to further restrict the amount of water piped to Southern California.

I found this article at Planetsave.com while doing a search about the amount of water used to irrigate residential lawns.  I don’t  know anything about them but they site predictions from two researchers at UCSD that Lake Mead has a 50/50 shot of drying up in the next 12 years.  I don’t know who these two researchers are either.  They do have some interesting figures on residential water use in the Southwest.  Their figures put potable residential water use for irrigating a yard at 57%.  This much is reasonably accurate from what I have read from other, confirmed sources.

So what?  I know many complain about the rising price of water in my area lately.  All the while they are irrigating a lawn area equal in size to as much double the area of their home.  Even more in some cases.  According to EMWD’s figures given in a testimony at a Senate subcommittee on local water resources they have gotten dependance on non-local water such as Colorado River and California Delta down to 56%.  Still a pretty big number but its down from 80% prior to a 34% population increase.

It occurred to me, our residential outdoor water use (read lawns and shrubs) percentage is about equal to our dependence on non-local water resources.  I don’t have all the other figures necessary to do a proper comparison but I suspect we could do a lot to make our community water independent in our own yards.  Water independence might become a pretty significant word in the coming years.  I urge everyone to keep that in mind the next time we are mowing our lawns.