Millions of Groundwater Wells Could Run Dry | Hacker News Reader

Millions of Groundwater Wells Could Run Dry

scientificamerican.com

56 pointsBender60 comments

The #1 factor impacting groundwater production is land use.

Yes, blame climate change, but it's going to become increasingly important to ensure that land is used in a way that generates lots of high quality groundwater (forests) and avoid land use that diverts water to overland flow (agriculture and urban land use).

Healthy soil is important too! A thick layer of living soil will absorb a lot more rainfall than dust and sand. If farmers were to practice things like no till and cover crops, they'd find they have to do a lot less irrigating after it rains

Cover crop is an extremely common practice among farmers. No-till not as much.

I will point to a related thread [0] along with my previous comment. In the western United States there is no "could" there is only "will." This has been understood for more than 140 years [1].

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18098899

1. https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/70039240/report.pdf LANDS OF THE ARID REGION John Wesley Powell

Family of mine just had to install a cistern after their well needed to be extended-it’s already been extended. Ie there’s just no more water there I think or something.

Water in the southwest has obviously always been something to take seriously. But as someone who’s always lived here, this seems much more pressing than anytime in the past. Wish this was a problem society could and would tackle as a “group effort”.

> Wish this was a problem society could and would tackle as a “group effort”.

From a macro level, it has been. There have been water pacts in the west for nearly a century. But these will likely need to change in order to address the severity of the issue. I'm curious how these will be changed in the future, it seems like there might need to be new legislation sooner rather than later.

Those water pacts are generally very out of date and haven't adapted to modern populations and usage volumes, though. Change must come.

Isn‘t there also an issue where water pacts were drawn up during what appears to have been a rainier period of time?

Most the US southwest seems to be organized around the concept of water rights, typically measured in acre-feet.

Even though this assignment of rights is rather old and has a multitude of problems related to the way it doesn't describe current usage patterns, that's not the biggest problem:

it doesn't help to have the water rights to 300 acre-feet on your property if that water doesn't exist!

Ultimately I think we'll need to have state governments seize those water rights through eminent domain (with fair market value payments), then institute an auction system to allocated only a sustainable level of water extraction. The problem today is that water prices are fixed below the market rate and fail to account for externalities so water users have little incentive to conserve.

Here's the other lovely thing, is the deeper you go with a well the worse the water quality. Deep water could have been sitting there for thousands of years and may have a higher radon concentration.

On the other hand, deeper water is less likely to be contaminated by toxic waste seeping down from the surface.

And the radioactive stuff can be filtered out locally much more easily (activated carbon).

We are solving it as a society. You're free to move somewhere there's more water, or you can not have any.

Ah yes, the Ben Shapiro climate solution: "Just sell your house and move somewhere else!"

Who, pray tell, will buy a house with no water?

That’s also not going to work if we’re talking about farmland. Not every parcel of land is exchangeable for every other. It’s one thing to point at a city and say “fewer people could live there” and another to point at farmland and say society won’t feel an impact from not growing the crops on it.

Tell that to Intel. They’re building a fab in Phoenix.

That's up to the people that live in Phoenix. If they want Intel to deplete their aquifer, that's their choice.

the bill comes due

decades of polluting the world with reckless abandon did not come without it's consequences. unfortunately the current generation has to clean up what the previous generations created

Although we have certainly spent decades polluting the world with reckless abandon, the issues outlined in TFA don't have much to do with pollution. It's about water use, more specifically excessive water use, not pollution.

"current generation has to clean up what the previous generations created" considering all my 20 year old friends zeal for bitcoin it won't be us cleaning it up either, good luck to the current 5 year olds

It'll be you reincarnated.

Freshwater depletion is unlikely to be a real problem in any developed country. State-of-the-art desalination plants in Israel are fulfilling contracts for hundreds of thousands of people at ~$0.40/m^3 [1], so $0.40 per thousand liters. The per-capita water usage in the US is ~1200 m^3/yr including all indirect water such a industrial, food and food exports [2], with peer nations such a Germany using ~300 m^3/yr, and Israel using ~130 m^3/yr. That amounts to a ~$480/yr increase in yearly expenditure per American which is a ~1.4% increase in base expenditure for the average American which by most metrics would constitute a fairly moderate expense especially for something as critical as food or water. This also assumes that the increase in water prices would not result in a change in water habits similar to other peer countries which are using a fraction of the water per-capita or Israel whose people have already adapted their lifestyles to the expense of desalination.

