Water is one of our most basic and important natural resources. In fact, I would say that it is the most important! Oil and metals give us a higher quality of life, but we could (and did) live without them for thousands of years.

Imagine a line running through the middle of North Dakota through the middle of Texas. (Almost) everywhere west of that line uses more water every year than nature can provide. This means that they have to import water from other places or pump out groundwater faster than it can refill. Southern California has been importing water from Eastern and Northern California for 100 years already! The Eastern USA also pumps groundwater, but there they get enough rain to replenish the natural water supply as they pump the water out.

Desalination is a very important process. We are literally running out of water in the Western USA. Unless we build huge water pipelines from Northern Canada (which has been proposed!), we need to find a new source of water, and the ocean is an obvious candidate. The problem is price. Desalination is not cheap. Groundwater is much cheaper. Desalination won’t replace groundwater until groundwater becomes more expensive (which is happening). I don’t know how quickly this transition will occur though. In places like Los Angeles, it will probably happen faster than in places like Phoenix, because Los Angeles is on the coast, so there isn’t a large transportation cost. Robert Holder