WaterWired

Care for Some Hay and Rice with Our Water?

Lloyd G. Carter sent me this post and granted me permission to repost it. It's a piece written by Patrick Porgans and Carter, about the California drought, agriculture, jobs, and shipping water overseas - virtual water- in the form of low-value crops.

Whenever we produce something in the USA and use water in its production, and then ship that product overseas, the water used in its producton goes overseas as well - as virtual or embedded water.

But you also need to remember that not all the water used in production is completely consumed; some of it gets reused, ultimately to return to the hydrological cycle.

Not everyone thinks the virtual water concept is useful; here is what the Australian National Water Commission thinks.

Here is their post, Hay! Doubt About the Drought?

In 2009, the last year of the so-called Great California Drought, some strange things happened: Growers had a “hay day” in the Imperial Valley desert; Sacramento Valley growers produced a near record amount of rice, and down south, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Met), the largest urban water supplier in the nation, experienced record-breaking water sales. All of this despite repeated mainstream media accounts in 2009 of an economy-wrecking “dust bowl” drought.

The two things that hay and rice have in common are that both of them consume a great deal of water for their dollar value and they produce very little net income.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the California rice harvest in 2009 was up nine percent from the previous year and near the record crop of 2004.

According to the rice growers’ publication, the minimum amount of water required to grow a crop of rice is about 42 inches; however, unavoidable losses due to percolation and tailwater outflows can add to this amount so that the amount of water consumed (or evaporated) can but can be up to as much as 100 inches per acre, depending on the soil. That appears to be enough water to drown the tallest person on earth.

The California Rice Commission, a trade group representing 2,500 rice farmers, estimates that rice uses 2.2 million acre-feet of irrigation water yearly, about 2.6 percent of the state’s total water supply. According to records obtained from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California that is equal to the annual average water it supplied to all of its 19 million customers.

In 2008, University of California Davis data show California exported 52 percent of its rice production, much of it to Japan. Furthermore, for every pound of rice exported, about 250 gallons of “virtual” or “embedded” water used in growing and processing that rice leaves along with it, according to “Water Footprints of Nations,” a 2004 study from the Netherlands for UNESCO. The report spawned the Web site www.waterfootprint.org

The rice harvest should be of great consolation to the chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board, Charles Hoppin, who is also a rice grower, vice-chairman of the Rice Growers Cooperative, and immediate past chairman of the California Rice Industry Association.

Chairman Hoppin, in a March speech in Yuma, Arizona, complained the regulatory community, including much of his staff, doesn't know or understand the issues facing agriculture and "doesn't give a rat's ..."

According to the Environmental Working Group, rice subsidies in California totalled $2.4 billion from 1995-2009. In that period the single largest recipient of subsidies was the Farmers’ Rice Cooperative of Sacramento, California, totalling $146,174,297.

Unfortunately, USDA has not provided recipient detail for rice cooperatives. Farm recipients of USDA subsidies in California totalled $9,123,000,000 in from 1995-2009.

According to EWG, “Washington paid out a quarter of a trillion dollars in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009, but to characterize the programs as either a "big government" bailout or another form of welfare would be manifestly unfair – to bailouts and welfare.” Hey! And where is that Imperial Valley water-gulping hay (and Sudan grass) going? According to writer Melinda Burns, much of it also going to Japan:

In the Imperial Valley of California, a region drier than part of the Sahara Desert, farmers have found a lucrative market abroad for a crop they grow with Colorado River water: They export bales of hay to land-poor Japan. Since the mid-1980s, this arid border region of California has been supplying hay and feed for Japan’s dairy cows and black-haired cattle, the kind that get daily massages, are fed beer and produce the most tender Kobe beef. Container ships from Japan unload electronics and other goods in the Port of Long Beach, and the farmers fill up the containers with hay for the trip back across the Pacific. Since the containers would otherwise return empty, it ends up costing less to ship hay from Long Beach to Japan than to California’s Central Valley. Water is cheap for [Imperial] valley farmers . . . it costs only $100 to irrigate an acre of hay in the desert for a year.

It should be remembered that California agriculture now consumes 75-80 percent of the state’s available surface water supplies.

Although 2009 crop estimates are not in yet, according to USDA’s annual reports, the data reveals that agricultural revenues generated in California have been rising since 2000, and that include the first two years of the so-called drought. In 2008, total gross farm revenues exceeded $36 billion; although that appears to be a significant sum of money (net farm income is far, far less), it represents less than two percent of the $1.88 trillion Gross Domestic Product generated in the Golden State in that same year.

