Western US States Using Up Ground Water At an Alarming Rate 377
sciencehabit (1205606) writes A new study shows that ground water in the Colorado basin is being depleted six times faster than surface water. The groundwater losses, which take thousands of years to be recharged naturally, point to the unsustainability of exploding population centers and water-intensive agriculture in the basin, which includes most of Arizona and parts of Colorado, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Because ground water feeds many of the streams and rivers in the area, more of them will run dry.
ALL RIGHT! (Score:3, Funny)
Soon the Department of Water and Power will control all the water and have all the power.
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most property deeds out there already exclude water and mineral rights. this has been a periodic problem going back hundreds of years
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One of the fun things about Seattle is we actually own the entire watershed here. All of it. So the suburbs basically have no water rights.
They either buy it from us at a premium to what our citizens (who own it) pay or they buy it from someone else (at a higher premium since it has to be trucked in).
Capiche?
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Everett is setup the same way with a lot of it sold to SnoPUD (also public.) I love our public utilities! My water in on Tulalip Bay comes from a Tulalip Utilities well and water tower about a half mile away. The east end of the rez last year put in a 30" pipe to Everett to get more water for the Quil Ceda Village area.
Re:And what's even funnier (Score:4, Informative)
Oh no! Kids in Seattle must not have rotten teeth. The horror!
Peak Water (Score:4, Insightful)
And you thought the wars and environmental harm over oil was bad, we ain't seen nothing yet.
Re:Peak Water (Score:5, Interesting)
US military does periodic defense reviews and the ones i saw back in the late 90's predicted wars over water shortages
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Well, predicted as in considered the possibility of, right?
Re:Peak Water (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, predicted as in considered the possibility of, right?
No. Predicted as in we already see the wars being fought over the economic conditions arising from a lack of it elsewhere.
Believe it or not, you can live without Internet, oil, air conditioning or even meat. But if drinking the local well water is gone, or "just" poisons you, you can't survive. You'll kill not for gold or ideology, but for water to drink, or to prevent your kids/wife/etc from dying of thirst. The ironic bit is we will poison the local well water via fracking for gas, so we can have "cheap" oil to fight for farther distant oil fields.
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yep
but then every war has been about resources and religion or anything like that
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Well let them drink Coca-cola (Score:2)
Where is that person that wanted to buy the world a coke when you need them?
But seriously, if polar bears are happy drinking coca-cola to cool off in the global warming, it should be good enough for the rest of us.
getting worse (Score:4, Funny)
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Yeah, but if you smoke the pot, you won't worry about the water any more . . . except for your bong.
BUT . . . .Re:getting worse (Score:2)
If everyone is stoned they'll hang out on the couch and won't wash as often, saving on shower water.
Also, they won't have the initiative to go out for a round of golf.
So, you can let the water-hog golf courses turn back into habitats for ground squirrels and coyotes.
Better late than never, Slashdot (Score:3)
People have been talking about this ever since (and likely before) T Boone Pickens stole the water in western TX.
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Nonsense! This is nothing more than a fake liberal crisis by King Obama! Its a conspiracy to turn the country into a commie state and kill capitalism!
The solution is obviously to give corporations the power to monetize water! Only by deregulating water and allowing the free market to decide things will things be solved!
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The problem is that people actually believe this. Ie, if the government says anything, it is automatically assumed to be a lie by the same people who use much of that water. Coastal towns which tend to be more liberal start conserving (except San Francisco, since they legally yet immorally own a water shed a hundred miles away). Inland farmers tend to be be conservative and are dubious about it, and a subset of those think it's a plot. Their concern number one is that they might have to let some fields
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People have been talking about this ever since (and likely before) T Boone Pickens stole the water in western TX.
Old rancher's saying: "Men fight over land, but they kill for water."
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Re:Better late than never, Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
People have been talking about this ever since (and likely before) T Boone Pickens stole the water in western TX.
Texas has uniquely dumb laws that let you suck up whatever water is underneath your land.
So if you own a couple acres on the edge of a giant underground reservoir that spans several counties, you are allowed to drain the entire reservoir from your property.
Texas tried to mitigate this by allowing for local water boards, but they get bullied/sued if they don't allow the resource extraction.
