Drought In The West May Mean The End Of Growth – Historical trends in rainfall may mean cities in the West are living beyond their means

Dry reservoirs a consequence of the West living beyond its means

From Elephant Butte to Lake Mead to Jackson Lake, reservoirs are near empty. White sediments on sandstone ledges mark where water once stood at Lake Powell. Acres of sand surround Bear Lake. A six-year drought has depleted water storage behind dams, most of which are old enough to have historical status.

By Thad Box

http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_2397699

News media decry economic loss to farmers, ideas for xeriscaping yards and ways to save water. Some suggest importing water from Canada. Cities, states and countries litigate compacts that allocate more water than streams flow.

Dry reservoirs are metaphors for our propensity to live beyond our means, our tendency to use temporary surpluses as if the bounty of good years or a windfall profit is normal. Once addicted to living beyond our means, we borrow against an imagined prosperous future that history tells us has never happened – and the probability of it ever occurring is low.

Credit card debt and personal bankruptcies are at all-time highs. Local and state governments, required by law to balance their budgets, search for ways to put current expenditures into the future. Federal budgets run deficits in the trillions. Politicians dare not demand we live within our means lest they lose the next election.

Our water shortage should surprise no one. Scientists published volumes showing we use more water than falls in the West. Tree ring studies show about two droughts per century in the last 1,500 years that were more severe than our drought of the 1950s. Archaeologists speculate whole cultures of people – large cities and many villages – became extinct in the land covering the western states because of drought.

These facts were known when leaders of yesteryear built storage facilities to capture excesses of high rainfall years and make them available during bad years. As water stacked up behind dams, we did not accept stored water as a bank account to get through bad times. It became venture capital to make development bloom in the desert. Las Vegas is our fastest-growing city because the most reckless gamblers are not in casinos but in development offices.

That it will rain again and reservoirs will fill is a hopeful prayer, not fact backed by history or science. No one knows what happened in the Range Creek villages where Fremont people disappeared in a dry period some 1,300 years ago. No one knows what will happen in the American West if drought continues another five to 20 years.

What we do know is that our current level of development and our standard of living are not sustainable. We used up half a century of surplus water in a historically short drought. If drought continues, or weather patterns change because of global warming – both predicted – the economy and culture of the West must change significantly.

The first attempt to maintain our over-indulgent appetite is conservation. Water-saving toilets and gravel lawns are like smiley-face bandages on our ruptured jugular vein. Attempts to "produce" water through drilling into non-rechargeable aquifers and using technology to make brackish water fresh may slow the hemorrhage. But ultimately the economy must readjust to a level that can be supported by the annual amount of water available.

The West is not sustainable if we use more water than falls from the sky.

Readjustment to live within our water supply will be difficult: First, we Americans are addicted to living beyond our means, credit cards maxed. We do not set aside surpluses for bad times or provide stability for the next generation. Second, leaders promise growth will bail us out and pay off our debts. Third, growth means getting bigger. Getting bigger increases consumption and exacerbates the problem through more demand for water.

Until we redefine growth as increasing quality instead of getting bigger, the West – and perhaps our country as well – is on a downhill slide. No one knows when we will hit bottom.

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Thad Box is a former dean of the College of Natural Resources at Utah State University. He lives in Logan and is an award-winning poet.