There is no Western Water Crisis
TL;DR;
- To whatever extent a shortage exists, it is driven by agricultural water use, not urban water use. 70%+ of water in every western state is being used by agriculture.
- Agricultural water use in the west is almost entirely frivolous, and as such can be drawn down without too much severe economic disruption.
- Even in a worst case scenario where no political settlement can be reached, cities can simply buy agricultural water, or, even failing that, can simply use desalination, which is completely feasible for municipal use.
Is the growing western population the problem? (no)
A common assumption people make when discussing the Western Water Crisis is that it is due to the growing population of the west. And of course, the west has grown in population. However, this is not the cause of the Western Water Crisis.
The population in the west and its water usage have been relatively decoupled. To take an example, in 1960, California used about 32maf (million acre-feet, forgive the terrible unit, but it’s the standard in the industry) of water, while in 2018, California used 37maf. More water used, to be sure (+15% to be precise), but California’s population rose from 16m people to 39m (+140%). [Source: PPIC]
How is this the case? Well, in practice, 25maf, 80% of California’s water use, goes towards agriculture, not urban areas [Source: CA Water Plan page 11]. This isn’t uniquely true of California, in fact, every state in the west uses at least 70% of its water for agriculture (Figure 1).
So that means that the urban population’s water use is a very small part of the problem. The western population could increase by a factor of 3x without doing any water conservation or finding any new water sources, and be completely fine, so long as the agricultural production was drawn down to compensate.
TL; DR: Western water consumption is driven by agriculture, not individual consumption.
OK, but is growing food wasting water? (it is)
Well, it depends on what you mean by “food”. Looking at, for example, California’s water usage by crop leads to an interesting discovery: a large percentage of California’s water use goes to crops that could be grown anywhere.
As shown in Figure 3, 26% of California’s agricultural water use going towards animal agriculture (alfalfa and pasture are both used as animal feed) is literally more than all non agricultural water use, combined. Cash crops, such as nuts and vineyards, make up 31% of California’s agriculture. A further 16% goes to Rice and Corn, two crops that very much do not need to be grown in California, and are generally grown east of the Rockies. The remaining categories, which are mostly the fruits and vegetables most folks picture when they hear “California Agriculture” contribute a total of 27% of the agricultural water use. That means 73% of agricultural water use, (making up 58% of all water use in California!) is on a combination of luxury cash crops, animal agriculture, and staples that could be grown anywhere.
“Wait but cash crops are still important to the state’s economy” I can hear you saying. In reality, there were only 429k agricultural employees total, or 2.3% of employment [Source: CA EDD]. For reference, the University of California alone employs 241k people, not including graduate student workers [Source: UCOP]. Total agricultural GDP is a similar 2.5% of the state total [Source: UA].
TL;DR: Agricultural production can be reduced substantially with no substantial effect on critical food supplies or the Economy.
OK, so it’s a political crisis. Still a crisis right? (no)
“OK, but like, the United States government isn’t just going to liquidate a bunch of farmers’ water rights.” -you, right now. Yes, I agree that water rights are a thorny issue. But do you really think that the government will let millions of people lose their access to water to please an industry that constitutes 2.5% of the economy?
I’d love to say the answer to that question is “obviously no”, but we all know that the American government loves rent-seekers, so I think the answer is just “probably no”. I still think that if push comes to shove, the problem just resolves itself, but let’s act as if we don’t want push to come to shove.
First, I think that an important thing to note is that “Agricultural Water” isn’t really a thing. Farmers have certain water rights, that they have broad discretion on how to use. For example, in 2022, the state of California considered buying senior water rights from farmers. As water becomes more scarce, this will start to actually happen, and effectively makes water a market-price commodity. When water is market priced and scarce, there is no way 80% of it will go to an industry consisting of 2.5% of the economy.
Secondly, the fact that water is “scarce” covers up an important detail, which is that we have plenty of water, it’s just that extracting it is expensive, and even then it’s not really that expensive at municipal use scales. Desalination is often criticized as overly expensive, but to take an example, the Doheny Plant is expected to cost about $175m to construct [Source: OC Register], will provide 5 million gallons a day [Source: SCWD], and will cost $4.5m/year to operate [Source: Final Summary Report]. Looking at the Los Angeles DWP as an example of a large agency, we can see that it has a budget of $1.59b and serves 401 million gallons a day [Source: LADWP]. So, in a worst case, where LADWP needs to upgrade to desalination immediately and can do so with absolutely no economies of scale it needs to construct 80 Doheny-style plants, for a capital cost of $14b and operating cost of $360m/yr. Assuming it wants to pay this off in 30 years, and at DWP Bond rates of 5% [Source: Municipal bonds dot com], this will cost about $1.53b/year initialy, decrease over 30 years to $0.83b/year, and then be $0.36b/year thereafter.
This would lead to an initial doubling of water rates. Keep in mind that the average Californian household spends about half their water use outdoors, on lawns and other landscaping [Source: UCANR]. As another point of scale, the Los Angeles city budget is $13.5b [Source: OpenBudget].
This means, that, even in this nightmare scenario where Los Angeles has to immediately and entirely fend for itself, and even assuming no savings at all from no longer needing to maintain current water sources, it can pay for a complete transition to desalination by simply doubling water rates. Obviously unpleasant, but nothing catastrophic.
TL;DR: even in a nightmare political scenario, cities can become self-sufficient at costs that would be annoying but not catastrophic.
Conclusion
I’m writing this article for a simple reason: I think the media has completely failed to educate the public on the issue of the Western Water Crisis, by blindly accepting the framing of “drought” without considering the practical aspects of scale involved. There is simply no path for a water shortage in the Western United States to actually lead to the government turning taps in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or Phoenix.
