This is an interesting video.
Most of the water is not being used by residents or by non-agricultural companies. It’s being used for agriculture, and specifically for agriculture aimed at feeding cows. That’s interesting. First, it means we need to stop blaming swimming pools and water fountains in Vegas. But second, this means there’s a lot of room for innovation.
Some nags are going to say we can solve this by cutting down on our meat consumption, but there’s another and better option. Innovation!
My understanding is that Israel has done great work in extending the reach of their water resources — using drip irrigation and other things. Rather than scolding everybody, or trying to get people to change their lifestyle, why not make a big effort to make our agriculture more efficient in its water use?
QUOTE: Rather than scolding everybody, or trying to get people to change their lifestyle, why not make a big effort to make our agriculture more efficient in its water use?
Doing both (changing lifestyle and agriculture efficiency) might prove beneficial.
Yet, relative to agriculture there seems to be some interesting policies/practices that if adjusted could contribute to greater water usage efficiency. Some examples:
* Given the scarcity of water in California to grow cotton in the Sonoran Desert, it could be more economically efficient to grow it in the moist American Southeast.
*Over the last 20 years, Arizona’s farmers have collected more than $1.1 billion in cotton subsidies, nine times more than the amount paid out for the next highest subsidized crop. In California, where cotton also gets more support than most other crops, farmers received more than $3 billion in cotton aid. If Arizona’s cotton farmers switched to wheat but didn’t fallow a single field, it would save some 207,000 acre-feet of water — enough to supply as many as 1.4 million people for a year. The government is willing to consider spending huge amounts to get new water supplies, including building billion-dollar desalinization plants to purify ocean water. It would cost a tiny fraction of that to pay farmers in Arizona and California more to grow wheat rather than cotton, and for the cost of converting their fields.
*Colorado’s water laws are a use it or lose it system for water rights that turn any water conservation approach into an immediate 100% forfeiture as a penalty for not wasting water. When a farmer, rancher or city uses less than the allotted maximum over a 10-year period, state officials declare all or a part of a water right “abandoned” on a list issued every 10 years. That water no longer can be diverted and goes up for grabs to other rights holders next in priority.