I was reading an article in the New York Times about a water conflict between 2 groups of people. The farmers like Frank DeStefano were told to stop pumping water out of the Brazos rivers by regulators because the cities and the power plants had priority over them. This however isn’t just happening in Mumford. In Nevada there are lawsuits going around trying to stop a new pipeline from being built that would supply Las Vegas with water from an aquifer near the Nevada/Utah border.
With the population growing at a pace of 4 people every minute in the U.S alone, pretty soon this conflict will turn into a crisis. only 2.5% of all water on earth is fresh, and most of that is frozen in glaciers and ice. In reality, only about 1% of earth’s water is available to us. The thing about water is, we will never get more of it, however the population is rising dramatically so pretty soon there could be another another conflict; what will we use our water for, making energy or feeding us.
In the middle east, there a conflict over a river between Palestinian and Israel since 1967. In 1967, the Israelis took over the west bank, meaning they could do whatever they wanted with the water including selling it to other countries at a high price. The world Health Organization says that everybody should have 100 liters of water per day. In Palestine people are getting 70 liters per day while citizens of Israel are getting 300 liters per day.
While its pretty understandable that there is conflict in the dry areas of the world, there is also conflict in the places you would least expect it. Take Maine for example. There is a conflict between the citizens and the companies that make bottled water. Large companies go into rural communities that have lots of clean water and simply take it all. Nothing legally can be done about this because the laws say that you can take all the water you want from land you own. However people that locally live there complain about huge draughts and dried up wells.
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Being in a wealthy area, we often don’t see the struggles that people not as fortunate as us have to go through; so it was a bit of a surprise to me that water, which here in NJ we all think is abundant, is actually something that people are fighting for.
