Water Wars Follow the Race to Solve the Southwest's Drought

Richard Parker writes a dispatch from his hometown of Wimberley, Texas. "Normally, my small town is a placid place nestled in the Texas Hill Country, far from controversy, a peaceful hour’s drive west of Austin," explains Parker.

"But these are not normal times. The suburbs of Austin close in every year. Recently, the suburb of Buda and developers enlisted a company from faraway Houston to drain part of the Trinity Aquifer, the source of the Hill Country’s water. An old-fashioned, Western-style water war has erupted.

Across Texas and the Southwest, the scene is repeated in the face of a triple threat: booming population, looming drought and the worsening effects of climate change."

Parker goes on to provide a history of water's empowering effects for Texas when it is in full supply and its catastrophic effects when it disappears, as it did for "the people called the 'Ancient Ones' — the Mimbres, Mogollon, Chaco and other Native American cultures," which flourished around 800 CE and had all but disappeared by 1200 due to a prolonged drought and poor management of water resources.

Parker also notes specific examples of the "race to engineer a new solution," but while cities like Austin, San Antonio, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles hang in the balance, the question still remains whether the Southwestern United States can overcome a megadrought.