Water is the source of life, the veins that run through the silent earth that keeps each and every one of us alive- 3 or 4 days without it and you are toast. We all know this. With populations rising and water supplies staying pretty much the same, many of the Western U.S. states are dealing with looming water crises. And Mexico City is in the same boat- a boat that is stranded on a dry shore along what used to be a seemingly endless riverbed.

Two articles from Aquadoc caught my eye this morning because they both speak to the silent threat that, apart from a few fringe videos and bloggers, no one is really talking about. We are stressing our water supply beyond sustainability. We are using more than we get. It’s just like the credit card crisis- If you make $1,000/ week and you spend $1,2000 on credit, you’ll get by fine for a while but eventually you will hit your limit and be out of money. Not only that, you’ll have injured the value of the money you spent in the first place because now you owe back more than you spent.

Crude comparison, perhaps, but if you think of money as equivalent to our water supply, you get the idea. We have been borrowing water from aquifers and other non-renewable sources for decades, and that has resulted in higher concentrations of trace minerals and chemicals of what is left of that water, meaning that we can’t even really count on it now, even as we need it more than before.

In the West, this problem is exacerbated by the complex web of water rights that govern who gets how much water from major sources, like the Colorado River. This simple explanation is taken from V.B. Price’s post about “Future Water Trouble…” setting in for western river states. It comes down to water rights, he writes:

"And New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming — the “upper basin” states in the Colorado [River] Compact of 1922— have “junior” water rights to California, Arizona, and Nevada, the states that comprise the “lower basin.” And that means in a crisis, upper basin states won’t get their water until lower basin states have theirs.

But when push comes to shove in really tough times, California gets its water first, trumping all other states."

Right now, we are making it work. But it won’t work 10 years from now. So what will?

Looking at Mexico City right now, they are dealing with taps that aren’t working for weeks on end. They have used up the water around the city and are dealing, very face-to-face, with the idea that they are out of water in a very immediate way.

According to this article, Mexico City has been draining the once-enormous basin from around the city to make way for more humans to live, redirecting the rainfall meant for this basin out to the Gulf of Mexico, and pumping a more-or-less equal amount of water from aquifers for people to drink and use. Crazy.

Both the West U.S. and Mexico City will need to make massive changes in how they manage and deal with their water in the coming years- not decades, but years.

Better get that last trip to Vegas in soon.