The Colorado River Basin has a problem: It is severely short of water, particularly in its major reservoirs. Both Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest and second-largest reservoirs in the country, respectively, reached record lows this week. Powell in particular is at a level of 3,520 feet—just 30 feet above the intakes for its electrical generators.
What is to be done? As I wrote in a previous Prospect print issue, Western water policy is a ludicrous tangle of anachronistic legal precedents and outrageous federal subsidies. Water must be repriced; as my colleague Gabrielle Gurley points out, cattle feed farmers paying $30 an acre-foot (or about 0.009 cents per gallon) while cities pay between $500 and $2,000 per acre-foot is preposterous. That’s half the reason why the shortage has become so bad…
