re: #165 lawhawk

When they built the Hoover Dam and wrote up the Colorado River Compact, the West had a fraction of the population it does now, and they were basing water usage on an unusually wet period.

Now, we’re seeing the more typical water flow into the basin, and usage has skyrocketed, primarily because more people are stressing the system.

It is indeed a desert, and as people start to realize that a desert can’t support that kind of population, you’ll start to see people moving elsewhere (because without water, there’s no life).

Of course, technology might have something to say about that - with water recapture/reuse technologies to get potable water from runoff/waste, etc. beyond merely using those runoff/waste as grey-water for irrigation.

Absolutely true, but a temporary fix. We’ve got West Texans already drinking their own wastewater, but it’s damn expensive and can’t take any large increase in population because water there is a finite resource. Like land, they aren’t making any more of it.

Oh, and this is the fun bit, groundwater removal used in fracking (necessary for the boom in the old West Texas Permian Basin the last seven years) is unregulated, untaxed, and untouchable under State Law.

Sweeeeeet!