Approximately 27% of the water used in Utah comes from the Colorado River and 60% of Utahans benefit from the river. 82% of Utah water goes to farmers. Significant amounts of that water usage is to grow Cotton and Alfalfa. Two water intensive crops that are largely exported out of the country.
In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, especially just to ship them out of the country. Unfortunately the Governor of Utah makes his money (you guessed it) growing Alfalfa in a desert, and he recently gave an impassioned speech about how those of us asking for certain types of agriculture to stop in our desert don't understand how important farming is.
Chinese and other overseas investors own those US desert farms. They were attracted here by the massively generous water rights they get automagically.
Very little of the water used to grow hay and alfalfa actually ends up in the hay and alfalfa to be exported. Most of the water ends up in the atmosphere via evapotranspiration.
The amount exported is something like 0.005% of the evapotranspiration amount.
Here are some numbers [1] for Idaho crops. There might be some differences in Utah but they should be in the same ballpark.
> Not much water is exported with alfalfa hay. Potential irrigated alfalfa hay yield at elevations near 4000 feet is about 7.5 tons/acre. Hay harvested at 12% moisture removes 240 lbs water/ton hay, or 1,800 lbs/acre for a normal crop of alfalfa hay per year.
> Evapotranspiration (ET) is the primary use of water by alfalfa and averages about 36 inches/year (900 mm) at Kimberly. The ET at peak periods of 0.4 inches/day (10 mm/day) can reach 4080 tons of water per acre and 45 tons per acre per day.
Are there good figures on how much of that water is “wasted” and how much ends up replenishing groundwater reservoirs? Utah isn’t that close to the Pacific so that water has a lot of opportunities to do something other than flow into the ocean.
We grow crops in the desert because there is so much sun there that the crops grow faster and to a higher consistent quality, and because there is much fewer pests that damage the plants.
If this is an argument, it is a very poor one and if this is a justification, it is entirely irrelevant.
Deserts have ecosystems that are adapted to life with limited water. Trying to transplant a crop that evolved with plentiful water into an ecosystem with very little is a bad idea. Even worse is the capitalistic incentive to divert natural watercourse to farm in an arid region.
Incorrect.
Per the Colorado River Authority agreement, Utah is allocated up to 24% of the rivers water. Utah is not even consuming it’s allocation. Due to the obviously increasing scarcity, Utah is pushing to increase its usage to meet its already agreed upon allowance. And that is because other states are greedily eyeing what is left in the banks and murmuring, “if Utah isn’t using their entire share, *we* should have it!”.
And like Utah local leaders are supposed to, they are fighting for their local constituency interests, because that’s what we elect them to do.
We have removed conflict of interest completely from the conversations of today. Jesus, that's one huge conflict of interest, but no one in power and the voters just don't care. Depressing!!
California is still worse. NO ALMONDS. They are water pigs and if you eat almonds you are aiding and abetting environmental damage at a grotesque scale.
You can live out there with little water impact if you don't insist on importing the kind of green water intensive landscaping that the rest of the country wants. People living there is relatively ok from a water point of view (though from a power usage perspective we really should be building very different homes in that area too) it's doing farming in some of the drier parts of the US that seems wasteful when we know water is an issue there.
They should grow drought resistant crops that use less water, because what they're doing now isn't sustainable and will end soon. Maybe wheat, maybe some livestock grazing, maybe nothing at all in some parts.
So that's your opinion, and it's a perfectly valid opinion. We also need a better plan on how to use the water sooner rather than later, so we need to tell the Governor to get off his damn ass and do something productive rather than wasting water for his own damn benefit. If you can't see how that's just not conflict of interest, then we really can't have a proper conversation.
The farming will stop, one way or another. That much is certain, since the river is drying up. Whether it will stop in time to prevent other issues is the question.
The same is true in California, where almonds, which consume massive amounts of water, are grown, along with alfalfa which is largely exported. Also, stunningly, rice is even grown, which requires flooding fields with water.
All of which is to say, our water problems are as much a political problem - due to overuse in farming - as anything.
There’s an argument to be made that states/nations should have some amount of self-sufficiency, or you risk running into the current issue where all of our Chinese import microchips are potentially compromised. I can see how Utah wouldn’t want to be entirely beholden to other states for its agriculture.
That said, arguments like yours present a powerful reason not to waste resources on what is largely illusory security.
Just like we fight deforestation by planting trees maybe we should fight drought by re-watering our land. It's a massive logistical problem, to be sure, but it seems like humans already have a pretty good handle on draining water from the land.
They could start by banning lawns and golf courses in the desert. No reason someone living in Phoenix needs a verdant green lawn. Maybe place some limits on unsustainable agriculture in the desert. I imagine such bans would be a tough sell in most parts but it's hard to imagine how else the land can recover.
Phoenix is a desert but it wasn't ever devoid of water like people think. Its more like a "green desert" of sorts. Its very existence is the result of the sheer amount of water naturally running through the area. Was once the alfalfla capital of the US due to the water and the number of growing seasons.
The only reason it started growing so quickly is because A/C became available. Prior to that they couldn't use swamp coolers mid summer due to the monsoon season making it too humid to work. Water, power, etc, all of that was already there.
Came across a recent 10-minute VICE video about the desert area of Washington County, Utah trying to build a new pipeline to pump water from the Colorado River: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWpui1P9cAY
Although the Utah officials are aware that the Colorado River is drying up, they basically justify it saying (paraphrase), "Utah hasn't gotten its fair share yet".
Also as trivia... if you're familiar with the popular Youtube channel "What's Inside", the family lives in St George UT which is the growing city the VICE video is about. The family often mentions the advantages of St. George after recently moving from SLC.
