Pumped Dry: The Global Crisis of Vanishing Groundwater | USA TODAY

[Music] Niagara Falls the impressive flow of water that draws visitors from all over the world is roughly equivalent to the amount of water that is being pumped out of the ground by wells in the United States alone much of the planet relies on groundwater and in places around the world in regions of Asia Africa the Middle East Latin America and the United States so much water is being pumped from the ground that aquifers are being rapidly depleted and wells are going dry [Applause] is this incredible global phenomenon that we really didn't you know we never really understood it the way we understand it now it's pervasive and it's it's happening at a rapid clip it will be an understatement to call it serious we're getting down to the bottom of that huge pool of water that in 50s and 60s we thought Worth's inexhaustible da wather is going down no exception we've passed a point that we've never seen before in history here no no no hace desaparición simplemente con el agua sing igual que vamos hacer with the help of satellite technology our view is not limited to the surface of the earth locked in a tandem polar orbit twin satellites named Grace looked down at the earth Grace's ability to measure small changes in gravitational pull allows it to observe changes in water content from glaciers to groundwater these satellite measurements show areas around the world where water supplies are declining and where groundwater is being depleted oh you daddy I follow you vote don't yeah I'm gonna get a lobster Gilligan let's go to the game [Applause] in India a groundwater crisis has been building for decades NASA imagery of groundwater depletion shows clearly that something serious is happening in the northern state of Punjab [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] punjab means the land of five rivers it's rivers have been divided and diverted into a vast array of irrigation canals the situation in this vision of India is played baby girl according to dr. bow under singh sidhu the Commissioner of Agriculture for the state of Punjab those canals only served 27% of Punjab's agricultural needs rather than this state of Punjab we have almost 98 percent area and assured irrigation out of which about 27 percent is based on surface water that is a canal system and 73 percent is based on groundwater so since we are using large part of ground water for irrigation so situation is that groundwater table in the state is declining Yoshio tasini they are pani but two apart occur at the Pawnee Cardinal in DC when I was a child the water level was only one or two feet from the ground level and in my last 45 years the water level goes down every year it is declining at an increasing rate it started declining in 1979 I mean it will be an understatement to call it serious in my state I've talked with farmers who have sunk 60 bore wells in just one piece of farmland at they own and all of the 60 bore wells feeling in Marathi there's this world called silent silent really means a you know a body with bullet wounds that's what's happening to the land here it's being reduced to a body with bullet wounds and there is no water coming from there the water in an aquifer is called groundwater an aquifer is a geological formation that has the capacity to store and transmit water an aquifer is largely a nun confined aquifer which is close to the surface which is not confined on the top by another layer of rock and then there's the confined aquifer which is confined or compressed between two layers of impermeable Rock a large diameter well commonly called a dagwon is sunk into the ground by excavating rock or rock material close to the surface of the earth a borehole on the other hand is a hole that is drilled in a hard rock and a tube well is drilled in sediment or alluvium or soil which is unconsolable and therefore it needs a tube to keep the loose material from collapsing in we always say they've drawn what is actually the lifeline of India it's it's not the water that flows over the ground it's actually the water that flows under the ground that is a lifeline of majority of the country this is cool wonder sing a third-generation farmer who works with his father Schinder on their 20 acre farm at the edge of the village of boos raj the water that flows in cool winters fields comes at a price the declining water table means that who winter has had to deepen his wells every year to keep his farm viable for Punjabi farmers like cool winter choosing what crops to grow comes down to economics the fodder that cool undercuts every morning is destined for his cattle who provide milk and fuel for cooking in the form of manure collected daily by his great aunt nasib cor the Indian government provides guaranteed pricing for some crops and rice is consistently the most profitable crop for farmers to grow rice requires far more water than traditional crops and it goes heel not mañana in the adult next time next day in the future [Music] good job electricity is free for farmers most farmers leave their pumps on so when the unreliable power comes on their pumps run constantly in this situation the farmer is already stressed and depleting down water levels are proven to be the last straw in many cases farmers have actually committed suicides when their bore wells stopped yield in water the pressure on farmers in India is real and the number of suicides is astonishing according to the Indian National Crime Records Bureau there is an average of 32 farmer or farm worker suicides per day across India while that tragic fact can't be