Dry days ahead: Collier, Lee counties at 'extreme risk' for water shortage
Naples Daily News
2010-07-23
Dry days ahead: Collier, Lee counties at 'extreme risk' for water shortage
Naples Daily News
By ERIC STAATS
Updated Tuesday, July 20, 2010
NAPLES — Water shortages are nothing new in Southwest Florida.
Just ask anyone who has tried to figure out whether he can turn on his lawn sprinklers on Saturday or has to wait until Sunday to comply with watering limits.
But a Natural Resources Defense Council report released Tuesday concludes that climate change will increase Collier County’s risk of water shortage by 2050 from “high” to “extreme.”
In Lee County, the water shortage risk is labeled extreme with or without climate change taken into account, according to the report compiled by engineering firm Tetra Tech.
Collier and Lee counties are among some 400 counties in the continental United States at an extreme risk of water shortage, the report shows.
In all, more than 1,100 counties — one third of all the counties in the continental U.S. — will face a higher risk of water shortage by 2050, according to the report.
The NRDC released the report as lobbying has kicked into high gear in the run-up to a Senate debate expected this summer on clean energy and climate change legislation.
The report illustrates the need to both conserve water and for Congress to take action to reduce the effects of global warming, said Dan Lashof, director of the Climate Center at NRDC.
“We need to attack the problem from both sides,” Lashof said.
NRDC said the Tetra Tech report breaks new ground by putting together data in a new way and creating an index to measure the risk of water shortage.
The shortages are a result of both higher demand for water and predictions that global warming will reduce rainfall and increase the amount of evapotranspiration.
The report cites water use data from the U.S. Geological Survey and uses climate change projections using models from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Future demand is projected on a “business as usual scenario” of population growth, according to the report.
Climate change already is on the radar screen of water managers in South Florida.
In November 2009, the South Florida Water Management District based in West Palm Beach issued a report that found a “broad range of uncertainty” about what climate change might mean for flood control and water supply in South Florida.
Temperature and evapotranspiration are expected to rise but projections “vary greatly,” according to the report.
Some studies predicted more rainfall in South Florida while others projected a 20 percent reduction in rain.
The Big Cypress Basin, the local arm of the water management district, has made climate change a focus of a new strategic plan, the basin’s Director Clarence Tears said Tuesday.
Tears said variations in rainfall already make his job tricky enough to balance flood control with recharging underground water supplies.
“It’s always a challenge and always a concern,” Tears said.
Collier County gets between 50 and 55 inches of rain a year, but all but about five inches of it is drained off to avoid flooding, he said.
The cities of Marco Island and Naples are moving toward capturing more of that water and storing it underground.
More than half of Collier County’s water supply already comes from alternative sources, such as deeper brackish aquifers that are more expensive to treat.
Climate change could put more pressure on water supply planners, said the NRDC’s Lashof.
“We have to be planning for a future where there is more stress on our water supply systems,” he said.
