Tag: water

The Largest US Groundwater Supply Is Running Out

The largest underground water supply in the United States—responsible for sustaining a vast share of the nation’s farming—is steadily running dry, raising concerns about future food production and price volatility as supplies come under strain.

The Ogallala Aquifer, which lies beneath eight Great Plains states from South Dakota to Texas, provides roughly 30 percent of the groundwater used for irrigation in the U.S. and supports around a fifth of the country’s agricultural output.

But water levels have been falling for decades, raising fresh concerns about how long one of the world’s most important food-producing regions can continue to rely on it.

In some areas, groundwater levels have dropped by more than 200 feet since large-scale irrigation began, according to U.S. Geological Survey data—one of the clearest signs of long-term depletion. Satellite analyses have also shown widespread declines across the aquifer, with maps revealing concentrated losses in heavily irrigated parts of Texas and Kansas.

A NASA Earthdata analysis has mapped what researchers described as the “human footprint” on the aquifer, showing how widespread pumping for agriculture has reshaped groundwater levels across the region. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that the system is being depleted far faster than it can naturally recharge.

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McMorrow Pushed Water Affordability While Racking Up $3,000 Unpaid Utility Tab at Million-Dollar Home

A candidate for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat apparently doesn’t like paying her utility bills. 

Fox News reported that Mallory McMorrow went nearly a year without paying water or sewer bills on their million-dollar home in Royal Oak until Friday, when contacted by Fox News.

The bill grew to over $3,000 since June 2025 when accounting for late fees and unpaid bills, Fox reported. 

In 2025, McMorrow sponsored Senate Bill 250, which aimed to create a water affordability program. The bill aimed to create the low-income water affordability program within the state health department to ensure an eligible customer didn’t pay over three percent of the household income on a water bill. 

That bill aimed to “identify alternative funding” for the program, which means raising taxes to fund “free” water for others. 

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Georgia Data Center Secretly Used 29 Million Gallons of Water, Exposed by Residents’ Low Water Pressure

A major data center campus in Fayette County, Georgia, drew nearly 30 million gallons of water through unmetered connections before the issue surfaced due to complaints of low water pressure from nearby homeowners, county officials said.

The discovery, first reported by Politico, centers on the sprawling 615-acre QTS data center development located about 20 miles south of Atlanta. Quality Technology Services (QTS), owned by Blackstone, operates the site, which is one of the largest data center projects in the United States.

Fayette County investigators found that the campus had been pulling water through two connections the county was unaware of and had not properly billed. As a result, QTS was issued retroactive charges totaling $147,474. County officials estimated the unmetered usage covered roughly four months, while the company maintained the period was between nine and 15 months.

Vanessa Tigert, director of the Fayette County Water System, attributed the oversight to an administrative error that occurred during the county’s transition to smart meters.

“Fayette County is a suburb, it’s mostly residential, and we don’t have much commercial meters in our system anyway,” Tigert said. “And so we didn’t realize our connection point wasn’t working.”

A QTS spokesperson confirmed the company paid the retroactive charges immediately upon notification and said the unmetered usage stemmed from the county’s meter system upgrade.

No fines were issued. County officials emphasized they are maintaining a cooperative relationship with the developer.

The Fayetteville campus currently includes 13 buildings encompassing approximately 6.2 million square feet. It is part of a larger planned development that could eventually include up to 16 buildings.

The incident highlights growing tensions nationwide over the resource demands of data centers. Communities across the U.S. have become increasingly vocal about the strain these facilities place on local water supplies and electrical grids, leading to heightened opposition to new projects.

In a separate but related development, an Indianapolis City-County Council member’s home was shot at in April shortly after he supported rezoning for a data center project. The attack on Ron Gibson came days after a 6–2 vote approving the nearly 14-acre facility in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood.

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Communitarianism: The Evil Unleashed on America PT 2 the Montana Water Rights Protection Act

There is a myriad of ways to take our property – and the “powers-that-be are using them and more that they just make up on the spot.

We’ve written about many in our Workbook, in Tom DeWeese’s Sustainable, and in scores of articles. And in more ways than most of us could ever conceive of an act being pulled-off, for instance killing hundreds of ostriches because a couple of years earlier two had been ill but recovered. In fact, the government of Canada had them shot! Another example is capturing” CO2 from atmosphere and compressing and storing it in geological formations. I won’t even get into what could go wrong or, even more, how absurd it is to take CO2 from the atmosphere where we and plants thrive on it.

