America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow

You have thousands of kilometres of coast; if you don't dessalinate it's because you don't want to.
- So far, desalination has not been a useful solution to the problem. Companies have been trying to create useful desalination plants for decades. The current process is expensive, inefficient, slow and creates toxic residuals. For these reasons, the current technology does not scale up very well at all.
- America does desalinate in it's coastal regions. Increasing desalination is prohibitively expensive. Shipping water inland is preposterously expensive. Even if you spend the money, scaling up takes years or even decades.
  There are reasons America, like nearly all other nations, gets a relatively small amount of it's fresh water from desalination.
- https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/10/desalination-plants-california/
  They are building them.
- America actually does do desalination in several locations along the California coast and is expanding.
- Desalination produces a massive pull on using more fossil fuels. It’s an emergency procedure. Not an end goal. Read a book.
- Like everything in life, it's not that simple.
  One thing that is simple, however, is googling the answer to this question before making an uninformed response.
- And what do we do with all the salt?
Wait till you learn about the water cycle.
- It takes hundreds of years for groundwater to replenish. We are experiencing problems right now.
- ...says the guy who clearly doesn't understand the geologic water cycle.

Tbf there very well could be no tomorrow

With climate change and large corporations like Nestlé sucking up all the water it can this will only get worse.
By the way large corporations and large agriculture farms are to blame for the most waste of water.
Also the amount of money spent on watering lawns and golf fucking courses are huge factors in this.
We need to put end to Nestlé and fuck lawns.
Don't threaten me with a good time
Promises promises.

In general: bad.

But the lion's share of that groundwater is going to agriculture, and much of it specifically to animal feed, so unlike with carbon emissions, this feels like the sort of environmental disaster that market forces are at least going to be somewhat responsive to; less groundwater - spike in alfalfa prices - spike in beef prices - people eat less beef - people use less groundwater.

Nah, the beef lobbies will just have the government increase subsidies. Obviously corporate profits are more important than the future of the human race.
Yeah but how long does that take, compared to how long the environmental destruction takes?
- It sounds from the article like the environmental destruction has been going on for decades and that it's already affecting crop output in some places.
I thought that groundwater used in beef production exists in the water cycle and actuslly replenishes. Did I fall for a talking point?
- That water would logically enter the typical water cycle, but ground water itself can take a long time to replenish. It seems to depend on the particular source, but in many cases it is functionally non renewable.
  Once pumped out, it will evaporate, rain down, and eventually make its way in to the oceans, I assume. Desalination seems like it will eventually be the solution, but it's a long way off.

Paywall.

the west coast is especially fucked.

there was never enough ground water and there never will be.

Central planes as well, there is an enormous amount of crop land that will no longer support farming.
- It's not like it's getting zero rainfall, it's just not getting enough to support its current levels of crop output; they were growing cereal crops in the Great Plains long before we figured out industrial-scale groundwater irrigation.
Idk fam there were some huge rivers in California not that long ago. Arizona and Nevada are much more iffy.
- rivers != ground water
  the water table dispute has been going on since the early 1800s.

Lol, it's nice to see nothing has changed in 20 years. Good job conservatives.

I mean, the Democrats haven't done fuck all better either. California and other blue states haven't done much better. We just love growing water hungry crops on deserts. It's insane.
- I didn't say Republicans, I said conservatives. That includes a majority of the Democratic party.
- But muh wine and blueberries taste good in rocky soil :3

this isn't helping: https://www.businessinsider.com/arizona-saudi-arabia-fondomonte-butler-valley-water-residents-cut-off-2023-7?op=1

An arab country siphons resources from the US this time? How ironic.
Whatt the fuck

I'm grateful you folks are doing something to combat the rising water levels.

^{(/s just in case)}

Plenty of groundwater in New Zealand, once the only economic class of people our society has agreed matters (or we'd stop them) have finished sucking us dry in every conceivable way.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

Can someone ELI5 where the water actually goes when it's used? It evaporates and goes somewhere else, right? So the drier one place gets, the more wet a different place needs to get because the earth is a closed system.

So where does water from the US go when it's used and/or evaporated?

It ends up in the oceans, to answer you simply.
Groundwater is water that has collected at some point. Lake, aquifer, whatever. Over X many years rain has pooled in this spot.
If there is X amount of rain coming in each year and you use less than that, by sending it on down the river/whatever no worries. (as long as you're not dumping things in the river that are gonna suck for people downriver.
If you use more than that, well there's going to be less water in the groundwater next year. Also the people downriver probably don't get as much water, so they're groundwater will also probably be lessened if they don't cut back.
Groundwater tends to be millions upon millions of gallons. It takes a while to use up, especially since it's being replenished occasionally.
But if you're using more than is coming in it doesn't matter that it will "eventually" come back around. At some point there's going to be a dry spot in the loop where previously there's been a water deposit.
Ground water is largely used to water crops. As an example, massive amounts of food is grown in California using California ground water. That food (containing said water) is then shipped all over the country and to other nations. It's exported in the form of produce.

Ok idea: any town that is willing to give up land for solar power can earmark 90% of the power from it to run pumps and desalination to get them water.

And for the other 90% of the country not within 100 miles of a coast?
- Maybe there will be a nice sale on "Population: 0" signs to plant at the town borders.

Wow you sound like a dumb asshole

It's mine. I own it.