Crisis feared as U.S. water supplies dry up

Official: Florida not doing enough
Florida leads the nation in water reuse by reclaiming some 240 billion gallons annually, but it is not nearly enough, Sole said.

Floridians use about 2.4 trillion gallons of freshwater a year, as well as an uncounted amount of treated and desalinated saltwater for consumption and for tasks such as cooling power plants.

The state projects that by 2025, the population will have increased 34 percent from about 18 million to more than 24 million people, pushing annual demand for freshwater to nearly 3.3 trillion gallons.

More than half of the state’s expected population boom is projected in a three-county area that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, where water use is already about 1.5 trillion gallons a year.

“We just passed a crossroads. The chief water sources are basically gone,” said John Mulliken, director of water supply for the South Florida Water Management District. “We really are at a critical moment in Florida history.”

Technology holds promise
In addition to recycling and conservation, technology holds promise.

There are more than 1,000 desalination plants in the U.S., many in the Sunbelt, where baby boomers are retiring at a dizzying rate.

The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant is producing about 25 million gallons a day of fresh drinking water, about 10 percent of that area’s demand. The $158 million facility is North America’s largest plant of its kind. Miami-Dade County is working with the city of Hialeah to build a reverse osmosis plant to remove salt from water in deep brackish wells. Smaller such plants are in operation across the state.

Californians use nearly 23 trillion gallons of water a year, much of it coming from Sierra Nevada snowmelt. But climate change is producing less snowpack and causing it to melt prematurely, jeopardizing future supplies.

Experts also say the Colorado River, which provides fresh water to seven Western states, will probably provide less water in coming years as global warming shrinks its flow.

California, like many other states, is pushing conservation as the cheapest alternative, looking to increase its supply of treated wastewater for irrigation and studying desalination, which the state hopes could eventually provide 20 percent of its freshwater.

“The need to reduce water waste and inefficiency is greater now than ever before,” said Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the Environmental Protection Agency. “Water efficiency is the wave of the future.”

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