To fight drought, we must drain: The paradoxical foundation of sustainable water management

“ It is an exceedingly erroneous idea that drains are worse than useless in localities where long droughts are of frequent occurrence. The truth is that draining enhances humidity during hot weather, since it enables the soil to exercise its absorbing properties to the fullest extent, there being more air in the soil water is retained in its pores, constituting a reservoir holding a lasting supply when other sources fail. ”

“ Lands which suffer most from drought are most benefited by draining,—more in their greater ability to withstand drought than in any other particular.
The reasons for this action of draining become obvious, when its effects on the character of the soil are examined. There is always the same amount of water in, and about, the surface of the earth. In winter there is more in the soil than in summer, while in summer, that which has been dried out of the soil exists in the atmosphere in the form of a vapor. It is held in the vapory form by heat, which may be regarded as braces to keep it distended. ”

“ And while we know no single weather event is caused solely by climate change, we also know that in a world that’s getting warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by it – more extreme droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes.
Those who already feel the effects of a changing climate don’t have time to deny it – they’re busy dealing with it. The firefighters who brave longer wildfire seasons. The farmers who see crops wilted one year, and washed away the next. Western families worried about water that’s drying up. ”

“ When a drought breaks up, sudden floods come down the rivers, destroying the dams and bridges, sweeping away houses, and often drowning men and animals. It is quite plain that we cannot say water is always useful; it is often so hurtful as to ruin and drown people. All that we can really say is that water is useful when and where we want it, and in such quantity as we want, and not otherwise. ”

“ Deforestation most severely disrupts mountainous areas and upland watersheds and the ecosystems that depend on them. The uplands influence precipitation, and the state of their soil and vegetation systems influence how this precipitation is released into the streams and rivers and onto the croplands of the plains below. The growing numbers and growing severity of both floods and droughts in many parts of the world have been linked to the deforestation of upland watersheds. ”

“ Pollution itself can affect the utility of water as well as people's enjoyment of it in a stream. A creek watershed that has been ignorantly farmed or roughly assaulted with bulldozers for urban development is an eyesore of erosive destruction, unproductive of crops, wildlife, or poetic appreciation, and can cause both heavier stream flooding in time of storm and lower flow in time of drought by the way its disruption alters the normal behavior of rainwater. ”

“ All the arrangements of rural husbandry, and we might say of civilised occupancy of the earth, are such as necessarily to increase the danger and the range of floods by promoting the rapid discharge of the waters of precipitation. Superficial, if not subterranean, drainage is a necessary condition of all agriculture. There is no field which has not some artificial disposition for this purpose, and even the furrows of ploughed land, if the surface is inclined, and especially when it if frozen, serve rather to carry off than to retain water. ”

“ If the land be properly drained, the water falling from the clouds is at once absorbed, and passes downwards, saturating the soil in its descent, and carrying the soluble substances with it to the roots, and the surplus water runs away in the artificial channels provided by the draining process. So great is the absorbent power of drained land, that, after a protracted drought, all the water of a heavy rainstorm will be drunk up and held by the soil, so that, for a day or two, none will find its way to the drains, nor will it run upon the surface. ”

“ The effects of drought are, of course, sometimes manifested on soils which do not require draining,—such as those poor gravels, which, from sheer poverty, do not enable plants to form vigorous and penetrating roots; but any soil of ordinary richness, which contains a fair amount of clay, will withstand even a severe drought, without great injury to its crop, if it is thoroughly drained, and is kept loose at its surface.
Poor crops are, when the cultivation of the soil is reasonably good, caused either by inherent poverty of the land, or by too great moisture during the season of early growth. ”

“ The extent to which plants will be affected by drought depends, other things being equal, on the depth to which they send their roots. If these lie near the surface, they will be parched by the heat of the sun. If they strike deeply into the damper subsoil, the sun will have less effect on the source from which they obtain their moisture. Nothing tends so much to deep rooting, as the thorough draining of the soil. If the free water be withdrawn to a considerable distance from the surface, plants,—even without the valuable aid of deep and subsoil plowing,—will send their roots to great depths. ”