wholly attributed to falling groundwater it is clear that failing Wells is an important factor among farmers the highest suicide rate in India is in the state of Maharashtra [Music] Bangkok Syria 1 she works his family seven and a half acre farm near the town of Nagar saga fine because I was the Madhumita funny it's just I the to find a certainty try court open Elector attested world Adelaide 10 G+ or any other guy divided the mata satte over Italy with the panel Avila final agreement into static 820 Valley the latest attempt to drill a well came up dry despite a depth of 900 feet rain is now the only source of water for their crops bond cot and his cousin Shanker have had to take jobs in the town of Pune six hours away to help subsidize the family's farming operation for the family's domestic needs water is fetched every morning from a relative's abandoned borehole compared to other households in the area it is a luxury i Goti [Music] in the nearby village of Depok young water vessels are lined up in front of fountains that only run for an hour or two each morning the entire village relies on one working well three others have run dry water insecurity across rural India is a massive challenge that is hampered by the lack of government regulation aggron water remains unregulated entirely unregulated at this point of time Brahman water actually is not regulated here but we are slowly trying to regulate trying to regulate it what is missing from a more comprehensive management of India's groundwater is the science part which needs to focus on aquifers and the demand management part which needs to focus on changing influencing human behavior if I have a board well in my piece of land I own that water my land my water this sort of ownership is actually changing a common pool resource into a privatized resource in which no matter if the person next to me is thirsty or his crop is dying I can still take water from my borewell and cultivate sugarcane gentle yeah yeah yeah baby but Jackie Carnegie has it out you were probably Bieber chant upon email a nigga yes or no it it's tough to think about what's been in my family for well over a hundred years not being here in 20 [Music] we have plenty of sunlight we have plenty of good fertile soils we even have a multitude of highly intelligent hard-working people here but the common denominator for all of that is water water is the limiting factor in life in general but southwest Kansas specifically from space the surface of Southwest Kansas looks like an aerated checkerboard center-pivot irrigation spins perfect circles of corn and Milo in square mile and quarter-mile sections grace data confirms USGS well data and tells a story of dramatic declines in the high plains or Ogallala Aquifer our ground waters the Ogallala Aquifer the High Plains aquifer the Ogallala Aquifer is really granite wash off the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains over time that washed over the plains filled in the low spots it's a very prolific act for a very porous quite permeable and contains a lot of water there is recharge but it's at a very slow rate maybe a half of an inch per year lifeblood of our land is that that comes from the Ogallala Sioux Indian tribe it extends from North Central Texas up through Nebraska it's the largest freshwater aquifer in the Western Hemisphere and 56 it appeared if we were going to stay on the farm without more acres we would need to develop irrigation 50s 60s 70s and 80s irrigation was developed in western Kansas and that's when the high use of the aquifer began most farmers were drilling wells at this time and pumping to irrigate we've been pumping out of that for livelihoods to sustain ourselves and our livestock now with a deep turbine pumps and the pressurized center pivot system you could irrigate just about anywhere any type of soil and we did I would say we don't have an original well-functioning anymore they've all been read ruled irrigation is a good thing over the last three or four generations we've just over done a good thing as we pump water on our crops for irrigation we're constantly drawing from that like a straw so basically the water situation we're in currently as we've been drawing from this aquifer the source of water for several decades now and now we're down to the very bottom we're getting down to the bottom of that huge pool of water that in the 50s and 60s we thought Worth's inexhaustible in some locations the groundwater has basically disappeared if you're looking at your car gas tank and your gauge we're cleared down to the e when grandpa was drilling wells you find big gravel or rocks like this you're gonna find a really good will and now [Applause] now the only water is a couple three feet at the very bottom of the well that the pumps can't effectively access anymore [Music] we're Sublette Kansas is the county seat of Haskell County Kansas it's kind of the hub of our farm it started in 1902 my grandfather's father my great grandfather homesteaded on this corner in 1902 my great-great grandfather he received some ground from his father as a wedding gift sometime in 1928 my great-grandmother ordered the house out of a Gordon van tine catalog this is where my grandfather was raised and my dad was raised we're still farming that grounded this day and we've just been building on top of that this particular farmstead has been where the last two generations of our family has started out after college we lived there probably a year before we had any kids the irony is the new irrigation well we drilled a couple years ago actually led to the demise of the domestic well yeah