Various Locations, largely ongoing

1. Would you believe Uranium in the drinking water? Uranium washes down from the sierras to the central valley floodplain. Overpumping and the drought combine with irrigation to drive it into the groundwater zone where wells pick it up. An article entitled “Fear at the tap: Uranium contaminates water in the West” at SFGate on 12/08/15 at http://www.sfgate.com/business/energy/article/Fear-at-the-tap-Uranium-co... notes that this is also happening at other locations variously described as “major farming regions of the U.S. West”, “the U.S. Central Plains”, and “the U.S. Midwest”. In many cases the uranium levels exceed federal and state safety standards. Uranium is toxic chemically as a heavy metal (mostly kidney damage), in addition to radiological toxicity (mostly cancer). Not all contaminated sources are identified.

The CA central valley alone is 250 miles long and contains 10 major cities. Ignoring urban and other public water supplies, it is estimated that 25% of the families on private wells have unsafe water. According to the article:

More broadly, nearly 2 million people in California's Central Valley and in the U.S. Midwest live within a half-mile of groundwater containing uranium over the safety standards, University of Nebraska researchers said in a study published in September.

This is leading to a variety of actual and proposed solutions, all of which are costly.

Use of bottled water for all drinking at selected locations like schools or libraries. Also

Meanwhile, the city of Modesto, with a half-million residents, recently spent more than $500,000 to start blending water from one contaminated well to dilute the uranium to safe levels. The city has retired a half-dozen other wells with excess levels of uranium.

In another example, 10 schools have installed uranium removal systems that cost from $65,000 to $500,000. One such system removes about a pound of uranium per year from the water which is then taken away and converted into nuclear fuel by a private contractor.

The fixes, in terms of dollar cost are going to be an ever increasing burden as more and more locales and families have to deal with the problem. The societal cost from delayed implementation of fixes is unknowable. Worse yet this is certain to contribute to the ever growing water scarcity:

Water scarcity already affects every continent. Around 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world's population, live in areas of physical scarcity, and 500 million people are approaching this situation. Another 1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world's population, face economic water shortage (where countries lack the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers).

http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml

Water tables and major aquifers in this country are dropping much faster than they are replenishable. The Oglalla Aquifer, for example http://modernfarmer.com/2015/07/ogallala-aquifer-depletion/, and all of California https://www.revealnews.org/article/9-sobering-facts-about-californias-gr....

Content to be crossposted to Daily Kos tomorrow