U.S. Drought Exposes “Hydro-Illogical” Water Management
Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack tours Eric Cress' farm to examine crop damage
caused by the drought near Center Point, Iowa. Eric and his father Dale
said their farm in eastern Iowa is running around seven inches behind
normal rain levels for this time of year. Credit: USDA photo by Darin
Leach
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The historic drought withering much of the United States this summer
has revealed a need for strategies to better manage water supplies that
could remain under severe pressure both this year and in the longer
term.
On Friday, the U.S. Agriculture Department said that corn yields –
which account for nearly 40 percent of the global harvest – would be 17
percent lower than expected, contributing to an overall rise in food
prices of three to four percent next year.
Van Ayers, an agriculture and rural development specialist with the
University of Missouri Extension in Bloomfield, predicts a continued
expansion of irrigation systems.
“When I first moved to southeast Missouri over 20 years ago, there
were approximately 300,000 acres with irrigation,” he told IPS. “Now
there is over one million. This trend will not change.”
The main problem this year is that farmers in southeast Missouri had
to irrigate more land than they expected, and some of the systems
failed.
“I don’t think anybody expected a drought this severe throughout the growing season,” said Ayers.
According to a July report
from the National Climatic Data Center, 33 percent of the country was
classified as experiencing a moderate to extreme drought and 55 percent
fell in the category of moderate to extreme. The high plains, the
midwest and the south are the areas most affected.
July 2012 was the hottest month on record for the U.S., with the
average temperature at 77.6 degrees F, 3.3 degrees above the 20th
century average.
On Aug. 2, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a
383-million-dollar emergency drought aid package for livestock producers
and farmers. The Agricultural Disaster Assistance Act
of 2012 will extend expired programmes such as the Emergency Livestock
Assistance Program to help farmers to deal with the current drought.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama announced new measures to aid the drought-stricken areas. This additional funding would provide nearly 30 million dollars.
States are also taking action. In Missouri, Governor Jay Nixon
established an emergency cost-share programme to provide water for
farmers and livestock producers. Some 3,712 applications have been
approved, which equals 18.7 million dollars in assistance.
But emergency relief is just a bandaid on the much bigger problem of
changing climate patterns and extreme weather events that will continue
to impact water supplies for the foreseeable future, environmentalists
say.
Gerrit Jöbsis, southeast regional director of American Rivers,
calls it the “hydro-illogical cycle” – a “jargon to convey that we are
illogical in our approach to managing water supply shortages.”
The cycle consists of panicking when there is a drought, failing to
address the shortages with preventive measures for the future and then,
once it rains, returning to the previous mismanagement of supplies until
the next drought.
“This illogical approach is a cycle of ineffectiveness that we need to end,” Jöbsis told IPS.
He stressed the importance of distinguishing between water efficiency
and water conservation. While water efficiency focuses on reducing
waste, conservation restricts water use overall.
For the southeast region, American Rivers says water efficiency is the solution.
“In the southeast of the United States, we have a long history of
taking for granted the amount of water that we have,” Jöbsis said. But
in the last 40 years, cities have extended their boundaries and the
population has increased, putting added pressure on water supplies.
The metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia is dealing with precisely these challenges.
“We generally oppose the construction of more reservoirs for water
supply until communities have maximised their existing supplies through
water efficiency and other means first,” Ben Emanuel, southeast
associate director of water supply of American Rivers, told IPS.
The area has nearly four million residents and consumes 652 million
gallons of water per day. American Rivers estimates that through water
efficiency measures, Metro Atlanta would save 300 million to 700 million
dollars, and there would be no need to build new dams.
Ayers also believes that in the mid-south, another area hit by
drought, there is a need to efficiently manage the supply of water.
Ayers’ focus is primarily on irrigation, and “the efficient use of these
irrigation systems is paramount,” he told IPS.
But even in areas where the drought is not as severe, there is a need
to better manage water supplies. In Washington state, a clear example
of this is the Yakima basin.
Negotiations among stakeholders started back in 2009 and now
environmentalists, farmers, the Yakima native nation, and state and
federal governments have reached general agreement on an integrated plan.
Michael Garrity, conservation director of for Washington state from
American Rivers, told IPS: “Water conservation and efficiency are an
important part of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan.”
But the plan also has other elements that need to be implemented in
order to meet its goals, such as better groundwater management and
renovation of existing dams.
The common thread in all these measures is simple, conservationists
say: you may not be able to predict a drought, but you can be prepared
when it comes.
SOURCE: http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/08/u-s-drought-exposes-hydro-illogical-water-management/
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