that was hard I just I was like can't we just drill that well again right now my dad and my grandpa and my uncle Jarvis are currently partners in the farm Jay does more the economic side Jarvis does more than technology side it tends to work real well together we've got dad with the senior partner the experience my brother is the finance guy he's he's the mark in charge of marketing and our risk management I don't care for that so I'm lucky I get to do what I want to do I get to be out in the field producing more the hands-on my brother and I you know we still got another 20 years at this before we can even begin to maybe think about retiring looking at our boys the next generation and we're trying to figure out how do we make this thing last longer this thing being the aquifer it it's tough to think about what's been in my family for well over a hundred years not being here in 20 it may mean that my kids are my nephew's don't come back may not even have a chance if that's their desire when harvest time comes and I see what's come of the things that I've done that's whenever it really pays off for me and that's when I get an awesome feeling inside with a ninety-eight percent of the population that's not working on farms they need to understand that their food isn't coming from the grocery store shelf it's ultimately coming from the fields of the heartland of America and the heartland food is fed by the Ogallala Aquifer and the water that we draw from it I want that opportunity so bad to be able to follow in those steps of my parents grandparents and previous generations to see all the hard work that they've put in and with our water situation to see it hit like a brick wall you know I would consider coming back but I'd have to lock in a 40-year investment that I I can't surely make the courts 20 Colonels around which is excellent and it's 45 Colonels law so that's about 900 kernels that we multiply that by 30,000 plant population we divide that by 80,000 ferner per bushel it tells us that this corn with probably yield in the 220 to 240 the range which means which would be very good so this is a good crop here disturbs me this morning checking on this irrigation wheel that is showing signs of weakening when I checked the water there I found air suspended in the water and that means that down at the bottom the pump is starting to gas air like when you finish soda with a straw out of a glass right at the end you get that sucking sound well this is the very beginning of that sucking sound this will last another five or ten years but not even at the production rate that we're at today it's just a question of how much time is left I suppose we should let ourselves enjoy a good crop walleteer but we can't lose sight of the long term and that's what I worry about for Jared Jayden and Jessie Rhys but thinking about Jared and the challenges that that his generation faces that's what leaves you gasping for air kind of leave get a loss for what to do next will succeed somewhere I just always thought it would be here the population in southwest Kansas today would be reduced by 90% maybe more if you removed water from the equation and that's kind of a microcosm in a way for the whole planet and the way we're looking at the strain especially on groundwater fresh groundwater supplies all over the globe what's happening in the Ogallala is a strong indicator of what what we can expect in these other regions of great groundwater depletion yeah the fact that they're running out of water means that we will no longer be growing food there this aquifer issue has become kind of the insidious felt but not seen cancer if you will that's pitting neighbor against neighbor and communities are tearing themselves apart and that could all change if our state elected officials would step out in the middle of the court and call timeout and help us start making some mandatory changes this is not something that you can solve overnight with just a couple of different policies and it's not something that if you just enforce a couple of things now that's going to solve our water problem for the next 50 years this requires community buy-in for decades at the rate we're going today we don't have to 2100 to run out I think it's closer to 2050 or maybe even less the good news is all the information we need to take action and by a longer time horizon is all very clearly here the only thing missing is the resolve to start by taking the first step but it has to be a collective effort because an individual is just just announced a unilateral economic disarmament if you slow down your pump before your neighbor does [Music] - had mattiyahu salamence at Fukushima well my - citizen regarding economy.matt leg [Music] [Music] from Morocco completely to the west to east Algeria Tunisia Libya Egypt even to Iran in all these countries groundwater is going down no exception and no exception is going down and something has to be done the bell carry family well goes down almost 200 meters from a piece of broken glass a shaft of light reaches for the bottom dug by hand and deepened on two occasions the well is now covered and abandoned there fuller z YC did rocky she is bad seed money tell me sit on doumeki apart-er to the moon Luka Missy Avila me Gilligan II don't Sarah coos Alex potassium problems also so tell see on expert power said to Ho sauce yo Holly was active on export a is Nokia said course export this and also don't before arretez at such chance it's all gone : degrees and continue decreasing more than three meter yeah it's too much Oh nah nah construction Gandhi visit the Nouveau day also sweet Iran no