water depletion

Gather App
H

hurleyjd

CT Supporter
Cattle Today Supporter
Joined
Sep 7, 2006
Messages
5,995
City & State/Province
Yantis, Texas
http://news.yahoo.com/drought-apocalyps ... 14264.html
Does anyone think that it would be feasible to drill injection and when we have floods try to recharge the ground water. Could it be done or would the cost of filtering and removing any contaminates make it to costly. For instance if we wanted to move the flood waters over the Rockies with a pipeline how many lift stations would we need. I know the water pipeline from Lake Fork to Lake Towakoni is large enough to drive a car through.
 
When you have "X" amount of water anything you do is simply redirecting it another direction for another use. To me availability for farm use should have top priority. People have to be fed. I would put it will above the need to preserve some insignificant fish, snail or bird. I would gladly go out htere and kill the last remaining one of those worthless little critters just to free up the available water for irrigation and food production.
 
Maybe had they not tore down so many dams to save these little fish and stuff there would be more water for people. Don't understand that myself. Also don't understand why we continue to reward those who cannot feed themselves and are of no benefit to society bonuses to have more children who will only strain resources even further. If you had more cattle than you could feed then the Humane Society would be all over you. Do we set a higher value on animals than we do on people?
 
There could be more efficient ways to use water and reuse water. Back when I was working I had an assignment in the Mojave dessert. They had dug wells to water alfalfa . A lot of the fields had been watered over the years to a point the salt was on top of the ground and they could not raise any thing. I think that is happening in a lot of areas where irrigation is used. Just saw an ad in the Farm Bureau Texas Agriculture magazine for a drought tolerant corn that did not need as much water. This could be an answer for less water use. Always wondered why we need to use 3 gallons of water to move maybe 8 ounces a urine out of the house. We really do use a lot of water for things that are not necessary. Any one ever read the book in titled The Edible Landscape.
 
Desalination plants are expensive but utilized is most all developed countries with limited supplies of fresh water. Probably see many more in the future. Some recycling is already being done on a limited basis...right from the sewer plant to the water plant. :yuck: :yuck:
 
I don't think we can be serious about water restrictions until we address golf and the turf and landscape industry. Obama recently spoke about the drought in California then turned around and played golf of a golf course built in the desert that uses over a million gallons a day just to keep the grass alive. This makes no sense to me when people producing food cannot get water yet these golf courses continue to pump water at rate 3 - 4 times higher than courses elsewhere in the US.

Turf companies around here will put an inch of rain on their turf every two days. This is over 27,000 gallons per acre! Then the sod is headed for lawns and golf courses where they will continue to be watered. Makes little sense to me. If we truly have a water problem then we need to cut out the wasteful uses of water and I don't think food production is one of them.

http://time.com/7853/obama-golfs-water- ... e-drought/
 
I won't make any friends saying this, but irrigated cotton farming uses tremendous amounts of water(circles use around 500 gpm for a 120 acres circle) There are literally 1000's of them running spring, summer and fall
I understand they are beginning to regulate the farmer. The numbers I've heard are 15" per year per acre
25000 gal per inch per acre
x 120 acres
____________
3000000
x 15 inches
___________
45000000
that's just one circle !

All for a product that is in surplus and imported from foreign countries at a much lower price.
So low that the US government has to subsidies the US grown cotton so the US farmer can make a living

The economy in the south is so dependent on the cotton industry that it's not possible to do anything about it till the water runs out :shock:
 
Desalination and pipelining water is used all over. In Texas however, people are not prepared to pay for it yet. Take SA and I-35 corridor. They refuse to pay the money to supply those areas adequately. They try to flood people's land and all kind of other non-sense rather than pay for the water that it pipelined to their back yard.
 
hurleyjd":9jajqqjb said:
http://news.yahoo.com/drought-apocalypse-approaches-colorado-river-basin-dries-221214264.html
Does anyone think that it would be feasible to drill injection and when we have floods try to recharge the ground water. Could it be done or would the cost of filtering and removing any contaminates make it to costly. For instance if we wanted to move the flood waters over the Rockies with a pipeline how many lift stations would we need. I know the water pipeline from Lake Fork to Lake Towakoni is large enough to drive a car through.
Click to expand...
Recharge ground water with injection?
Not a chance. Billions of gallons of water would be required at very low pressures and flow rates to keep from blowing out the formations or packing off the sands.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top