Thirsty for Intelligence
The New York Times ran a thorough (and thoroughly scary) investigative piece at the end of August that looked at multiple ways the U.S. has been depleting its groundwater resources, treating aquifers as if they are infinite sources of water instead of limited ones. Climate change is mentioned as one of the factors that will increase this problem since it is leading to diminished snowpacks that feed rivers (and then to farmers and municipalities continuing to over-rely on aquifers). But I think the issues with water & climate are not just about how one affects the other: an essential element is how the same type of thinking has brought us both of these dire situations.
Whether it's been industrial-scale agriculture in California or Kansas, or over-pumping of drinking-water wells on Long Island, the trends in this article are not new. Yet on a national level this "essential natural resource is barely regulated". Even though we are living in a time when one might think (or hope) that climate change has led to an increased awareness of ecosystems & an interest in policies that protect resources, with the liquid necessary for life:
"The federal government plays almost no role, and individual states have implemented a dizzying array of often weak rules."
So instead of dealing with data researchers have provided for years, the dominant mode of handling this depletion of water sources has been to turn a 'blind eye' & let bad actions continue unabated (like growing water-intensive crops in Colorado).
This kind of deeply disconnected thinking & living is built on ignoring the realities of nature in favor of a kind of capitalism-first logic: for now, we can just pump more water, so what's the problem? Nevermind that an area in Maryland is looking at a very expensive desalination plant to remove salt from river water for their future drinking water; nevermind that saltwater intrusion is happening in Florida & along the east coast because of over-pumping groundwater (and subsidence, which I always thought of as a purely geological process, but now realize can be caused by groundwater extraction)...
The business-as-usual/'nothing to see here, folks' logic just keeps going, until it can't. Arizona actually set a limit this past June by saying there wasn't enough groundwater for new subdivisions in some areas. Why is it so striking to see a place actually admit that the availability of water should play a role in development?