Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 14 January 2020
Water tankers ply the city streets bringing essential supplies of fresh potable water to thirsty neighborhoods.
“For city authorities that are already struggling to maintain the current supply as climate change strikes, let alone source additional water, tankers can seem like a safety net they feel powerless to resist.’’
So Peter Schwartzstein writes in a feature piece in the New York Times titled “The Merchants of Thirst” in the 11 January 2020 online edition.
The Times’ article is about a real and important issue: the inability of many cities in developing countries — and sometimes well developed countries, such as South Africa — to provide adequate clean, safe and drinkable fresh water to homes and businesses, even in their larger cities.
To fill the gap, fleets of water tankers (as pictured in the featured image) roam the streets of these cities, delivering much needed water to homes and businesses, filling everything from large 100 gallon tanks to 5-gallon jerry cans and even 1-gallon jugs. Of course, in most cases, the tankers are selling this water to desperate customers.
I can confirm from personal experience in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic that this is a real and ongoing problem. It is more often the poor that end up paying the sometimes exorbitant prices demanded by the tankers — they have no choice when water ceases to come out of the pipes. Note that the wealthier neighborhoods are less commonly under-served by the municipal water supply — and when they are cut off — they have standby water tanks pre-filled and fitted with electric water pumps to ensure that water continues to flow when the faucet is turned on. High-rise apartment complexes sell themselves on their ability to supply 24/7 electric power utilizing on-site dedicated diesel generators and 24/7 water supply — from on-site multi-thousand gallon cisterns buried beneath the building.
Every country I have visited, with the exception of those in Europe, uses water tankers for some purposes. Even where I live in Upstate New York, there are water tankers that fill swimming pools in the spring and dump water down dry wells in the late summer.
Many of us may not realize that when there is no water flowing out of the pipes it means: No showers, no baths, limited cooking, no dish washing, no clothes washing, no toilet flushing.
[In the Dominican Republic, it was common practice for homes to have a 50-gallon drum in the bathroom — which would be kept full with a hose from the sink or shower — next to the toilet. A gallon-sized water scoop made from a used bleach bottle could then be used to flush the toilet even when the water pipes ran dry.]
Apparently in keeping with the NY Times’ editorial narrative for climate change — which seems to require that every story on an ever-longer list of topics blame climate change for any and all negative circumstances — the problems related to Water Tankers in various places is hinted to have something to do with Climate Change, which is claimed to be adversely affecting the water supply in these places. However, it is in fact almost totally unrelated, even where there are real, physical problems such as drought.
In one word: Infrastructure
The real-world problem is infrastructure — inadequate, often antiquated, infrastructure. That is both not enough infrastructure and failing infrastructure.
To deliver fresh potable water to homes and businesses, these cities must have a whole list of major items; as illustrated in this diagram of Oahu, Hawaii’s water system:
1. Sources of water — dependable rivers, reservoirs, aqueducts and water treatment facilities to sanitize the public water supply.
2. A water distribution system — once the water is treated, it must be distributed throughout the city — down every street to every home, apartment building and business. This distribution system has valves and booster pumps and supply mains and distribution pipes of adequate size to meet the demand of customers.
3. In many cases in poorer countries, public water fountains and faucets need to be supplied for those neighborhoods not served with water piped directly into individual homes.
Schwarzstein reports; “But no matter how hard the [tanker truck] crews worked or how furiously they pushed their lumbering vehicles over the potholed roads, there was no satisfying the city’s needs. The going was too slow. The water shortage too severe.’
The fake news is right there. It is the sentence “The water shortage too severe.”
What water shortage?
There was no water shortage — not in Kathmandu. There was a water delivery problem — a water infrastructure problem — Schwartzstein reports it — right after the false information. The whole article starts with the truth “It had been 11 days since a ruptured valve reduced Kupondole district’s pipeline flow to a dribble,…” — a valve in the water supply main had ruptured leaving the neighborhood without water. He goes on later: “By the time the pipeline was fully restored, some households had subsisted on nothing but small jerrycans for almost an entire month.”
There is nothing in the entire article about an actual water shortage in Kathmandu — yet the Times’ author repeats three times that the problem is water shortages and climate change. He cites problems in Chennai, Indian and in Cape Town, South Africa.
