LaurelFirestone

Great question! I think there is a natural human tendency to want to grab as much as they can of a scarce resource when it seems to threaten their survival. It is the classic tragedy of the commons challenge in many ways. So the key is creating legal, institutional and cultural shifts that allow us to think of our future and survival as shared with our neighbors. There are lots of examples of that happening. For example, the community of Farmersville extended water lines to a small community outside their City boundaries that didn't have safe water.

We need to shift how we think about water in particular, though. It is truly a human right and something no one can live without. CA passed the Human Right to Water Act in 2012 that says that it is the policy of the state that all human have a right to safe clean and affordable water for their basic human needs. I think that captures it right. The key is ensuring a basic amount can be affordable to all. Our current water rights and water financing systems need to shift to really achieve this, though.

Safe, clean and affordable drinking water is a basic human right! We have to address root causes of problems to achieve that - water protection, diversity in water leadership, and democratic water decision-making. And we have to look for shared solutions with our neighbors.

Desalination is a super important technology. But the places that it is most needed and makes the most sense is actually in-land where we can take out salts and contaminants like nitrogen from contaminated water, and where we have the most communities without access to safe drinking water (or now in the drought without access to water at all). I don't know a lot about coastal desal, but I do know that it is expensive and there are environmental concerns, but some Cities are very actively pursuing it in California.

There is a ton of finger-pointing going on. I do think sunshine is a good thing. It helps us all make good decisions and better manage a resource if we know what water is being used where. And we all need to do our part. We are all going to have to make sacrifices. But I think the more that we have good, transparent information on what water is needed and what water is being used where, the more we can ensure we can meet our collective basic needs. Right now CA has a law that makes utility usage information confidential and I think that needs to be changed. We FINALLY changed the law in CA just this month to make well logs public. So we can finally have public information on where wells are and how deep they are, which is vital for managing groundwater. That was a hard fought victory.