Many have expressed a valid concern about water usage of the renewable resource system proposed. Water is our most precious resource, and therefore must be considered thouroghly.
New technologies and manufacturing processes use more water than ever. Coupled with an expanding population, we are depleting groundwater resources and adding ever more toxins associated with computer chip manufacturing, mining, plastics, and a myriad other chemicals and substances. Much of the water used in these processes is simply disposed of down the drain.
Is agriculture on a large scale, such as that proposed, feasible?
The answer is yes. As a matter of fact, it is quite possible that large scale crop production could actually help mitigate the impact of some of this industrial and urban water waste. Here’s why:
- Arizona is #8 in the US in cotton production It is estimated that 400,000 acres are available for cotton, of which about 300,000 are being used. Cotton uses more water than hemp or kenaf.
- Experiments have been conducted using plants to actually “harvest” heavy metals and other material from contaminated soil. Another industry in it’s infancy, it has been confirmed that plants and plant matter are effective in the cleanup efforts of such locations as Chernobyl and in the petroleum industries for clean up of waste water.
- Contaminated process waste water is just that, wasted. By application to a bio-resource system, it becomes a commodity.
- The costs of treatment of the waste water are reduced, since the plants do most of the work.
- There is a carbon-sequestration effect to be considered. Large scale agriculture will absorb CO2, thereby helping offset increased emissions caused by industrial activity.
Water in the West,
by Char Miller offers a comprehensive look at our water resources. Highly recommended reading!
Excerpt:
“In the West, these six words ruled: "First in time, first in right."
No one knew better than John Wesley Powell just how wrong-headed this legal principle was. A Civil War hero, an explorer, and founder of the U.S. Geological Survey, he had been the first Euro-American to raft down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, the first to map portions of the arid landscape beyond the 98th Meridian, the first to think seriously about the significance of the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation in a region of little rain. Those Americans who pushed out into this forbidding terrain, he predicted, would be confronted with a choice between what he desired (the establishment of cooperative, small-scale communities dependent on the "new industry of agriculture by irrigation") and what he feared (the creation of an economic environment monopolized by "a few great capitalists, employing labor on a grand scale, as is done in the great mines and manufactories of the United States"). That agribusiness early on dominated the size, scope, and character of western farming and ranching perfectly illustrates how completely Prior Appropriation directed the flow of water away from Powell’s Jeffersonian fantasy.”
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