They have had problems in Chennai, India, which has traditionally depended on the Indian monsoons to supply water but where the reservoirs have been allowed to silt up reducing their capacity while the population of the city of Chennai has grown out of control — without any additional investment in water infrastructure — no new reservoirs.
Time Magazine reported the Cape Town situation as:
“The Cape Town crisis stems from a combination of poor planning, three years of drought and spectacularly bad crisis management. The city’s outdated water infrastructure has long struggled to keep up with the burgeoning population. As dam levels began to decline amid the first two years of drought, the default response by city leadership was a series of vague exhortations to be “water aware.”
Not enough water or too many people?
Both, actually. Chennai, India had a population of 4 million in the year 2000. Today there are almost 11 million. [World Population Review reports 10,971,108] — nearly a three-fold increase in twenty years. In 2001, Kathmandu had a population of 671,846, today it is just under 1.5 million — more than doubled. Cape Town population in 2001; 2,900,000; in 2020 4,617,560 — adding one and a half million additional people, plus businesses and agriculture.
Rich or poor, localities cannot expect to meet the water needs of today with the infrastructure of the past century.
We see these recurring factors: There are too many people in an area without dependably sufficient natural fresh water supplies — in Chennai and Cape Town — both in naturally dry areas which are prone to drought. We see burgeoning populations without commensurate increases in water supply infrastructure and, in many cases, without adequate maintenance of existing, already inadequate, infrastructure — particularly in Kathmandu. The island of Phuket, Thailand, dependent on monsoonal rains, had water problems last year — with the same factors — skyrocketing population and inadequate water supply infrastructure. In each case, we see poor government — poor planning — poor crisis management.
And we see weather — good weather, bad weather, too dry weather, too wet weather. And we see slowly changing, ever changing climatic patterns with broad changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulations — and the coming and going of El Niños and La Niñas.
To deal with ever changing weather, and slowly changing climate, requires good government and adequate national wealth, well spent, to prepare first for the present, and then for the inevitable but unpredictable possible futures. All three of the localities covered in the Times have not even properly planned for the present — not kept water supply infrastructure up to the task of keeping up with population growth and local water needs of agriculture and business — not even in fully modern Cape Town. India, Nepal and Thailand are in far worse situations — broken and inadequate infrastructure, planning decades behind the needs of times, governments without sufficient funds to make needed corrections and additions.
Politicians fall back on blaming Climate Change — something they can’t be expected to be held responsible for — for their own shortcomings and failures. The international community is equally happy to blame Climate Change for the misery of local peoples left without basic cheap clean safe water supplies — blaming climate, the universal scapegoat, rather than supplying humanitarian aid to help where it is really needed.
The international community needs to focus more of its humanitarian aid effort on the real and pressing problems of water supply in developing nations — a pragmatic approach that will be a win-win regardless of the vagaries of climate.
Without any need to invoke Climate Change, Cape Town’s narrow escape should inform the megalopolises of the American Southwest (in particular Southern California but including such cities as Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada) of their imminent and possibly unavoidable danger — they share a common Mediterranean climate and are historically subject to droughts and mega-droughts. Both have out-of-control population growth and tourism growth as well as heavy demands of agriculture on water supplies. The American Southwest and especially Southern California are just one extended drought away from a massive water crisis.
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Author’s Comment:
This story represents the ubiquity of blaming climate change as a means of avoiding responsibility for the failings of civil society. It is interesting that even wealthy countries like South Africa suffer the same problems — albeit on a lesser scale — as seen in poor and developing countries. Money cannot obviate the damage caused by lack of governmental foresight and lack of continuing infrastructure investment.
I grew up in Southern California, living through periods of drought and periods of seemingly endless rains that washed homes and whole mountainsides into the sea. For those with interest, the movie-classic “Chinatown” tells some of the story.
Please begin our comment with the name of the person you are addressing if replying to something specific. Begin with ‘Kip…’ if speaking to me.
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I’ve studied tyranny, government, for decades. A few truisms have emerged from that study.
The first truism of government is: “History informs that the criminal syndicate of theft and violence, government, can only produce 5 things: Lies, poverty, misery, destruction, and death.”
Relying on such an entity to deliver such a vital life sustain resource is foolish at best.
