I'm not disputing the claim, nor your or Mig's assessment and analysis.   Merely reporting I find it incredible s/e England is facing water shortages.  In New Mexico the combination of real estate developers, construction industry, agriculture interests, forest overgrowth, and Global Climate Change has put paid to the snow pack and summer surface water supply.  Meanwhile water distribution percentages were based on, what we now know, was unusually wet years.  In other words, NM has legally guaranteed more water to more people and business entities than exists.  Further the quantity of summer water is shrinking while the quality of that water is lowering.  

I expect Americans, especially white Americans - tho' Red, Yellow, Black, & Brown Americans aren't far behind! - to be dumb & ignorant mofo's regarding things biological and ecological due to the larger tracts of land here versus land constraints in the UK and especially s/e England on the premise:

if you don't have a lot of it you need to take care of what you got.  

At least, I would think, the 0.06% who own the damn thing and steal make gobs of money from the damn thing would take care of the damn thing.  

Guess not.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

yup


She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

I dunno...not sure that turning Bishop or Needles into major cities would have been any smarter.

I disagree that LA is a poorly located city - it is in the middle of a large coastal plain, which is a sensible place to put a city. The plain is prone to flooding, but the flood-prone areas are in specific sites and not generalized to the whole region.

The problem isn't where LA is, but how LA was built. Instead of density, after the 1920s there was a shift toward huge urban sprawl, enabled by the automobile. That led to more water-intensive patterns of living, especially in the mid-20th century when there was a widespread delusion that CA had limitless water supplies, partly a function of an unusually wet climate period experienced during the middle decades of the century.

There's been some change in recent years - true urban density is taking shape in nodes across the region, and I'm firmly convinced there is pent-up demand for more. Water usage is becoming smarter, with Orange County having built the nation's largest (some have said the world's largest) wastewater recycling facility to recharge the aquifer.

Still, there's a long way to go. LA developers helped force an $11 billion water bond through the legislature and onto the November ballot to essentially steal water from Northern California agriculture for further sprawl in Southern California. And Southern California still hasn't adopted the kind of widespread restrictions on lawns and other such things that are certainly needed these days.

That $11 billion bond may get pulled off the November ballot. But at least Southern California can tap other regions for water. Here in Monterey, we overshot our water carrying capacity long ago, and have been under state-mandated water rationing since 1999. A desalination plant may get built here in 3-4 years' time, if debates over who will pay for it can get resolved.

And the world will live as one