According to a report by the Peter H. Gleick, with the Pacific Institute, “This is water that is literally being shipped away,” said Patrick Woodall, research director at Food and Water Watch, an international consumer advocacy group with headquarters in Washington, DC: “There’s a kind of insanity about this. Exporting water in the form of crops is giving water away from thirsty communities and infringing on their ability to deal with water scarcity. This is a place where some savings could be made now, and it’s just not being discussed.”

Jobs and Water: According to the Pacific Institute’s report, “…there is a huge disparity in the number of jobs that 1,000 acre-feet of water produces in different sectors of California’s economy. The use of 1,000 acre-feet of water produces 9,000 jobs in the semiconductor industry, 2,500 jobs in commercial offices, 35 jobs in grape and wine production, and 3 jobs growing cotton [one job for growing rice]. Overall, 1,000 acre-feet of water produces 22,000 jobs in California’s industrial sector, 6,600 jobs in the commercial sector, and 12 jobs in the agricultural sector.”

Are the taxpayers, who have poured billions of dollars into California’s water infrastructure, getting a good return on their money? Is this type of use of the public’s water resources sustainable? In the past several decades tens-of-billions of dollars have been expended on government water projects. Between 2000 and 2006 California issued almost $20 billion in General Obligation bonds, for water- and water-related purposes, with interest payments will costs the public more than $30 billion in repayment from the state’s deficit-ridden General Fund.

Taxpayers may want to remember this when California’s “water lords” try to float another $11 billion water bond ($22 billion by the time it is paid off) in the 2012 election.

Regarding virtual water: Patrick and Lloyd forget an important point - we get to import Fiji Water! So it's a wash, right?

Note added on 18 August 2010: over at Carter's blog this post has produced some discussion about how much water rice uses.

"When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast." -- Portia, in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Watering the High Plains Aquifer: Back to the Future

In May 2009 I posted an item Saving the Ogallala (aka High Plains) Aquifer, in which I reported on an article from the March 2009 Scientific American. 

The southern portion of the High Plains Aquifer is well-known for drastically lowered groundwater levels because of unsustainable pumping. Schemes have been proposed to recharge the aquifer, generally involving pumping water from the Mississippi River, which Pat Mulroy mentioned last summer, or other regions.

When I was in graduate school almost 40 years ago, a number of large-scale water importation schemes were being bandied about. In addition to importing water from the Columbia River or Canada (NAWAPA or NARA), a plan to use nuclear-powered pumping plants to pipe water uphill from the Mississippi River was being kicked around. 

Thanks to reader Ken, here is one such plan that invokes a 1984 Journal of Hydrology paper: "Preliminary study of the diversion of 283 m3/sec (10,000 cfs) from Lake Superior to the Missouri River Basin" by J.W. Bulkley, S.J. Wiright, and D. Wright at the University of Michigan's Department of Civil Engineering.

Download JH Paper

The paper's introduction has a brief summary of some proposed large-scale water diversions and cites the 1976 High Plains Study authorized by Congress. (Download S79BANKS-2)

But the title of the paper describes a non-starter. In 1984, the Great Lakes Compact was not in existence. Trying to import water from the Great Lakes theses days would run afoul (an understatement) of the governors of the eight states and premiers of the two Canadian provinces in the basin.

Back to Ken's comment: he posted a link to a site in which he reviews a plan to recharge the High Plains Aquifer and a possible way to add water to the Canadian River. He has used information from the aforementioned paper.  He's done a lot of work, including some interactive spreadsheets accessible from the site:

RAM Review

RAM Snowmelt Study

I have not yet played around with these. He uses the term 'RAM' which is apparently an (undefined) acronym (I am guessing 'Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability' or more unlikely, 'Recharging Aquifers from the Missouri." [Note added on 15 August 2010: Actually, it is part of his last name.] 

As a final item, it is instructive to note that the Bulkley et al. paper came from a special issue devoted to Global Water: Science and Engineering - The Ven Te Chow Memorial Volume. Wonder if anyone would dare propose such a special issue these days. Maybe it's time.

Since I am in Ashland taking in some Shakespeare, what better way to close this than a quote from the Bard of Avon:

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" --Puck, in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Emily Green's The Week That Was, 1-7 August 2010 - And More!

Another excellent weekly compendium of water world events awaits us once again. Emily Green treats us to yet another The Week That Was, 1-7 August 2010.

Oh, no! Say it ain't so, Joe! Chief Seattle  never said what he supposedly said, “If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?” It was all concocted in 1972 by a Hollywood screenwriter who probably grew up in New York City.

