Word: conservationism
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The national parks have been likened to America's crown jewels, repositories of majesty and beauty passed from one generation to the next. But as development and tourism have grown, these heirlooms are becoming shopworn. "There never has been so much pressure on parks as today," says Paul Pritchard, a...
Public-spirited campaigns have been far more effective in Arizona, where the forward-looking 1980 Groundwater Management Act restricts depletion of aquifers and effectively raises water costs statewide. Tucson, which had suffered an alarming 120-ft. drop in its water table, imposed a scaled billing system, charging more per gallon...
Yet while residential conservation is desirable, it cannot accommodate the West's urban growth. To save enough water for their projected 33% population leap over the next two decades, Californians would have to cut per-person consumption by one-third, an unprecedented feat of discipline by U.S. standards.
More good news: the opportunity for conservation is considerable, considering the scale of profligacy now encouraged in Western agriculture. Throughout the region, scarce but subsidized water is inefficiently flooded onto marginal soil to raise crops like cotton and rice that are already in surplus and must often be bought at...
If farmers could freely sell or lease their water rights, profit motives would provide a powerful incentive for conservation. In Arizona, where such "water ranching" is widespread, farmers are drawing top dollar and, in the words of former Governor Bruce Babbitt, "retiring to beachfront condos in La Jolla ((Calif.)) to...