Water Is The Backbone Of Civilization Essay

Each year, at least 7.8 trillion gallons of water are drawn up from the Ogalla Aquifer to irrigate the crops planted on the High Plains. These cros are the main food sourrce for our entire country. Tragically, irrigation is depleting the aquifer faster than it can replenish itself, and that is the problem. In fact, only the tiniest fraction of the water is ever replaced in the Ogallala Aquifer. If the water were ever fully depleted, the aquifer would need 6,000 years to refill naturally (Zwingle 83). The only way the Ogalla can be replenished is by water seeping down through the layers of soil until it reaches the aquifer. This water comes from the small amount of precipitation in the region, as well as from streams, reservoirs, canals, and irrigation (McGuire and Sharpe).

California has always had a warm climate, yet its supply of water has rarely been affected. In 2014 California’s water shortage issue truly began. Due to low amounts of snow in the winter in recent years, California has tried to equal out these shortages by drilling water from underground aquifers. Yet, underground aquifers recharge much slower than surface water sources. California has already made significant drawbacks to attempt to limit the amount of water they use, so these aquifers can recharge. But still resources continue going down and the Central Valley Aquifer’s water level is rapidly declining. Luckily, on April 7, 2017 the drought stage of emergency in California was ended. Yet the issue isn’t truly resolved. Glen MacDonald

At the start of my journalistic investigation I stumbled upon a 2010 documentary by the explorer Wes Skiles titled Water’s Journey. The short film is available online free of charge and follows a scientific team of four as they traverse the Florida aquifer in real time. The goal of their mission was to explore and extensively map the inside of the Florida Aquifer for the first time. The four individuals on this groundbreaking mission included Tom Morris, a cave explorer and biologist, Jill Heinerth, a technical dive specialist, the Wes Skiles, and electromagnetics expert Brian Pease. Pease designed a revolutionary transmitter that was able to send signals through Florida’s solid rock and water below, which allowed for him and Skiles on the surface to actively track Morris and Heinerth as they explored the depths below.

Envision yourself, about to complete a straightforward, everyday thing such as washing the dishes, suddenly to your surprise there is no water coming out of the faucet. Well for the civilians of East Porterville this is their reality. California has always had very lenient and ineffective groundwater regulations. Today, this has become a major issue, especially with California's severe drought. The regulation of the aquifer is a necessity because cleanliness is a basic human right and by not regulating the groundwater and leaving civilians with no working water, that right is taken away. The right to bathe, wash your hands, and have a working toilet is simply no more. Furthermore there are scientific statements, proving that excessively pumping groundwater will lower the water levels, which will likely lead to the land level sinking as well.

Imagine having to go outside every time one needs to use the restroom. There has been a drought going on in California for the past four years. There is a feud for water between farmers, citizens, and the drillers who get drain the water. The drought is a damaging issue that is affecting the lives of many. Therefore, California’s government should pass laws to manage how aquifers are to be properly used.

Would you like to go without a shower for five months? California right now are in an unfavorable and enormous drought. As a result, many citizens don’t have water to drink water, flush the toilet, take a shower, and wash the dishes. Also, Farmers don’t have enough water to harvest crops so if they can’t harvest crops, we won’t have enough food. Therefore, I support the regulations that allow the California Farm Bureau to control groundwater for all citizens.

Groundwater is one of the most important natural resource in the nation, specifically in the Central Valley. In California, many people are pumping a lot more water because of the California drought and groundwater is a good resource for the farmers to harvest their crops. However, the main issue today is that in the Central Valley is that the land is sinking faster and faster due to the demand of pumping more water from the ground. The ground sinking in California isn’t recent, but it has been going an ongoing issue for over decades. Therefore, the land sinking has background history, but many studies and researchers didn 't take it as a warning until recently, and as a result it has been getting worse. The land sinking occurring in the Central Valley can cause damages to our communities such as bridges and roads cracking and can even go as far as cracking irrigation canals. These damages can cost millions of dollars to recover and rebuilding damages. On the other hand, the ground sinking has already destroyed canal linings, which will cost millions of dollars to repair. With that being the case, imagine all the other damages that the ground sinking will cause and cost to fix them. For these reasons, the state of California needs to start finding possible solutions to prevent the ground sinking from further sinking and to prevent more damages to the Central Valley. Solutions that might include encouraging the community to