Sequim, WA, learned its name does not mean 'quiet waters' but 'place for going to shoot.' Chief Seattle's joke on the white folks?

There are some stories on the terrible flooding in Pakistan. Bless her, she even has a link where you can contribute to the British Red Cross relief efforts in that country. But despite the flooding, Pakistan is still struggling with water availability.

The Russian fires and heat are also reported. Seems to be a disagreement on whether the fires are under control or burning the country to a crisp.

The Scotts Company complained that grass is often portrayed as a water-gulping plant, yet it is one of the best oxygen-producers there is.  Think I saw that on Sean Hannity last night; must have been another 'fish vs. farmers' piece. Another Long Islander does good!

And this: “We can trust citizens of LA. They’re not dumb, they’re pretty smart. But when you put together a scheme like this, nobody can figure it out.” Find out who said that and why (no, it's not the Governator talking about another proposed fix for the 101-110 interchange).

More stuff, too. The patron saint of swimmers and drowners. The Dead Sea dying. Gardening in LA. The EPA's unfunded mandates. BP.

Lastly - an interesting piece about the heavy hitters running for election to the Central Arizona Project's board of directors. Sarah Palin has urged them all to refudiate Federal money and reaffirm the founding principle of the CAP, that of using only private money. Newt 'Faxman' Gingrich and Gov. Palin are supporting different candidates in this race, which has ramifications for the 2012 Presidential election. Stay tuned.

Give it a read.

I'm heading to Ashland for a few days to take in a few plays. Can't wait to see Total Recall in the round!

"There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears.” --Chief Seattle (I hope!)

Aquifer Amity, Hydraulic Harmony, or Water Whimsy? PUBA Signs Guaraní Aquifer Agreement. Also: GA Strategic Action Program Report

Good friend and colleague Gabriel Eckstein, who runs the International Water Law Project and its blog, just posted an item on the recent Guarani aquifer agreement signed by Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina (PUBA).

He begins:

Last week it was the Nile Basin riparians [see here and here]. Now it's the countries overlying the Guarani Aquifer. On August 2, 2010, the four nations overlaying the massive South American aquifer – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay – signed the Agreement on the Guarani Aquifer [Spanish] [Portuguese] in San Juan, Argentina (original text can be found on the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations website). Has humanity finally reached its senses and decided to pursue global hydraulic harmony?

While one might be inclined to wax enthusiastic that such an achievement heralds cooperation in managing the world's largest liquid freshwater resource, Eckstein is not so optimistic:

It is unfortunately unlikely that a global era of hydro-cooperation is at hand. Moreover, a review of this new Guarani instrument reveals a bare-bones agreement that contains less than ideal cooperative mechanisms. In particular, the agreement places great emphasis on individual states’ right while limiting obligations to cooperate and jointly management the aquifer. Article 2, for example, affords the parties the right of exclusive dominion over the portions of the aquifer that underlay each nation, while Articles 1 and 3 evince similar notions of sovereign rights. The idea that a state can have sovereign rights over a water body (or a portion of that water body) that flows across an international border harkens back to the long-discredited Harmon Doctrine. As international water law expert and former UN International Law Commission member, Dr. Stephen McCaffrey, modestly stated in a 2009 law review article [The International Law Commission Adopts Draft Articles on Transboundary Aquifers, Amer. J. of Int’l Law, Vol. 103, pp. 272-293 (2009)], where “the subject matter is something that moves from one state to another, from underground to surface, from surface to atmosphere, and so on in the hydrologic cycle, the notion that states have sovereignty over it seems a far from perfect match.”

In contrast, the Guarani Agreement places few limitations on sovereignty in relation to the rights of other parties. While it does contain provisions alluding to well-known international water law principles that could moderate the problems associated with sovereign claims over fresh water resources (e.g., principles of reasonable and equitable use [Arts. 3 & 4] and of no significant harm [Arts. 3, 6, & 7]), it merely references these notions without providing definitions or elaboration. In other words, the Guarani nations agreed mostly to leave each other alone in their respective Guarani-related territories and hydro-activities and only modestly agreed to cooperate.

Yes, the four nations did agree to share information generated about the aquifer (Arts. 9 & 12) as well as to notify each other of planned measures that may result in a transboundary impact (arts. 9, 10, & 11). And there is some language on the conservation and environmental protection of the Guarani (Art. 4) and the need to identify critical areas, especially in border regions, that require special measures (Art. 14). However, the language used in these provisions leaves quite a bit of room for interpretation and suggests that the parties themselves could not agree on the extent to which they want to cooperate. Similarly, the absence of any language describing the responsibilities and authority of the commission that is to be created under Article 15 intimate the creation of a paper tiger.