About the only conceivable problems for developed countries relate to scaling up global desalination by a factor of 100x-1000x. However, given the existing scale and maturity in the industry, I find it fairly unlikely that it would not be possible to scale up while maintaining existing prices given a reasonable lead time. Given that it is highly unlikely that any country would preferentially choose to deprive their citizens of water or food unless there were no other choice, this reduces the problem of freshwater depletion to just a problem of power generation and a problem of how to solve it for less-developed countries who might not have the resources to engage in mass desalination. However, I will declare those problems to be out-of-scope for this discussion as they are complex topics in their own right with various proposed solutions and tradeoffs.

[1] https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/05/27/203950...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263156/water-consumption...

I live in the dry US southwest. My home is roughly a thousand miles in two directions from an ocean, and much, much more in the other two directions. Although it is not completely unimaginable, I very much doubt that there will ever be a pipeline from an ocean desalination plant to the area where I live.

Indeed an excellent point, but there are many mitigating factors that might resolve that problem.

1. Reduced water diversion. If there were mass desalination, the places closer to the shore would have access to a substitute water supply which would reduce their need for water in your water source. This would likely result in having more of the water source available to your city.

2. Water usage. The vast majority of water people "use" is actually in the form of food. Unless your home is growing a vast quantity of crops in the dry US southwest, it is highly unlikely that you are actually depleting your water source unless it is being diverted to farming. If your city is farming, then the farms will relocate after the water supply is dried up to a place where desalinated water is more accessible. Once this occurs the newly relocated farms will be able to produce in their new location and it is likely that your city will no longer be net depleting the water source. So, food continues to be produced, but elsewhere, and your city now has water.

3. Pipelines are cheap. Pipelines are actually quite cheap based on my research. Here is a 15 year old paper which estimates the price of water pipelines to be ~$0.06/m^3 per 100 km [1]. At 1000 miles which is ~1600 km, that would only be an extra $1.00/m^3 raising your costs to $1.50/m^3 over your existing costs for both desalination and piping. For an average American that would be ~$1800/yr or ~4.2% increase in yearly expenditure.

4. Water embodiment. Again, the vast majority of water people "use" is in the form of food. That means that most of the water you "use" will likely be used on farms which will likely be wherever water is cheap. This reduces the direct costs to you. It also means that you do not actually need a very large source of pure water to support a city since most of the water being imported is "food" which is a volumetrically and price efficient means of "importing water". It is quite likely that you would need at most a modest pipeline or possibly even be able to ship the pure water some other means without being too costly.

5. Moving. If water actually becomes unavailable then your city would become inhospitable much like random wilderness and people would leave rather than die of thirst. This may be unpalatable to you or others in your city if you like where you live, but it is almost assuredly what would happen if no other solution is possible and would "resolve" the problem.

Essentially, the problem is solvable, but like any other change may require tradeoffs of money or lifestyle. The less change in lifestyle you want the more money it would cost, but even essentially zero lifestyle change seems quite feasible for the average American at a relatively modest cost.

[1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...

Are you near an aquifer? How far is the ocean from an edge of that aquifer? That’s the pipeline (and reservoir). We use renewables to replenish aquifers.

One of the lowest hanging fruits in water conservation are reducing irrigated forage crops (like alfalfa or silage).

Without getting into meat production, dairy is a tremendous user of water.

I'm particularly excited to see lab created milk. I suspect it will be easier to take to production then artificial meat, and we can free much of the water (and land for that matter) while continuing to enjoy our cheese pizzas.

Why lab created milk instead of something like oat milk? As a lactose intolerant person, I don't miss cow milk at all. Cheese substitutes mostly suck, though.

Well, I am not lactose intolerant, and I don't don't miss cow milk.

I'm lactose intolerant and I miss milk greatly. It doesn't help that I also have a mild reaction to nuts, so almond milk is out.

Oatmilk is just meh.

Best I've found for cheese substitute so far is a brand called follow your heart from Sprouts. It is only good if really well melted on toast, otherwise it's very much unsavory. Stay away from the mild cheddar and Gouda, both are really bad. The provolone is ok, the American is ok as well.

