Opinion: The thirsty West’s dreaded water crisis is here
To grow up in the American West in the 20th century was to swing between inferiority and hubris.
Our history books taught us that all great and elevated events happened back east. We should go there someday and study the monuments. At the same time, there was a sense — an understanding, as it turned out — that the East might be the past but the West was the future. We had the energy. Our restlessness would be transformative. We had the breathtaking real estate and the vivid weather: mountains to climb up and ski down, beaches to bask on and everywhere cerulean skies. Our ornery libertarian pragmatism would alter American politics.
The Achilles’ heel, the hard ceiling on Western ambitions, was water, and everyone knew it.