oh NO! Thirty-Six U.S. States to Face Water Shortages in the Next Five Years

[mdmc]

http://www.naturalnews.com/022915.html

EVEN UPSTATE NY IS IN TROUBLE!

Other threatened regions include the Midwest, where the Great Lakes are shrinking, and upstate New York, where reservoir levels have fallen to record lows. Georgia's crisis has already arrived, and Florida's is expected to hit soon.









http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2878306

[LSK]

1. actually this was a very very good winter for the Great Lakes

There was more snowfall than in many many years and the lakes water levels have risen.

[mdmc]

4. thank you for the good news

I'm a bit xerophobic...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2878306 (related thread)

[Nederland]

2. We need to stop subsidizing water now

People need to start paying market prices for water, not subsidized prices.

[JackRiddler]

6. Yeah, why not privatize it, that fixes all..

When industrial capitalism and consumer culture use up too much water, the answer obviously is to raise the rates on it? For whom?

Who is this "we" who's going to be charging?

[Nederland]

14. Answers

Raise rates so they reflect the actual costs of producing and distributing water. Right now residential users of water subsidize water for industrial and agricultural users. That is not fair and promotes inefficiencies by the very people that use the most water. If industry and agriculture were force to pay real market prices for water they would immediately stop wasting it the way they do. The "we" who is going to be charging is whoever currently charges. I'm not advocating the privatization of water, merely a change in the way it is priced.

[progressoid]

20. If agriculture were to pay market rate, the cost of food would be astronomical.

[JackRiddler]

21. "Market rate" would be a disaster...

"Market rate" is a synonym for whatever the seller can get away with, and this is water we're talking about. (And America we're talking about!)

However, nederland uses "market rate" as though it represents real cost (in keeping with the dominant economic paradigm in which the market is an objective and just god). Cost-plus, on the other hand, makes sense for the reasons nederland states. That means whatever the real costs are plus a small, fixed margin. But it's a patchwork fix.

On the other hand, an economy planned rationally to minimize resource consumption and environmental impact (and the social impacts of shifting away from waste as "growth") would just make too much sense. That would be communist!

[DrDebug]

10. As in Atlanta, you mean...

Published: August 29, 1998

United Water Resources Inc. and a French partner have won a contract to manage the City of Atlanta's water system for 20 years. United Water Services, a joint venture between United Water and Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux of Nanterre, France, submitted the low, winning bid for the privatization of the water system, the analysts HSBC Washington Analysis said yesterday. The contract could be worth more than $400 million, according to HSBC, which said it was the largest of its kind ever offered in the United States. United Water, a water-services management company based in Harrington Park, N.J., should get half of the revenue from the contract, which is for operating Atlanta's drinking water supply system. The city intends to put out for bid a contract to manage its waste-water facilities by the end of the year.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE4DC1F3CF93AA1575BC0A96E958260

And within 10 years:

http://www.atlantawatershortage.com/

The largest privatization in the U.S. was in Atlanta and Hauter describes it as "a complete failure. The way that the company achieved its efficiency -- and this is true whether its Atlanta or Jakarta -- is that they fire staff. Roughly half in Atlanta. At that point they are no longer able to really maintain the pipes and provide potable water, so you had a relatively wealthy city like Atlanta having brown water days -- people having to boil their water and not being able to do laundry."

(...)

According to the NGOs' report, the big three -- Suez, Vivendi and RWE -- and their subsidiaries have been charged and fined for dozens of environmental violations. A few examples they give:

n 1999, the Suez subsidiary Northumbrian Water was declared by the Drinking Water Inspectorate in the U.K. to be the second worst company in terms of operational performance in England and Wales. The main reason was poor water quality: high levels of iron and manganese were found in the water Northumbrian was delivering. Elsewhere, in Potsdam, Germany, city officials terminated a contract with Suez when, after discovering that water consumption levels were lower than predicted, the company demanded that higher water rates be levied. Apparently, water revenues were more important than water conservation.

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wto/3645.html

Just like oil, there are just a limited amount of players. In fact there are just three main companies: Vivendi, Suez (now called Gaz de France) and RWE who use dozens of local names to confuse their monopolies (just like Unilever and Procter & Gamble who use brand names to give the impression that there are more than two companies who control the entire market.)

They are very active in the third world with the blessing of the World Bank and the IMF of course. The price of water tends to double and tripple after one of the big three start supplying their privatized water, thus making it unafforable to the local population.

[Nederland]

15. No

That is not what I am suggesting.

[BadgerLaw2010]

3. Great Lakes levels are actually rising now, when they normally fall. Extremely wet winter.

Hopefully that's turned around.

