Howdy Jed,
Few around Houston can imagine the area was once prime farm land first
cultivated by German immigrants with truck farms delivering fresh vegetables
daily. By 1900, rice farming was underway with Japanese immigrants. By the
end of WW2 Rice was a super crop exported across the world. These huge rice
fields stretching from Beaumont across to Victoria but are now reduced to a
small percentage of earlier times. The subdivision expansion of single
dwelling homes continues and entirely cover some of the best rice farm land
in the world.
Combined with this huge land area some 250x 100 miles is one of the world's
most prolific fresh water aquifers on earth. The Gulf Coast acquifer. This
acquifer was the reason why Houston developed into the petrochem complex it
is today. Few places on earth have such an huge quanity of fresh water
available. The industries now have available the coastal industrial water
authority which canals water from the Trinity River and comsumes some one
billion gallons per day from that source plus the acquifer. Land has
subsided as much as 14 feet in parts of Harris and surrounding counties from
excess pumping. Land subsidence is now measurable as far north as Fayette
county( my home). Not to worry.. the petrochem industry has one of the
strongest lobbying efforts in the nation that protects their right to almost
free and unlimited water and a liscense to pollute at will. The profits are
so huge that Shell resorted to some very creative bookkeeping to show a loss
2 years back. How??. They wrote down their estimate of holding of crude
reserves, fired their manager and held out their hand to IRS. Our two US
senator wept tears while supporting their pauper's claim.. nowhere but
Texas.
Richard
Richard
Jed wrote,
During the past 40 years, about 30 percent of the world's arable land
has been lost (Pimentel et al., 1995). Current agricultural practices
create considerable topsoil erosion. Its severity depends on the
particular crops planted, methods of culture and management,
topography, rainfall and wind, and other factors (Pimentel et al.,
1987; Lai and Pierce, 1991). Worldwide, erosion and its associated
problems force the abandonment of 7 (Tolba, 1989) to 15 million
(Pimentel, 1993) ha of land each year. This problem is also severe in
the United States. For example, Iowa, which has some of the best soil
in the world, has lost half of its topsoil after being farmed for
about 100 years (Risser, 1981)."