Jay ==> It is estimated that 80% of all Americans live in urban areas — and thus mostly rely on municipal or other public water systems of some sort.
It has only been twenty years since my semi-rural home was finally connected to a public water system — mostly driven by the demand that we eliminate the use of our private septic tank, connecting all the homes along our road to the state financed water treatment plant (for which we are still being billed….).
We have two wells on the property, which I maintain for back-up use.
Kip? You should not have publicly stated you have clean, potable well water on your property. The greenunists will be coming after you, you are a threat to their agenda.
2hotrel9 ==> Good one….
All the suffering is simply the crime of wasting resources by the millions on hoax problems and not spending the resources instead on known solutions to make life better for all. Climate Change panic bla bla is evil at it’s core.
Tom ==> Unfortunately, there are many places in the world that simply do not have the resources — not even to waste — and what little they have is misappropriated by kleptocrats.
My experience in the norther Caribbean region — Bahamas, Dominican Republic and Haiti mostly — has brought home many lessons about national economies. A nation must have something to exchange in the international marketplace to acquire foreign capital. Without something valuable to exchange, they must create the wealth within their own little nation — which is usually not possible — thus, these island economies are poor.
Most island nations exchange beaches and other tourist attractions. Some exchange “unregulated financial services” (money laundries). In the 1950s, some exchanged cheap labor — sewing clothes and the like. The Caribbean used to exchange sugar and rum and slaves.
Building resilient national economies is not easy — even when local leaders are mostly honest.
We all know that “climate change ‘is nothing but a deliberate deceptive term. It can mean almost anything. Global or regional warming or cooling at the very least. Global warming , including warming ocean temps. should mean lots of evaporation, lots of clouds and lots of rain. All of this talk of droughts and water shortages point at cooling of the ocean surfaces.Certainly this seems to be the case in southern Australia .The argo buoys show a drop in average temps and the indian ocean dipole has delivered cooler surface temps and weaker winds. The result is history.Warmer is good,cooler can be disastrous.
John ==> I visited Cairns with my family while I was working on the Sydney Olympics website team in 2000. Absolutely wonderful. Toured the nearby mountains as well by automobile.
Have the wildfires affected your area?
No it wouldn’t burn there in tropical rain forest. Come to sunny Queensland their tourism cries. Raining one day and pissing down the next at least for the tropical far north and that’s where the flooding of Lake Eyre in SA comes from occasionally. When it isn’t hosting Donald Campbell’s world land speed record in 1963 as it predominantly can like the US Bonneville salt flats.
Here with tropics in the far north to snow on peaks in the south and skiing in winter with lots of desert in the middle or you think the US is one big monoclimate too? (the Tropic of Capricorn runs about one third down from the top of Australia remember)
&exph=606&expw=914&q=map+of+australia+on+us&selectedindex=0&ajaxhist=0&vt=0&eim=1,6
Here Kip with the map-
https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/australia-map.htm
Now if you take Alice Springs in the centre (and note Ayers Rock nearby although check the scale) you can see Cairns on the coast opposite the GBR at 2 oclock well above the T of C compared to Sydney on the coast at 4.30 below it. In fact any of the coastline above the T of C is prone to Tropical Cyclones but as you can see from the deserts they quickly peter out over land.
I mentioned the winter low pressure systems bringing cold moist air from the Antarctic/Southern Ocean and they largely bring rain to the SW of Western Australia (see Perth at 7.30) and tend to miss the Nullarbor but give Adelaide in SA our Goyder Line and then continue eastwards over more fertile Victoria and NSW. In summer large high pressure cells take over the land and they can direct high temps from inland deserts over coastal populations with heat waves.
Now the east coast also gets rainfall from the Pacific Ocean but like your Rockies the Great Dividing Range prevents much of it progressing too far inland to the drier fertile plains and you can see how Pacific oscillations will affect flooding and droughts there. It can also be the case that monsoons and TCs in the NW of WA can reach us here in Adelaide dumping summer rains and causing flooding of the inland deserts.
Most of Australia’s population is concentrated in the Brisbane/Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne arc.
