Are we REALLY running out of water?

The other day, walking with an intelligent, well-informed friend, I happened to mention that Washington is having real water supply problems. She was dumbfounded, unaware that all the talk about water conservation was actually more than just environmental rhetoric. That made me think. At Ecology, with all our insider talk about subareas, stockwater exemptions, senior water rights and exempt wells, we’re not really getting the message across to people like my mailman Curt or my pal Cindy that we have a real and serious water supply problem. People don’t really know that we are running out of water. As reported in the Oct. 30, 2009 Columbia Basin Bulletin, “Aquifers are being depleted much faster than they are being replenished in many places, wells are drying up, massive lawsuits are already erupting and the problems have barely begun. Aquifers that took thousands of years to fill are being drained in decades, placing both agricultural and urban uses in peril. Groundwater that supplies drinking water for half the world’s population is now in jeopardy.” And then there’s climate change. The Climate Impacts Group in Washington state says April 1 snowpack is projected to decrease by 28 percent across the state by the 2020s, 40 percent by the 2040s, and 59 percent by the 2080s (relative to the 1916-2006 historical average). Climate scientist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, speaking in October at the 2009 Nobel Conference, said that water scarcity resulting from climate change is the number one issue the world will have to grapple with in the future. “On the one hand, we will have more water around us with sea level rising,” he said. “Drought caused by climate change, on the other hand, will leave billions of people without clean water.” While Gov. Gregoire and her Department of Ecology are trying (and succeeding in many cases, I might add) to find water and bring it in from elsewhere, moving water around can solve only so much of the problem. That may not be the end-all, be-all solution in the long run, not with climate change threatening to obliterate our snowpack. Conservation is often cited as the most effective way to generate “new” water supplies. We have to use less water. But, if people aren’t fully aware that this threat is real, how can we expect them to take water conservation to heart? When you find yourself in conversations with your friends and family, feel free to use any or all of the following examples to drive the point home. These Eastern Washington issues are not, by any means, an exhaustive list; they are currently in the news and pose knotty problems for residents, municipalities, farmers and water managers alike. In the Odessa area of the Eastern Columbia Basin, the aquifer is dropping 8-10 feet per year on the west side of the Odessa area. Owners must either deepen their wells at great expense or bring water in for domestic use from elsewhere. All the surface water in the Yakima Basin is spoken for by senior water right holders. No new water is available for allocation from surface water supplies. This has put pressure on groundwater withdrawals, and is resulting in tension over new wells being drilled under the exempt-permit provision. The water table is dramatically declining in Pullman where water levels in the shallower aquifer have declined 1-2 feet per year since the 1950s. Research shows that little, if any, precipitation is recharging the deeper aquifer, where Pullman currently gets its water. Groundwater is being “mined” in the West Plains area, west of Spokane, i.e., more ground water is being pumped from the ground than is being naturally recharged. Some owners of domestic wells began reporting dry wells as early as 2002. These examples point out that the problem is real, right in our Eastern Washington backyard, and people need to know that it’s real in order to get on the conservation bandwagon.