The people murmuring about Water Wars are starting to look less and less crazy as time goes on.

Sarnia solved the issue of water conservation. They raised water prices and imposed watering restrictions, and a miraculous thing happened. “The water is so bloody expensive, that’s why people are not using it,” according to Coun. Anne Marie Gillis. They cut their water down to 81,000 cubic metres/day from the 181,000 it’s licensed to sell. So, to celebrate, they are begging people to waste more water, because the loss of revenue is putting them in the red.

Water is more valuable a resource than coal, oil, or gold. Three days without it and you die. Period. And as we start to watch folks around the world try to deal with their water shortages, it’s probably a good idea to look at our relationship to it. The average American uses 4500 litres of water per day (and I can’t imagine the Canadian numbers are much different—but if you know your food consumption in kilograms, you can calculate your water footprint). It’s not so surprising when you realize that it takes 200 litres to make 1kg of plastic, or that it requires 2-4 barrels of water to extract a barrel of oil from the tar sands. And then, of course, there’s food.

Food requires a tremendous amount of water to produce commercially. Like 70 litres for 1 apple, 1300 litres/kg of wheat, 3400 litres/kg of rice, 15500 litres/ kg of beef [More stats >].  In my backyard garden, I can get away with not watering my vegetables because I drought-proof it. But when you have a sterile field fed with chemical fertilizers, you need a lot of irrigation (oh, and you have to remove nitrates from the groundwater afterward, but that’s another story).

So when you import grapes from Israel (75% of whose water footprint falls outside of their country) for example, it’s pretty much the same thing as importing fossil water, which can never be replaced. And the really sad thing?
Most of that irrigation water is just wasted, due to runoff (which poisons surrounding ecosystems, and groundwater supplies—remember Walkerton?) and evaporation. How efficient can something called “flood irrigation” be, do you think? Yeah.

But like many things, shit has to get really bad for it to get better. California’s water pressures (“We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California”) have resulted in innovations in technology to ensure more efficient irrigation practices, and farmers are beginning to return to hardier heirloom fruit and drought-proof practices, encouraging their tomatoes, apple trees, almonds and oranges to grow deep, healthy roots and wait for the rain. As it turns out, drought-farmed fruit is a lot tastier and more disease resistant than the fruit coming from lazy, shallow-rooted plants. They’re finally making more of less water. But what can individuals do to consume less water so we’re not dying of thirst in the future?

Well, for starters, get to know your farmers. Half of the fun of going to the farmer’s market is learning about the farms that supply your meals. The smaller the farm, the more likely they are to act responsibly. If you’re lucky enough to be in a city where Mennonites frequent the farmer’s market, you can be certain that they’re not using wasteful irrigation systems.

Your choice of food can make a difference too. It takes a lot less water to make a grain-based meal than a rice-based one, and it takes much, much less water to make a meal without meat.

And I can’t tell you enough that you need to try growing some food of your own. A one block diet saves more water and fuel than anything else you put in your mouth. The earth, and your stomach, will thank you.

Watch this video. It’s not just about the bananas, it’s about intelligent energy-saving design, and it brought me back from the depths of GMO dispair last night.

Because I can’t endorse the Chevron PR ad preceding the vid, here’s a bonus image:

According to this disturbing article, America’s largest reservoir is drying up. It’s really simple math: the amount of water being removed from Lake Mead every year excedes the amount being fed into it by the Colerado river.

In 2008, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography issued a paper titled “When will Lake Mead go dry?” which set the odds of Lake Mead drying up by 2021 at 50-50. No more water, no more electricity, no more pumping power.

This is bad news for the million acres of crops being irrigated by the water source accross the U.S. and Mexico. Oh, and the tens of millions of people who depend upon the reservoir for their water supply, and the half-million homes that are powered by “its mighty Hoover Dam”.

How did this happen?

Well, for starters, there’s the farmers who flood arid farmland with water to grow rice (what?). There’s the fact that we depend on veggies grown in the desert (how much are those California strawberries worth to you?). And then there’s the fact that residents of desert communities maintain beautiful green grass lawns, and “golfers demand courses in areas where the temperature exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit”.

Is the status of a green lawn or the convenience of out-of-season food really worth “turning the tap off for 800,000 households”?

At least they’ve started “grass buyback” programs to convince people to consider drought-tolerant landscaping. They’re offering tax incentives to people who use pool covers. Lovely.

Of course, when Las Vegas residents tried to pass a bill to allow homeowners to install graywater systems, Southern Nevada Water Authority blocked it, saying that “legalizing graywater will cause people to use more fresh water and return less dirty water to the reclamation plant”. Sorry? It’s like the laws making rain barrels illegal.

Instead of considering a shift in thinking/lifestyle, the best solutions that the Big Thinkers could come up with for the problem are either to pump water in from eastern states or to de-salt seawater.

The power requirement for either proposal—desalting seawater or transporting water over great distance—is enormous. But if the only other alternative is a mass evacuation from the western United States, what other choice do we have?

Pardon me?