David Von Drehle at the Post has a thumbnail rundown of the water crisis in the West. My sister is a big deal in the Colorado Basin and so I've been hearing about this coming crisis for years.
Basically, as Von Drehle points out, the Colorado Compact was written for a mythical Colorado. There simply isn't enough water even in good years to make it work. In drought years, the problem is amplified. We were just out west in early June and the scarcity of water was profound. Then, of course, you have the flash floods that ripped through Zion Canyon.
It's all gone wonky.
One of the enduring questions in the climate debate is the degree to which technology might save us, through things like carbon capture and sequestration technologies. When it comes to water, we already have some options. You CAN desalinate sea water but it's expensive. California is simply going to have to find a way to meet that cost, both for its cities and its agriculture. We have irrigation techniques that could help tremendously, but Western farmers are stubborn to the point of being assholes about it. We drove through southern Utah and saw farmers using spray irrigation in the middle of a 100 degree day, rather than drip irrigation at night. Madness.
Since we live in a world where we literally can't pay those farmers to get a vaccine that could save their lives, I'm trying to think of a way where we can get them to change their farming practices to save water for their grandchildren. Drawing blanks here.
One thing is for sure, we are going to have to price water differently out west in ways that impact usage without immiserating the poor, especially Native Americans. I don't think our politics is up to the challenge.
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