California drought pits farmers vs. cities. But neither is the biggest water victim of all.
The California drought has become the first in the nation to cause the loss of agricultural water. Nearly every day brings news of a new record drought. It also causes devastating losses to farmers and other crops that depend on water to survive. Yet the biggest victims of the California drought are not agricultural water or the cities that have lost water. It is the public, the water users who are being asked to take more of a hit by the state’s water shortages.
The current state of California’s water supplies is, of course, a problem the rest of the nation has to face. It doesn’t offer a perfect solution for all of its public water systems.
But that doesn’t mean that we’d do better. It is an unfortunate situation, to be sure, but one that is happening in every water producing state, and the sooner the nation’s elected leaders take on the issue, the sooner the country finds a solution to the water shortage.
California is just one of the many states facing a water shortage. A recent report out of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows that 20 percent of the nation’s cities will need to build more storage to keep up with their local water needs.
The report states that there are about 4.2 billion people on the planet. Over a third of that population lives in urban areas. The United States is home to more than 1,500 cities with populations of more than 100,000 people. In addition, more than 300 million people depend on a drinking water source for more than 100,000 square miles—a third of the nation’s land mass—which makes up what is referred to as the “urban water footprint.” These are areas where the water is not being put to beneficial use.
Yet, when you look at water as a resource, you see that it is not only a finite resource on the world’s most populated continent. It is, in fact, a finite resource, and the nation’s cities and the nation