Building Our Way Out of the Problem Won’t Work

In the United States we use more clean water per capita than the other top 30 developed nations in the world. Despite our wasteful use and growing pressures on supply, in many parts of the country Americans are accustomed to thinking of water supplies as nearly limitless, enough to meet all of our needs regardless of how rapidly we deplete them.

Decision-makers often turn to developing “new” supplies – dams, reservoirs, water diversions, and even pumping water from one river basin to another, as the primary means to meet growing demands. This is a costly and unsustainable approach. New dams and reservoirs are expensive, environmentally destructive, and can only hold additional water where it falls. Reservoirs also lose significant water to evaporation.  Every year enough water for eight million people evaporates off of Lake Mead before it ever reaches a home or farm field.   Desalination plants are expensive, require tremendous amounts of energy to operate, and their concentrated brine discharges cause other environmental problems. Many water projects can take decades to design, permit, and construct before they can provide any water at all.  American Rivers’ Water Supply program works to promote 21st century water supply solutions that are effective and sustainable as our first source of supply.