A funny thing happened on our way to Peak Oil. We started running out of water in a very large area of the United States. Some parts of Australia have been in extreme drought mode for several years. Several other countries have started reporting similar problems. Of course we hear outcries of more evidence of global warming. But historically the earth has gone through periods of extreme drought, long before there were any man made greenhouse gasses polluting the atmosphere.
Several months ago I became a part of our corporation’s drought remediation planning team trying to address the issues that are becoming more and more threatening in the SE part of our country. As a part of that team, I have become aware of a lot of issues that I had been only vaguely aware prior to addressing this problem. Some of these have a direct impact on some of the energy issues for which we are all keenly aware. I had been asked by some friends to put some of my thoughts on paper regarding this exceptional drought condition and how I envision it playing out. This is my own perception of what is going on and how it impacts people and the enterprises that support them.
First of all, mega droughts in the SE part, and indeed, all of the United States have occurred through out history, and appear to be cyclical in nature, the last occurring many centuries ago. Even though it is not a unique phenomenon historically, what is unique is the large number of people living there today as we go into this period. Like recognizing Peak Oil, we won’t know if this is another historical mega drought until we are well into it.
This type of drought is not unusual in this country, the most famous being the Midwest during the dust bowl days of the 1930s. Typically, they last for 5-10 years before the rains start coming back and refilling our many reservoirs and lakes. There have been others since, but man has been good about building dams and reservoirs to capture the water in good times, to tide them over in the lean years. This has been a trait of man for many millennia. And those plans work very well, as long as the drought condition isn’t prolonged over 3-4 years.
Now, we have a situation where large population centers are facing a very severe lack of water, the water level falling by the day. They no longer are measuring the time to extreme crisis in years, but in days. There are major cities in the Carolina’s looking at being out of water in under 60 days. There are states that are looking at imposing a usage cap on water, in other words, city abc has a cap of x gallons a day usage. When that cap is reached, the water is turned off, only available for fire fighting.
Well, you say, “I don’t live in the SE part of the US, what has this got to do with me and the energy crisis?” Did you turn on any lights today? Do you have a refrigerator keeping your food cold? Does your job depend on availability of electricity? Then you might want to pay attention. Unless you are a resident of Texas, which is not a part of the national power grid, all the rest of us are linked together in several interconnecting big power grids, often called the world’s largest machine. Guess what is the essential ingredient in all nuclear, coal fired, gas fired, oil fired, and hydro power plants? You guessed it! Water! For every kilowatt generated in a fossil fuelled power plant, .5 gallon of water is used. In a nuclear power plant that number is .62 gallon of water. I don’t know what the water usage in hydro plants is per kilowatt, but since that does not play a large role in the SE United States, I am not too concerned with it. Because peak loads all over the country are frequently handled by transferring power across the grid from areas not experiencing peak usage, a problem in the Carolinas with power generation shutting down from lack of water may show up in another location hundreds of miles away. Suddenly the drought problem in northern Georgia may become a problem for you, several states away, in a totally unexpected way. The same way a tree limb falling on high tension lines in Ohio several years ago was a problem all the way to the Atlantic in the NE. Suddenly your utility may find itself way down the peak production slope because the excess supply isn’t there, but the demand still remains. Companies in the drought areas will be faced with having to shut down because of lack of water for air conditioning chillers for electronic equipment, electricity usage being curtailed to preserve water for human consumption, and other side effects.
But what happens to major population centers such as Atlanta when the water becomes very hard to get, and very expensive? It is anybody’s guess at this point as to what people will do, but I can make a few educated guesses, based on what happened during the dust bowl era. We frequently hear of the just in time economy as it applies to retailing or manufacturing, but there is another piece of the just in time phenomenon that is frequently overlooked, it is the individual just in time income to survive. The other term we hear referring to it is the “living hand to mouth” syndrome. During the late 1920s and the 1930s, the average person fit that same description. For those involved in agriculture, if the crop didn’t come in that spring and summer, they were financially ruined. Those not involved in agriculture were also affected by the lack of business supported by the farmers and ranchers spending. Since one didn’t know how long a mega drought might last, their only recourse was to load up what ever belongings they could cram in their cars or trucks, pile everybody in, abandon everything else and head to where ever they heard a rumor of work being available (interestingly, where water was also abundant). It was called the largest voluntary mass relocation ever seen in the modern world at the time.
Will people and companies make the same choice again? I don’t know, there are many factors involved, but the ability for a large population to try to survive without a steady income and no reliable forecast of when the drought will likely end will cause a lot of people to do as in the 1930s, pack up as much as possible, walk away from what is left and go seek their fortunes elsewhere. Well you say, “I’m not in the SE United States, I feel for them, but I am staying put and working my regular job.” Oops, all those displaced people have to go somewhere, and now they are in your state, your community, your neighborhood, wanting a share of the jobs, a share of the electricity you are using(remember their power plants in the drought areas may not be producing enough to share with you), a share of the government services you depend on. Now their water problem has come to roost on your porch, and you realize that their water problem is just not their problem, it is collectively our problem.
I personally think that without significant rainfall over the next 4 or 5 months in the exceptional drought area, we will be dealing with a major impact to all of us. Even though Peak Oil appears just around the corner, the effects of a large area exceptional drought may be much closer to impacting us. Like Peak Oil, there is no single solution, no magic bullet, and no government program that can be put in place quickly to offset the likely damage caused by this drought in such a vital part of our nation. All the solutions proposed will take years to implement, we may only have months. A similar scenario to Peak Oil.
Chuck Willis has worked IBM working on the System 360 project. After 22 years in the computer field, Chuck became Vice President and Sr. Contingency Specialist for a major financial corporation, a position he has held for 20 years developing plans and processes to limit the impact of natural and man-made disasters on the corporation. Chuck and his wife live in Kansas.