Every person who moves to this region will place a greater strain on our already strained water resources, both supply and quality. There are certain activities well within our reach to conserve our water supply and improve its quality. Many of these are unpopular for a variety of reasons (economic, mostly), but they are at least proven to work, and the technology is there. There are activities that are out of our control, however, that will impact greatly how we allocate our water resources. The federal courts (opens AJC.com – free subscription required) will be key in deciding how much water we can draw from our surface water sources. Also, regulatory barriers make it difficult to “build” new water resources like reservoirs (opens AJC.com – free subscription required</em ) and economic barriers make it difficult to fully pursue new technologies like desalination. Without water, the typical planning conversations of how best to allocate growth and other infrastructure-related resources will be entirely different in a couple of decades. We won’t be talking about what to do with all our growth, we’ll be asking what happened to it.
Can we conserve enough water to meet the needs of future generations? How will we develop new sources of water?
