{"id":4724,"date":"2016-08-21T20:25:27","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T01:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=4724"},"modified":"2016-08-21T20:25:27","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T01:25:27","slug":"water-water-water-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/08\/21\/water-water-water-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Water, Water, Water: Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sally Adee at NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (13 August 2016, paywall) covers<\/a> how some cities and water mix poorly:<\/p>\n

Beyond Rio, evidence of our disregard for the wet stuff is all around, and it is starting to bite. Beijing has sucked so much water out of the ground that the city is sinking by 11 centimetres a year<\/a>. That\u2019s positively glacial compared with parts of California\u2019s Central Valley<\/a>, which are dropping by 5 centimetres per month.<\/p>\n

In Connecticut, nuclear power plants have shut down for lack of water to cool the furious reactions inside, and coal power stations in India have shut due to droughts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

China has been facing water issues for decades, but a point was put on the issue this May when the citizens\u00a0of Lintao, of 200,000 people and located basically in the center of China, found they no longer had water. From Marketplace<\/a><\/strong><\/em>‘s\u00a0Rob Schmitz:<\/p>\n

Lintao is in Gansu province, in China\u2019s arid northwest, situated along the Tao River, a tributary of the Yellow River. The combination of a drought and a surge of urban development means the city\u2019s underground water supply has dwindled to dangerously low levels, leaving tens of thousands of people without easy access to the precious resource.<\/p>\n

Experts fear Lintao could be a sign of things to come.<\/p>\n

“Four hundred Chinese cities now face a water shortage. One hundred and ten cities face a severe water shortage. This is a very serious problem,” says Liu Changming, a retired hydrologist for the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.<\/p>\n

China is home to more than 20 percent of the world\u2019s population, but it contains only 7 percent of the world\u2019s fresh water. Liu, who advises China\u2019s leaders on water policy, says all of China’s so-called “water scarce” cities are in northern China, home to half a billion people, and a region that contributes nearly half of China\u2019s economic growth. Former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao once called northern China\u2019s water shortage \u201ca threat to the survival of the Chinese nation.\u201d…<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Wang Shucheng,\u00a0China\u2019s former minister of water resources, at current rates of water extraction, many cities in northern China \u2014 including Beijing, home to more than 20 million people \u2014 will run out of water in 15 years.<\/p>\n

Wang said this 11 years ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rob goes on to detail several water transfer projects, but explicit is the question: what about those who were consuming the water now being transferred? Implicitly, are we beyond carrying capacity? The South China Morning Post<\/strong><\/em> covers<\/a> a report by\u00a0The Nature Conservancy<\/strong><\/em>, summarizing it thusly:<\/p>\n

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The report pointed to nature as a key solution to improving water quality. If conservation strategies \u2013 such as reforestation and better agricultural practices \u2013 were applied to roughly 1.4 million hectares in the cities, there would be a clear drop of at least 10 per cent in sediment and nutrient pollution, the report said.<\/p>\n

In turn, more than 150 million people in these cities would have better water quality, it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe power of nature to solve water crises should not be underestimated,\u201d Zhu Jiang, deputy director of the Ministry of Water Resources\u2019 International Cooperation Centre said on Monday at the report\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn China, developing a natural model for water treatment can not only protect urban water source catchments to ensure water safety, but effectively lower the costs of water treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The actual Nature Conservancy<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0report is here<\/a>. Back at NewScientist<\/strong><\/em>, Sally applies\u00a0the stick before discussing toilet to tap recycling<\/em>:<\/p>\n

In the not-too-distant future, we could see entire cities abandoned \u2013 ghost town<\/strong> casualties of drought and water mismanagement. It is not overly dramatic to say that the world\u2019s \u201cuse once and throw away\u201d attitude has enabled a slow-motion water apocalypse. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to do something or we\u2019re all going to be juddering to a halt,\u201d says Dominic Waughray, head of environment at the World Economic Forum<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here in the St. Paul \/ Minneapolis area of Minnesota, we do not yet face any serious problems with water supply. We’re occasionally warned off the beaches of our numerous lakes due to various water problems, and one or two lakes seem to be losing their contents, but all in all we enjoy them year ’round.<\/p>\n

I wonder how much longer that will last.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sally Adee at NewScientist (13 August 2016, paywall) covers how some cities and water mix poorly: Beyond Rio, evidence of our disregard for the wet stuff is all around, and it is starting to bite. Beijing has sucked so much water out of the ground that the city is sinking \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4725,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4724\/revisions\/4725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}