State of Emergency in Washington?

Deb and Ed M wrote:

Cummins12V98 wrote:
There is exactly the same amount of water on this planed as there ever has been.

Not really. Hydraulic fracturing (oil well "fracking") takes freshwater completely out of the Water Cycle for eternity. The "flowback" water, contaminated with salt, oil, and chemicals, is pumped into disposal wells FAR below the water table, never to be part of the Water Cycle again. And each fracked well can use hundreds-of-thousands to MILLIONS of gallons of freshwater over the course of its productive life.

Other liquids/gasses can be used to frack - but of course, water is cheap. And my understanding is that precious freshwater IS being used for fracking in CA.

I don't necessarily have a problem with drilling/fracking - but wasting something as precious as freshwater HAS to stop.

Again, when we talk about water, we don't talk about gallons. Even "MILLIONS of gallons of freshwater over the course of its productive life" is nothing compared to the BILLIONS of gallons used in California every single day.

Did you know that California uses 38 Billion gallons of water per day? source

Nope, Fracking is not the cause of California's problems. Nor is it golf courses, lawns, bottled water or any other simplistic argument you can come up with. The problem is very complex and involves water rights, politics, state borders, population growth, geology, weather, economics, etc.

But ultimately it comes down to this, there is not enough precipitation in the right places to support current demand. There may never be.