Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

I've mentioned freshwater as one part of the perfect storm coming for
agriculture, and discussed methods of conservation for food growing. But I
get no traction even on a list like this, not even pushback.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
------------------------------------------

Water Crisis Rocks LA, Mexico City; Who's Next?
http://www.upi.com/news/issueoftheday/2009/04/10/Water-crisis-rocks-LA-Mexic
o-City-whos-next/UPI-63621239376355/
by Martin Sieff
Published on Friday, April 10, 2009 by United Press International (UPI)

WASHINGTON -- Water, water hardly anywhere. Water crises are rocking two of
the world's largest cities as Mexico City starts a 36-hour water cutoff and
Los Angeles is in the midst of a water dearth.

[A resident looks on while a city worker delivers her weekly water ration
in containers at a low-income neighborhood in Mexico City, Thursday, April
9, 2009 The Mexican capital, one of the most densely populated cities in
the world, cut in water supply to a historic fall in reserves, a measure
that affects at least five million people, according to authorities. (AP
Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)]A resident looks on while a city worker delivers her
weekly water ration in containers at a low-income neighborhood in Mexico
City, Thursday, April 9, 2009 The Mexican capital, one of the most densely
populated cities in the world, cut in water supply to a historic fall in
reserves, a measure that affects at least five million people, according to
authorities. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
The problem, however, is far wider than two of the most populous cities in
the Western Hemisphere. Beijing, the capital of China, has a serious water
shortage. The Israelis and the Palestinians are at loggerheads over control
of the key aquifers west of the River Jordan that are vital to sustain both
peoples. An unprecedented world population of 6.8 billion people -- more
than three times that of 80 years ago -- and the inexorable reality of
global climate change are guaranteed to make the long-term crisis worse.

The cutoff in Mexico affects about a quarter of the capital city's
residents -- 5 million people. Mexico City instituted a five-month
rationing plan in January with the Thursday-Friday cutoff this week deemed
necessary to fix a leaky supply system and to ease -- somewhat -- a supply
problem that began when the lakes that once flooded the city were drained
40 years ago.

The leaks problem is not small. Half of Mexico City's water supply is lost
through lousy infrastructure alone -- primarily through leaking pipes.

The change in weather patterns over the North American continent has taken
its toll too, just as it did in Los Angeles.

Mexico's National Water Commission said that the capital city's water
supply system is at its lowest level -- less than 50 percent capacity after
low rainfall totals last year and the leaky delivery system.

In Los Angeles, the City Council unanimously turned back a rationing plan
Wednesday that had been put together by the city's Department of Water and
Power, which is caught between the council and a statewide order from
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to cut usage 20 percent.

If the city fails to take action, the agency that supplies the bulk of
water to Los Angeles could impose rationing.

The plan the council voted down -- so it could be studied further -- would
have mandated by June 1 much higher rates for water users who exceed a
monthly limit, which itself would be lower than current water usage.

U.S. cities are going to be hugely vulnerable to water shortages within the
next five to 10 years. There is a huge aquifer under several states in the
Midwest. The aquifer, tapped primarily for agriculture, has been hugely
depleted over the past couple of decades and is a future crisis waiting to
happen.

Almost no one in the United States -- or anywhere else in the
industrialized world -- takes the crisis seriously or realizes how directly
it threatens them. About 70 percent of Earth is covered by deep oceans, but
all the water in the oceans is heavily saline, with high quantities of salt
that make it impossible to drink.

The unprecedented global population growth and the demands of industry and
modern agriculture for gigantic amounts of water have depleted aquifers
around the world. Nitrate fertilizer is universally used to maintain crop
yields at levels that would have appeared magical a century ago. But
nitrate fertilizer, based on an industrial process to "fix" nitrogen out of
the atmosphere developed by German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch
before World War I, seeps through soil to poison water tables everywhere
and make them unusable.

The United States embarked on a binge of dam building to preserve water
starting in the 1930s as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal
and continuing in the 1950s under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. But later
presidents slashed funding. Under President George W. Bush and his four
Congresses -- three Republican-controlled and one Democrat-controlled --
the problem got vastly worse.

On Thursday CNN cited a recent American Society of Civil Engineers report
that concluded more than 1,800 U.S. dams are now in urgent need of
reconstruction work and pose a significant risk of being breached. That is
up from around only 360 dams at such risk in 2001.

Even the drowning of New Orleans in 2005 -- which came about after the Bush
administration and recent Congresses neglected maintenance funding for the
levees protecting the city -- did not translate into a wider wake-up call
to protect and upgrade the national water-reservoir infrastructure.

The ASCE report concluded that it would take $8 billion to repair those
1,800 dams. But there are another 2,200 dams that also need maintenance
work. The bill for repairing all 4,000 dams in all could come to almost $50
billion.

That sounds like a lot of money. But the current Democrat-controlled 111th
Congress has just pushed through a gigantic $787 billion stimulus spending
package, of which little more than $80 billion, or around 11 percent, was
actually stimulus spending. So far, the current ruling Democrats in
Congress have proved as ignorant and irresponsible about the need to repair
dams and pipes and prioritize the U.S. water infrastructure as their
Republican predecessors.

Repairing dams and leaky pipes is not sexy. It is not cutting-edge
technology. It doesn't carry dreams of putting two or three American
astronauts back on the moon or providing an astrodome defense against
nuclear-armed missiles. It is only a matter of life and death for 300
million Americans.

The water shortages now hitting Los Angeles and Mexico City now "only"
threaten around 40 million people. If the U.S. and Mexican governments
don't get their acts together, the problem will only get far worse.
© 2009 United Press International