“ Whatever the theory, the fact is acknowledged, that stagnant water in as well as on the soil, impedes the growth of all our valuable crops, and that drainage soon cures the evil, by removing the effect with its cause. And the remedy seems to be almost instantaneous; for, on most upland, it is found that by the removal of stagnant water, the soil is in a single season rendered fit for the growth of cultivated crops. ”

“ We must underdrain all the land we cultivate, that Nature has not already underdrained, and we shall cease complaints of the seasons. The advice of Cromwell to his soldiers: "Trust God, and keep your powder dry," affords a good lesson of faith and works to the farmer. We shall seldom have a season, upon properly drained land, that is too wet, or too cold, or even too dry; for thorough draining is almost as sure a remedy for a drought, as for a flood. ”

“ Not only is the temperature of the air reduced, but its dew point is raised, by water being evaporated which might be drained off; consequently, the want of drainage renders the air both colder and more liable to the formation of dew and mists, and its dampness affects comfort even more than its temperature. It is easy, then, to understand how local climate is so much affected by surplus moisture, and so remarkably improved by drainage. A farmer being asked the effect on temperature of some new drainage works ”

“ The fact is, that Nature drains thoroughly the greater portion of all our lands; so that artificial drainage, though it may remove surplus water from them more speedily in Spring, cannot make them more dry in Summer. And what thus happens naturally, on most of the land, without injury, cannot be a dangerous result to effect by drainage on lands of similar character. By thorough-drainage, we endeavor to make lands which have an impervious or very retentive subsoil near the surface, sufficiently open to allow the surplus water to pass off, as it does naturally on our most productive upland. ”

“ The vast quantity of water which Nature pours upon every acre of soil annually, were it all to be removed by evaporation alone, would render the whole country barren; but Nature herself has kindly done the work of draining upon a large proportion of our land, so that only a healthful proportion of the water which falls on the earth, passes off at the surface by the influence of the sun. ”

“ But when we have got rid of the cold arising from the evaporation of free water, have given a range of several feet to the roots of grass and cereals, and have enabled retentive land to filter through itself all the rain which falls upon its surface, we are not, in our present state of knowledge, aware of any advantage which would arise from further lowering the surface of water in agricultural land. ”

“ A moment's reflection will satisfy any one that, the dryer the soil in Spring, the deeper will the roots strike, and the better able will be the plant to endure the Summer's drought.
Again, drainage and consequent pulverization and deepening of the soils increase their capacity to absorb moisture from the atmosphere, and thus afford protection against drought. Watery vapor is constantly, in all dry weather, rising from the surface of the earth; and plants, in the day-time, are also, from their leaves and bark, giving off moisture which they draw from the soil. ”

“ A drought is the enemy we all dread. Professor Espy has a plan for producing rain, by lighting extensive artificial fires. A great objection to his theory is, that he cannot limit his showers to his own land, and all the public would never be ready for a shower on the same day. If we can really protect our land from drought, by under-draining it, everybody may at once engage in the work without offence to his neighbor. [282]
If we take up a handfull of rich soil of almost any kind, after a heavy rain, we can squeeze it hard enough with the hand to press out drops of water. ”

“ We have no frigid climate to prepare against, but we have possible drought, and our first and greatest consideration should be the conservation of water for irrigation.
This water conservation is exceedingly important thing. Men do not think, and the waste is enormous. When the rain falls it runs into the gully, from the gully to the creek, from the creek to the river, from the river into the sea; and then in the dry season water is deplorably scarce.
I once asked a young squatter from the New South Wales side of the Murray "Have you got a garden?" ”

“ Even in heavy rainfall countries, there is often such vast waste of water from run-off that the lands suffer severely during droughts. The hilly lands of our best farming regions are greatly reduced in their crop-producing power because people do not prepare against drought as consciously as they provide against winter. It is often said that we shall water eastern lands by irrigation, and I think that we shall; but our first obligation is to save the rainfall water by some system of farm-management or dry-farming. ”

“ The run-off is increasing every year as we cut our forests and cultivate our land. It is used for navigation, irrigation and power, but the increase is not an advantage for these purposes as might be supposed, because it comes in disastrous [Pg 88] floods, tearing away dams, ruining power sites, and not only preventing navigation during the flood season, but by filling up the rivers and changing the channels, making navigation difficult and dangerous throughout the year. The run-off is controlled to some extent and may be brought under almost as complete control as may be desired. ”

