Paul Dempsey - Do-It-Yourself Sustainable Water Projects: Collect, Store, Purify, and Drill for Water

Paul Dempsey is a DIY mechanic, bike rider, and a former magazine editor. He has written some 30 technical books, most of them about internal-combustion engines.

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This book is dedicated to Larilla Templeton
who looks after all of us

Mica, Erica, Araceli, Bebe Joel, Ariel, and Ramn.

DIY Drilling

The drought of 2011 that extended from northern Mexico through Texas, Oklahoma and into the Dakotas brought the water crisis home for millions of Americans. But it was not a complete surprise: like a bad lab report or a visit from the IRS, it confirmed something we had long suspected.

Supplies of clean drinking water are becoming increasingly problematic. In 2002, 8% of the worlds population labored under extreme water scarcity, as defined by drinking from sewage-laden ditches, walking for hours a day to communal wells, and similar deprivations. By mid-century, 40% of the world population, or some four billion people, are expected to be in the same predicament. Water will replace oil as the rationale for war. People can live without SUVs and jet travel, but no lifehuman or otherwisecan survive without water.

If climate models are correct, the ambient temperatures in the American Southwest will increase 57F. Warm air holds more moisture, which means that the area will see less rain and the rain that does fall will quickly evaporate. Major river basins, including the Rio Grande, Colorado and Missouri will experience severe reductionssometimes as great as 20%in flow rates. In short, the Southwest will revert to its natural desert state.

According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, groundwater, which supplies almost a third of the irrigation for agriculture, is being depleted 160% more rapidly than the aquifers recharge. The Ogallala, which contains fossil water left over from the last Ice Age, will be a memory during the lifetime of most readers. Short of some technological miracle, the Great Plains will return to grassland.

The outlook for municipal water supplies is not much better. The last upgrade of these systems occurred during the boom years following the Second World War. Treatment plants and distribution networks have long since exceeded their 50-year design life. While data is hard to come by, it appears that municipal systems lose, on the average, about 30% of the water they pump to leaks. In some cities the figure is 50%.

Older cities in New England and the Midwest have their storm drains cross-connected to sewage lines. Heavy rainsrains that climate change producesoverwhelm the treatment plants, and raw sewage enters the potable water mains.

Water-starved El Paso is one among several American cities that has turned to desalination. Because of the energy requirements, freshwater obtained in this manner costs an order of magnitude more than water obtained from aquifers and surface sources. Other cities are now recycling sewage, which, aesthetics aside, is also an expensive proposition.

Some idea of the desperation that water professionals feel can be had from the schemes they promote. Authorities in Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada have offered funds to build a 50-million gallon per day desalination plant in Playa de Rosaria. None of the plants output would be exported to the U.S. Instead, the Mexican government would renounce some of its claims on Colorado River water.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority is seriously lobbying for a scheme to reduce demand on the Colorado River by recharging the Ogallala with flood waters from the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Should this project go through, it would be an engineering feat on par with the Aswan Dam.