Been researching water usage a lot lately. Truly eye opening the amount of indirect water we consume through food products. We "eat" 3496 litres of water everyday. Check out https://thewaterweeat.com/ for a great infographic.

This infographic is very misleading. All water isn't created equally. A liter in a very wet place like Florida used to grow strawberries doesn't have much of an impact, while a liter taken from depleted aquifers in dry, northern Texas makes a bad situation worse.

that is true, but just like oil water can be transported via pipelines.

And, just as oil, it costs money, adding to the price.

And, with enough electricity, taken right from the ocean.

In theory sure, but not so much in practice. The east coast of the US dumps a lot of fresh water into the ocean, but trying to transport it to the Midwest is pardon the pun a herculean task.

We transfer millions of dollars of fresh Florida water all over the world every day at a profit margin of ~1600x. It comes in little plastic bottles.

Now make it competitive with desalination at around 1/2 a cent a gallon and realize even that is far to expensive for agricultural use.

That’s the difference between theory and practice.

Water and land isn’t fungible.

US policy made it possible to grow produce in the desert for free. When climate changes reduce Colorado flow and groundwater in the Midwest runs out, you can’t just grow tomatoes in New Jersey and Long Island anymore. It’s converted to millions of homes and businesses.

Which is why water theater was so rediculous in California during the drought. San Diego banned restaurants giving people water unless they asked for it, but they didn’t ban putting a scoop of California grown rice on the plate unless people asked for it.

Water essentially all goes to agriculture, a small amount to industrial, and even smaller amount to decorative irrigation. Toilets are not even a rounding error but here we all are plunging to “save the planet”.

So help me understand this... I eat far less than 3496 liters of food every day, and only a fraction of it is water. So where are the other 3490-something liters of water? Or to put it differently, the link says "3091000 liters of water for producing 200 kilos of boneless beef". Clearly only a tiny fraction of that water is tied up in the animal at any given point. Where is the rest?

My point being: even if we all stopped eating meat because it takes too much water to produce, would this actually make a difference in the amount of water available? Or would it just change the rate at which the water is cycled from environment through plants and animals and back into the environment? And in the larger context of the water cycle, does it make any difference?

That infographic doesn't seem to touch on any of this, instead handwaving about the water being "virtual" or "hidden in the food you eat". It's not as though 3091000 liters of water just disappear, never to be seen again when those 200 kilos of beef spring into existence.

Generally speaking, the rest is in the ocean or air. Before it can be reused it must either be in the natural water cycle and rained back down or it can be artificially reclaimed via desalination and the like. Ignoring artificial reclamation, we can view the natural water cycle as producing some amount of fresh water per unit time and underground water stores as containing some amount of fresh water. When we use fresh water in places faster than the water is replenished in those places we must either draw upon water from another place or upon water stores. What "consuming" some quantity of fresh water means is that quantity of fresh water must be "produced" either naturally or artificially otherwise the net stores of water decrease. If we reach zero stores of water then we can no longer "consume" more than is "produced" and thus have no choice but to reduce production of things that "consume" water. If this is sudden and unexpected then we will have a food crisis as we will not be able to produce as much food as we expected.

Thanks, I appreciate the explanation. So is there good evidence that agriculture is causing these stores to run dry? Or is it more a matter of climate change causing droughts, and we're all supposed to "tighten our belts" to mitigate it?

(As an aside, thanks also for the interesting info on desalination you shared in other threads. Do you have any pointers to good resources on this topic that are both up-to-date and freely available? I'm very interested in this topic but have found in the past that a lot of the open academic literature is out of date while the up-to-date industry sources are usually paywalled.)

Having not done any particularly rigorous research, the evidence I have seen indicates that agriculture is the primary driver of natural freshwater store depletion. Climate change may be an exacerbating force, but it is highly likely that freshwater stores are being consumed significantly faster than they are being naturally replenished even if we assume no changes in the natural water cycle. Here is a graphic illustration of the depletion of the Aral Sea [1] and a link to Google Maps [2] to provide perspective on its size if you are unfamiliar with the geography.