Read more here: http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/who-stole-the-water-20140623 [mensjournal.com]
I'm alarmed! (Score:3, Funny)
That headline alarmed me!
Just more alarmism from waterists (Score:5, Funny)
Waterist like to pretend water is crucial for life and plant development. These are all fabrications from hydrologists who wish to keep their grant money.
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Cancerous tumor. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some time ago I remember reading about a proposal to building an aquaduct from the Snake River in Idaho to Southern California. It reminded me of the metaphor that when a cancerous tumor grows unchecked it will commadeer local blood vessels for its own use.
Re:Cancerous tumor. (Score:4, Funny)
Your post contains words that are known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
DEsalination plants should be a priority (Score:3)
for every state along the cost.
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Freudian slip?
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That would be great as it would require bringing nuclear power back in a big way.
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Actually, the co-location of desalination plants with natural gas power generation is the new rage. I am in TX, so I have a parochial view of it, but this is the near future.
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Getting most of the salts out is energy intensive. That last few ppm is probably even harder to get out; but that last few ppm is what will eventually salinate the soil. Unless they've solved that problem, they'll have to ban irrigation in any area that uses desalinated water, and ENFORCE the ban.
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California may be experiencing a drought now, but other years this becomes an unnecessary cost that may affect people of differing incomes unequally.
Why I'm on a well in a sustainable aquifer. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why I'm on a well in a sustainable aquifer. (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that now but, when that well runs dry, you'll be screaming "why didn't the government do something about this!"
Re:Why I'm on a well in a sustainable aquifer. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why I'm on a well in a sustainable aquifer. (Score:5, Informative)
Until your well collapses one day and you need to get approval to drill a new one and that approval is not forth-coming because there's now a water-coop that you need to join instead; paying them lots of money to run a pipe to your house and charging you per cubic meter...
Seen it happen; it's coming.
My well collapsed and fortunately a permit to drill a new one was a rubber stamp and I have a nice clean (albeit very hard) 10gpm well. Hopefully this well will last until I'm too old to care...
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Until your well collapses one day and you need to get approval to drill a new one and that approval is not forth-coming because there's now a water-coop that you need to join instead; paying them lots of money to run a pipe to your house and charging you per cubic meter...
Seen it happen; it's coming.
My well collapsed and fortunately a permit to drill a new one was a rubber stamp and I have a nice clean (albeit very hard) 10gpm well. Hopefully this well will last until I'm too old to care...
I've never gotten a permit to drill a well.
There are some things the government can't regulate because they're impossible to regulate.
Granted, I'm lucky that I live in an area where I know people that will borrow me the equipment to do such things. If you're living in the middle of town the rig might become obvious...
And you think it's sustainable why? (Score:5, Informative)
All of those 2 acre lots are a tiny spot on the water table map that they lie on. Everyone else is sucking up your water and you don't even know it.
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I drink your milkshake!
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Re:Why I'm on a well in a sustainable aquifer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Get the popcorn (Score:2)
Is a pipepline going to be created? Massive desal plants powered by...who knows what? Mass exodus? Ghost towns? Agriculture prices skyrocketing leading to global food riots?
Interesting times indeed.
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The problem with using desal plants supplying the Great Basin Desert [wikipedia.org] would be that the process doesn't eliminate the sodium in the water, it only reduces it to potable levels; sodium builds up in the soil and eventually becomes toxic to the plants. How long this takes depend on how much salt is left in the irrigation water and how much rain actually falls to wash out the excess salt.
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Subsidence, as geologists call the phenomenon, is just one of the unanticipated consequences of rapid growth that have come to plague Houstonians. The city's roads, services, and even the very land beneath it, have been unable to sustain it all.
and: Moreover, downtown Houston is sinking fast, too. A recent computer simulation of the process suggested that it could sink 14 feet more b
we are experiencing something similar (Score:5, Informative)
in northwestern Venezuela we are having the biggest drought in 60 years. We only have 57 days left of water, and that's including with limited use (1 and a half days of water per week!)
Our water comes by the way of reservoirs, and we depend heavily on rain. Can't remember the last time it rained and we are getting extremely worried
Re:we are experiencing something similar (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like it's time to sacrifice some virgins to the rain god. There are plenty on slashdot if you are recruiting.
