Water supplies: states grapple with how to grow in drying West

POLITICO illustration/Photos by iStock

Communities are being forced to confront the challenge of not enough water to support building into the desert.

Across the parched West, there are signs the region’s decades-long population and housing boom is confronting the realities of dwindling water supplies.

These have come in recent months from court rulings and executive edicts alike, as states crack down on the potential for new users to draw from already oversubscribed aquifers and surface waters.

The skeleton of a would-be subdivision outside Las Vegas illustrates the coming constraints, stymied by a lack of water to support the new community. Water shortages also forced difficult decisions in other places, such as new restrictions in the Phoenix suburbs and a Utah town that halted all new construction for more than two years until it could secure a new well.

While there is little doubt that residential construction will persist across the West — where the population has grown 82 percent since 1980 — it is clear new difficulties are set to arise for builders, as states and localities more cautiously guard their supplies in preparation for a future where water is no longer a certainty.

…new difficulties are set to arise for builders, as states and localities more cautiously guard their supplies in preparation for a future where water is no longer a certainty.

“The era of limits is upon us. Many water managers who previously thought they had everything under control are now understanding that there are more challenges than they expected,” said Kathy Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona.

Exactly how the region’s housing supply grows in coming decades will be a key question for states and local governments.

While residential water use makes up just a fraction of demand across the West — farms claim the majority of surface water and groundwater — it remains among the most visible uses and, therefore, a target for conservation targets and cutbacks.

More than two decades of persistent drought in the West have decimated surface waters, including rivers and reservoirs, and increased pressure on groundwater supplies that serve agriculture and industry as well as municipal populations.

Those pressures are evident in recent decisions by state and local officials, along with courts, in states like Arizona, Nevada, Montana and Utah.

One example is a sprawling master-planned community outside of […]

Full article: www.eenews.net