“ When the rains fall upon the open, unwooded country, unless it is of a quite level character, they flow off at once into the beds of the neighboring streams, and pour their united flood into the larger rivers, swelling their volume rapidly to such an extent that their waters can not be confined within their banks, but break out and overspread the adjacent lands, carrying destruction oftentimes to the growing crops, covering fertile fields with masses of gravel and rubbish of various sorts, interfering with manufacturing interests, and often destroying life itself. ”

“ All the pine needles and rootlets and blades of grass, and the fallen, decaying trunks of trees, are dams, storing the bounty of the clouds and dispensing it in perennial life-giving streams, instead of allowing it to gather suddenly and rush headlong in short-lived devastating floods. Everybody on the dry side of the continent is beginning to find this out, and, in view of the waste going on, is growing more and more anxious for government protection. The outcries we hear against forest reservations come mostly from thieves who are wealthy and steal timber by wholesale. ”

“ The presence of a forest on a watershed tends to give the stream which rises thereon its daily supply of water, whether it rains every day or not. By checking evaporation, the forest swells the volume of sea-going water in this stream, and thereby increases its water-power and makes it more useful as a deep waterway. Forests so regulate stream-flow that if all the watersheds were forested but few floods would occur. Forest-destruction has allowed many a flood to form and foam and to ruin a thousand homes. A deforested hillside may, in a single storm, loose the hoarded soil of a thousand years. ”

“ This is the more important for the reason that the same steps taken to insure a perpetual supply of raw material for our wood-workers will tend to stream and soil conservation by increasing stream-flow in periods of drought and by lessening the destructiveness of floods which erode the soil of the upper watersheds and deposit gravel and silt on overflowed lands and in the beds of the navigable parts of the streams. ”

“ Another improvement, which seems to be the opposite of this, is the irrigation of arid lands in those parts of the country where the annual rainfall is small and every summer brings a drought. In these cases, water stored in large natural or artificial reservoirs, or that furnished by snow melting on the mountains, is utilized to carry the crops through the dry season and to enable the farmer to grow large crops where nothing could be produced without this aid. ”

“ We draw the waters from our great number of immense reserve storage reservoirs, which are directly diverted to them from the run-offs of heavy river water flows. Saving us from overflowing rivers, flood control, levee construction, inundation damage, and disasters, at the same time increasing generating power of our dams. We have an efficient drainage system for our tropical crops in rain-soaked lands, excess waters of which also flow into these reservoirs. Sun rays are available to treat our vegetation, when necessary. ”

“ He deems the law wise under which the receipts from the sale and disposal of public lands in certain states and territories are set aside and used in the construction of irrigation works, and he believes that it is a wise policy for the United States Government to appropriate money for building reservoirs to conserve the flood-waters which now go to waste, and cause so much damage along our great western rivers. ”

“ The natural causes of famine are still mainly outside our control, though science enables agriculturists to combat them more successfully, and the improvement in means of transport allows a rich harvest in one land to supplement the defective crops in another. In tropical countries drought is the commonest cause of a failure in the harvest, and where great droughts are not uncommon—as in parts of India and Australia—the hydraulic engineer comes to the rescue by devising systems of water-storage and irrigation. ”

“ The irrigation of lands by water-channels connected with rivers is accepted as an important means of agricultural development in countries subject to protracted droughts, where rain falls only at distant and uncertain intervals. The irrigation caused by the periodic overflow of the Nile is a noted case in point. But for the annual overflow, temporarily deluging the land for a foot or two, Lower Egypt would be barren instead of a scene of fertility. ”

“ Where their purpose is to regulate the flow of streams, the water should be turned freely into the channels in the dry season, to take the same course under the same laws as the natural flow.
“The reclamation of the unsettled arid public lands presents a different problem. Here it is not enough to regulate the flow of streams. The object of the government is to dispose of the land to settlers who will build homes upon it. To accomplish the object water must be brought within their reach. ”