(https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatsInside/videos)
Does anyone have educated views on desalinization tech? That seems to be the few ways out of this that's totally within our control. I imagine we'll rob Peter to pay Paul with it via extincting a bunch fish we didn't mean to in desal turbines or something unexpected like that, but that aside..
I've read about some pretty interesting recent developments in desalination and other water "cleaning" technologies lately, but they're all still "in the lab" as it were. Nothing of the newest and most amazing stuff I've read about has yet progressed to the point of being in any widespread use.
As another reply mentions, existing technologies that are in use tend to be quite expensive (in terms of cost and power/resource usage required to get the job done on any sort of large scale).
We're not going to make any of these hard choices. We're going to keep assuming some nameless person in the future will come up with a way to solve these problems without any sacrifice from us because we're under the collective delusion that the future is always better than the past. Instead, the future is going to be grim because we're refusing to do anything active here in the present to make the future better.
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In my opinion we have absolutely no business growing these crops in a desert, especially just to ship them out of the country. Unfortunately the Governor of Utah makes his money (you guessed it) growing Alfalfa in a desert, and he recently gave an impassioned speech about how those of us asking for certain types of agriculture to stop in our desert don't understand how important farming is.
Of the remaining 18%,
~ 8% goes to commercial/industrial use
~ 10% goes to municipal residential use (outdoor: 6%, indoor: 4%) [1]
[1] https://le.utah.gov/interim/2012/pdf/00002706.pdf
It's not that 8% of the remaining 18% is commercial/industrial; it's that 8% of the total (not part of the 82% agricultural) is commercial.
In other words:
* 44% of non-agricultural use (8% of the total, within the 18% non-ag) is commercial/industrial,
* 33% of non-agricultural use (6% of the total, within the 18% non-ag) is outdoor residential, and
* 22% of non-agricultural use (4% of the total, within the 18% non-ag) is indoor residential
^Data are on page 4/16 of the linked PDF
[0]https://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/+symposium/proceedings/2019/Arti...
ref: https://grist.org/agriculture/u-s-southwest-already-parched-...
The amount exported is something like 0.005% of the evapotranspiration amount.
Here are some numbers [1] for Idaho crops. There might be some differences in Utah but they should be in the same ballpark.
> Not much water is exported with alfalfa hay. Potential irrigated alfalfa hay yield at elevations near 4000 feet is about 7.5 tons/acre. Hay harvested at 12% moisture removes 240 lbs water/ton hay, or 1,800 lbs/acre for a normal crop of alfalfa hay per year.
> Evapotranspiration (ET) is the primary use of water by alfalfa and averages about 36 inches/year (900 mm) at Kimberly. The ET at peak periods of 0.4 inches/day (10 mm/day) can reach 4080 tons of water per acre and 45 tons per acre per day.
[1] https://www.uidaho.edu/-/media/UIdaho-Responsive/Files/cals/...
It's so staggeringly wasteful it's hard to understand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Desert
Replace water-intensive crop with something more appropriate.
Replace flood irrigation with something like aquaponics which is leagues more water efficient.
Deserts have ecosystems that are adapted to life with limited water. Trying to transplant a crop that evolved with plentiful water into an ecosystem with very little is a bad idea. Even worse is the capitalistic incentive to divert natural watercourse to farm in an arid region.
> 82% of Utah water goes to farmers.
In 2021, we don't need to grow Alfalfa in the desert. Especially not when it's being exported out of state anyway.
It's better than what we usually do: destroy natural bio-diverse habitats along rivers and coasts and replace them with housing and strip malls.
63% goes to California for growing almonds and oranges? and 0% left for Mexicans?
https://www.kold.com/story/25067593/colorado-river-flows-int...
You might as well just say people shouldn't be living in most of the western US then since a majority of it receives very little rainfall.
It's very easy to call these people out when you're not directly affected. Yes just strip them of their major sources of income. No issue there....
You need a better plan than just telling the Governor to shut up and be ok with losing money.
All of which is to say, our water problems are as much a political problem - due to overuse in farming - as anything.
Flooding fields is not required for rice farming. Its done to control weeds, not because the rice crop demands it.
That said, arguments like yours present a powerful reason not to waste resources on what is largely illusory security.
They could start by banning lawns and golf courses in the desert. No reason someone living in Phoenix needs a verdant green lawn. Maybe place some limits on unsustainable agriculture in the desert. I imagine such bans would be a tough sell in most parts but it's hard to imagine how else the land can recover.
The only reason it started growing so quickly is because A/C became available. Prior to that they couldn't use swamp coolers mid summer due to the monsoon season making it too humid to work. Water, power, etc, all of that was already there.
A better example is someplace like Las Vegas.
https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/default/files/files/2017/08/Sc...
Although the Utah officials are aware that the Colorado River is drying up, they basically justify it saying (paraphrase), "Utah hasn't gotten its fair share yet".
Also as trivia... if you're familiar with the popular Youtube channel "What's Inside", the family lives in St George UT which is the growing city the VICE video is about. The family often mentions the advantages of St. George after recently moving from SLC. (https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatsInside/videos)
And now I understand why farms waste so much of it.
As another reply mentions, existing technologies that are in use tend to be quite expensive (in terms of cost and power/resource usage required to get the job done on any sort of large scale).
Desalinization works just fine--if you have an ocean nearby.
In California, desalinization plants keep getting built and will eventually be able to handle the water needs of people near the coasts.
However, there is no way desalinization can ever support farming. And that's 80+% of the water consumption.
Either you shut down the farms now or when the water runs out--that's the only option.
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+water+knife+novel
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/how-the-we...