In terms of solutions, as I have mentioned desalination is a functional solution that developed countries will likely be able to deploy that should make the worst case scenario of mass starvation or thirst unlikely. In fact, given the costs of desalination it is likely that developed countries will be able to deploy it just because they do not want any lifestyle changes. Other than that, the most likely solution will be a massive reduction in water usage which is, based on my recollection, predominantly agriculture (~70%) followed by industrial (~15%) followed by recreational/aesthetic (~12%) followed by personal (~3%) or something similar to that distribution. Given how small personal usage for things such as drinking, cleaning, bathing is, this reduction would largely need to come from agriculture with maybe some coming from reductions in industrial and aesthetic uses such as lawns. Frankly any calls to reduce personal usage should probably be seen as evidence of a lack of understanding of the problem or possibly even a deliberate act of sabotage since it would have little impact on the problem, but come with a large human cost.

In terms of the feasibility of water usage reduction, a large reduction in water usage seems quite doable in the US given that it consumes ~3-4x more per-capita than similarly wealthy European countries. To some extent this is a partial misrepresentation since the US is a major food, and thus water, exporter, but I am fairly certain even without looking at the underlying numbers that the US can significantly reduce consumption without significant lifestyle changes. From what I have heard, but not investigated thoroughly, this is mostly blamed on the relatively large amount of meat consumption/production in the US which is not implausible on its face. Assuming this is the case, a reduction in meat consumption to European levels would be a fairly minor change in lifestyle that would dramatically reduce water consumption. Alternatively, the development of meat substitutes or artificial meat with far lower water needs could solve that problem. I am uncertain if this is a sufficient reduction as I do not know about the raw consumption/replenishment rate of water resources, but if it is not it would at least provide a significantly longer lead time to solve the problem in other ways.

In terms of research into desalination or the like I do not have any particular resources. Most of my knowledge is fairly surface level from piecing together random snippets that I find and doing some first-principles analysis.

[1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/aral_sea.p...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Aral+Sea/@45.9900368,43.86...

So, i used to be very knowledgeable in climate drift causes and consequences, until i stopped paying attention since what i do doesn't really matter in the end.

Short story: barring sea rise that will do moderate damages at worst, and until we reach wetbulb temperature in SEA and india, climate drift will only have small, enhancing impact on already-existing disasters. It just makes disaster worst.

Misleading -- 94% of the water that's "used" to produce beef is just rainwater, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGG-A80Tl5g

Anyone have the access to the PDF they cite? I don't have an account on AAAS https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6540/418

You can get a copy at the lead author's website: http://www.jasechko.com/papers.html

Edit: Or, here's the direct link: http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/372/6540/418?...

Arizona has some of the largest lettuce farms in the nation. They consume extensive amounts of water. They can be moved to someplace with lots of rain like the Pacific northwest.

Is because lettuce grows well with sunshine?

I wonder if somewhere with lots of rain would (necessarily) have weaker sunshine and grow lettuce slower, or grow smaller lettuce.

California and the other Mexico-bordering states have so much ag in the middle of the desert because of the ready supply of immigrants.

There are lots of Mexicans working in ag in Central Washington state and even in Ontario, Canada. Its climate/weather driven not proximity.

Fairly similar story in Upstate New York.

> California and the other Mexico-bordering states have so much ag in the middle of the desert because...

... the arable land is flat, sunny, cheap and the government allocated more than all of the Colorado River flow[0] into irrigation systems for them. [1][2]

[0]https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45546

[1]https://www.iid.com/water/water-transportation-system/colora...

[2]https://www.cap-az.com/about-us/background

The labor situation is a factor but the arid environment helps with pests and California is basically the ideal environment to grow a lot of things, once you irrigate it. Compare photos of Georgia peaches to California ones and the difference is obvious.

Farmers prefer irrigation to rain, it’s controllable. And in the west water is not only free but use it or lose it because of idiotic prior appropriation rules.

or move them to indoor farms

To see if that's logically feasible, visit Yuma and look at the scale of the operations.

Or google maps sat view and do some image searches.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yuma,+AZ/@32.6778769,-114....

I was going to mention Yuma as well, it’s absolutely amazing to see that much farmland in the desert.

The lettuce farms in Arizona produce during the winter months.

They could not be moved the Pacific Northwest for that production period.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com