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History of water use in the west a prime example of short-sighted but big thinking American ingenuity

Posted by: Maven on October 25, 2007 at 5:58 am

From New West Politics, Diary of a Mad Voter Blog, a response to the New York Times Magazine article about water and the west:

We’re not completely doomed, as the article points out. It features and ingenious (and expensive) program being developed by the city of Aurora, CO to create a closed-loop recirculation system from the South Platte. It also details some, again very expensive, efforts by the city of Las Vegas (a city that probably wouldn’t exist in a rational world) that even include transport of desalinized water from the Pacific. It also included some strict conservation. Pat Mulroy, southern Nevada’s water maven puts it succinctly: “The people who move to the West today need to realize they’re moving into a desert,” Mulroy said. “If they want to live in a desert, they have to adapt to a desert lifestyle.”

That hard-headed view has to extend beyond the people moving into the region and sink in for those of us who’ve called it home for years, decades, and generations. And it has to sink in for our political leaders, who are notoriously averse to delivering bad news to constituents. Unfortunately, this isn’t a problem that can just be passed off to the next guy.

The history of water use in the West, like so much else of its natural resources, is a prime example of the short-sighted but big thinking American ingenuity that at once made us the greatest power in the post-war world all the while setting us up for a hard fall. Let’s hope that our current and future political leaders, public officials, and even plain old citizens (water users all, to the tune of about 140 gallons per day) have enough ingenuity, not to mention the ability to think beyond a generation or two, to lead on the issue. A good start would be us demanding they do so.

To read the full text of this article from New West Politics, click here.

October 25, 2007 · Filed Under Aquafornia News & Exclusives

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