In 20 years, water demand will exceed supply by 40 percent - from Smart Planet - Pre 2014 Blogs - SWMM 5 or SWMM or EPASWMM and SWMM5 in ICM

From Smart Planet "In 20 years, water demand will exceed supply by 40 percent"

It takes so much water to make everything we produce and own. The hidden use of water is known as virtual water. Nearly 90 percent of the consumption of the world’s fresh water supply is used for producing food and energy.

You might not realize this but it takes 1.5 tonnes of water to make a computer and six tonnes to make a pair of jeans. So it’s not surprising that the annual global virtual water trade is the equivalent of 10 Nile Rivers.

More here http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/science-scope/with-population-growth-and-climate-change-water-demand-will-exceed-supply/6967/

Today at 3:14 pm

Urbanism And Water Scarcity

When SA sent me a link to an article about a large “new urbanist” development planned for the suburbs of Albuquerque, I was instinctively skeptical. I like cities, personally, but I try not to let that cloud my judgment to much. Historical urbanism was driven by transportation technology (harbors, rail lines, but no cars) and present-day urbanism should be driven by scarcity of land but unless Albuquerque has changed dramatically since I was there three years ago they’re not exactly running out of space in New Mexico.

But this points perhaps in another direction:

Like other desert boomtowns, Albuquerque’s loosely planned sprawl is on a collision course with its finite water supply. Mesa del Sol will have an extremely efficient water system, and its dense, mixed-use design could reduce the need for more development on the city’s west side, where suburbs have consumed huge tracts of once-wild desert.

I’m not at all familiar with the details of western water management issues, but in general water rather than space is the scarce commodity in that region. If it’s the case that urbanism is a way of economizing on water, then it might have a promising future there. At the same time, we really really really really really really don’t have a free market in water in this country, especially in arid parts of the west. Consequently, water-related development decisions are rarely driven by straightforward considerations of trying to allocate a scarce resource efficiently.

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Robert Dickinson April 20, 2011 at 5:14pm

Today at 3:14 pm

Urbanism And Water Scarcity

When SA sent me a link to an article about a large “new urbanist” development planned for the suburbs of Albuquerque, I was instinctively skeptical. I like cities, personally, but I try not to let that cloud my judgment to much. Historical urbanism was driven by transportation technology (harbors, rail lines, but no cars) and present-day urbanism should be driven by scarcity of land but unless Albuquerque has changed dramatically since I was there three years ago they’re not exactly running out of space in New Mexico.

But this points perhaps in another direction:

Like other desert boomtowns, Albuquerque’s loosely planned sprawl is on a collision course with its finite water supply. Mesa del Sol will have an extremely efficient water system, and its dense, mixed-use design could reduce the need for more development on the city’s west side, where suburbs have consumed huge tracts of once-wild desert.

I’m not at all familiar with the details of western water management issues, but in general water rather than space is the scarce commodity in that region. If it’s the case that urbanism is a way of economizing on water, then it might have a promising future there. At the same time, we really really really really really really don’t have a free market in water in this country, especially in arid parts of the west. Consequently, water-related development decisions are rarely driven by straightforward considerations of trying to allocate a scarce resource efficiently.

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