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Virtual water from a vanishing river
Author(s) -
Kelley Scott,
Pasqualetti Martin
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal ‐ american water works association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.466
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1551-8833
pISSN - 0003-150X
DOI - 10.5942/jawwa.2013.105.0132
Subject(s) - underpinning , resource (disambiguation) , virtual water , scrutiny , electricity , destinations , water resources , business , environmental science , natural resource economics , water scarcity , economics , geography , computer science , civil engineering , engineering , computer network , ecology , electrical engineering , tourism , archaeology , law , political science , biology
The Colorado River Basin (CRB) supplies much of the resource underpinning the mushrooming cities of the American Southwest—water. Water managers diligently track its distribution and usage to the seven states served by the CRB, but this accounting ignores water embodied in the goods it helps produce. Electricity is a valuable export from the CRB, and although records show the amount of water used to generate it, the destination of the “virtual” water embodied within this export is ignored. This article is a first attempt to quantify transfer of this resource to destinations outside the CRB. The authors calculate that thermoelectric stations within the CRB evaporate about 330,000 acre‐ft of water annually to produce electricity. Of that volume, nearly half is exported—virtually—to distant customers, and thus is not part of accounting systems or legal arrangements. As water demands come under increased scrutiny, such transfers will become more salient to near‐term policy decisions.