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Serious question: why isn't Venezuela trading tankers of oil for tankers of fresh water? Doesn't have to be 1:1 of course. Surely there are nations that can provide excess water in return for cheap oil, at least for the time being.
We need mutant kangaroos and Lori Petty now! (Score:2)
Tank Girl for the win! [imdb.com]
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i'll settle for lori petty by her pretty self
Complicated background (Score:2)
When I took a geography class focussing on the western US, one of the things the teacher mentioned (which I haven't verified independently, but it was his job) was that the Colorado River water rights were allocated based on how much the Colorado River was running in roughly 1920, which happened to be an unusually high flow rate period, so ever since then there hasn't been enough water to satisfy everyone. (Water rights are allocated by time priority: first person who used it gets to take the entire amount
An old Colorado Saying about water applies here: (Score:4, Insightful)
Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting.
This applies to all of the southwest and a lot of the plains. Land is useless for anything but energy production without a supply of water, so you drink your whiskey and fight over the water. This has been true for centuries and will continue to be true for many more.
PBS covered this (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the local farmers said "I expect when we run out this next decade, everyone will be very angry over the decisions we made to plant water-intensive crops in a very arid land for so many years".
It's like Global Warming.
It's coming for you whether you believe in it or not.
Water? Like out of the toilet? (Score:4, Funny)
Why don't they just use Brawndo? It's the thirst mutilator.
Lumping everyone together.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I really hate when they lump everyone together. The fastest draining aquifer is the Ogallala, which is in the middle of the country, not the west. What this article claims is absolutely not true in 99% of the areas included in that list of states. My state, Utah has one of the most highly regulated water systems in probably the world. We have strict regulations on wells and draw rates that are reviewed and approved by state regulators that will halt all pumping if they detect subsidence in the aquifer. The aquifers are almost uniformly carefully monitored to ensure water levels don't drop, and in some areas near the salt lake they monitor to ensure positive pressure into the lake is maintained so salt water isn't sucked back into the fresh water.
Yes there are bad situations out there, Las Vegas and Phoenix are terribly managed water systems IMO, favoring growth over conservation. We shouldn't have 6 million people living in a desert that can barely naturally support 1/10 that many. And pumping several hundred thousand acre feet of water over a mountain range for Phoenix is a terrible waste of water, not to mention the water lost to evaporation in the process and the power used.
But this blanket inclusion of all the western states in this indictment is stupid. Those of us with scarce water resources have carefully managed them for the most part. Utah's been managing water use far longer than most states because it's a scarce commodity and always has been. There is a river in Utah where every single drop is used 7 times before discharge into the Salt Lake and the river isn't very long.
If you want to talk about water misuse, talk about the areas misusing water and stop lumping the rest of us in with them.
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Agreed. Most of the country doesn't have a problem. The people living in the Arizona desert watering their Golf courses are running out of water... well surprise surprise. Let them run out. They can move... pretty much anywhere else in the country to avoid that problem. The solution to this problem is simple... ignore it.
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We shouldn't have 6 million people living in a desert that can barely naturally support 1/10 that many. And pumping several hundred thousand acre feet of water over a mountain range for Phoenix is a terrible waste of water, not to mention the water lost to evaporation in the process and the power used.
I get it, you don't like the Central Arizona Project, but without it what would Arizona do with it's share of the Colorado? I think it's better to deliver it to where it's needed (i.e. Phoenix) than sell it to southern California or let it flow into Mexico unused. The areas nearest the river are poor areas for development anyway.
Is California populated by idiots!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
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I know, right? I wish someone with money and land rights would set up a nice solar or nuclear desalination plant. Of course, getting through the environmental review would probably take the rest of this decade.
Re:Is California populated by idiots!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Now let's work on the hard part of your plan which is convincing people not to be against new wind farms and nuclear plants along the coast.
Proportionate response? (Score:2)
Out Of Sight Out Of Mind (Score:2)
Why would they conserve? (Score:2)
Half the congress is corrupt and is paid to keep quiet. The other half makes some half hearted noises
Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator (Score:2)
I Welcome This (Score:2)
As someone living in California, I can't wait until the Sideways bunch are forced to grow their grapes in a different fucking state.
