Let's Think about Water while We Still Have a Bit.

Sometimes something startles me.

Reading an article on a multistate agreement designed to save the Colorado River, a graph shows where the water goes, a blue stream flowing downward on the page, with lighter blue offshoots marked “Residential (12%), Commercial/Industrial (4%), and thermoelectric power (4%).

But 79% is agricultural. Those offshoots include Cotton (11%), Wheat (3%), Corn grain (2%), Barley (1%), and Other crops (7%).

The other 56% of the water went to livestock, 1% for watering livestock and 55% for the alfalfa, hay, grasses, and corn livestock feeds on. That’s 56% of all the river water used.

With all due respect to our state’s ranchers and dairies, uhhh, WOW! Water we drink, bathe with, grow vegetables with, or utilize in industry, plus cotton, etc. and food crops is less than the water used to ensure abundant meat and dairy products.

Our rivers are drying up. See the “Rio Sandy” in our backyard. While some still dither about whether global weirdness is real, or whether it’s related to human piggishness, real rivers are really dying. (Meanwhile, our state operates largely on water laws enacted to attract people to a desert that now cannot sustain population levels.)

It’s time for us to change: if you eat meat, recognize that if we all halved our meat and dairy consumption, we’d save a lot of water.

Some estimates say that, with watering feed crops and the cattle, it takes more than 38 gallons of water (plus transportation) to produce a quarter-pound beef patty.  As you eat it (plus whatever weird stuff growers and fast-food joints add to maximize profits), consider you’d need just five gallons of water to get that protein from tofu.  Don’t like tofu? Eat two burgers (76 gallons) ignoring that 15 poor folks somewhere could have eaten some protein if you’d passed on meat today.

I’ve eaten some dairy and have eaten meat. I bicycle way less than I should, and always loved long showers (though those have shortened considerably). (Admittedly, having last eaten meat in 1984, I don’t miss it.)

We put food waste in the compost bins at home. Largely influenced by my wife, we collect our dish water to pour on the compost. (This newspaper goes in, too.) We have buckets at hand, and daily I pour several of those on the compost bins. (Tissue and newspaper go in there too, and the occasional paper bag.) My wife traps rain in rain barrels, to help in watering the garden.

Wasting less water feels good. The walk to the compost bin is outdoor time to think. Pouring water, I smile for the worms I hope are surviving our desert summer.

Of course, these efforts are a literal drop in the bucket. We must elect leaders who care enough and dare to make systemic change – and hold ‘em to their promises.

Will our grand kids pay $20 for a glass of water, and their kids be refugees to New Hampshire, Canada, or maybe Siberia? How would we explain to them why we couldn’t cut from daily meat consumption to twice a week, or that our lawns looked too pretty to abandon. Or why we didn’t insist politicians make serious improvements? Or voted for some candidate saying there’s no problem.

Change can be challenging, yet produce unexpected good. Cutting back on meat and dairy for our grand kids' sake also improves our health. Water is life.

                                                          – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 28May 2023, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and on KTAL (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and be available on both stations’ websites.]

Beautiful, but not Good

[There’s so much more to say on this subject, both in terms of what each of us ought to do (and why I think we should, when we can spend time taking buckets out to our compost bins then watch city or county or NMSU or company let a huge pipe run all day in the street.) and regarding facts and policies. (I hope no eco-terrorist starts burning down every new pecan orchard, but would understand the impulse.) A pet comment of mine is that a state law should prohibit (with criminal penalties) the planting of more than four new pecan trees on any acreage in a calendar year. Sounds crazy but would do good, and ain’t gonna happen, but the arguments for it might help topple over some other problem.]