More on the future Water Wars

Keeping track of the 'escalating fights over water and water rights, between cities and farms, between states, between neighbors.'

Here are some articles that touch on quality and quantity available. Via Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat, AP's article on pharmaceutical contaminates in our drinking water:

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

World's Water Supply at Risk:

One of the world's leading water experts explains how our local water supplies are threatened across North America and across the globe. Surface waters are being polluted, and we are mining our groundwater at unsustainable rates. At the very time when corporations are privatizing everything, our governments are allowing corporations to move in and take over the ownership of essential resources like water. The more our water becomes polluted, the more precious it becomes. The more desperate people are, the more they will pay for their water, and the more money there is to be made from cleaning it up.

The corporation KBR poisoned our soldiers in theaters of war:

The AP reports that, between 2004 and 2006, “dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq fell sick at bases using ‘unmonitored and potentially unsafe‘ water supplied” by KBR. The Pentagon’s internal watchdog said soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after from using the discolored, smelly water.

Expect more of these stories as we find out we have treated our most essential of needs so casually. Global warming also means less snow pack which leads to less water in rivers and in aquifers. Some burgeoning population centers which rely heavily on rivers are feeling this already:

The world is running out of water and needs a radical plan to tackle shortages that threaten the ability of humanity to feed itself, according to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the UN's Millennium Project.

Professor Sachs, who is credited with sparking pop star Bono's crusade for African development, told an environment conference in Delhi that the world simply had "no more rivers to take water from".

The breadbaskets of India and China were facing severe water shortages and neither Asian giant could use the same strategies for increasing food production that has fed millions in the last few decades.

"In 2050 we will have 9 billion people and average income will be four times what it is today. India and China have been able to feed their populations because they use water in an unsustainable way. That is no longer possible," he said.

Since Asia's green revolution, which began in the 1960s and saw a transformation of agricultural production, the amount of land under irrigation has tripled. However, many parts of the continent have reached the limits of their water supplies. "The Ganges [in India] and the Yellow river [in China] no longer flow. There is so much silting up and water extraction upstream they are pretty stagnant," said Prof Sachs.

(Psst ... turn off your taps!)