The Groundwater Crisis - White Paper George Shultz Update November 2022 .pdf

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Agua Via White Paper: The Groundwater Crisis. Origin, First Pictures and Data of Imminent, Invisible

Water Crises Emerging as the World’s Groundwater “Savings Account” is Drained

White Paper

The Groundwater Crisis

The World’s Groundwater “Savings Account” is

Being Drained Dry: Origin, First Pictures and Data of

Unfolding, Invisible Water Crises

With special thanks to hydrologist Dr. Paul Hsieh of the United States Geological

Survey for evaluating the analysis in this document. Dr. Hsieh, called “hero scientist” in

the press, is best known for solving the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Original Publication Date: May 19, 2014

Update: September 10, 2022

Note: this 2014 analysis of the Groundwater Crisis was written at the request of former

US Secretary of State George P. Shultz and General Jim Mattis, who later became US

Secretary of Defense, to explain the Groundwater Crisis and the NASA GRACE satellite

system that tracks groundwater drawdown. The original document is unchanged, and

updates reflecting developments are added as notes to the original text. The updates

explicitly show the pace of change and impacts of the accelerating Groundwater Crisis.

Gayle Pergamit

Agua Via Ltd

g.pergamit@aguavia.com

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Agua Via White Paper: The Groundwater Crisis. Origin, First Pictures and Data of Imminent, Invisible

Water Crises Emerging as the World’s Groundwater “Savings Account” is Drained

"Groundwater is like your savings account. It's okay to draw it down when you need it,

but if it's not replenished, eventually it will be gone." – Matt Roddell, Goddard, Chief of

the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory, NSA Goddard Space Flight Center

“It’s like taking money out of your bank account without knowing how much money is

in your bank account. It’s a really terrifying prospect.” - Kate Voss, policy fellow, UC

Center for Hydrologic Modeling, UC Irvine.

Our blue planet holds plenty of water, but only 2.5% of it is fresh. The amount of fresh water

has fallen 35% since 1970, as ground aquifers have been drawn down and wetlands have

deteriorated. Meanwhile, demand for water-intensive agriculture and energy is soaring.

Overall water demand is on pace to overshoot supply by 40% by 2030. - Stuart

Goldenberg for Barron's, May 3, 2014

ABSTRACT: Over the last 70 years, the world expanded the source of

agricultural, manufacturing and domestic water from a reliance on surface water

(rainfall, rivers, lakes) to routinely include groundwater from rechargeable

aquifers (the “savings account”) and fossil water aquifers (a “one time

inheritance”) for the dominant share of its grain production, a large percentage of

total crop production and over half of its drinking water. Tapping these supplies

provided food security during dry years, multiplied agricultural yields during

normal or wet years, and provided the foundation for supporting the rise of

population from 2B to 7B. We are now dependent on routine use of resources

that date from decades to millions of years back. Although there are exceptions,

such as the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) tracking of groundwater

depletion in the US, the world at large has been using this resource without

measuring consumption rates or how much is left. Globally, we have been

withdrawing from a bank account without knowing how much we are pulling out

or if the account is almost empty.

For the first time, we know. The picture is surprising and not good. Recently,

NASA has released images, analysis and multi-year comparison studies from the

GRACEi satellites that give the first pictures of the state of groundwater usage

and groundwater reserves by measuring changes in gravity. The findings show

imminent and developing water crises across the world’s major agricultural areas

and population centers due to over withdrawal of groundwater. To put this in

perspective, outside of the shrinking of the polar ice caps and glaciers, the

biggest single point of contribution to rising ocean levels came from groundwater

pumping around New Delhi, India. To put it in the context of how big a surprise

the data delivers, the water loss from New Delhi turned out to be 70% larger than

the Indian estimates had predicted. The satellite data offers a global, quantified,

objective view of the invisible, irreversible overspending of a huge percentage

world’s storehouse of water.

News reports from Syria and Iraq about population flight from villages as

irrigation wells go dry cease to be isolated data points when placed in the big

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Agua Via White Paper: The Groundwater Crisis. Origin, First Pictures and Data of Imminent, Invisible

Water Crises Emerging as the World’s Groundwater “Savings Account” is Drained

picture context of the satellite data. The GRACE satellite system makes visible

the exhaustion of groundwater in one key region after another, beginning with

Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and the rest of the Middle East within the next few

years. India, China and the US will follow later.

Analyses of the data ascribe the cause of the depletions to “decades of bad

management and overuse,” which continue unchanged. Even if global

conservation methods and plentiful rainfall patterns were to begin tomorrow,

crises would be marginally postponed; scarce rainfall or drought will accelerate

them. The numbers and trends have mass and momentum: they show that we

have been supporting a global population through living beyond our water bank

account. The published scientific papers use words such as “alarming.”

Update 2022: The groundwater depletion described above has continued and

increased. The prediction of imminent trouble deriving from groundwater

depletion promptly came true. The news reports of Syrian farmers abandoning

their farms and Yemen’s Houthi fleeing as their wells ran dry led first to civil wars

in their respective countries, and then to humanitarian disasters, refugee flight

and international wars involving ISIS versus the US in Syria, and Iran versus

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen.

During our 2014 meeting with Secretary Shultz and Secretary Mattis, we made

the comment that NASA publishes maps that show you where the next wars will

be. This has statement has been borne out. The US Department of Defense has

now joined the Department of State in being interested in deploying water

technologies into these water crisis points to stop the next wars.

A range of other consequences of groundwater depletion also occurred. For

example, the flight of over 1 million refugees from Africa who crossed the

Mediterranean into Europe was also initiated by groundwater depletion.

In 2022, the United States is now also deep within the crisis, although most of the

population appears unaware of the problem. Although people who have direct

contact with water issues, e.g., farmers forced to fallow half their acreage through

lack of water, are well aware of the situation, the vast US population remains

either unaware or – as described in an article in The Atlantic - in denial. An Aug.

25, 2022 interview with James Famiglietti, who led the GRACE data analysis

summarized the situation: “The Colorado River crisis is urgent, Famiglietti said,

but the hidden, underground water crisis is even worse. We talked about what

U.S. leaders either won’t acknowledge or don’t understand and about how bad

things are about to get.”ii

SURFACE WATER VERSUS GROUND WATER

From pre-history through the late 1940s, humanity has lived off of surface water -

the 0.25% of all freshwater that is in lakes and rivers – and the small amount of