Timon you would learn up those whose this is mrs. generation condition climatic so far Baldy Vermont liquor and who do we lost kid v what I hear he says Kelly to the region portfolio return Matt Matt the song the soos region the depletion has gone over 70 meters there was our exploitation of current water unfortunately by farmer mainly because this farmer have big farmers and the crop are destinated for to export and then the over exploits people economically were quitting the orchard is they earn money by by quitting the or should let them die Mandira beyond survey in notion of human wallow and Emma sorry it's really did well in nadir how muddy publishers of Raqqa in Syria how much Tommy Tommy Tommy the camel walk will she Atlantic another dealer Cinderella member under dollars a holiday a limit Morales had another Shira in this boy had more only mechanically as Morocco started to face their water challenges they began by building dams before the sixties of the last century Morocco was mainly entirely dependent on grow mortar and after the 60s the late king hassan ii has decided to adopt a new policy of water which is called the policy of big dams bocconcini a poorly ventilated winner are constantly Bihar don't eat my hand at work her husband never produced fruition knock some ugly G the country a Consuela bars Nancy you sir could the prison Bashar s Akutan term the fin on cm egg Alamo on top that packed socio-economic locals with who we see who borrows use vintage Finn it's it per a million bars dual original African capacity that was so mean on the meter cube the carrot and the stick when you build more dams when you build more you are just giving carrot all the time and people are claiming water but we tell them well that's good we build what will build for you bring water but at the same time you have to save water and if you don't save it penalty that's it that's the the stick and you have to pay for water that's a stick you have two banners near oh my gosh I just hang in more about Intel not an American [Music] in Peru the iike valley has become a lucrative farming region it's located in the desert between the foothills of the Andes and sand dunes that stretch westward four miles toward the Pacific Ocean sale in California Peru in kissimmee economicus Elio a car general puerto a trabajo de mis apple-pie re-ment apparel mundo the crops grown on large farms around iike are mostly exported and the farms use water pumped from wells is a parasail simplemente con el agua singer Gua Kaiba Moses air and historical Travis paneer soup also via treat metros tenia Sawa yeah I wanna give us a tree seen tough meat of paravasu ito a via general Tina's how one set us a condo era mass event at Renta de profundis ah and the Remington where a soprano deck area or attack a son doscientos a asiento agenda I tan T Seema's don t say no porque esta haciendo yo sé como la Paz Arcata prohibido que estamos destroy yendo no solamente el futuro de las de la generation amended eras sino que estamos de pree Dondo recourses in all of these economic activities there must be an absolutely respect for resources and for the rights of other people pelo sido una los primeros producto de Despereaux freken en el mundial es un crimen poor decir lo menos sembra risperidone desierto porque son o los productos mess demand antes de rigueur so Edco asparagus should have been outlawed way back when this problem began Sunday goes home or rent a blaze no Momo rent a blaze Alito de tener oqt voce a mandate on tagua cbn cierto rentable a sin embargo el costo ambiental e sosial no se host offical PK no realtor histórico mente Nicasio product or de productos ona sega's yahi tantos producto que podrían ser perfectamente prova chaebols yo no se hace porque lo que se bukas o la una ganancia a me no kami preocupa no solamente la la la de producción de los uros naturals Chiado esta muy bien dos see no la profunda exclusion que vivimos t large landlords came NT iike most of their capital is from lima and some from chile and from outside and they started buying up all of the wells they could from small but they had a lot of capital and if you were a small farmer or a medium-sized farmer and your well breaks down you don't have the capital Esposito casi total a historia los últimos a nose te la pequeña agricultura como a ido simplemente say ego Marja Nando de tortilla probe diva-ish Ateneo Pericles de servicio de harlot Chocula okay our second minimus parasailers America Kuya and his small farmers co-op sold two of their wells to a large farm because they couldn't afford to fix them they run another well with a diesel engine one of the wells that they sold now sits behind locks cameras in an electric fence una empresa Grande armée Jurado trabajo de la noche y da da no cuenta que etiquette and oh I love pasta mas cerca knows the small farmers in terms of drinking water where they live recently in the last three years have tap water tap water through the municipalities they have it two to three times a week for about an hour okay that's the only water they have drinking water I will tell you the words of one of these big agro exporters that went north he told me David what you're talking about is absolutely right and I fear that when the people don't have drinking water they will come onto my farm and burn it down meat amor es que puede Ricardo a cool TiVo's nam-il Valencia Valencia delinquency al protamine Valenza política we witnessed some of that violence when we visited the town of oku keiichi what we have here is a town that's trying to prevent pipe from being laid and through that pipe would run water from