Yet another reason why we should take water into account in any development plan: fracking for shale gas uses huge amounts of water, competing with everything else, maybe even using more than power plants and cities.

Delaware Riverkeeper and Protecting Our Waters wrote for Waterkeeper Alliance today, The Water Footprint of Shale Gas Development,

Recent studies examining potable water supplies on a global scale, the current trends in American water consumption and the causes of depletion of this essential resource are helping us to understand that the footprint of shale gas development expands indefinitely when measured in water….

Of the seven nations where the groundwater footprint is greatest, the U.S. is one of the fastest speeding towards disaster. According to Cynthia Barnett’s Blue Revolution, scientists say the 20th century was the wettest in a thousand years and now drier times are ahead.[3] This means that many of the management schemes we use now—based on 20th C planning—need to be changed to avoid catastrophe. So the 410 billion gallons of water America uses every day will suck the nation dry if we don’t stop over-tapping nearly every river and aquifer.

The biggest U.S. users are power plants and agriculture with private