Lots of information on the history and current water supply problems of the Colorado river supply system are avialable here at;

http://www.livingrivers.org/pdfs/lasvegassunfeature2008.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00...merican_Plenty/



The long term future for the water supply from the Colorado river system seems to be pretty bleak with demand outstripping what the water supply from the eastern side of the rocky mountains can supply. The alternatives appear not to be sustainable either. You may of heard of peak oil but in this part of the world peak water may get you first. You can live without oil because there are alternatives, but you can't live without water.

If you deliberately try to collect rainwater through clandestine means, and you get caught, it is then elevated to fraud (due to intention). That would then equate to a prison sentence if you get caught.

Not worth it.

Thinking about storing it underground? Better hope your local water enforcement agency doesn't hire a helicopter with a flir system, which can identify underground water sources by their infrared footprint while flying overhead. Maybe you can dig a hole deep enough that the thermal variance will get masked. Of course there's the building code inspectors that might notice the constructive efforts on your property and want to find out what's going on. Have you filed a permit app for that underground tank on your property? Is there a new outbuilding that just popped up that isn't in last year's overhead picture? Or maybe they'll just look for typical usage indicators. Are you planning on watering your lawn with that water when your neighbors yard is brown? Will the sewer camera see a greater outfall from your service connection than the rest of the neighborhhod?

Having the water is not so important as being able to use it when needed. Unfortunately, such uses are easy to detect, if you know where to look, and they are getting very good at recognizing these things.

Are you talking about the Ogallala Aquifer? Do note that the farmers have pretty much switched out to a new kind of pivot that is much more efficient than the ones that were probably mentioned on the history channel, but even before it was better than gravity irrigation.
Your corporate farms have to have something to water their thousands of acres and this is currently the best solution (that I know of), unless you want to move to dry land crops (and if you think grain prices were high before...!)

Actually, most of our cropland now is not irrigated, IIRC. Then again, a lot of it is now in CRP. We're paying an awful lot of people not to farm dryland grain these days. I doubt the price would go up much if they were told the CRP subsidy was going away.

Hmm, I can say that is not true in this area fer shure.

That could be the case. I don't know the regional breakdown of land usage so much, but it ain't all crop circles from coast to coast just yet.

Just you wait.

If grain prices do go up, I would hope to see more farmland actually being farmed and producing something other than natural grass. I think overall we only farm about 5% of the total arable land in the world anyways.

At the risk of sliding off into politics, I have to say that the free money that goes to farmers is here to stay. At any rate, I really just meant to add a footnote about how the pivots are more efficient these days than when they first arrived - part of the whole saving water topic : p

People who like to water their garden should check out a book (actually 2 volumes, soon to be 2) called Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster. He lives in AZ, so he knows what 'dry land' means.

Out of many clever ideas, one is digging a hole for a tree or shrub twice as wide as you would normally make it. Fill one half of the hole with stacked junk mail, magazines and old newspapers, plant the tree in the other side, soak all with water, then cover both with soil to the appropriate level. He said he has a friend who does this (in AZ), and he has checked back three months later and the trees were doing very well, and the junk mail was still moist. In summer.

More ideas, too.

I doubt that communities care so much about the rainwater as they do about the tax they want to collect on it. The next time you go to Las Vegas, check out all the water features they have there. And most of them were created AFTER the new water laws were put in place. All you have to do is pay the right people under the right table, I guess.

Cynical Sue