a well to areas farther away where this company would use it for their crops joseline Guzman is a resident of oku Calle and she's been opposing the company's plans SK no permiso in okay lame ok seasick en el agua por que ser una cosa sent to the Hobbit enemies the company Agricola la venta is awaiting the government water authorities approval to start using three wells the company says it has permission to lay the water pipe but sections of pipe were left burned by those who are trying to stop the project some of the people spent that night blocking access to the road to keep the work for me zooming that night turned out to be a quiet one the next morning we met Jocelyn again nosotros on was a presenter hockey bukakke after a brief interview she offered to show us another location where she had heard the company was starting to lay more pipes que pasa mijo amigo slowing down the video you can clearly see the moment when one of the men punched her in the mouth and then one of them yelled we're gonna go to your house later we reached the company's manager Javier de los ríos by phone he said he wouldn't approve of any violence by his workers he said those who opposed the company's plans had acted aggressively toward his workers and he accused joseline of burning the company's o Celine said it was the townspeople who burned the pipes in protest and they're worried that when the company starts to pump water it will leave them with less for their crops the company's manager insisted that pumping groundwater here won't cause any harm for the small farmers but in this region of Peru groundwater levels have been declining in many areas and it's likely there will be more conflicts like this one in the future [Music] there may be a migration out of here if this keeps on happening like happened in the Dust Bowl years [Music] I feel like we're standing in between the railroad tracks and we see the train coming and the lights going like this and we're saying God darn it I hope he don't hear this we've passed a point that we've never seen before in history here the whole western United States it's kind of scary to know where are you safe this one used to have water coming out just out of the well head goes down 138 feet there's nothing if nothing's put back in eventually you run out that's where they're at right now you can't continue withdrawing from the bank without shutting the bank down if it were to start raining tomorrow and rain for a year and a half or two years straight we'd still have this problem it's dry it is this grip this fields bone-dry Dust Bowl was a result of the water problem just do the math I mean there's hundreds of thousands of acres fallowed that are doing us nothing but making blowing dust and tumbleweeds some areas around here we there is no more groundwater to pump is completely dry you can drill a well as however much money you want to spend you don't stand a real good chance of puck hitting water grapes of wrath' was written about what was going on here during those dust four years if I could I'd leave for what for family and land and stuff I'd leave everybody is using groundwater that's how we sustain ourselves through a dry time where there's no surface water and we're all pumping from the same bowl we all got straws in the ground over the past three years we've had six wells blowout wells have been going dry already I can point you to properties I can see three of them right now who have had their wells go dry [Music] in the wine-growing region of Paso Robles and the vast fertile Central Valley widespread groundwater depletion threatens the future of residents and farmers alike we use this this corn silage used to feed our cattle and as you can see it's pretty burnt up from night and might comes along with the dust and thus comes along with dryness you know whoever's got the longest straw being the deepest well there's gonna be the one with water the longest this is our family farm Kissick farms we've been farming here approximately hundred five years this grove has been pushed out due to the fact of limited water it's a Washington Naval variety that we had here and this fruit is shipped all across the United States into Japan Korea even in China there's no longer enough water to do everything that we want to do we can no longer grow as much food as we're growing as inefficiently as we're growing it we can no longer ignore the fact that some of our agricultural practices are leading to problems with surface water and groundwater availability for local communities we can't do this and that but that's what we do that's how groundwater has been managed we pretended groundwater was some separate part of the system that we could we could ignore we can't ignore it any longer [Music] [Laughter] [Music] this is the Christian Valley and so this valley is open to the what's called the Templeton gap so it's open to the Pacific Ocean basically so every afternoon we get these breezes come through here and that's what allows these wine grapes to thrive because it could be a hundred degrees in the day but it'll drop to 55 at night we've probably dropped an average of 70 feet in the last ten years it's probably dropped half of that in the last three to four you know when you look at the rise and fall of civilization some water is often at the at the center whether they were successful or ultimately they maybe weren't I mean I think we should do something about I don't want to sit here and say God had done something about that yeah doggone it maybe there was a problem the county is getting a 1% more or less getting a 1% property tax off the value of these