7 Forces Driving More
All this futility stems from an assumption of an unending supply, which
helps explain why the United States never established a unified approach
to using water. In the East, surface-water laws were based on prox-
imity to rivers or lakes.^ In the West, surface rights were based on who
used the water first, regardless of proximity.^ For groundwater, the
framework for state laws and court decisions assumed that water flowed
through underground rivers or percolated through the ground. Either
way, the amount available was presumed to be inexhaustible.
This approach could not have been more scientifically wrong.^
Instead of images of underground streams and cavern-like lakes, a more
apt metaphor is a sponge of varying thicknesses. By pressing a straw to
the sponge, water can be sucked out. How much water can be withdrawn
depends on the size, pressure, and number of straws. How quickly it
recharges provides clues to the water’s origin.
For the High Plains Aquifer System, its slow recharge rate suggests
the water is from the last ice age. Extracting this “fossil” water has paral-
lels to extracting crude oil. As early as 9 0 , its overall level began plum-
meting and has declined ever since.^ By 0 0 , an estimated 0 percent
was drained, a volume roughly equivalent to Lake Erie.^ Despite a rapid
decline, the pumps continue to draw more of the water. Over the next
four decades, almost 70 percent will be drained.
So why does America persist in pursuing failing strategies? Old
thinking dies hard. I cannot look at massive dams without thinking
about men entombed alive, even though I later learned that this was
never true. Texas, the second-most-important agricultural state, has
seven thousand dams, more than any other state.^ Its population is
expected to grow by 0 percent in the next half century.^ Groundwater
from the High Plains and Gulf Coast aquifers is diminishing. The state’s
primary solution: build more reservoirs.
Nationally, agriculture uses some 0 percent of ground and sur-
face water.^ In many western states, it’s over 90 percent.^ In the wake
of California’s latest drought, new laws portending a more sustainable
approach were enacted. Yet the self-imposed deadline is not until the
year 0 0.
To change, California must overcome a jumble of Roman, Spanish,
English, and indigenous systems spanning from infrastructure to rights
of usage.^ Over decades, surface-water rights were overallocated by five