I participated in a panel discussion last month with some of our biggest retail and wholesale water providers, presented flawlessly by the Summit Health Department.  Everyone had the proper astonishment of the general, regional and the latest climate conditions — getting warmer and drier at a n increasingly rapid rate. We may have been preaching to the choir or talking to the wrong people.   Conservation is a battle of economic will that should not be foisted on the wholesalers and retailers of water but on the political will of the people. But as Bob Dylan said, “The pump don’t work since the vandals stole the handle.” These speakers pay their bills by selling water and they can only afford to bang the conservation drum so hard. They do a pretty good job at seamlessly making our water plentiful and cheap, and not privy (do you mean vulnerable?) to the slings and arrows of outrageous climate.   But they sugarcoated our severe drought as moderate and called for El Nino to save the day, the Great Salt Lake and the Colorado River. It’s all good, until it isn’t.  We figured out years ago that runoff from the Weber and the Provo rivers peaks now in May instead of June, has done so since 2000, and this year it peaked in April. Both similar river basins deliver 321 acre-feet per year less than they did. That is enough water for 1 million people, or one big lake.   We knew this was coming, but we do not act until it is a crisis. We are looking optimistically at our exponential climate and water issues with linear solutions. Dylan: “We don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Isn’t it ironic that our second most valuable natural resource, behind air, is being squandered because demand is high, supply is low, and the price of it is too cheap?  Water is distributed by the state in a socialized manner to those who want and need it first. The commodity is actually free! So farmers are growing water-hungry hay and alfalfa in Utah at 8,000 feet, cotton in Arizona and rice in California because they were first in line, while downstream users go thirsty.   The original system was set up to promote Western growth and dependable economic development, order and certainty through the beneficial benevolence of the state engineer. It worked. Now the only way to influence water use, human nature of fear and greed, or game theory and the tragedy of the commons is to charge what water is worth, not what it costs.  The capitalist system and market economy is needed to promote conservation and wise use of our water resources where the age-old system of prior appropriation cannot. It’s contradictory but true that we need capitalism to justly distribute a social resource for the public good.  Things are changing faster than we thought. The Great Salt Lake and our regional rivers are drying up. But the state did away with the public welfare requirements of water rights this year so they can build more data centers and shirk responsibility for shrinking lakes and rivers.  That clause may have allowed or forced them to give every water user a haircut and devote enough water or the public good of avoiding toxic dust storms around where the lake has dried up. But eventually the state and the feds would in theory buy up water they already own and control or direct it to where it will do the most public good. Instead we are capitalizing personal profits and socializing public expense.  Perhaps farmers can use less water to grow hay and sell that saved water for the lake. Dry farming does not have to be a binary yes or no. It can be a scaled usage and maybe we just buy the anemic third crop water. I don’t know whether the feds or state could afford all the water needed to save the lake.  Or as the price of water goes up, market forces could make it too valuable to squander on low-income crops. I would call our water situation severe instead of moderate and impose the preordained 40% restrictions because of our physical predicament and to impress upon the public the severity of our situation.   My position may seem harsh, but I feel the middle is defined by the extremes in these situations and we can no longer afford to be naive or cautiously optimistic.  Appropriate cutbacks should be then enforced because it is better to err on the side of conservation than profligate use.   Dylan again: “Even a blind man knows when its not raining.” Matthew Lindon lives in Snyderville. See his website: Waterandwhatever.com The post Water and Whatever: Drought and Bob Dylan appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less