Water shortages threaten the American West lifestyle While not
every dire prediction has come true, amid swimming pools and
thirsty crops, the hard truth remains that the American West
cannot maintain its spendthrift ways of using fresh water. The
next time you fly into a parched, western sprawl such as
Phoenix, glance down at the amorphous blots of green and the
splattering of aqua blue rectangles. Squint into the blinding
sun and behold the glories of irrigation. But along with the
golf courses and swimming pools made possible by a seemingly
endless flow of H2O came people — and lots of them. Between 1920
and 2000, the seven states that share the Colorado River grew
from 5.7 million to almost 50 million people. Peter Gleick, co-
founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in
Development, Environment, and Security, says 23 million more
people will be added by 2030 amid mounting evidence that our
current practices in water use and management are unsustainable.
As Gleick points out in “Roadmap fo