It’s a commonly heard concept that if wars in the 20th century were for oil, wars in the 21st will be for water. As climate change increases global temperatures, the need for water will increase. More water will be needed to water plants in hotter temperatures, more water will be drunk by humans, amongst a variety of other knock-on effects that the increase in global temperatures will create. This is commonly known and true. What is similarly known, but not necessarily true, is that countries in the first world like the United States will be minimally affected by this potential global water shortage. With our vast military and economic power, coupled with some of the most abundant natural resources in the world, it would make sense that we would be fine. This idyllic dream sadly does not measure up to the facts recently reported by the two New York Times articles published within the past few months on American groundwater.
We here in the United States rely overwhelmingly on groundwater to supply our cities and our farming industries. Groundwater is normal fresh water stored within vast underground aquifers, which are natural rock formations created over millions of years. Over time more water trickles back into rock formations naturally. The sheer amount of groundwater in the United States is one of the reasons our farming industry is so powerful — we have freshwater available all over the country. However, in recent years, our supply of groundwater has diminished for a few reasons.
Firstly, we’re simply using way too much water. Nearly half of all groundwater aquifers have decreased significantly in volume since 1980, and 4/10 reached record low levels in the past few years. Too much depletion of these aquifers can be particularly dangerous because they might self-destruct if water levels drop. These rock formations are used to having the water pressure inside of them. If not enough water is within the aquifer at one point, it may collapse in on itself, thus either decreasing how much water can be in the aquifer or completely stopping holding water at all. Part of the reason that we’re pumping so much water is simply because plants need more water these days. Hotter temperatures mean plants need more water to survive. Tack on that hotter temperatures mean less snow dropping in the winter to drain down the mountains in the spring, and you have a problem. There are ways to alleviate this problem; modern technology can be applied to farms to make them require less of this transparent gold. Unfortunately, those solutions require money, and that leads us to our second problem: politics.
A combination of lack of regulation and political control over the pumping of groundwater is significantly contributing to the problem. In part because we never needed them, and in part because of the deregulation that has occurred since the 1980s, we tend to have very little regulation surrounding groundwater pumping. What few state regulations there are tend to be weak and the federal government doesn’t have oversight over those regulations. This means that farmers and corporations can pump as much water as they want — cheaper than those tech upgrades in the short term. When there is some kind of political control over the pumping process, it is often corrupted by big corporations, or it allows for big farmers to control the bodies that regulate their pumping. The former can be seen in Nevada where gold mining company Barrick Gold Corporation, which has a major mine. Mostly through significant campaign contributions, they were able to defeat a state-bill that would’ve limited how much water they could use in their shafts and refineries. The latter can be seen in Kansas’s Groundwater Management District 3, where 13 elected men serve on its board. These men who are elected officials aren’t elected by the general body, but by their peers and large landowners. In an area with 130,000 inhabitants, only 12,000 are allowed to vote. And despite their aquifers quickly losing water, the amount of pumping has only increased.
Simply put, groundwater is crucial for the future of this country. Lack of regulation, corruption, and overuse of water is creating a problem that we will face within our lifetimes.