vineyards which is probably at least $30,000 an anchor for every vineyards is here plus they're getting it off the winery plus they get sales taxes and all that if this industry collapses it's gonna hit the County coffers pretty hard we have known that a number of our basins have been declining for literally decades a variety of reasons from simple more pumping than the basin can stand to other basins which have had pollution from septic tank systems and more growth than they can sustain so in the last 20 to 30 years we we've seen groundwater supplies decline in many parts of the county it's really only in the last three to four years with the drought really hitting us hard that we are seeing some more dramatic effects we're seeing well levels drop very seriously especially in Paso Robles we're seeing sea water intrusion in a groundwater basin that's just to the south of us here and so I say that the drought has put a magnifying glass on a problem that's been brewing for a long time here behind me is a stock trough for our cattle just on the other side of that fence there's a well that was put in by a vineyard and within one month of the vineyard well going in this went dry come on girls we cut that number of cattle down by 65% because we've cut back on water usage some of the large wineries in the area they're well goes a thousand feet and the tube coming out of the ground is this big versus the tube that comes out of the ground and our well is this big there's this going 24/7 well ours is only going enough to water the cattle and to supply water to the houses come on Roli there you go we are 100% reliant on our groundwater early in the 1990s we saw a very large influx of vineyards planted in the area lots and lots and lots of wine grapes which has been a spectacular thing for our economy I can't downplay that but as a rural resident I found myself personally getting very worried back in the early nineties even that that this supposedly endless aquifer that we sat over that we were assured would last forever when we bought her place would be endangered my wells dry for two years already okay ready let's go let's go good boy couldn't come you you need the ball good I had a nice lawn in the back growing my garden and everything and all of a sudden you know it's just these vineyards starting to kill us there's a couple beans on that side but the main vineyards that are killing us is over here behind us well you can see this where the water comes from my neighbor's well you know it's we're all hooked up together so actually both neighbors have offered to help me out on water no it's it's nice but they are I'm pretty sure they can only take so much you know it's kind of sad for the homeowners you know we can't afford it well they can afford six seven eight wells the Central Valley of California is a highly productive agricultural area it has lots of sunshine but limited rainfall and it's an excellent area for growing food crops and it's kind of the breadbasket of the u.s. as the water table drops that can cause clay silty materials to compact as the water drains out of them people will call up and say hey if something's happening your casing is pushing out of the ground the casing is not pushing out of the ground the surrounding ground around those wells are sinking so out in the San Joaquin Valley I measure two things primarily one being groundwater levels and the other being aquifer system compaction which is a proxy for land subsidence I've been measuring ground water levels declining almost all of the wells are either at near or beyond historical lows meaning that they're lower than they ever have been in their history hold it 166 and now we reel it back up and see where the water line is 5.45 in order to basically give a visual to people of how much the ground has been sinking Joe Pollan stood next to a large telephone pole and on that telephone pole he put dates of where the land surface was at various times and you can see that near the top of that telephone pole is that's where the land surface used to be this can be a major problem if you have a canal going across an area that's subsiding in the middle of it then all of a sudden the flow in the canal is is disrupted and you can't just get water in a canal to go back uphill this is a broken canal lining I'm on the Delta Mendota Canal and this has been a problematic area for subsidence for many years subside this occurs when you have two things you have to have clay to the right geology and you have to have groundwater level declines a clay is a little bit different than other particles because it's a platy mineral and when it's deposited it's deposited in random orientations there's a lot of space between the grains it holds lots of water when groundwater level declines the aquifer responds and the clay units in particular responds so that they actually start rearranging themselves into a stack and you can see that there's a lot less space between a stack of plates than randomly oriented one so the result is there's a smaller volume underground of clay and the land subsides as a result of that the clay cannot hold or store as much water as it did before the compaction occurred once it's compacted the capacity to retain water is lesson I'm sitting on the bridge that crosses the outside canal which is another canal in the San Joaquin Valley and as as you may be able to see here that the water surface is higher than the bridge surface when the bridge was originally built the water was quite a bit below the bottom of the bridge but as subside ins has occurred the bridge has come down the water surface elevation