A lot of the bushfires are in inaccessible high country Eucalypt forest but the ever present threat is to adjoining farms and towns in the SE of the country and here’s NSW-
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/nsw-rural-fire-service-map-shows-massive-extent-of-bushfires/news-story/0bd5be470d55ac2f8b06922e1a72b6c5
It’s a big country of drought and flooding rain somewhere and there’s some rain falling in NSW at present in summer which will be welcome-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/bom-warns-of-flash-flooding-as-rain-forecast-to-bring-bushfire-relief-across-nsw/ar-BBYZkVK
As if to make the point-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/police-and-emergency-services-search-for-missing-toddler-on-remote-noreena-downs-station/ar-BBZ05SD
Newman (an iron ore mine) is at 9 oclock near the coast and essentially part of the Pilbara iron ore mining and export ports region( Port Headland and Karratha/Dampier) and here’s a clip of what the country is like there if you’re interested in what most of Australia’s semi arid and desert can be like with the odd oasis-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=0&v=eH0wCI7lSC4&feature=emb_logo
Not exactly Cairns tropical rainforest you experienced or those tall Eucalypt forests of the east coast that are burning now although that country will burn.
Most of us live pretty mundane safe lives in capital cities and large urban centres but you can see how a touchscreen generation with a constant barrage of in your face news items (and largely bad news items) can easily become somewhat paranoid about that and susceptible to this doomsday cult and weather events from around a continent and even the globe now. Those of us who grew up without that (book readers?) have a much better sense of history science and balance about the environment we actually experienced more rather than their virtual one they’re getting fed all the time. That’s the problem I see with these young XR hysterics and as one country politician put it- They’re like dogs chasing cars that wouldn’t know what to do if they caught them.
Just playing mud pies mum-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/girl-3-found-safe-after-24-hours-missing/ar-BBZ0Rx1
observa ==> Thanks for the good news!
But, really? “She’d reportedly gone for a walk with the dog on her family’s million acre station.”
onserva ==> I (maybe, we) have had the privilege of living a life spanning these marvelous technical advances. Television was a modern miracle when I was born and we were lucky enough be be able to afford one. At one point, I was involved in selling and installing the first “car phones” — the advent of the cellular phone boom. I retired at 52 from a high-tech job at IBM HQ.
It has been my luck to have been given a very wide view of the world.
observa ==> Thanks for the detailed update on the brush fires in Australia — with maps!
Kip-
The comments are filled with examples of when the responsible actions you call for were not taken, with the results of inadequate water supply.
To prove your point, I thought that you would like to hear of a place where the water supply agency did take responsible action and worked to provide adequate water supply for a growing city for many years into the future.
When I moved to San Antonio, Texas, almost 50 years ago, the municipal water system got it’s water from the Edwards aquifer. The Edwards is rechargeable and large and deep, so at the time, San Antonio thought they had their water supply figured out. However, not only did the city grow fast , but the agricultural usage grew fast also, with resulting usual disagreements between the city and the rural areas over water rights.
As I said, the Edwards is very deep and could have probably supplied the demand, except for the actions of a few environmentalists. The max level for water in the Edwards is somewhere around 700 feet above sea level. When the water level drops below somewhere around 630 feet, some of the springs in the Texas hill country dry up. There are small fish in these springs. So yes, they were declared endangered species, therefore the springs were not allowed to dry up. So the water level was not to drop below about 630 feet, which it sometimes did during dry periods. The immediate reaction was water rationing during the summer months. Not severe, but inconvenient.
Undeterred, the San Antonio Water System (SAWS) looked for other sources of water. It found another small
aquifer south of city which had some water, but had room for lots more. Over the past several years, when the Edwards has plenty of water, some of it was pumped into the smaller aquifer. This aquifer now has enough water to supply the entire city for 6 months if needed. SAWS also arranged for long term supply contracts from two areas well north of the city (one several hundred miles away) and installed pipelines to bring this water to San Antonio.
Yes, our water bills went up some, but with a tiered water rate system, water is cheap for those who use just a little. The result is that San Antonio has a dependable water supply at an affordable price.
So yes, Kip, you are right, all it takes is a competent government agency doing it’s job.
‘
Old Engineer ==> Thank you for sharing San Antonio’s success story with us. We needed a positive to offset the many examples of failure.
If only other areas would follow their good example.
old engnr says:
competent government agency doing it’s job.
Those are more endangered than the fish in the springs.
