Water Depletion In California

California is in a drought and farmers believe our only option is to take water from under the ground. But, groundwater depletion is causing a lot of bad things to happen. It is making the layer of clay above collapse, when the clay collapses the dirt above gives way and sinks. This sinking causes sinkholes and is very dangerous. The sinking also damages pipes, buckles walls of irrigation canals, and cracks homes. Although the sinking is already a big enough threat the water in general could be dangerous. In some cases groundwater becomes contaminated, this occurs when man-made products like gasoline, oil, road salts, and chemicals get into the groundwater and cause it to become dangerous for us to use. The state of California can prevent groundwater depletion by harvesting stormwater, reusing water, and seawater desalination.
Instead of taking groundwater David Sedlak claims that we should harvest stormwater. Even though it is not a very reliable source since it hardly ever rains in California we can slowly collect the water to refill our aquifers back up. We can do this by capturing the rainwater and letting it percolate back into the ground. This is not a very fast way to get water but, we are not
going to use it as normal drinking/washing water we are going to use it just to refill our aquifers.
We can also reuse/ recycle water. Recycled water is an amazing source because we can use it for not only ourselves but, we can also treat wastewater to a point where it is safe to water crops with. That’s amazing because we can reuse that water for many different things. We can treat the wastewater with two simple steps. In the first step we can pressurize the water and pass it through a reverse osmosis membrane, the membrane traps everything bad we do not want in our water. In the second step we can add a small quantity of hydrogen peroxide and shine ultraviolet light on the water. The ultraviolet light breaks down organic chemicals. Organic chemicals are by-products of industrial processes.
One of the most reliable sources we can use is water desalination.
In the whole world we have 5 giant oceans. That’s 326 million cubic miles, that amount of water can last us a very long time. The only problem is we cannot just drink salty water like that because for humans it is extremely hard for our bodies to take in all of the sodium. That is why we have to purify it. Although the whole process of water desalination is expensive and time consuming it is definitely worth it because we need water in everyday life. Other than the cost the only negative thing about water desalination is that it can cause climate change. But, that one thing is not really a big deal considering we have all of the other ways to get water on top of water
desalination.
Although groundwater may sound like a very simple reliable source it is actually doing the opposite of helping us and is putting California in an even bigger drought. Why is it a good idea to take groundwater if all it is going do is make us face more struggles then we already have to deal with? In the long run we will not make it very far using up all of our groundwater. That’s why the state of California needs to harvest stormwater, reuse water, and start using seawater desalination.