has to remain at a certain level to allow it to continue flowing downhill but now you see that the water surface is higher than the bridge and this bridge has to be replaced because it's eroding the integrity of the bridge [Music] so part of the tension about water resources around the world is this balance between how much water humans want and how much water ecosystems require environmental regulations are causing the loss of so much good clean water well I mean it doesn't help when you have people in Sacramento and San Francisco who are letting a little fish rule how water can be distributed the environmentalists have been using the delta smelt as a reason to push more and more of that water out through the bay the more water humans take out of the system the more pressure there is on natural ecosystems the less water we leave in rivers and streams for fish we lost 200,000 acre-feet a year up to 200,000 acre-feet to the San Joaquin River restoration Act we call it an environmental drought was the demand for water grows the pressure to take more water by humans out of ecosystems is growing the answer really is not find more surface water in a place like California we use all the surface water pretty much in California already we're not going to take anymore without causing massive ecosystem additional ecosystem disruption what we see under these free-for-all conditions is that many people are pumping and the water table is dropping it's now dropping at the fastest rate ever and so that means that people with shallower wells which are many many people they're wells are going dry [Applause] oh dude most adored a mucho rancheros yes lo que yo pienso que esta pasando aquí que que no you ever EKU Stannis and hola todos man eres para sacar super gusto farmers come first that is the valley is set up that way when I heard the motor not a putt the well just making loud buzzing noise and then I tried to turn on spigot and nothing we've been without water for about six or seven months now I called the well company again they came out put the dipstick down and nothing they said you were all's dead crops are the number one priority yes estamos dando mucho but I usin because they're saying so true no sunde ha no Sinagua there's a town called Porterville it's not too too far from us there they're in bad shape what's happening now is a lot of their homes the majority of the homes have their own private well system which feeds water to their home and those wells are all drying up it is absolutely an emergency Tulare County is really ground zero for the drought in California approximately 55 to 60% of the dry wells in California are in Tulare County with the majority of those wells being in this specific area of East Porterville unless it directly affects you or someone you love you don't understand what these people are going through [Music] the days of having abundant water in many parts of the world are long gone the key is not the resource Percy the key is governance of the research it's figuring out how to manage surface water better so that we're using it more carefully and we're not over drafting the ground level increase the recharge into aquifer systems to basically build up that bank account we have no choice but to figure out how to use the water we're already extracting from the system more efficiently let's figure out how to grow more food with less water there's tremendous room for irrigation efficiency right we need far more drip irrigation we need far more deep drip irrigation changing the crop mix and growing less water intensive crops grow in the right things in the right places in some places it's possible that we're taking too much out of the system and the only way to bring it back into balance is to reduce what we're doing it's a multidisciplinary task that requires an integration of hydrogeology as a science understanding aquifers engineering in improving efficiencies of supplies and sociology economics and ecology in managing demand so that we have a comprehensive toolkit of term water management we have to teach to them to make them a word about this problem [Music] if we'll be thinking about water pricing and you know charging that the true value for water right now in most places in the u.s. anyway we don't really pay for the water we just pay for the service to move the water from point A to point A to point B every state has their own set of rules and laws and regulations and so it's hard to come up with general management principles that could be applied everywhere without some kind of community consensus it's going to keep going the way it's going why not you know everybody's in this scramble and get as much as they can for for themselves so we need to kind of force the community to have a consensus through a management agency if you do it collectively then everyone get the ownership and when you get the ownership of the diagnosis and again and from there build a strategy collectively and from the strategies developed action plan then at that point everyone also co-holder get ownership of that expand as we try to implement it because they see that succeeding in doing it it's a success for all I feel like there are a number of things that we should be talking about in California and around the world that we don't talk about they're off they're off limits you're telling farmers what they can grow what they shouldn't grow changing water pricing you know rethinking water law scrap the whole thing and start from the beginning do it over again it would look completely different [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: USA TODAY

