Water, water everywhere, but …

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

By Bill Sniffin

 Seems like we have been bombarded with seemingly unrelated facts over the past two weeks, which individually did not strike any hot buttons with me at all.
But when thought of in the one context of water, well, these seemingly unrelated facts got me thinking.

For example: Like the fact that Las Vegas in running out of water. Should we care? Or that it allegedly takes 1,000 gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk on your store’s shelf.  Is this a big deal?

 Here is where these thoughts came from:

A smart gal named Pat Mulroy, whose job is to keep Las Vegas faucets running, spoke to a forum in Casper.

 She talked about Lake Mead, where we did some boating a few years ago.  It was astonishing to see how much the water level had dropped back then. It is worse today.

 Ms. Mulroy said that full, the lake’s water level is 1,220 feet in elevation. Today it is 1,092, which is an almost catastrophic level. It is projected to drop to 1,080 next summer.

It was a big shock to hear that when the level hits 1,050 feet, the hydroelectric generators at Hoover Dam quit.

The water Las Vegas is talking about starts as melted snow high in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains, which forms the Green River, which becomes Flaming Gorge and ultimately merges with the Colorado River as its biggest tributary.

Ms. Mulroy spoke on a panel that also included Aaron Million, who wants to siphon 81 billion gallons of water a year from Flaming Gorge and send it to Colorado plus Paula Wonnacott, a Sweetwater County Commissioner.  Ms. Wonnacott was far more popular with this crowd and her comments made much more sense than Mr. Million’s.

With water on my mind, my next question came from a Forbes article, which talked about a brilliant vegetarian who plans to figure out a way to get the planet off its hunger for meat.

Patrick O. Brown contends that 37 percent of all the greenhouse gases in the world is caused by the production of meat, meaning cattle and pigs, primarily.
Besides consumers, he blames food producers and restaurant owners for not making fruits and vegetables look more appetizing to customers so that they buy less meat.

This is a big deal for Wyoming since some 1,360,000 beef cattle are raised in our state annually.

 How do we process this information and come to rational decisions?
If it really does require 1,000 gallons of water for one gallon of milk, does that make sense in a world that is short of water?

 If beef and pigs cause considerable more global warming pollution than all the cars and trucks and power plants, should not someone be listening?
 As a journalist, it is easy to be skeptical of these reports, despite my penchant for repeating them.

It was Benjamin Disraeli who said there are three kinds of lies:
Lies. Damned Lies.  And Statistics.

 It would be hard to imagine a world without ample amounts of beef and pork but perhaps we are headed that way. JHW
 
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Water, water everywhere, but … | Planet JH News Article: Coulter Elementary School

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