Protect
The need for freshwater has led to overuse of limited resources in places like the Western United States. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power diverted water from Mono Basin streams to Los Angeles through the L.A. Aqueduct. Excessive diversions of these streams took place until 1989. The reason that the diversions were stopped was because stream ecosystems deteriorated due to lack of water. Air quality became so poor (due to the exposed riverbed) that the Clean Air Act became the only reason that the diversion of water was stopped.
A central user of freshwater is agriculture. In areas that do not have large amounts of freshwater available for use, irrigation is used to water the crops. The 230-mile Klamath River, which flows from Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in California, supplies irrigation water to about 200,000 acres of farmland through the federal Klamath Reclamation Project. A California state report in 2003 showed that the Bush Administration allowed too much water to be diverted to farms in that area. The result was that 33,000 fish died on the lower river in Fall 2002.
June 22, 2005 1:21 PM | Category: Water
Comments
Good article.
Posted by: sam at June 22, 2005 7:08 PM