When One Almond Gulps 3.2 Gallons of Water

NYT OPINION: When One Almond Gulps 3.2 Gallons of Water
By Nicholas Kristof
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: May 13, 2023 at 03:00AM

If we don’t allocate water more sensibly in the West, Mother Nature will do it for us. And that will be ugly.

RIO VERDE FOOTHILLS, Ariz.

When interviewing people in their homes here, I didn’t have the heart to ask them if I could use the bathroom. There’s no water to spare, so some families flush only once a day.

As for showers, they’re rationed and timed: “You get in, you soap up, you turn the water off, and then when you’re done, you turn the water on and wash it off, and then you’re out,” said Cody Reim, who works in construction.

All this is because water has become scarce here this year, after the city of Scottsdale cut off this area from water it had supplied; it said it needed to conserve water for its own residents. The resulting crisis in these foothills outside Phoenix offers a glimpse of what more Americans may face unless we reconfigure how we manage water.

This is a crisis across the West, for the West was built on cheap water that is now running out from underpricing and overuse just as climate change is amplifying droughts.

Arizona lures retirees with lush golf courses, sometimes requiring as much as 200 million gallons of water per 18-hole golf course over a year. But the big user of water isn’t households, sprawling lawns, fountains, industry or golf courses. It’s farming.

One study found that 88 percent of water in 17 Western states was used by agriculture. Only 7 percent was consumed by homes. Alfalfa fields single-handedly drank up almost three times as much as all households.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/13/opinion/water-shortage-west.html