“ If the screw turned too much brings fever, the screw turned just right brings plenty and health.
Let the people only see how much they can do for themselves in improving their surface drainage, in keeping their water supply free from pollution, in cleansing inside and out.
Let the Government see how much they can do for the people in introducing and stimulating better agriculture; irrigation, combined with drainage works in water-logged districts; for the two must never be separated there.
There is not a country in the world for which so much might be done as for India. ”

“ The planters and all their available forces, it may be, have been busily fighting the rising floods, but have been finally vanquished momentarily by wind and wave. Hoping to hold the levee, few, perhaps, have removed their families, goods, or chattels, or livestock. Then when the break comes, the raging flood rushes in over the fields and woods, demolishing out-houses, shaking cottages, drowning stock, hurling masses of drift against dwellings that might otherwise stand—seeming as though a living genius of destruction. ”

“ But the people who have taken possession of the rich flood plain of the Mississippi River, who have built their homes there, drained and cultivated the land, and built cities and towns on the areas reclaimed from swamps, recognize the elevation of the river bed as the greatest danger that threatens them. Suppose a flood should come. Even if it does not overflow the levees, it may break through the natural banks and thus overflow the cities and the farm lands to left and right. ”

“ In carrying out extensive public works care should be exercised to provide good subsoil drainage in connection with irrigation, to provide efficient drainage to carry off superfluous water before introducing a larger water supply into a town previously inadequately watered, and to avoid interfering with the natural drainage of a district in constructing railways and so forth. To do anything that may raise the level of the subsoil water in potentially malarial districts is most dangerous. ”

“ Thus when a watershed deteriorates, poor farmers suffer more because they cannot afford the same anti-erosion measures as richer farmers. When urban air quality deteriorates, the poor, in their more vulnerable areas, suffer more health damage than the rich, who usually live in more pristine neighbourhoods. ”

“ Such disasters claim most of their victims among the impoverished in poor nations, where subsistence farmers must make their land more liable to droughts and floods by clearing marginal areas, and where the poor make themselves tore vulnerable to all disasters by living on steep slopes and unprotected shores - the only lands left for their shanties. ”

“ In addition, a number of developing countries have large populations that are either concentrated in low-lying regions vulnerable to a rise in sea level or flooding or that subsist on marginal agricultural lands vulnerable to drought.
In contrast, industrial economies can draw on many more resources to ease the adaptation to changes in climate. ”

“ Threats to the Stability of Countries Many countries will encounter climate-induced disruptions—such as weather-related disasters, drought, famine, or damage to infrastructure—that stress their capacity to respond, cope with, or adapt. Climate-related impacts will also contribute to increased migration, which can be particularly disruptive if, for example, demand for food and shelter outstrips the resources available to assist those in need. ”

“ These storms can cause significant damage that can cost individuals, businesses, and government billions of dollars. Worst of all, however, is the loss that can never be recovered: human life.
Currently more than 48 million people live along hurricane-prone coastlines in the United States. The growing number of residents living in these areas, as well as the millions of tourists who visit our Nation's beaches annually, has increased the difficulties in evacuating people from areas that are threatened by an impending hurricane. ”

“ Even if climate-induced environmental stresses do not lead to conflict, they are likely to contribute to migrations that exacerbate social and political tensions, some of which could overwhelm host governments and populations. Sudden extreme weather—such as from floods, droughts, and severe tropical storms—almost certainly will increase the number of displaced people, particularly in regions that are unaccustomed to or unprepared for such events. ”

“ The city-wide calamity caused by the unprecedented breakdown in the sewage disposal system gets more threatening with every minute. As engineers are still unable to enter the atomic power plant and as the sewage disposal-pumps continue to work in reverse, all Chicagoland is rapidly turning into a cesspool as millions of toilets and kitchen sinks spill sewage into every apartment. ”

“ Cor­rectly viewed, urban areas constitute a spearhead of economic and social development.
In some cases, however, unplanned growth has resulted in the creeping disease of urban blight. Cities outgrow them­selves without realizing it. Inadequate sanitation facilities, shortage of social services, lack of housing resulting in the growth of slums, excessive speculation in land, lack of public transportation coupled with inadequate streets, pollution of the atmosphere—these are some of the symptoms of the progressive disease known as urban blight. ”

