Re: some water resources for the Upper Midwest

Lucy Kemnitzer wrote: 
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 08:55:13 -0500, "J. F. Cornwall"
<JCornwall@xxxxxxx> seems to have said:


Patricia C. Wrede wrote:


"J. F. Cornwall" <JCornwall@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:84CXe.12063$Ix4.10116@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


Patricia C. Wrede wrote:


Water-flow wise, Minnesota is actually at the...I forget what it's called, but it's the geological point on the continent where, absent things like the Rocky Mountains, water flows away from it. So we have rivers in this state 

Watershed divide

Jim C (hydrologic database programmer) 


*Thank* you -- that sounds right.

I knew it wasn't just watershed, and I was pretty sure it wasn't "continental divide," but I couldn't remember the two of them at the same time to put them together properly, if you know what I mean.

Patricia C. Wrede


:-) And, if you want to get more technical, you also have the term "groundwater divide", which is the same concept as applied to water flowing underground. An interesting (well, to some of us anyway...) fact is that the surface watershed divide does not necessarily coincide with the groundwater divide. The direction of surface flows depends on the topography, but the direction of groundwater flow depends on pressure gradients.



Okay, this explains a lot to me about water movement in California.

For one thing, saltwater intrusion, which didn't mystify me before,
but which I'm seeing in a new way on the basis of that sentence (it's
those words "pressure gradients" which give a much richer picture than
"when you take the fresh water out the salt water seeps in," somehow).
We have this problem in the Pajaro Valley -- the farmers use well
water, free and unmetered, and not surface water. Which has resulted
in marked and increasing saltwater intrusion in that part of the
county. The county wants to meter the water (and may have started,
you never hear about these things except at the peak of the argument
or the unmanageable point of the crisis), but the farmers say this is
an abridgement of their rights because they own the land they pull the
water out of.

Here's a link to one of our Fact Sheets which you may find intersting (and educational too, hopefully):

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs030-02/

Water law is a fascinating subject, especially when you look at variations across countries and states. The differences between the water laws in Eastern states and the more arid, recently developed Western states is especially intersting. I'm in Nebraska, where we are having increasing conflicts between surface water users (irrigators and municipalities primarily), groundwater users (also irrigators and towns), and the state government which regulates surface water usage, and the Natural Resource Districts which are empowered to regulate groundwater usage. Plus a whole 'nother set of conflicts with Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming over various bits of river flow, plus being right in the thick of a multi-state conflict involving the whole Missouri River basin (states vs Feds vs barge operators vs wildlife groups vs floodplain farmers vs Cthulhu-only-knows-who-else...). Arghhh, enough to make you want to get people's attention with a 2x4!

Jim 

Patricia: a story _detail_ is in here somewhere, or several different
ones (notice these aren't plot ideas):

salt-adapted commercial crops (also attractive in over fertilized
"blooming desert" places like the Imperial Valley, whose awe-inspiring
fertility of the past century is slipping)
commercialization of already salt-adapted plants (pickleweed!  this is
already being done, but I can't see as how it's gone much of anyplace)

what happens when a community or industry begins to depend on
desalination as a primary potable water source? What happens to the
shoreline and shallow ocean habitats when they are flushed with
concentrated brine from the desalination plants? What happens if this
is in concert with icecap melt and the dilution of seawater? 

abandoned coastal lands -- what will happen to them when they can't
support agriculture and the water's too expensive for residential use?
Or residential districts where everybody has to buy all bottled water
all the time, and where does that come from?

other coastal concerns:

New Orleans isn't the only coastal city built on subsiding land.
Venice is the classical example (Anna, aren't there other Italian
cities with submerged bits and canals where there once were streets?)
How does a community adapt to losing territory like that?  What
happens to the people who used to live on land that is no longer
there?  Does the community compensate them, or are they just out of
luck?  What about sanitation issues -- how does such a community
manage its sewage when it's lost so many pipes and outfalls?  Maybe no
outfalls.  What do you do with sewage under the circumstances (come to
think of it, how do they handle it now in desert cities -- ones where
flush toilets and bathtubs exist?)

What happens to the world economy if all of the major ports must be
rebuilt because the place where they are located change untenably?

Cliff erosion is a  big issue along the stretch of coast I live in. As
sea level rises, hoiw much will erosion accelerate?  Will the beaches
from which we derive a large part of our income be scoured away or
inundated or rendered unsafe (we already have rip currents and high
waves part of the year)?   What about the impact of very large slides
on the movement of water(one of the tsunamis in the south Pacific --
Phillipines? -- was supposedly caused, proximally, by a large
underwater slump, which itself was caused by otherwise not entirely
threatening seismic activity)?

noncoastal concerns: What happens to particular river systems during
global warming? If there's less snowpack, which is what's predicted
for the Sierras? What happens to particular river systems as a result
of various human activity? Levees don't do exactly what they were
supposed to do when they were built. What are the consequences of
that? What happens to the Midwest if the Mississippi and its
tributary rivers change a whole lot? 

And what happens to an environment as a consequence of the various
steps we take?  Something promising is genetically engineering
organisms like algaes to neutralize pollution in various ways.  What
happens to a habitat that has these organisms introduced to it?

The answers to these questions don't have to be all gloom and doom.  I
mean -- there's fish in the Thames now, and there weren't any a
generation ago.  As stories go I'm interested in the ones which are
mixed, complicated, challenging, with optimism in them.

One of the stories I already wrote is here:
http://www.baymoon.com/~ritaxis/WaterRunningGirl.html

Lucy Kemnitzer, still chapter nine is up:
http://www.baymoon.com/~ritaxis/donor/donorweb/donorindex 
.

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