grapplingstars.com, femcompetitor.com, fciwomenswrestling.com, fcielitecompetitor.com fciwomenswrestling2.com articles, Vegaster-photo-credit.
August 30, 2020,
Change is often dictated by necessity.
Hopefully not. But most likely.
Isn’t it preferable if we make changes by choice?
Which raises a philosophical question.
If you live in a region where there is plenty of water today, should you start dry landscaping because it is the right thing to do?
We’re in the camp of do the right thing, even when you have an abundance.
As you will soon see, in the larger picture for a city, it actually does have a major positive effect.
Many regions who once had an abundance of water, no longer do.
Take Las Vegas as an example.
The team at waterworld.com educates, “In May 2019, federal officials and leaders from seven states signed the Colorado River Drought Contingency plan, a new water management agreement designed to reduce risks from the ongoing drought and protect the most important water resource in the region.”
That is a great idea since the Las Vegas Valley gets about 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River.
Here is the rub.
Waterworld.com adds that the water level of Lake Mead, which serves as the source of the community’s drinking water, has dropped more than 130 feet since January 2000 and the federal government is projecting a high probability that Lake Mead water levels may fall below 1,075 feet in 2021, triggering the first-ever shortage of Colorado River.
On November 18, 2020, another media source The Reno Gazette Journal reported, “Nevada’s director of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said Nevada has already reached the point of “critical mass” or the breaking point when it comes to the problem of water scarcity.”
Currently, Lake Mead is at an elevation of 1083 feet or 39-percent full.
Will Lake Mead run out of water?
It makes you wonder. When you look at pictures of Lake Mead, one of the first things you notice is the massive bathtub ring.
It is huge.
The 140-foot ring is a constant reminder of how high the water once was in the good old days and makes you wonder if we’ll ever return to those higher levels.
Las Vegas needs more water.
The Emerald City needs more options.
They appear to be okay for now. Here in part is why. Read this carefully.
On April 17, 2018, the team at newsdeeply.com enlightened, “Although Las Vegas is known as a city of excess, that is no longer the case when it comes to water consumption. The city has become a leader in water conservation. Since 2002, when the current long-term drought began in the Southwest, Vegas has added more than 600,000 residents while actually reducing its withdrawals from the Colorado River.”
That’s good to know. Facts and details are always helpful.
You see? Water conservation on the part of the average citizen does indeed make a big difference.
They add that Las Vegas may not need new water supplies for some time.
Southern Nevada is entitled to 300,000 acre-feet per year of Colorado River water, the smallest allotment among the states that depend on the lower river. The great news is that it currently uses only 240,000 acre-feet. When possible, it banks the unused portion in local groundwater aquifers.
An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock, rock fractures or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt).
Groundwater can be extracted using a water well.
Aquifers occur from near surface to deeper than 9,000 meters. Those closer to the surface are not only more likely to be used for water supply and irrigation, but are also more likely to be topped up by the local rainfall. Many desert areas have limestone hills or mountains within them or close to them that can be exploited as groundwater resources.
It currently has enough banked water to meet its annual need for eight years.
There are still voices, mostly in urban Nevada that feels desalinization should still be an option.
Desalination is a process that takes away mineral components from saline water. More generally, desalination refers to the removal of salts and minerals from a target substance, as in soil desalination, which is an issue for agriculture.
Saltwater is desalinated to produce water suitable for human consumption or irrigation.
Desalination is used on many seagoing ships and submarines.
Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on cost-effective provision of fresh water for human use. Along with recycled wastewater, it is one of the few rainfall-independent water sources.
Due to its energy consumption, desalinating sea water is generally more costly than fresh water from rivers or groundwater, water recycling and water conservation.
Currently, approximately 1% of the world’s population is dependent on desalinated water to meet daily needs, but the UN expects that 14% of the world’s population will encounter water scarcity by 2025.
Desalination is particularly relevant in dry countries such as Australia, which traditionally have relied on collecting rainfall behind dams for water.
There is a country that is completely pro desalinization.
Kuwait is a country in Western Asia situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf which borders Iraq to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south.
As of 2016, Kuwait has a population of 4.5 million people: 1.3 million are Kuwaitis and 3.2 million are expatriates. Expatriates account for approximately 70% of the population.
When Kuwait comes to most of our attention, it typically has something to do with oil.
When it comes to water consumption, did you know this?
Kuwait produces a higher proportion of its water through desalination than any other country, totaling 100% of its water use.
That is an incredible statistic.
By contrast, as posted on April 16, 2020 at thenevadaindependent.com they share, “The Southern Nevada Water Authority is ending a decades-long effort to build a controversial 300-mile pipeline to pump rural groundwater from eastern Nevada to Las Vegas.
On Thursday afternoon, the water authority confirmed in a statement that it would not appeal a recent court ruling that denied the agency a portion of its water rights. The decision means the water agency is shelving a development project that has long inflamed tensions between rural and urban Nevada.”
Too bad.
There is a part of us that are sad to hear that. Just because you don’t need another option right now doesn’t mean you won’t need it later.
We can’t control that.
What we can control is how we conserve water. It does actually work.
Otherwise, we can look to Kuwait as another example of a possible water delivery system in a drought ravaged time period.
~ ~ ~
OPENING PHOTO grapplingstars.com, femcompetitor.com, fciwomenswrestling.com, fcielitecompetitor.com fciwomenswrestling2.com articles, Vegaster-photo-credit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait
https://fciwomenswrestling.com/
