Build New Surface Water Storage

Chances are, if you’re reading this blog you live a fairly comfortable lifestyle that includes electricity, running water and a roof over your head. You probably took a shower this morning and didn’t give it much thought except maybe some impatience at the length of time it took for the hot water to get there.

Imagine what your life would be like without all of that. Unless you live in some self-contained, fenced compound you built to protect your self from the government or whatever other “threats” exist in your world, you depend on others for the basics that keep you clean, dry and warm.

Except now we face a future where some of those things, such as water, may be in short supply. The dams and reservoirs that were built 50 or 100 years ago were designed to meet the needs of a smaller population than we now have. More and more people depend on the same amount of water and while we’ve done a good job stretching supplies, it can’t go on forever. Sometime we are going to have to increase the amount of water storage capacity in order to meet everyone’s needs and not compromise farms (which grow our food, another “convenience”) or require drastic conservation that reduces our quality of life. Kids like a lawn to play on in the backyard as much now as they did back in the day.

Think about this. Due to population growth, we’re eventually going to need more water, even under normal circumstances. Imagine what it will be like when, not if, the next drought hits California. The 1976-77 drought cost $2.5 billion in economic losses ($6.5 billion in today’s dollars) and the 1987-92 drought caused us to rely more heavily on fossil fuels to produce energy. That’s because dams provide clean, inexpensive renewable hydro-electric energy and without adequate storage to capture and release water to generate electricity, we’ll be burning a lot more coal and natural gas to keep the lights on and the shower water hot.