Oil Shale v Food (and Drinking Water)

Anyway, that's what the headline should read for this story about how oil companies have "cornered" water rights in Colorado for oil shale processing.

California's water situation is fairly dire right now. They're an example that's been in the news a lot and much of their irrigation water comes from the Colorado Compact, which is also critical to agricultural production and municipal supplies in six other western states.

And Colorado doesn't have as much water available from the Colorado River as optimistic past planners might have hoped:

... The document showed that, [in June, 2007], Colorado actually had only 474,000 acre-feet of water left to develop. More importantly, it showed that once existing and approved projects were built and operating at full capacity -- which, according to the document, will be next year -- only 159,000 acre-feet of water will be left.

... Kuhn's findings also suggest that there's little water left for the predicted explosion of oil shale development in western Colorado, which could require up to 400,000 acre-feet per year. ...

The Colorado Compact does stipulate that a predetermined amount of water must reach Lower Basin states such as ag-heavyweight California. But if Upper Basin states like Colorado have to start cutting off existing users to satisfy the demands of those downstream, that's bound to create a tense, political war between urban and agricultural users.

Do people only want drinking and wash water or can we grow food, too?

The use of Colorado water for oil shale development raises another possibility that I just touched on earlier, and that's pollution. In this past decade, both milk and lettuce from California was found contaminated with perchlorate, a rocket fuel ingredient released from a factory near Las Vegas that leached into the lower Colorado.

The perchlorate got into the river, that river water went into irrigation, the perchlorate went into the food.

What are the oil companies going to be putting into the water they want to 'develop'? Do we want it going into people's taps, or into food that gets shipped all over the country for everyone to eat?

This puts people in the US in a position similar to the position third world residents are in with regard to biofuels, where demand for fuel comes at odds with supplying the necessities of life. Not fun. Not fun for anyone.

(Photo credit: the International Rice Research Alliance on Flickr.)