More Building Permits (Score:2)
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The Santa Cruz river thru Tucson has been dry for so long, the local joke is the first day that the temp hits 100F, "breaking news, the ice has melted on the Santa Cruz"
In the 1960's there were pictures of concrete pads on wells that were three to five feet off the ground. Drive I-10 near Pich-a-co Peak (Picacho Peak) and there is a ten foot drop in the highway from ground water subsidence.
Not new news.....
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Right, because human consumption is the only thing that matters - once we wipe out all other life on the planet we'll be free to eat each other forever!
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I don't want to live in a world without bacon...
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Only the fat ones.
Conveniently, they're also the easiest to catch.
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I've been slacking, hadn't seen that one before.
Sure, given preservation capabilities far in excess of anything the human species has ever accomplished, and a way to exterminate everyone else up front, you could pull it off. Out here in the real world the laws of thermodynamics require that you assume a steadily diminishing breeding pool to pull that off - only the Midgard Serpent can survive indefinitely by eating it's own tail. As is covered just slightly further down that page - assuming everyone is s
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The drug war is bad enough, but when the DEA waits until just before harvest to destroy fields they know about... really gripes my cookies. They let it consume all that water, *then* they destroy it. And of course they'll destroy small backyard grows that don't even push people into the next water usage tier. When Joe Sixplant's grow is pushed over, where does he buy weed? From big growers illegally diverting.
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Poverty doesn't cause obesity. There is a correlation in the modern world because food is cheap and the ability to delay gratification leads to poverty and obesity.
Re:Should the United States accept more foreigners (Score:4, Insightful)
Food is not cheap. Taking inflation into account, food prices are at an all-time high [wikipedia.org] on a global basis. They're even higher than they were during World War II, when rationing was in place.
The price of food increasing far faster than wages has in fact resulted in more poverty, which has in fact resulted in more obesity is many nations around the world.
The parent post should have said developed countries instead of modern world, because in developed countries food certainly is cheap. In 1900 families spent 43% of their money on food, while in 2003 it was 13%. Food is incredibly cheap by historical standards, about a third of the cost of food 100 years ago. source [theatlantic.com]
Poverty only correlates to obesity in areas where food is abundant. Then the same incapability to delay gratification that causes poverty also causes obesity. One does not cause the other, they have the same root cause.
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For those with access to a supermarket, a combination of lack of time, lack of education, and lack of ability to delay gratification that causes people to eat junk food. Not money.
None of the above. For most poor and even lower-middle class families, the limiting factor is lack of access to food preparation equipment and facilities. Low-income housing often lacks a kitchen. Even if you have a kitchen, one often lacks appliances; trying to subsist on unprocessed food without a refrigerator or a stove is difficult to put it mildly. Families near the poverty line move from place to place a lot, often on short notice in response to evictions. There's no way they could maintain possession
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Have you ever seen a recipe for bean soup in the US? half pound of bacon, ham, or smoke jowl, boil the shit out of it, put 2 pounds of soaked navy beans in and boil until tender adding salt and butter to taste at the end. The good tasting recipes will have at least an inch of lard coagulating on the top when the left overs are put into the fridge. But if that didn't sound bad enough, it's usually eaten with fried potatoes and buttered corn bread. (god I'm getting hungry..lol)
as for rice, the only rice dishe
your reality is ludicrous (Score:3)
The Famous Senate Restaurant Bean Soup Recipe [senate.gov]
2 pounds dried navy beans
four quarts hot water
1 1/2 pounds smoked ham hocks
1 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper to taste
Wash the navy beans and run hot water through them until they are slightly whitened. Place beans into pot with hot water. Add ham hocks and simmer approximately three hours in a covered pot, stirring occasionally. Remove ham hocks and set aside to cool. Dice meat and return to soup. Lightly brown the onion in butter. Add to soup. Before serving, bring to a boil and season with salt and pepper. Serves 8.
You are correct, they like it with a lot of pork. /snrk
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And I said how people eat beans and rice in the US.