Many people do not realize that “property” is more than land or a house. Your clothes, your written words, the food in your house and the gas in your car are your property. And your children. Don’t think those taking other forms of your property won’t touch your children.

The U.S. Supreme Court defines property:

“As protected from being taken for public uses, is such property as belongs absolutely to an individual, and of which he has the exclusive right of disposition. Property of a specific, fixed and tangible nature, capable of being in possession and transmitted to another, such as houses, lands, and chattels. Scranton v. Wheeler, 179 U.S. 141, 21 S.Ct. 48, 45 L.Ed. 126.

Note: Chattel represents physical, transferable items like furniture, jewelry, cars, or livestock. It is used to distinguish personal belongings from real property.

Keep in mind that if you have nothing, you are chattel – you are property.

So, let’s look at the Columbia River Basin and the “New Compact”. I am using Catherine Vandemoer, Ph.D.’s report “Meet the New Compact, Same as the Old” to give you the background of the Columbia River Basin project introduced to Montana in 1993.

At that time we were told that the project was to take the area back to pre-Columbian times. Note:Dr. Vandemoer’s words will be in Times New Roman.

Dr. Vandemoer has been following this issue for years, and her writings on it are invaluable. She points out that Senator Daines “put forth the same bill that Senator Tester had done earlier – the CSKT Compact in full, ‘wrapped” it into the “new” Daines Compact and then added ‘new’ and more ‘goodies’ than even the Democrat did,” in addressing the Western Montana portion of the Columbia River Basin Project.

“As with the Tester bill, the intent of the Dains Compact is to have us all now be distracted by the “goodies” and forget about the documented problems with and substance of the provision of The original CSKT Compact whose true economic, environmental, and nation-wide legal precedent-setting impacts have never been examined.

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She Refused A Smart Meter For Health Reasons — So New Jersey Water Company Shut Off Her Water

A New Jersey water company shut off a woman’s water for six days after she refused a smart meter due to health concerns, even though the state has no regulation requiring residents to accept smart meters.

In an exclusive interview with The Defender, Alla Goldman described how New Jersey American Water (NJAW) employees “harassed” her and her husband for over a year, threatening to shut off her water if she refused to let them install a smart water meter.

On March 5, the water company made good on its threats by sending a technician — escorted by two police officers — to her home to shut off her water.

For six days, Goldman, who was sick with the flu, and her husband went without water at their home. Goldman took shelter in a hotel and bought gallons of drinking water.

“I want to sue them for their literal threats,” Goldman said.

While staying at a hotel, Goldman filed a complaint with the state’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) about the water company’s action.

The BPU informed her that the water company had no legal basis for shutting off her water because there is no BPU regulation requiring people to accept smart meter upgrades.

Goldman said, “A BPU supervisor told me that if we do not want a smart meter, we do not have to have one.”

When the BPU informed the water company of Goldman’s complaint, the company changed its tune by offering to restore services and install an analog meter that would not emit wireless radiation.

‘Few people know that water companies do the same thing’

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Israel ‘weaponizing’ water in Gaza – medical charity

Israel has used access to water as a weapon and a form of “collective punishment” against Palestinians in Gaza, according to a report by international medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Israel has rejected the claims as baseless.

The organization said in a report released Tuesday that Israel has “engineered” water scarcity in the strip, creating “conditions incompatible with human dignity and survival.” Access to water, sanitation and hygiene has been “severely undermined” since the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza in October 2023, it stated.

The report highlights a sharp rise in water-shortage-related diseases, including diarrhea, skin infections, lice, and infected wounds. Additionally, the lack of clean water and sanitation is also worsening malnutrition and severely affecting mental health.

Gaza has no natural freshwater sources, relying instead on groundwater and seawater, both of which require treatment. Much of the infrastructure, including desalination plants, boreholes, pipelines, and sewage systems, has been rendered inoperable or inaccessible, according to MSF.

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Denver Imposes Water Restrictions, Orders Restaurants To Serve Only On Request

Restaurants in Colorado’s capital are only allowed to serve water to guests if they ask, according to new restrictions by the Denver Board of Water Commissioners.

“Restaurants and catering businesses shall serve water only upon request,” the mandatory irrigation restrictions read.

