Western Drought Provoking More Than Water Wars

Worst western drought in 500 years

by Franklin Bell

Executive Intelligence Review

What the U.S. Geological Survey has identified as the worst western drought in 500 years, is propelling the whole western region of the North American continent toward conditions for which financial oligarchs' anti-infrastructure advocates pine: drastic de-population of the North American West, within this decade.

The current drought doesn't stop at the United States' northern border negotiated with the British Empire, nor at the southern border of the Gadsden Purchase. The North American Drought Monitor, compiled by the American, Mexican, and Canadian national governments, shows "Abnormally Dry" to "Exceptionally Dry" conditions stretching from an area well above the panhandle in Alaska, to central western Mexico. Parts of Western Texas have been afflicted with drought for the past dozen years.

The 200,000-square-mile Ogallala Aquifer that stretches from South Dakota to Texas, and provides water for one-fifth of the irrigated land in the country, is being depleted 14 times faster than its normal process of restoration.

In early 2000, Lake Powell was 95% full. Since then, it has drained so rapidly that water experts say it may drop to "dead pool" levels, below which it cannot deliver stored water downstream.