sargentodiaz
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Location: Las Vegas, NV
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Potable Water
I'm just curious.
Baja is a desert. Deserts don't have a lot of water.
Yet there are all sorts of towns and even cities.
Where does the water come from?
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OCEANUS
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Location: Dana Point; L.A. Bay
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Around L.A. Bay, it basically comes down to natural springs (in town and San Borja) and wells (Aqua Amarga.)
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Howard
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Mood: I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.
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If you read Jack Smiths book, "God and Mr. Gomez" you would know. He writes a great couple of paragraphs about that same question that Jack asked Mr.
Gomez.
Great and fun reading.
We don't stop playing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop playing
George Bernard Shaw
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Whale-ista
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Mood: Sunny with chance of whales
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Great question. One many more people will be thinking about in future.
First- Not all Baja is desert.There are springs in mountains in Central Baja, aquifers inland of Ensenada. Groundwater in Cd. Constitucion. Oasis in
San Ignacio town, but nothing at lagoon.
Desal is helping in some places. But electricity is pricey to run desal facilities.
Tijuana mostly gets Colorado River water and uses/reuse/recycles each drop better than in San Diego.
\"Probably the airplanes will bring week-enders from Los Angeles before long, and the beautiful poor bedraggled old town will bloom with a
Floridian ugliness.\" (John Steinbeck, 1940, discussing the future of La Paz, BCS, Mexico)
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David K
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If not springs, then from wells. It is amazing the amount of water that is stored underground.
One of the amazing places to see this is Mission Santa Maria where the granite rock and gravel soil produces year-round running water... and from near
the top of the range, not just down on the desert floor near Gonzaga at the base of the mountain!
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David K
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The above photos are near the top of the ridge, a couple miles west of the mission.
Here is a look down at an oasis about, also west of the mission:
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Marc
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One of my favorite places on the trail up from from Gonzaga. Just after I took this picture of my buddy Pete I slipped on a slick rock and fractured
my wrist.
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David K
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That's the bottom of the same water course! Thanks for the photo... Some of you will recall when Baja Mur and I hiked up there from Gonzaga in 1999:
I couldn't resist going in!
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rts551
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Although some people argue that these are resources to be used, most scientists agree that the peninsula aquifers are overused. More water going
out than going in. To the point that Ensenada is now rationing water in some areas.
Conservation and alternative sources is and will continue to be a big issue.
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rts551
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| Quote: | Originally posted by David K
I couldn't resist going in!
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So much for potable water. (title of this thread)
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sargentodiaz
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Thanks. It just seems to me that with the booming population of Baja, there should be a shortage of water.
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Osprey
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Whiskey is for Drinkin’…
There’s an old saying “Whiskey is for drinkin’, water is for fightin’. Now that the pure water world is running on empty, the saying might hold true.
Water wars are nothing new but where people live in deserts, the fighting is about to get serious.
Take the southern part of the Baja Peninsula for example:
About 700,000 people have to share 7 inches of rainfall a year.
70% of that amount goes to agriculture.
The amount available (rain and from wells) is 45 cubic meters per person per year.*
Only the big fancy beach resorts can afford to build desal plants and usually that water is for their clients.
With over 100 inches of evaporation per year, it takes 650,000 gallons of water to grow one crop of tomatoes on one acre of land.
Range cattle during droughts are dying from starvation and dehydration at alarming rates. Over 700 ranchos were at risk two years ago of forced
abandonment because they could not feed and water their animals (horses, cows, goats, sheep, mules).
*The amount available, for comparison, in all of Mexico is 4,338 cubic meters per person per year and in Central America it is 20,370 cubic meters per
person.
The battle lines just got drawn in my neck of Baja Sur, La Ribera.
Our 2,300 residents have been using about 65,000,000 gallons a year, 120 cubic meters per person per year for non agricultural home/business use.
Remembering there are only 45 cubic meters available (my wife and I use 240), even without the 70% for agriculture we are way overusing the resource.
Between our village and the shore, for hundreds of years the fresh water from the mountains (with nobody or nothing here to use it, drink it) pooled
up at the bottom of the arroyos; at times storms pushed the water out to sea until the beaches returned and the pools were full again.
A new marina being built here on 800 acres right where those shallow pools were, is changing everything about stock and flow in this area. It is a
very big dig – as much as 400 acres could be the marina basin; about ½ that area is now full of pure water mixing with the salt water and flowing
daily out with the tide, lost forever to thirsty people, plants and animals.
The new basin is a hundredfold larger and deeper than the shallow natural pools were – the new lake is draining the aquifer now at such a rate that
the water table supplying upstream wells has fallen 3 meters in a short period of time interrupting regular water services while the villages dig
deeper to get at the falling water.
A selling point for marina lots is that would-be buyers, yacht owners, would have little or no salt water hull, engines and prop damage for boats
slipped in the basin as they promise “The marina will be full of fresh water which drains down from the nearby mountains.”
Summary
It won’t be long now before we begin to use and deplete fossil water in the southern state and particularly where this new marina is being built. Some
of the fossil water probably remains underground from when it drained there before the peninsula slipped away from the mainland 4.5 million years ago.
My guess is that the pools we are about to drill and drain are just a few hundred years old – that means that with normal rainfall it will take the
same centuries to recharge, refill, replenish even if the land was devoid of people as it was those long 4.5 million years past.
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Jack Swords
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This winter we spent considerable time, as usual, in the mountains between La Paz and the tip. We are quite familiar with this area and the folks
that live there. Few ranches were occupied as ranchers were forced to move or sell their livestock. Ranchers and their families have moved down to
the cities. Streams and ponds that we have been accustomed to are dry. The high pressure that has affected California and the southwest has affected
Baja Sur as well. Normally there is lots of water in the canyons providing water for the ranches and their stock. Not so this year. With Cristina
already behind us, perhaps an early hurricane season might provide water for this next year.
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