Views: 444,484

Rating: 4.6245852 out of 5

Keywords: USAT, USA TODAY, News, Ian James, Steve Elfers, Pulitzer Center, The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Morocco, Peru, Kansas, California, India, groundwater, aquifer, water crisis, farming, groundwater pollution, groundwater contamination

Id: RjsThobgq7Q

Length: 63min 58sec (3838 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 14 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/R50cent]

Ok, I'll be the one to say it:

Fuck companies that bottle water and sell it back to us. Morally bankrupt slime, every one of them.

[u/magnumxl5]

Connecticut here -my backyard is flooded all the time by both runoff and groundwater - they can have some of that.

[u/k1rage]

Glad I dont live in an area where water is an issue

[u/welloffdebonaire]

What’s amazing is the the US is basically giving it’s water away to Saudi Arabia for free. Doesn’t seem like it would be a popular thing to allow to happen.

https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/water-wars/

[u/Garrett42]

Ooooh this hits me home, my family owns a farm in Nebraska. The way we irrigate it is by having a converted desiel engine simultaneously pump natural gas (to feed the engine) and water to the crops. Pretty neat. But EVERYONE in the great plains pumps water from the same auquifer thus it is mostly empty at this point and stated to run out in under 50 years and as soon as 2028... Not really sure what to do about it but really would like something to change.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer Link too it for anyone interested

[u/Danielle082]

Nestle. A dirty ass company. We try very hard not to buy nestle products in my house because of what kind of greedy company and group of people they are.

[u/Guy_In_Florida]

Before fracking was a thing in Oklahoma, our brick home was cracking like crazy. It was from the settling of the foundation as the water supply under it was disappearing. No one wants to talk about this problem, yet.

[u/ratpoison987]

Oh...

Who thought there was a magical ground water fairy that replaced everything you pumped out of the ground?

[u/FedorsQuest]

Fuck a bank, I need a 20 year water tank - Mos Def