By Carlos F. Ugalde
While most Americans continue to believe that dwindling oil reserves and growing energy prices are the nation’s main concerns, there is a far more palpable and imminent crisis at arm’s length. Global warming—the observed ongoing rise in global average temperatures near the Earth’s surface caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—has markedly decreased precipitation and multiplied evapotranspiration rates across the globe and, particularly, in drier regions. The immediate result has been harsher and longer drought periods, thus reducing the availability of water resources for industry and consumption.
In 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences reported that “nearly one in ten U.S. watersheds is ‘stressed,’ with demand for water exceeding natural supply,” and that the western states are in greater danger of succumbing to such vulnerability. These findings are confirmed by a Columbia University Water Center study, which further cited population growth as a cause for the strain in water resources. This is a source for major concern for United States’ fastest growing cities—namely, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, D.C., Houston, and Los Angeles—which, without sufficient water resources, would most certainly lose all economic momentum.
This is not to say that the different layers of government have not yet responded to this impending crisis. At the national level, there has been a recent positive development. On November 12, 2014, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China agreed on new targets for reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions by their respective countries. The United States will have to reduce its emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels. Moreover, the agreement includes provisions promoting collaboration between the two countries to improve building efficiency and green technologies, as well as an extension of the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC)’s mandate through 2020.
More importantly, under the agreement, CERC must launch a $50 million water-energy research program to tackle the water crisis in both countries by developing strategies and technologies that could help increase water conservation in major industries. According to a recent article published in Circle of Blue’s website, the research efforts will begin on October 2015, and will focus on three specific areas: (1) reducing water usage in the cooling of electric power plants; (2) reducing energy use in the conversion of brackish water, salt water, and waste water into usable fresh water; and (3) recovering methane and other nutrients from sewage to use it as an alternative energy source.
At the local level, the most sensible and common approach is the recycling of waste water for reuse. In fact, state and local governments in Arizona, California, Texas, Florida, and Texas have been the first to adopt this response to drought. Notwithstanding this trend, waste water treatment still faces many challenges. First, higher levels of treatment require more energy, which, in turn, demands more expenditures and water. Second, there is widespread public opposition to the measure as a result of the media’s “toilet to tap” label. And finally, the lack of explicit federal regulations on the issue imposes implementation costs on the states. A national framework would not only create uniformity, thereby improving technological development and facilitating information sharing and diffusion, but would also raise public awareness.
In a paper written for the Brookings Institution’s The Hamilton Project, Robert Glennon, the author of Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It, has suggested that “water markets” can help fix the impending crisis. This proposition would seem to work quite well in the western part of the United States, where water is underpriced, despite being in high demand, giving farmers and cities very little incentive to conserve. Glennon argues that if farmers and ranchers, who use about 80 percent of the water in the western United States, were to increase efficiency by four percent, the amount of water available for other uses could increase by 50 percent. In simple terms, these markets would allow for different actors to buy “water rights” from each other, thereby increasing the incentives to use water efficiently. The obstacles are clearly political and regulatory in nature. Such a system would require an extremely complex set of regulations and strict limits on groundwater access. The farming industry, as well as environmental groups, would likely block such measures in the state and national legislatures.
Notwithstanding these obstacles, earlier this month, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported that water withdrawals for 2010 in the United States were at their lowest level in 45 years, representing a 13 percent decrease from the 2005 estimates. The USGS cites improved water management and other state and local conservation measures as the drivers behind the decrease despite the recorded growth in population and economic activity. Interestingly enough, electric power plants, agriculture and public water systems account for 90 percent of the withdrawals, suggesting that there is still plenty room for further improvement.
Links from this Article
Amena H. Saiyid, Water Scarcity Drives U.S. Communities Toward Smarter Use, Recycling, Bloomberg (March 24, 2014), http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-24/water-scarcity-drives-u-s-communities-toward-smarter-use-recycling.html.
Brad Plumer, Could Water Markets Help Solve the American West’s Water Crisis?, Vox (October 31, 2014), http://www.vox.com/2014/10/31/7135249/could-water-markets-help-solve-the-wests-water-crisis.
Brett Walton, U.S.-China Climate Deal Includes Provision on Water-Energy Research, Circle of Blue (November 13, 2014), http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2014/world/u-s-china-climate-deal-includes-provision-water-energy-research.
Daniel Shi et al., America’s Water Risk: Water Stress and Climate Variability—White Paper, Columbia Water Center (February 2013), http://growingblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/GB_CWC_whitepaper_climate-water-stress_final.pdf.
Evapotranspiration – The Water Cycle, U.S. Geological Survey (July 30, 2014), http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleevapotranspiration.html.
Extreme Weather: Impacts of Climate Change, NRDC (January 15, 2014), http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/climate-change-impacts.
Kristen Averyt et al., Sectoral Contributions to Surface Water Stress in the Coterminous United States (IOP Publishing Ltd. 2013), http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/035046/article.
Matt Ferner, These 11 Cities My Completely Run Out of Water Sooner Than You Think, The Huffington Post (December 4, 2013), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/04/water-shortage_n_4378418.html.
Molly A. Maupin et al., Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2010 (U.S. Geological Survey Circular 2014), available at http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1405/pdf/circ1405.pdf.
Office of the Press Secretary, Fact Sheet: U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change and Clean Energy Cooperation—Press Release, The White House (November 11, 2014), http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/11/fact-sheet-us-china-joint-announcement-climate-change-and-clean-energy-c.
Peter W. Culp et al., Shopping for Water: How the Market Can Mitigate Water Shortages in the American West (Brookings 2014), http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/market_mitigate_water_shortage_in_west_paper_glennon_final.pdf.
U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center, http://www.us-china-cerc.org (last visited November 23, 2014).