Other newcomers have built homes in the desert, some of them second homes or retirement homes, and they want the green lawns, swimming pools, golf courses and fountains they are used to having. Unfortunately, these amenities require water.
For example, since 1990, St. George, UT, has been one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States. The city is 119 miles (192 km) northeast of Las Vegas on I-15, one of the major north-south highways of the West. It provides year-round golf, access to Nevada casinos and scenic vistas with several nearby national parks for outdoor activity. U.S. News and World Report named this area "one of the best places to retire," which active Baby Boomers have found particularly appealing. In 2007, the area had 140,908 residents with projections of a sixfold increase by 2040, according to the St. George Chamber of Commerce.
While most newcomers have a social or economic connections to the land, others have an emotional or religious one.
The nineteenth century Mormons, a people nobody wanted, settled on land nobody wanted and turned it into a "Promised Land." By applying their belief that stewardship required care for the land and its resources, which were put there by God, they created a sustainable life there for themselves. However, the drought has caused some in the Basin to realize that even God's resources are finite.
Las Vegas, which lies in the southern-most tip of Nevada next door to Utah uses water with reckless abandon despite all the warning signs, according to energy resources journalist Kurt Cobb.
Lake Mead, which provides 90 percent of the city's water, is down 120 feet from its peak in October 1998 and it now holds only 60 percent of its capacity. The white "bathtub ring" around the lake caused by deposition of minerals on the lake floor dramatically illustrates the lake's depletion, which is even visible from the air.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) is working hard to lay pipe for a new intake to provide 40 percent of the city's water by 2012. However, this project illustrates the desperation officials feel in finding enough water for the city, a desperation that seriously affects the rest of the country.
For example, the SNWA is also making plans for a $3.5 billion, 327-mile (525-km) underground pipeline to tap aquifers beneath cattle-raising valleys northeast of the city, according to Bloomberg and it has even looked into diverting floodwaters from the Mississippi River westward. Such plans incite people from the Great Lakes region to quiver over the prospect that their precious water may be tapped for a pipeline to the West.
According to Mark Reisner in Cadillac Desert, this region initially watered itself through diverted rivers and irrigation ditches. The 1930s saw the construction of huge water projects like the Hoover Dam that were largely financed with federal tax revenues. In the 1960s, long-distance pipelines were first conceived by Western-born federal officials, including those donning the environmental mantle.
Where all of this will end up is unknown but the future does not look very promising especially as a variety of adverse environmental forces are now coming together. However, the American people as a whole are unresponsive, perhaps because they are unaware of the dangers while many Westerners are clearly in denial of the problems. Perhaps a few suggestions will help.
- We must come to grips with the fact that most of the United States west of the Mississippi River is arid or semi-arid and that attempting to "green it" with water projects is ultimately a losing battle with serious and expensive consequences on the entire country.
- We must learn to organize our communities around regional systems like water and climate rather than only geographical political units in order to respond to regional problems.
- Sustainability must be everybody's concern. Making a profit through cheap water resources, for example, must now take a back seat to being able to live well on our planet.
- Schools and colleges must promote sustainability programs both in practice and theory. The young people in these institutions are the ones who will have to live in the resource-depleted twenty-first century.
- The U.S. Congress must get on board with effective and deliberate water and climate change legislation.
Baby Boomers have benefited the most from twentieth century industrial society, where unlimited supplies of fresh water (and other resources) were taken for granted. Hoping for technology to fix the depletion of water is no longer a strategy. The water is running out!
This article appeared on CommonDreams.org on Monday, August 31, 2009.
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