Meet The New War

... same as the old war.

Decades ago, we were told about "the coming resources wars". At the time, they were trying to get us to rationalize our fucked up military adventurism in Iraq, and to pretend it was all about freedom and not oil.

Although similar, it's a different thing now, as more of us begin to see how stupidly distracting and ultimately destructive it was to be chasing something that would harm billions while benefiting a very few.

Populations tend to expand geometrically, while food resources expand arithmetically, and mineral resources are finite to begin with.

So it follows that there will come a time when demand exceeds supply to the point where the whole thing goes ka-flooey.

There's some hope, but there's also a need to recognize a couple of bare-naked truths.

1. Cooperation and planning and sensible policies can get us thru a lot of bad shit
2. There's no negotiated settlement to be had with a natural world that's been damaged badly enough to threaten human survival
3. We don't have a very happy history of getting everybody together and singing from the same hymnal

Fresh clean water

Clear breathable air

Healthy nutritious food

Why is this too much to ask?

Another Chicken Comes Home To Roost

Sir William Ramsay

Seems like it wasn't all that long ago that "problems with the nation's strategic helium reserves" was very popular as joke fodder on the late night talk shows.

Yeah, go ahead - yuk it up, laughing boy.

The World is Running Out of Helium, Worrying Doctors

Liquid helium, the coldest element on Earth, is needed to keep the magnets in MRI machines running. Without it, doctors would lose a critical medical tool.

A global helium shortage has doctors worried about one of the natural gas’s most essential, and perhaps unexpected, uses: MRIs.

Strange as it sounds, the lighter-than-air element that gives balloons their buoyancy also powers the vital medical diagnostic machines. An MRI can’t function without some 2,000 liters of ultra-cold liquid helium keeping its magnets cool enough to work. But helium — a nonrenewable element found deep within the Earth’s crust — is running low, leaving hospitals wondering how to plan for a future with a much scarcer supply.

“Helium has become a big concern,” said Mahadevappa Mahesh, professor of radiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Baltimore. “Especially now with the geopolitical situation.”

Helium has been a volatile commodity for years. This is especially true in the U.S., where a Texas-based federal helium reserve is dwindling as the government tries transferring ownership to private markets.

Until this year, the U.S. was counting on Russia to ease the tight supply. An enormous new facility in eastern Russia was supposed to supply nearly one-third of the world’s helium, but a fire last January derailed the timeline. Although the facility could resume operations any day, the war in Ukraine has, for the most part, stopped trade between the two countries.

Tragedy of The Commons

In economics, the tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use, act independently according to their own self-interest and, contrary to the common good of all users, cause depletion of the resource through their uncoordinated action.

It's The Water, Stupid

Lake Mead - Nevada

The Guardian:

US issues western water cuts as drought leaves Colorado River near ‘tipping point’

Arizona, Nevada and Mexico affected as federal government steps in after states failed to reach agreement

After western US states failed to reach agreements to reduce water use from the beleaguered Colorado River, the federal government stepped in on Tuesday, issuing cuts that will affect two states and Mexico.

Officials with the Bureau of Reclamation declared a “tier 2” shortage in the river basin as the drought continues to pummel the American west, pushing its largest reservoirs to new lows. The waning water levels, which have left dramatic "bathtub rings" in reservoirs and unearthed buried bodies and other artifacts, continue to threaten hydroelectric power production, drinking water, and agricultural production.

“The system is approaching a tipping point,” the Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, M Camille Calimlim Touton, said during a news conference on Tuesday, adding that urgent action was required. “Protecting the system means protecting the people of the American west.”

- more -

In the middle of that Tier 2 Water Shortage someone decided it'd be a good idea to let a foreign government - an extremely wealthy foreign government - exploit the single most valuable resource anywhere, for free.

When do we acknowledge that the "party of good business" is either incredibly bad at business, or simply too fucking corrupt for words?

Yahoo News:

Saudi firm has pumped Arizona groundwater for years without paying. Time to pony up

Bruce Babbitt and Robert Lane

The Butler Valley is an empty stretch of desert west of Phoenix, worthy of note for two reasons.

• It holds more than 6 million acre-feet of groundwater, strategically located near the Central Arizona Project canal.
• And more than 99% of Butler Valley is owned by the state of Arizona in trust for the support of public schools.