The wonderful water delivery in Ancient Rome was paid for by wealth obtained by conquest. It was not an economic system.
In the Third Century an experiment in authoritarian government went out of control and the bureaucrats destroyed the economy. One can say that like today, a welfare dictatorship and a military dictatorship ruined the economy. Rome, the city had almost 1 million people, of which half were on the dole.
Today’s water systems should be privatized and run as a utility, with accountability.
In Michigan there was the Flint City example when state employing would not test the water supply according to regulations.
Even worse there is a community in Northern Ontario, that has been on a “boil water advisory” for 25 years.
Canada’s federal government can’t seem to fix it and obviously the locals can’t either.
Bob ==> Many of these problems seem so simpole — yet in the real world, can get complicated, complex, and difficult to solve.
I am a proponent of refusing building permits for new homes and businesses where future water and power cannot reasonably be guaranteed.
Good article, Kip. If you’ve followed the news lately, Lake Michigan (possibly the other Great Lakes, too) has been overflowing its banks during the past week and as far as I can tell, the entire watershed is as close to flooding as you can get. Last report on Lake Michigan was that it was now 37 inches higher than normal. That storm we had last week not only sent waves crashing over the entire lake shore, but also eroded more of the beaches and damaged the paved walkways from the South Shore up to the state line, and probably more than what was just reported on the news. Some of that wave action went right into the yards of people who thought they had enough distance between the shore line and their homes.
What made it worse was that any water that reached past the beach limits to the Outer Drive froze and made driving hazardous. I don’t think this is going away any time soon, either, but I don’t know how far north there was the same damage, or how much damage by waves pounding the shore occurred on the eastern shore. Nor has there been a report on Lake Superior or any of the other Great Lakes about it. That may not come up until spring, but the rivers are full and close to overflowing.
Seems as though if there’s a drought or low water level in one place, there is the opposite in another place. I don’t know if any of this means we’re meddling too much with Mother Nature’s designs, or if it’s just how things are, but I will not be surprised to find that my favorite places to visit with a camera may no longer have trails because they are all under water and it isn’t going down.
Kip… Could you comment on the de-engineering of management. In Australia many jobs that required engineering qualifications have been restructured into administration/management type jobs. Previously there were City Engineers who managed water supply in many towns. Now this is done by Manager, Services or the like. The qualifications for the the job are now Business Management or the like. The engineers are far down the ladder. Engineers like to build things. Administrators like to avoid responsibility.
Richard ==> I am not personally familiar with the shift away from real engineers to managers.
Any readers here have experience with this?
Here in Australia we are suffering one of the worst droughts in modern history, some would say the worst. The current bushfires reported worldwide are partly as a result of this drought.
The engineer who designed the Sydney harbour Bridge as well as Story bridge in Brisbane, designed a watering system for Australia in 1938 that has still not been implemented to this day, making use of the substantial rainfall, meters of rain, in the tropical north of Australia and re-directing that water into the inland existing inland rivers through a series of dams, tunnels, pipes etc.
This was named the Bradfield Scheme, lots of articles on the internet about it.
Over the years there have been enquires at a govt level, costing millions about the viability of this scheme, if only some of that money had been spent on the scheme.
Today the Chinese are buying up farmland for cents in the dollar, remember drought stricken, in a long line down the center of Australia. They are thinking add water. Need I say any more.
Feel free the edit as you wish
Kip, although Australia’s population is relatively small at around 25million we too have serious water problems, lack thereof. Australia accepted 238,300 migrants in the year ending June 2019.
We have monsoonal rains in the north flowing out to sea, while vast areas in other parts of Australia are suffering crippling drought. Our Murray Darling rivers now have higher demands on them, including overseas interests who have bought up water licenses and can choose whether or not to sell their water. The river system ends up in South Australia and environmentalists won the right for the river to supplement waterways so as to keep them fresh. These same waterways had been traditionally brackish, being infiltrated with seawater. In more recent years dredging had stopped. Our farmers had to watch waters flow past them, waters they weren’t allowed to access so that waterways in SA had a top up of fresh water.
Some people are suggesting that more of the migrants should be sent here to the regions. We are struggling to provide enough water to those already here. The truth of the matter is that we need to sort out our water infrastructure nationally and cut the number of new immigrants, at least temporarily.
