Freaking Out About The Drought

When will the drought in New Mexico ever end?

Bruce is getting worried about it all:

William deBuys Author, A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the Southwest, The Age of Thirst in the American West


Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).

The fires were a function of drought. As of summer’s end, 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat. It was the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.

Virtually every city in the region experienced unprecedented temperatures, with Phoenix, as usual, leading the march toward unlivability. This past summer, the so-called Valley of the Sun set a new record of 33 days when the mercury reached a shoe-melting 110º F or higher. (The previous record of 32 days was set in 2007.)

And here’s the bad news in a nutshell: if you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst, which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization. No kidding.

I reply:

Hi Bruce:

Preaching to the converted here. I definitely think water is a big, big problem.

That said, I think the interim solutions are actually pretty darn simple, and lack of will and a lack of infrastructure is the only reason we don’t proceed. In other parts of the world subject to these problems, they collect rain water.

Australia is a First World kind of country, but it is expected that every residence collects their own rain water. There are exceptions – recently-built residences in urban areas lack them – but every ding dang place in the interior has them. They have to. Interior Queensland, for example doesn’t have much in the way of ground water resources. So they can’t do what people in NM do, and dig a well. The droughts in Australia are so extreme that any ground water they have would be exhausted. NM is more fortunate. But we will get there eventually. And then we will do what they have always done. They have the infrastructure. We have it for livestock, but not people.

Some laws might have to change. In Colorado, it’s technically illegal to collect rainwater. Interferes with watershed drainage, they say.

In Mexico, they have water pressure problems, so they have nifty water pressure units on apartment buildings that could well double as water heaters. If water was a problem it probably wouldn’t be hard to add rainwater tanks too. They have the infrastructure. Do we have a market? Maybe someday!

Regarding NM’s current extreme drought, it’s definitely the worst in my lifetime, but it’s probably no worse than the drought just before I was born, in the early 50’s, and not as bad as the 30’s. The difference now is that ABQ has many, many more people.

What’s worrisome, of course, is that the archaeologists see records of droughts in the 1200’s and 1300’s that were definitely worse than the 1930’s one – much worse. So, the climate hasn’t shown its full range of potential in modern civilization’s run. Mother Nature can surprise. Climatologists are still wonderstruck at the current drought in SW Australia that stuck around despite La Nina and they reckon is the worst in 1,000 years, or longer. NM’s current 5-year drought doesn’t even compare to that. But someday, one might.

Marc