In 1982 as the Central Arizona Project canal neared completion, Wes Steiner, the renowned director of the Department of Water Resources, proposed that the state set aside Butler Valley as a groundwater reserve for future use in connection with the CAP.

Acting on his advice, we worked with the federal Bureau of Land Management to transfer the Valley into state ownership to be managed by the State Land Department.

How much water has Fodomonte pumped?

In June, The Arizona Republic uncovered the story of how the State Land Department had recently handed over thousands of acres to a Saudi corporation called Fondomonte, giving it permission to pump unlimited amounts of groundwater to grow alfalfa hay for export to Saudi Arabia.

This tale of official misfeasance began in 2015 when the State Land Department began leasing land to Fondomonte at an annual rental of just $25 per acre.

Sweet deal for Saudis: Arizona allows farm to use Phoenix's backup supply

However, the 2015 lease in addition allowed Fondomonte to pump unlimited amounts of groundwater at no cost whatever.

How much is Fondomonte pumping? The company refuses to disclose how much water it uses each year, and the State Land Department has never bothered to demand reports. That Fondomonte is growing alfalfa year round on approximately 3,500 acres can be verified from aerial photos.

And according to U.S. Geological Survey studies, alfalfa in Butler Valley requires 6.4 acre-feet of water per acre. That means the company has likely been pumping 22,400 acre-feet of water each year for the last 7 years.

Void its lease, charge for past rent

How much should the state be charging for this water? The Arizona Constitution, Article 10, Section 4, requires that land leases and “products of land” … “shall be appraised at their true value.”

The appropriate method for determining true value is hiding in plain sight. The Central Arizona Project sells water to customers throughout Maricopa County for $242 per acre foot delivered through the project canal that passes just south of Butler Valley.

Add these figures, and Fondomonte should have been paying $5.42 million per year for each of the last seven years.

What should be done to clean up this scandal? First, Gov. Doug Ducey should instruct the State Land Department to void the lease and restore Butler Valley to its intended use as a groundwater reserve for the future.

Second, Gov. Ducey should instruct the attorney general to collect past due rentals of about $38 million to be held in trust for the benefit of Arizona school children.

Bruce Babbitt served as governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987. Robert Lane served as State Land commissioner from 1982 to 1987.

Reach them at bbabbittaz@gmail.com and robert.lane@me.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ducey, AG must get Saudi firm to pay for groundwater use

Resources

Water is kinda the main thing we need to be concerned with.

Even the Druids knew that much.

JR Roberts, Daily Camera OpEd:

Next time you lift a glass of water to your lips, take a moment. Please reflect on where it comes from. Most people haven't a clue.

Rivers from snowpack? Only partly. Less understood is that the mountains are not really like steep roofs that shed their meltwater bounty directly to us down surface watersheds. Our mountains are more like deeply-stacked sponges. Their underlying fractured rock substrata hold far more water in their cracks than reservoirs do. Underground water flows into and out of rivers and streams all the way down and out onto the plains.

To have enough clean water, we must maintain the health and volume of our deep, spongy, groundwater exchanges.

Call Gov. Jared Polis. Demand revisions to the Colorado Water Plan that include more attention to our support base of groundwater resources. Stop pollution and protect the vital health of aquifers and wetlands.

You're drinking from a deep, giant sponge. Please, think deep.

John Roberts
Boulder

Tara Lohan, EcoWatch:

In the last few weeks of 2018, the Trump administration set the stage for a big battle over water in the new year. At stake is an important rule that defines which waters are protected under the Clean Water Act. The Trump administration seeks to roll back important protections for wetlands and waterways, which are important to drinking water and wildlife.

This is just one of the upcoming water battles that could serve to define 2019. It's also poised to be a year of reckoning on the Colorado River, which supplies water to 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland. A long-anticipated multi-state agreement is close to completion after an ultimatum from the federal government. And it could also be a landmark year for water management in California, with several key issues coming to a head.

Big things may also happen on the water infrastructure front and in efforts to address clean-water concerns. Of course, underlying many of the water issues is the specter of climate change, which is bringing both severe droughts and floods and exacerbating water-supply problems.

• Clean Water Rule Change
• Colorado River Agreement
• Climate Change
• California's Grand Bargain
• Infrastructure and Clean Water