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USA: Irrigation Nation Faces A Dry Future
September 20th, 2016
Via Pacific Standard, an interesting look at how irrigation helped create America’s breadbasket and how it threatens to destroy it: Rick Hammond turned a yellow dial until it locked into place with a hollow clank, and a high-pressure hum filled the air. Across the windswept field, a light started blinking atop a metal contraption that […]
Read more »Water: Precious Commodity Sparks Fear, Feuds and Lawsuits On U.S. Great Plains
April 6th, 2016
Via E&E Publishing, a report on It took 10 million years for rainfall and glacial runoff to fill the sprawling Ogallala Aquifer. It took a century to drain a third of it and threaten its future. Spread under parts of eight Great Plains states — Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and […]
Read more »A Boon(e) for Water Pipelines?
August 7th, 2008
As recently featured in Popular Mechanics, legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens is in the planning stages of a $1.5 billion initiative to pump billions of gallons of water from an ancient aquifer beneath the Texas Panhandle and build pipelines to ship them to thirsty cities such as Dallas.  As the article notes: “…So far, […]
Read more »T. Boone Pickens: Water is the New Oil
June 13th, 2008
As recently reported by Business Week, T. Boone Pickens thinks water is the “new oil’ and he’s betting $100 million that he is correct. As the article notes: “…Pickens has also bought up the rights to a considerable amount of water that lies below this part of the High Plains in a vast aquifer that […]
Read more »Geo-Strategic Implications of Dwindling Water Resources
January 11th, 2008
Noticed an interesting report on the geo-strategic implications of climate change put together by The CNA Corporation, a nonprofit institution that conducts in-depth, independent research and analysis. CNA brought together eleven retired three-star and four-star admirals and generals to provide advice, expertise and perspective on the impact of climate change. Here is what the report […]
Read more »Water Politics in the U.S. West – No Dry Spell Ahead
October 27th, 2007
The New York Times Magazine recently published a long article on the drought in the Southwest by Jon Gertner. His main thesis is that water shortages resulting from climate change may take a greater toll on humanity than a slow rise in the sea level. I believe it also gives a prescient snapshot of the […]
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