I know exactly what he meant. It's just not likely to happen that way as I already said. "I just don't seem to think it would happen in practice often. Americans like flavor"
As for the rest of your comment, I agree except with the birth control thing. Granted, people shouldn't be having kids they cannot afford but it is not our place to tell people they can or cannot have kids. And I'm not about to let a kid suffer because their parents are imbeciles so I g
Re:Colorado has California over a barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a proposal to built a freshwater pipeline from Lake Superior. I'd prefer to see growth limited to sustainable levels before they start pumping water out of the Great Lakes...but moneyed interests will probably get their way...they usually do.
Re:Colorado has California over a barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Colorado has California over a barrel (Score:4, Informative)
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And yet you have farm, home, and cottage owners living near the shore of Lake Manitoba in the province of Manitoba screaming about the lake getting too much water from the Portage Diversion due to all the recent flooding [google.ca].
If all the excess flood water could be piped South to thirsty states every spring that would likely make more than just the Lake Manitoba residents happy. Heck, the capital of Winnipeg has a floodway designed to prevent the city from becoming the center of a lake (check out a satellite imag [umanitoba.ca]
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Don't worry. We'll just take water from our half
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The water in the great lakes are already starting to drop. The great lakes consortium states would do just about everything to stop other states from coming in and taking their water. It would be the equivalent of Wisconsin trying to forcibly move all the wealth of silicon valley to green bay.
Re:Colorado has California over a barrel (Score:4, Informative)
You mean where they've been at the highest point in a decade because we now seeing a return to normal winter snowfalls? I remember 8 years ago that they were screaming that the end was nigh because the water levels had dropped. This was because we had unseasonably short winters with no heavy snow packs.
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That is patently false. 2013 was the lowest point in all of recorded history. It has gone up slightly for the season, as it always does.
Really? Best let environment canada know that their data is incorrect. After all, it appears that the water levels are above the lowest recorded, and in many cases at the highest point in a decade. [waterlevels.gc.ca]
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I live one block away from the Niagara river. Out of curiosity I compared the rate that I pay for water with the residential rates for Phoenix and L.A. My rates are the highest. No wonder the west is running out of water.
Re:Colorado has California over a barrel (Score:4, Insightful)
That said if you have a lawn and your shower/bath water doesn't provide the primary water to the landscaping, you are part of the problem too.
If you still believe in the concept of lawns you are part of the problem.
At what point did people start thinking that spending resources planting and maintaining a monoculture of sterile inedible grass was a good idea? Did golf players do this to us? The same area and resources could be used for everyone to have fresh vegetables growing around thier homes except:
1) homeowners associations and baby boomers would throw a fit
2) Americans don't eat vegetables anyway
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Actually, long-term it's going to be the other way around. California coastal towns have already started desalinating, even though they currently have to use the expensive reverse-osmosis technology. As soon as the nerds at Caltech figure out how to apply graphene, the cost will drop exponentially and the big California cities will be able to make their own water. This will take the strain off inland water sources for a time, after which California will be actually shipping water inland in exchange for the
Re:Colorado has California over a barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
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So what alarmist hyper-environmentalist news stories are we to believe? Last time I checked, we had environmentalists screaming that fracking thousands of feet down leaks chemicals (sand, light hydrocarbons) through thousands of feet of permeable geological layers. If these layers are so permeable and the alarmists are telling the trough, how come it takes `thousands` of years to recharge the aquifers?
The act of fracking, or fracturing, creates many tiny cracks.
Here's a thought experiment: Stick your head under a bucket of tightly packed soil (mostly clay) in a bottomless bucket and fill it up.
Now try the same thing after you use a spade on the soil in the bucket for a few minutes.
Get the picture?
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Ya know Will, you can be really depressing at times.
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Because they don't have a giant fucking hole drilled strait through the middle of them?
The waters at 1 PSI and the Frack well is at 15,000 PSI.
The Fracking solution is designed to erode those very geologic structures...
Should I go on? or are you getting the idea?
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Umm..... not so much. While you're on the rant though, any other things you want to blame on fracking?
The energy obtained by it is pretty much the only thing keeping the U.S. currency viable, for starters. That's a *bit* more of an issue than getting "fuel to cook food we aren't growing".
I'm not really sure why the fracking process requires clean, fresh water either? Seems to me any water would do -- including salt water from our oceans. If they use fresh water, it's probably because it's cheaper and easi