Mono Lake Tufa Towers, originally uploaded by chaybert

Since the Hoover Dam was built, there has never been a water shortage on the Colorado, never a day when there was simply not enough water in Lake Mead to meet all the downstream allocations. Drought, and a realistic understanding of the past, have made such a day seem more imminent. Under the pressure of the drought, the seven Colorado basin states have agreed for the first time on how to share prospective shortages.

Read this National Geographic article, Drying of the West The American West was won by water management. What happens when there’s no water left to manage?, and view the accompanying photographs. Or read The Eternal Dustbowl, Paying for the sins of L.A.’s water barons has created a half-billion-dollar boondoggle concerning Owen’s Lake and the environmental impact of water diversions on a massive scale. This reminds me of when I visited Mono Lake in California, a wasteland the result of Los Angeles water projects. Mono Lake is the now a veritable salt flat, whose water level was 45 feet higher before Los Angeles began to steal its water.
Ask yourself if those who live out West shouldn’t be paying huge taxes on the water they are consuming and wasting. Then remember that the water projects outlined in the above articles pale in comparison to the truly huge projects in China, namely the Three Gorges Dam and the South-to-North Water Transfer Project.