Arizona’s extended drought is forcing water companies to take water from non-replenishable aquifers which take centuries to refill. Central Arizona needs to take drastic measures to reduce the amount of water consumed to ensure less water is drained from aquifers. A crucial measure which needs to be implemented is water conservation; some of these necessary water conservation methods include metering and increasing the water efficiency in agriculture.

The state of Florida is very dependent on groundwater, primarily for public and agricultural supply. Indeed, the largest source of drinking water in Florida is groundwater from the state’s massive aquifer system; approximately ninety percent of the state’s drinking water is extracted from groundwater sources (Marella, 2004). According to Marella (2004), “Between 1970 and 2000, total freshwater withdrawals increased for public supply by 176 percent and for agricultural self-supplied by 87 percent” (p. 1). As discussed previously, a growing population correlates with an increase in the demand for groundwater resources. Groundwater is currently being pumped out of Florida’s aquifers faster than the state’s abundant rainfall can refill them (Barnett, 2007, p.2).

The drought in California isn’t even close to seeing an end, in the article Solutions to California Water Crisis From Half a World Away by Stephen Stock, Michael Bott, Jeremy Carroll and Felipe Escamilla, it reports that California needs to brace itself for multiple decades more of this monumental drought and that it going to take trillions of gallons of water to catch up to the state current deficit. They summarized the severity of this drought by saying that it could rain every day in San Francisco and Oakland California for the next decade and a half and the state still wouldn’t have even made a divot in the terms of catching up. When there’s a shortage in the amount of water available, a state or country relies on the hidden water supplies underground in aquifers and ground water which they then drill into to

“The state should regulate groundwater because normal average people will not have water available for them to perform their necessities if there is no limit to how much groundwater is being taken out of the ground” (California ). California’s weak ground water legislation have allowed more to be taken out the returned.Farmers should realize that too much water will cause people not to be able to use the restroom, wash their hands, use the sink , and take a shower.People will not be able to obtain proper hygiene.

With our water aquifers running out of water fast and our farmer pumping out water as quickly as they can, our aquifers will not be able to replenish themselves fast enough to survive the constant water use, and if the Californian government were to just implement a law regulating how much water these farmers use, the state of California may be one step closer to solving the problem of groundwater depletion. Currently, when a farmer digs a well in California, they have no limitations on how much water they use nor do they have to tell anybody how much groundwater they use (Pool). In California, farmers use eighty percent of the state 's groundwater, and without the

In California, groundwater is not merely part of the hydrologic cycle, but a key component that supports the state’s economy, contributes towards environmental stewardship, and supports communities that may range from being partially dependent to solely dependent on groundwater. Groundwater in California has always supported the urban settlement, irrigation in the arid Central Valley, and functioned as a backup water source during droughts. Given the importance of groundwater in the state, California pumps more groundwater than any other state, pumping roughly 16% of national groundwater use (California Department of Water Resources 2015). Despite groundwater’s importance, there has not been an established system to manage groundwater throughout

How many of you, when you go to a restaurant and the waiter/waitress asks you what you want to drink ask for water?

The drought in the western United States has been going on for nearly five years and while there are countless ways to lessen the effects, there isn’t much action being taken. If nothing is done, the supply of groundwater in the United States along with the quality of it will greatly diminish within the next few decades. In many Western states such as California, the residents haven’t been taking much notice to the situation due to their use of the use of water from aquifers and reservoirs without strict regulations. The continuous use of water from these aquifers will eventually result in empty aquifers and no fresh, potable water for residents in the affected areas and in order for a change to actually be made the people must realize what kind of situation they are actually in and that if they do not follow regulations put forth they will be in a dangerous situation.