Managing the west's water

Excerpt

AMERICA's arid West has entered a new era. What once was an endless frontier is now a vital, populated region of the country. What once were seemingly inexhaustible stores of natural wealth—land, wild rivers, forests, blue skies—are now resources under stress. Water, one of the West's most vital resources, is no less physically abundant today than it was decades ago, but it is now oversubscribed and often polluted.

Stories about water in the West often make headlines and sometimes movies: floods follow droughts, cities condemn water from farming valleys, toxic chemicals leach into water supplies, and environmentalists wage battles with developers over dams in pristine canyons. Today, most streams and rivers in the West have been fully appropriated (4). In fact, use actually exceeds average streamflow in nearly every western subregion, causing water quality degradation, groundwater mining, and depletion of instream flows. As a result, competition over western water is increasing among different economic sectors, among neighboring river basins, and between those who would develop water resources further and those who would protect other natural resources lost by that development (4).

Any examination of major demands on wester water shows clearly that …