Fresh water will be in short supply; the time to avert shortages is now, one expert says

OpenStreet map by The Washington Post, adapted by The Rural Blog

“Water, water, no longer everywhere, and every drop a drink.” Present-day rephrasing from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

Over the next 30 years, global freshwater supplies will face a crisis, the degree of that crisis depends on current water planning. “A growing population and rising temperatures will jeopardize available water for drinking, bathing and growing food, according to new research,” report Veronica Penney and John Muyskens of The Washington Post. "An analysis of newly released data from the World Resources Institute shows that by 2050 an additional billion people will be living in arid areas and regions with high water stress, where at least 40 percent of the renewable water supply is consumed each year. Two-fifths of the world’s population — 3.3 billion people in total — currently live in such areas."

The U.S. will likely feel the water crunch in regions that already have stressed water systems. For instance, "Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, California and Idaho are using more water than they receive each year, depleting groundwater reserves to support farming and industrial use," the Post reports. "Many rural areas use groundwater for drinking water, and farmers worldwide rely on it for irrigation. But groundwater often replenishes much more slowly than surface water. . . . Only half of 1 percent of the world’s water supply is fresh water in liquid form. The rest is saltwater or frozen into glaciers."

Globally, "agriculture accounts for 70 percent of water use each year and is deeply affected by changes in precipitation. Even if a region is getting the same average amount of rain and snow, droughts and floods have become more common," Penney and Muyskens write. Matthew Rodell, the deputy director of Earth Sciences at NASA, told the Post, "Just looking at the averages doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s much more useful and easier to live with if the water all comes regularly and without these extremes. But more and more, that’s not the case.”

Beyond weather extremes, the location of some industrial farming operations has lacked logical water consideration. "One Saudi company is growing alfalfa in the Arizona desert, pulling from the area’s groundwater supplies," the Post reports. "That alfalfa is then shipped overseas to feed cattle in Saudi Arabia, where industrial-scale farming of forage crops has been banned to conserve the nation’s water."

Water planning, saving and industrial restructuring are happening in cities such as Las Vegas and worldwide; there's a lot that can be done to prevent the intensity of freshwater shortages. Heather Cooley, director of research for the Pacific Institute, told the Post: “Water challenges are only going to become more frequent and more intense. That needs to motivate us to begin preparing and implementing projects. . . . We’ve taken water for granted. We’ve undervalued it. And that has to change.”