Our government has spent tens of billions of dollars on wind and solar renewables. That’s tens of billions of dollars that would have been better spent on building dams and putting in other water infrastructure.
Megs ==> I am truly sorry for the troubles faced by the Australian people. On the upside, you have representative democratic governments and the people can change the government to get one that will be responsive.
Kip, what I have described to you is under a conservative government, returned to power only in May of last year. The only other major option is leftist (democrats)/greens.
Our society would be a total basket case if they were in power.
Kip: If all California had to do was provide water to people and industry, they’d be in OK shape. The California Water Project, Central Valley Project, Owens River aqueduct and Colorado River aqueduct taken together represent a huge investment, a lot of engineering, and a pretty successful attempt to move a lot of water over great distances. More than enough for 40 million people and a few semiconductor fabs.
The problem is the need to provide CHEAP water to agriculture in the Central Valley. They can sort of do that in wet years. In dry years, not so much. But you can’t just not water your almond groves and such in dry years if you expect to have a crop when(if) the rains return.
Then there is California water rights law which might be generously described as demented. It’s sort of first-come-first served except when it isn’t. So if the original owner of a plot back in the 19th century raised a few grapes and irrigated them, the current owner can probably take that much water (but no more) from the stream the original owner used. If there is any water in it to take. But all the upstream and downstream landowners that took water from that stream in earlier years get their allotments first. A problem to administer? You bet.
There’s lots more. And no one seems inclined to try to straighten things out because any attempt to rationalize things will harm someone financially and/or hurt wildlife and/or screw up the salmon run somewhere and will summon virtual or actual lynch mobs to the doors of anyone crazy enough to try to fix things.
Here’s a link that describes some of the issues.
https://www.scpr.org/news/2015/04/15/50941/10-things-to-know-about-california-water-use/
We have the tools. We have the technology to solve the world’s water problems:
“Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World”by Seth M. Siegel
https://www.amazon.com/Let-There-Be-Water-Water-Starved-dp-1250073952/dp/1250073952/
Let There Be Water illustrates how Israel can serve as a model for the United States and countries everywhere by showing how to blunt the worst of the coming water calamities. Even with 60 percent of its country made of desert, Israel has not only solved its water problem; it also had an abundance of water. Israel even supplies water to its neighbors-the Palestinians and the Kingdom of Jordan-every day.
Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews, Let There Be Water reveals the methods and techniques of the often offbeat inventors who enabled Israel to lead the world in cutting-edge water technology.
Let There Be Water also tells unknown stories of how cooperation on water systems can forge diplomatic ties and promote unity. Remarkably, not long ago, now-hostile Iran relied on Israel to manage its water systems, and access to Israel’s water know-how helped to warm China’s frosty relations with Israel.
Beautifully written, Seth M. Siegel’s Let There Be Water is and inspiring account of the vision and sacrifice by a nation and people that have long made water security a top priority. Despite scant natural water resources, a rapidly growing population and economy, and often hostile neighbors, Israel has consistently jumped ahead of the water innovation-curve to assure a dynamic, vital future for itself. Every town, every country, and every reader can benefit from learning what Israel did to overcome daunting challenges and transform itself from a parched land into a water superpower.
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Incidentally, Israel offered to send teams of experts to Cape Town. Cape Town refused because of their solidarity with the Palestinians, who are not nearly as stupid as the South Africans.
Walet ==> Thanks for the link to Siegel’s book.
Judith Curry has often described climate change as a wicked problem.
But is nothing compared to the most wicked problem of all POVERTY.
Poverty as a wicked problem is intertwined with education, lack of jobs, health, crime, poor government.
Lack of water and waste water( just as important) is a key contributor to Poor education, poor health and waste of Human Resources.
The late Hans Rosling video on the magic washing machine is excellent
https://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-and-the-magic-washing-machine/
Just try to imagine a adolescent girl not going to school because she has to manually collect water from a well and then hand wash her clothes.
Hans Rosling also highlights that babies per women is the key indicator of a nations wellbeing.
All actions that improve the health and education of girls should be the highest priority of all nations. Providing reliable reticulated water and waste water infrastructure is probably the most important of these actions.
Kip’s article is something I would like to see more of on WUWT.