“ From the neglect of sewerage, drainage, a due supply of water, air, and light to the interior of houses, and an efficient system of house and street cleansing, a poisonous atmosphere is engendered, particularly in the districts occupied by the poor, which endangers the health and life of the whole community, but which is particularly injurious to the industrious classes. ”

“ Developing-country cities are growing much faster than the capacity of authorities to cope. Shortages or housing, water. sanitation, and mass transit are widespread. A growing proportion of city-dwellers live in slums and shanty towns, many of them exposed to air and water pollution and to industrial and natural hazards. Further deterioration is likely, given that most urban growth will take place in the largest cities. Thus more manageable cities may be the principal gain from slower rates or population growth.
54. Urbanization is itself part or the development process. ”

“ Fluidity is accomplished at a stroke. There comes a sudden chance for permanent social change.
Social changes follow both minor and major disasters. The destruction of a mill may change the economic outlook of a village. The loss of a bridge may result in an entirely different school system for an isolated community; a cloud-burst may move a town. Great visitations, like the Chicago fire or the San Francisco earthquake, reveal these social processes in larger and more legible scale. ”

“ Heightened Social and Political Tensions Decreases in water and disputes over access to arable land will increase the risk of conflict between people who share river basins, aquifers, or land areas. Although historically water disputes between states have led to more water-sharing agreements than violent conflicts, according to academic studies, we judge that this trend could change over the next 20 years as water scarcity and variability intensify, possibly leading to disputes that pose greater challenges to security. ”

“ It will be readily admitted that such gigantic schemes of irrigation as these must raise new questions of both civil law and political economy. The constitutional conventions of the newly admitted States spent some time in wrestling with the problem of water rights. In all our arid regions property in land involves property in water. If by going higher up the river or canon your neighbor may divert and use the water you have depended on, he might as well be permitted to take your land also, for it is valueless without the water. ”

“ Develop appropriate national and regional policies and plans for water and watersheds, and water management techniques; promote economically, socially and environmentally sound irrigation improvement, in particular small-scale irrigation, and sustainable intensification of rainfed agriculture, with a view to increasing cropping intensities and reducing the impact of droughts and floods on food output and restoring natural resources, while at the same time preserving the quality and availability of water for other purposes, especially human consumption ”

“ It is not within the scope of the best laid drains to control storm or sunshine,—but it is within their power to remove the water of the storm, rapidly and sufficiently, and to allow the heat of the sunshine to penetrate the soil and do its hidden work. No human improvement can change any of the so-called "phenomena" of nature, or prevent the action of the least of her laws; but their effects upon the soil and its crops may be greatly modified, and that which, under certain circumstances, would have caused inconvenience or loss, may, by a change of circumstances, be made positively beneficial. ”

“ If mines must be worked and towns built in arid regions, let promoters of these schemes be required to build aqueducts and bore wells sufficient in advance to supply the needed water, not waiting until droughts come and the people die. Every place on this globe has its rainy years and its dry years. Areas of cold and heat, wind and calm, rain and drought, appear and move and disappear in irregular succession. We must prepare for them and provide against disaster. We can not control the weather, but we may control ourselves.
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CONVERSION ”

“ But there must be the look ahead, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. ”

“ Therefore the conservation and rural life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future. ”

“ The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still obtained, and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition. The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems of National welfare and National efficiency had not yet dawned on the public mind. The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still a matter for private enterprise alone; ”

“ That there is any effectual remedy for the floods can scarcely be maintained; that their violence can be mitigated, the adherents of reforesting devoutly believe; and that the great dearth of water can be largely prevented by allowing the hills to become clothed again with forests, and the springs give out their stores perennially instead of drying up in seasons of drought, all must admit. ”

“ The farmer is much criticized for polluting streams; but when the farmer pollutes one stream occasionally, a city will pollute a whole system of streams continually. One of the greatest sins of society is the wholesale befoulment of streams, lakes, and water-courses. I do not see how we can expect to be called a civilized people until we have taken care of our refuse without using it to fill up ponds and lakes, and to corrupt the free water supplies of the earth. ”