[KansDem]

5. Don't fret: There's always Bush Family Water!

Meeting the new couple next door can be an anxious business for even the most relaxed home owner. Will they be international drug traffickers? Have they got noisy kids with a penchant for electronic music? As worries go, however, having the US president move in next door must come fairly low on the list.
Unless of course you are a resident of northern Paraguay and believe reports in the South American press that he has bought up a 100,000 acre (40,500 hectare) ranch in your neck of the woods.

The rumours, as yet unconfirmed but which began with the state-run Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, have triggered an outpouring of conspiracy theories, with speculation rife about what President Bush's supposed interest in the "chaco", a semi-arid lowland in the Paraguay's north, might be.

Some have speculated that he might be trying to wrestle control of the Guarani Aquifer, one of the largest underground water reserves, from the Paraguayans.

The Guardian

He'll just run a pipeline up here then we can all quench our thirst...for a price.

[Romulox]

7. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing...

Looks like we're going to have to rethink moving the entire population of the US to Los Vegas, after all! :eyes:

[mdmc]

8. I actually moved back to NYS from vegas

cause it was too dry and scary

[enlightenment]

9. Too late. They're coming here anyway.

It's LAS Vegas, btw . . . though you made an interesting historical slip. When the first post office was established in the are, it was called LOS Vegas because the city of LAS Vegas, New Mexico already had the name.

Today, of course, Las Vegas, NM is a really cute little town and Las Vegas, Nevada is a concrete monstrosity!

[Romulox]

12. D'oh! Took FOUR semesters of Spanish in college too

Rookie mistake. Refreshing my Spanish is definitely on my to-do list, but I have ZERO intention of relocating in the Southwest.

My intention is to hang around Detroit long enough that water becomes "the next big thing".:thumbsup:

[enlightenment]

17. No biggie!

I really just wanted to tell the little story about the post office . . . *slaps self!*

So you weren't wrong, really! :)

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

26. I grew up in Buffalo

and my Grandfather always used to say, of the migration away from WNY, 'they'll be back, you cant drink sand'. One of the big concerns about NAFTA was it makes it feasible to take water from teh lakes and distribute it elsewhere where as before due to the fact they were internationally shared lakes that could not be done..

[Romulox]

28. You're against NAFTA on this thread, and buying a KIA on another.

:shrug:

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

29. yup...

Im not against Trade Im against free trade and like I said in that thread.

Id buy the kia because its safer for my kids and if I have to pay a tariff because of that so be it..

Im for Fair trade Im not a xenophobe..

[bdamomma]

11. water wars will be next.

:shrug:

[mdmc]

24. you are correct

:kick:

[lpbk2713]

13. Florida is its own worst enemy.

The money hungry realtors, builders, and developers are all encouraging growth at any cost while at the same time no one is addressing the problem of depleting natural resources, water and wildlife among them.

From the article ...

"While Florida has no shortage of rainfall, widespread draining and paving of the region's natural wetlands has left the water unable to drain back into the soil. As a consequence, the state is forced to flush millions of gallons of water into the ocean per year to avert floods. The state's environmental chief, Michael Sole, has asked the Florida legislature to increase the use of reclaimed wastewater. Other states are encouraging measures such as desalinization, but it is widely accepted that conservation is the cheapest alternative.

Even with such measures, the forecast is not expected to improve. "Unfortunately, there's just not going to be any more cheap water," said Randy Brown, utilities director for Pompano Beach, Fla."



Pogo was a prophet way before his time.

[Ilsa]

16. So which are the 36 states? I guess we have to figure them

out from the regional locations mentioned in the article?

[datasuspect]

18. we need to annex canada

they have lots of water.

water will be the new oil within the next century.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

19. K&R n/t

[JNelson6563]

22. Prepare for the water wars

Thankfully MI has a lot of idle plants we can re-tool to make weaponry. While we're fighting you all off when you come for the water, I think we could also declare war on Iowa and NH regarding the primary system.

Julie-mostly kidding

[Alexander]

23. Well if dumbasses here in AZ wouldn't waste gallons watering their golf courses and lawns...

We wouldn't have as much of a problem here.

[Blue_In_AK]

25. We have a lot up here...

Many years ago former governor Wally Hickel put forward a plan to build a water pipeline to the Lower 48, and everybody laughed and laughed. Maybe he was onto something.

[Seeking Serenity]

27. Won't be Arkansas any time soon.

Raining again today.

But, as always, I'll count my blessings. More rain keeps the aquifers and reservoirs filled.

[LeftinOH]

30. People can stop watering their lawns immediately -its absurdly wasteful..

..I like it when my grass becomes brown and dormant: less mowing.