Other world issues more important than climate change
As a climate skeptic I find having an arsenal of talking points available when challenging alarmists.
Alarmists struggle when I highlight that the education of teenage girls is more important than climate change.
Waza ==> All very good points. My wife and I put in about 12 years of humanitarian service in the northern Caribbean before I “aged out” and I can verify that all you say is true.
Thanks for the link to Rosling’s Magic Washing Machine. Education, basic electrical supply, clean safe water, basic sewage systems — all so important.
Waste water is just as important as water supply.
Since the dawn of civilisation the Nile River has been suppling drinking water?
Only now after 5000 years the Nile is struggling. Not because of lack of water or over population but because the level of waste water being treated can not keep up with the water being pumped from the river. This means the next town down the river has to spend more on water treatment. Uh oh
Waste water contamination of of ground water is also becoming a problem
Most people don’t realize that you don’t “consume” water, you “use” water, then it goes back into nature, even what you drink returns to nature, through sweat or going to the bathroom.
Davis ==> Quite right — but the availability of clean potable fresh water where it is needed is often a problem.
In my area, our potable water supply comes from an inconsequential creek with a six foot dam, with a water treatment facility. Water not used to supply our town simply flows over the dam and on into the Hudson River thus to the Atlantic Ocean — where it is “lost” as fresh water. I often correct people here about “wasting” water — what we don’t use in our homes goes to the sea.
Epilogue:
My thanks to all of you who have joined in the conversation on the Water Tanker phenomenon.
Lots in interesting input and some great links — several on the Australian situation including the heart rending story of a little Aussie girl lost but now found.
Thanks for reading!
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I like WUWT
Best all time thread.
My family has missionaries world over. (Even China in 1950s)
Our large family erected hundreds of windmills in the prairies. Rural electric happened next. Wind and electricity. (daughter EE PhD power systems). My company partnered with Enron wind to bring Wind farms to
Tehachapi Mountain Range. We like CO2. My wheat fields draw 17,000 pounds per acre and use less precip when CO2 rises.
Tossing some thoughts, the people problem i see is human interference. I like the post on Israel which is dry and creative with solutions. Australia has problems. Most are hindrance problems tied to suits in cities.
Henry ==> Thanks for weighing in. My grandfather was a missionary (and school teacher) to the Lakota Sioux, my father born on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. My wife and I put in 12 years of humanitarian work in the Caribbean.
For proper treatment, and transport (pipes) of potable water and sewage, you need quite a bit of cheap, abundant power, such as electricity.
Oh wait, we don’t want developing countries to have cheap, abundant energy, even if it would solve a multitude of medical issues.
Davis ==> There are a lot of dark downsides to the current international thinking on energy issues for the developing world, especially Africa.
Kip,
Great essay, I do a lot of work in rural Indonesia and the sight of women carrying buckets of water long distances is amazingly common. Always a real source of perspective for me to see people in 2020 teetering on the edge of survival. A far cry from our common SoCal origins, a little bit of infrastructure really goes a long way. A plastic tank, ($40), some PVC and a pump and bang, sister can go to school instead of schlepping water up the hill all day…..
I know you water, gonna miss you when yer gone…..
Tim ==> Yes, all over the world, women and children lug water. My wife and I would stop and load Mom and her six children, each with size appropriate jugs (5 gallons for adults, down to 1 gallon for the little ones) into the back of our pickup (a practice entirely forbidden by our NGO for insurance reasons) and drive them to their destinations — often shocking far along the road. Many times it was not apparent where the water came from — but it was never a safe drinking water source.
I tried following the South Africa drought story.
What is the solution there? given that 1 the population is growing, 2 the reservoirs will go low occasionally as the weather varies.
Dig a big reservoir? Pipe water from somewhere else? Desalinate? I believe they were working to get a few new desalination plants up and running. Not sure how much they can meet need.
TheLastDemocrat ==> They will have to increase supply to meet increased demand — how they do it, I don’t know. Nuclear power plant using excess heat run desal plant? More reservoirs?
What they can’t do is keep adding more people and agriculture — demand — without adding supply.
Ya know, seems to me US Navy is preparing to retire another Aircraft Carrier, which would have a very large desal capability. Perhaps it could be permanently moored in LA, pipe the fresh water output to the city and convert large ares of the ship to house the homeless, plus medical facility already aboard. Would certainly be smarter than simply scrapping it, so clearly an idea that will not only be rejected out of hand but also ridiculed by the left.
