The Other Liquid Gold

Forget the energy crisis. There's a crisis even more dire looming on the horizon, and Charles Wheelan, the Naked Economist spells it out for us:

There's plenty of evidence that the country already has water issues.

Much of the Southeast was in drought all fall. In the Southwest, communities have been springing up and growing at a rate likely to outstrip the region's long-term water resources, at least if swimming pools and landscaped lawns in the desert remain the norm.

Even in the Great Lakes states the water issue has come up. I recently attended an academic presentation entitled "Is Water the Next Oil?" The speaker made two main points. First, water drawn from the Great Lakes is often not returned there, causing water levels to fall. Much runoff and sewage drain into other waterways, such as the Mississippi River, and ultimately run out sea. More provocatively, she asked what will happen when some parts of the country have enough water and others don't. When Nevada residents realize that there isn't enough water to support the recent housing boom, will U.S. taxpayers be asked to pipe new water to them? (Midwest voters won't like the expense of it, or having "their" Great Lakes piped out of town.) Think about that one for a while.

Perhaps the United States will never face major long-term water shortages. If that turns out to be the case, then great. We won't have to agonize over how much water we're sending out of the country every time we export a watermelon.

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