But he does see some hope:

Notwithstanding its shortcomings, the Guarani Agreement can still be regarded as an important milestone in the world of international water law. Even in its less-than-ideal formulation, it constitutes progress in the effort to have more nations cooperate over shared fresh water resources. At the very least, it is an agreement for some measure of cooperation. If the four Guarani nations actually ratify the instrument (which appears likely), they will join a very small club composed of states who are party to a cross-border ground water treaty. The number of these treaties can be counted on one hand and include the complex management mechanisms governing the use of the Genevese Aquifer [French and unofficial English translation] along the French-Swiss border, and the rudimentary consultative and data-sharing agreements implemented for the Nubian Sandstone and Northwestern Sahara aquifers in North Africa. Given the dearth of treaties over transboundary aquifers (in comparison with the thousands of agreements over transboundary rivers and lakes), and the fact that there are at least 273 transboundary aquifers globally and that millions of people around the world rely on transboundary aquifers for their sustenance and livelihoods, the Agreement on the Guarani Aquifer is still a welcomed development.

Access the English version of the Guarani Aquifer Strategic Action Program (43 megabytes). Thanks to Annabel Symington for sending me this link.

Here are my previous posts on the Guarani aquifer: 26 June 2010;18 April 2010; 10 April 2010; 8 December 2009. And here is a frivolous post.

At this point I think it's best to invoke a Paraguayan aphorism:

"A hatchet in the mouth is more harmful than a hatchet in the hand." -- Paraguayan proverb

Wally's Warming Warning: 'The Climate System Is an Angry Beast, and We Are Poking at It with Sticks'

Time for a shout-out to a remarkable scientist (thanks to columbiawater for alerting me to this).

Thirty-five years ago, on this date in 1975, renowned geoscientist Wallace (Wally) Broecker published a seminal paper in Science titled,"Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?". To say that Broecker was prescient is an understatement.

 Here is the abstract:

If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climatic change, then a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural climatic cooling which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom out. Once this happens, the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years.

Over at Foreign Policy Brad Johnson has an informative article, "Wally's World," not only about Broecker, but also a brief history of the work of those who set the stage for Broecker and those who came after him. It's global warming in a nutshell. See also this post from Andrew C. Revkin.

Here is an interview with Broecker, who coined the term 'global warming' and is regarded by many as the father of climate science. He is 78 and still going strong at Columbia University and The Earth Institute.

I knew of Broecker long before I knew of global warming; I cited some of his work in my dissertation. Broecker was one of the pioneers of radiocarbon and isotopic dating and I used carbon-14 and tritium dating of groundwater in my tome, Finite-State Models of Transport Phenomena in Hydrologic Systems (Pretentious? Moi?), which I was completing about the time Broecker's paper appeared. I confess I did not read the paper until almost 15 years later.

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting and chatting with him in the early 1990s when he spoke at one of our E&PS seminars at the University of New Mexico. He was a terribly nice fellow. His topic was something with which I was unfamiliar: the disruption of the North Atlantic's thermohaline-driven 'ocean conveyor belt' (which he first recognized) that brought heat from the tropics to the northernmost Atlantic and kept northern Europe from having a climate like Siberia's. Broecker posited that if global warming melted enough of the polar icecaps, the northernmost Atlantic would freshen, thus weakening, and possibly terminating, this heat transfer mechanism, thus plunging northern Europe into a freeze. It has happened in the past.

I thought that was quite remarkable: global warming leading to dramatic cooling in one part of the world (here's an article by Robert B. Gagosian on this topic). But that's the nature of global warming: worldwide, average temperatures rise, but not every region warms.

Broecker also noted that these climate changes occurred rather abruptly:

The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth's climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change... Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation. We place strong emphasis on using isotopes as a means to understand physical mixing and chemical cycling in the ocean, and the climate history as recorded in marine sediments.

I'll never forget Broecker's talk, lucidly and cogently presented. It was in the pre-Power Point era so he used transparencies and slides. He had some simple cartoons, and his closing transparency, showing a ferocious dragon-type creature with some humans annoying it, bore these words that have remained with me ever since:

"The climate system is an angry beast, and we are poking at it with sticks." -- Wallace S. Broecker, Albuquerque, NM, c. 1991