In the western United States, water is power.  Water is politics.  Water is life.  We are constantly worried about our levels of water, where our water is going, who is using more than we are and why they are allotted more water.  Along the Colorado River, there are so many agreements and treaties that the disputes over water rights are often in court.

Much of the American West is desert.  We have high mountains, snow covered peaks, oceans, lakes, and ponds.  But we are still in the midst of deserts.  Desert doesn’t mean that you’re filled with cactus or sparse land that grows little of what most people would call lush vegetation.  Desert means that you get very little rainfall in a year.  It means that you must find your water by alternative methods.

I remember a few years ago when it started pouring rain in Los Angeles.  Los Angeles, and the surrounding communities (something like 35 million people) had been under severe drought warnings and water restrictions for 3-5 years.  All of a sudden, it starts raining.  The people there, silly people that they are, decided that because it was raining, the drought was over.  They could use water as they wished once again.  What scientists and meteorologists scrambled to publicize is that although they got rain (for all of 2 weeks out of the year), the drought was not over.  The water supplies had not been replenished and there was still a problem.  Angelinos did not listen.

The Gulf of California (Baja), where it meets the Colorado, has nearly dried up.  It is a wasteland of what it used to be.  Life used to be in abundance as the great Colorado River emptied into the Gulf.  There are now wide expanses of beachfront property without water because the water is recessing further and further into the Gulf.  The Colorado is barely a trickle on good days now.

We have farmers fighting casinos, cities fighting cities, states fighting states over water rights.  We push water by canal over great distances to be able to water pristine lawns where none should exist.   We regulate water, deciding who is more worthy, who gets more because of the money and power they can produce.

My town, which sits at 7000 feet, on top of the mountains, is in the desert.  We are surrounded by beautiful, lush ponderosa pine forests.  We have lakes.  We get snow.  Our aquifer is so deep that we have to drill between 1200-1500 feet to hit water in most areas. 

My town, which is beautiful by most accounts, is on water restrictions beginning on Friday.  This town, which up until 10 years ago was small by any account and has outgrown itself with the sudden influx of new residents from neighboring states, has not taught its inhabitants to conserve water in a meaningful way.  We cannot keep washing our cars in the streets, watering whenever we want, growing lawns that probably shouldn’t be there, letting faucets drip without fixing them.

This is an emerency.  We must understand that water is precious.  It is always precious…not just when the snow hasn’t come, the rains haven’t fallen, and the water levels in our resevoirs are at all-time lows.  It is always precious.

We are in a state of emergency.  We need to take action now.