The rules were issued in the Mile High City after the commissioners declared a Stage 1 Drought and made plans to seek a 20 percent reduction in water use. City officials expect drought conditions to last until April 30, 2027.

The update will affect many businesses, including the hospitality industry.

“Lodging establishments shall not change sheets more often than every four days for guests staying more than one night, except for health or safety reasons or upon express request of guests,” the Denver Board of Water Commissioners stated.

Drivers who attempt to wash their car are told to use a bucket or a hand-held hose equipped with an automatic shut-off nozzle if they don’t use a commercial car wash.

Residents can water their grass only two days per week, according to the schedule provided by city officials, but it is prohibited between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., when the sun is up.

“Current conditions indicate that this is going to be an exceptionally challenging year for our water supply,” Nathan Elder, manager of water supply for Denver, said at a Denver Board of Water Commissioners meeting.

“Snow pack levels are at historic lows and are melting earlier and more rapidly than normal.”

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The Iran War’s Most Precious Commodity Isn’t Oil

The CIA calls it the “strategic commodity” of the Middle East. But it’s not referring to oil or natural gas. What the American spy agency has in mind is far more prosaic: drinking water. Don’t underestimate it, though, because if military hostilities continue to escalate, water could become the geopolitical commodity that decides the war between the US and Iran.

The Persian Gulf is gifted with a fabulous hydrocarbon endowment, worth trillions of dollars. What its desertic countries don’t have is water. From the 1970s onward, the oil money bought a solution: desalination plants. Today, the region relies on nearly 450 facilities to stop everyone going thirsty.

The US Central Intelligence Agency has been briefing American policymakers for decades on the inherent risk of relying on those plants for such a crucial supply. In a secret assessment in the early 1980s — since declassified — the CIA said: “Senior government officials in some of the countries perceive it [water] as more important than oil to the national well-being.”

More than four decades later, not much has changed. Desalination remains a relatively cost-effective technology to transform sea water into drinking water. The downside is the vulnerability of the installations, and the oil and gas consumption required to fire the power generators that run the plants.

About 100 million people live in the countries belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman — all now under Iranian attack. Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are, for all practical purposes, completely dependent on the desalination plants, particularly for metropolises such as Dubai. Saudi Arabia, and especially its capital, Riyadh, also relies heavily on them.

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Newsom’s water plan —as empty as the Palisades reservoir

Gavin Newsom launched a new water policy this week that does almost nothing for water. Perhaps he thinks it will help his nascent presidential campaign.

Newsom’s biggest weakness as a presidential candidate is his record. He cannot point to any major achievements after two terms.

That’s the real drought his plan aims to address.

Newsom called his policy the “most ambitious water plan in California history.” If so, the obvious question is why he waited until the last months of his administration to launch it.

And the equally obvious answer is that he is focused on the 2028 presidential campaign, not on solving California’s chronic water problems.

His policy is even called “California Water Plan 2028.” Why 2028, two years after he leaves office? The question answers itself.

Of course, nothing that ambitious can be done in two years in California. Even massive water bonds take forever to spend.

It has taken all eight years of Newsom’s governorship for him to line up the approvals for the Sites Reservoir, the first major water storage project in half a century. 

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Incoming: Millions of Water Refugees from Iran

Tehran is at risk of becoming uninhabitable due to a severe drought that has led to a severe water shortage. The drought has been the catalyst to expose decades of government mismanagement that caused Iran’s water supply to run dry. Now, the government is prepared to issue a city-wide evacuation notice in Tehran if the situation worsens.

Rain will not be sufficient to fill the dry reservoir, which was brought about by government mismanagement—farmers protested against the government in 2018 when water levels were low. Protests erupted in 2021 in the southern Khuzestan province as the people blamed the government for water mismanagement. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controls construction over the main, poorly planned dam, which has resulted in dry rivers and wetlands. Salinity of the water supply has led to a loss of fertile agricultural land. For example, the Govtvand Damn on the Karun River caused saltwater to destroy nearby land over a decade ago, and the situation has not been resolved.

Over 75% of Iran’s land is experiencing groundwater depletion. IRGC-controlled industries receive water as a first priority, and this is used for everything from agriculture to crypto mining. Rural areas are the last to receive water, as it is carefully regulated and rationed by the government. The government has built several new dams with no concern for the ecological implications of diverting water. It is well-known that the nation uses outdated agricultural practices that often require a vast amount of water.

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