2hotel9 ==> The re-use of retired naval vessels is a good idea. The devil is always in the details. Boats and Ships are very expensive to maintain for any use whatever — but it may be practical for multi-use purposes — maybe a Veterans Hospital and other things.
Involving VA is always a bad idea. It is infested with military hating, anti-America f**kbags. They took their swipe at killing me in the 1990s, never again. F**k VA, f**king c*cksuckers. I have watched them purposely drive too many good men to suicide over their f**king sh*t. Don’t get me started on the f**king VA.
2hotel9 ==> and what’s your real opinion about the VA? Don’t hold back just to be polite…..
VA is one point that sets me off. When any group actively tries to kill me I am never polite about them, period. I will admit reforms have been pushed on them, which they fight tooth&nail, and improvements are slowly being forced on them. That said I will never enter a VA building nor interact with any VA personnel. Ever. Period.
The maintenance costs on a 40-50 year old carrier, just to keep it afloat – not to mention an operational nuclear PWR would be enormous I imagine. While I do believe nuclear power with adjacent seawater desal plants is an idea that makes a lot of sense, I don’t see the use of retired/dated CVNs, SSNs, or SSBNs being feasible for that purpose.
Chuck, Cali has a massive problem, any solution will help. They have no trouble pissing away gigantic amounts of money on failing “solutions” which are making the problems they have created even worse. Maintaining a vessel in a permanent mooring would cost far less than what they are doing now. Look at what they threw away on the bullet train to nowhere, that could have been used to build desal plants in multiple locations and actually help the citizens of Cali.
2hotel9 ==> The city of Santa Barbara has a complete, ready to do, desal plant that is just waiting to be needed and pass the economic-common-sense barrier.
Really? All the news I see coming out of Cali is they need it, desperately. Or are they lying? Is there plenty of water in Cali and they simply want to rip off America with their lies? All I see is Cali has no water and people are going to start dying. Are they lying?
2hotel9 ==> You make the mistake of accepting the media’s incorrect tendency to generalize. Santa Barbara, a bit north of Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast, has its own reservoirs and water supply system — and its growth is somewhat limited by geography (and the incredibly high cost of land).
They do in fact has a de-sal plant which was finished and ready to go, constantly maintained, but not in use — until it was re-commissioned in 2017. It now produces about 3 million gallons of drinking water a day.
That is good to hear. Again, all I read is that Cali has no water and the end is nigh. Surely you are not intimating that journalist would lie?!?!? Heavens forfend! (and spell check is quite cross I am not letting it change that last word)
2hotel9 ==> I am an “Angelino” – born and raised through high school and uni in Los Angeles. I still keep track of the water situation there. It is easy: one link:
https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=rescond.pdf
Cool, thanks. Always nice to have another vector of intelligence, as S2 always said.
Chuck ==> Maintenance is a huge issue — I have lived on boats and ships for half my adult life — and much of that has involved dry docks and boat yards….LOL…and a heck of a lot of money.
Personally, worth every penny — but I can’t speak for society at large.
A lot of maintenance would be saved if the dragged the ship ashore…..
Hi Kip,
I was an electricians mate on the destroyer USS Berkeley, DDG-15, from 1979 to 1983. Commissioned in 1962, she was of the last class of fuel oil burning steam plant DDs in the Navy, obviously not a Nuc. She was in the yards in Long Beach when I left, later decommissioned from serrvice and sold/transferred to the Greek Navy. She was subsequently decommed in 2002 and scrapped in 2004. 40 years of service and she was pretty much beat. Run hard and put away wet, as the cowboys say. Anyway, the older ships require a LOT of maintenance just to keep them afloat.
Chuck ==> Yeah, my ride for much of my youth as originally a passenger ferry built by Harland and Wolff at Belfast for the Burns and Laird Lines, launched on 11 March 1936 — used in the Med by the allies during WWII. Giant twin diesels burning the crudest bunker oil we could buy. She was a beauty in the first-class passgenger decks, where officers (such as my wife and I) were berthed.
Cost a fortune to keep on the right side of the ocean surface.