|
 The U.S. government
is ill prepared to confront increasingly severe water shortages across the
country and should make a new commitment to water research and governance,
water experts warn in a new report. Water research is fragmented among 20
federal agencies and is poorly coordinated, according to a new study from
the National Academies of Science sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The report comes on the heels of an announcement by USGS scientists Friday
that the parched Interior West could be the driest it has been in 500 years.
A decade of drought has produced the lowest flow on record in the 1,400 mile
long Colorado River, which provides drinking water to Phoenix and Las Vegas.
USGS scientists said Sunday that drought continues to affect a broad area of
the West, from the Central Plains into the Northern Rockies, and has now
moved into the Southeast.
 Committee
Chair Henry Vaux, a resource expert with the University of California at
Berkeley, warned "water crises are not confined to western states." Vaux
cited as an example the recent conflict between Maryland and Virginia over
Potomac River water rights that had to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Decision makers at all levels of government are going to have to make
difficult choices in the coming decades about how to allot limited water
supplies, and they need sound science to back them up," Vaux said. Given the
competition for water among farmers, environmental advocates, recreational
users, and other interests, as well as emerging challenges such as climate
change and the threat of waterborne diseases, the committee concluded that
an additional $70 million in federal funding should go to water research
each year.
Overall
federal funding for water research has been stagnant in real terms for the
past 30 years, and that the portion dedicated to research on water use and
related social science topics has declined. The panel says additional
millions of dollars should be allocated with the aim of improving the
decisionmaking of institutions that control water resources and gaining a
better understanding the water use challenges that lie ahead. The water
experts called for a new entity to coordinate water research at the national
level. No structure is in place now that prioritizes research for funding
purposes, evaluates progress, or shifts priorities as new challenges arise.
 The panel said
either an existing interagency body, a neutral organization authorized by
Congress, or a public-private group led by the White House Office of
Management and Budget could serve as the coordinating entity. Scientists at
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) say one of the
worst climatic events in the history of the United States, the Dust Bowl
drought, which devastated the Great Plains in the 1930s, was brought on by
changes in sea surface temperatures. Siegfried Schubert of NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center and his colleagues used a computer model developed with
satellite data to look at the climate over the past 100 years. The study
found cooler than normal tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures
combined with warmer tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures to create
conditions in the atmosphere that turned America's breadbasket into a dust
bowl from 1931 to 1939. These changes in sea surface temperatures created
shifts in the large-scale weather patterns and low level winds that reduced
the normal supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and inhibited rainfall
throughout the Great Plains.
"The 1930s
drought was the major climatic event in the nation's history," Schubert
said. "Just beginning to understand what occurred is really critical to
understanding future droughts and the links to global climate change issues
we're experiencing today," he said. Across the Great Plains 2004 ranks as
one of the top five driest years since 1893 in parts of Nebraska and since
1909 in parts of Wyoming, according to data provided by Brian Fuchs,
regional climatologist at the High Plains Regional Climate Center. From
southeastern Montana into western Nebraska, occasionally hot weather and
short-term dryness is aggravating the effects of a multi-year drought,
according to the National Drought Mitigation Center. In parts of western
Nebraska, the January-May period rivaled 2002 for the driest start to a year
in more than a century.
Meanwhile
on the southern High Plains, where June 8 to 14 temperatures ranged from
four to six degrees Fahrenheit above normal, short-term heat and dryness
continued to take a toll on dryland summer crops. As a result, abnormal
dryness and moderate drought continued to expand across the southern High
Plains, the National Drought Mitigation Center said.
(source:
Environmental News Service) |
