At the very least, regionalize the production better. Throwing out the way we currently do water rights and putting sensible limits on how much can be used for ag production would go a long ways.
Right now many pleases have a tragedy of the commons situation. If you don't use up as much water as possible, and dig deeper wells to use it up faster than your neighbors, then you can end up with no water and out of business. If you could secure specific water rights you could plan your business. Farms _would_ go out of business with crops that are too water-intensive relative to the price, but that is actually a desirable property of the system. Those crops will raise in price until the demand lowers and the cost of higher water is sustained. Lower water-utilizing crops will replace the previous higher intensity usage.
But if the water sources are publicly managed and water consumption is priced progressively (and sustainably) at the source, I don't see what the problem is of letting markets do the rest.
Although water pollution should be addressed as well, but this is required regardless of the scenario.
That's absolutely insane.
Don't worry poor people, you won't be able to drink water because Amazon is being lazy with pumping tap water to cool it's data centers, but it's okay because markets have deemed you irrelevant!
Also data centers don't use water for cooling. They primarily use air cooling, and last time i checked air conditioning doesn't require a constant supply of water.
Nearly all cooling towers require a constant water supply. Some water is recycled, but it is not anywhere near a closed loop system.
Some do, some don't.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/27/thames_water_to_datac...
> Not all datacenters use water for cooling, but of those that do, a large facility might use anywhere between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day
i.e. The more you consume, the higher you pay per gallon.
Most crops you can’t regionalise, they grow where they grow and that’s about it. You won’t get oranges in Maine (except under greenhouses at insane costs).
The Central Valley is exceptional because of how flexible and productive an environment it is, it’s home to half the fruits, vegetables, and nuts production of the US, 8% of the US agricultural value, and is the primary worldwide producer of several crops.
So what is necessary is to change minds about what produces people get, and when.
IANAL but is that even remotely feasible? My impression is that they're basically akin to property rights, and the state unilaterally revoking them is going to be blocked by the courts.
Good luck with that one. Southern California has defeated basically every attempt to reform water rights.
Right now all the people out west think that is something that applies to people in third world countries. In the US it's going to be an attempted migration of the west's middle class to other regions.
At first they will have buyers for their homes to fund the migration...until they don't. Before that there will be a frenzy of wasteful government spending to try to preserve the regions and way of life. It will not work.
Climate change is the reason we keep digging up civilizations that "just disappeared without a trace."
One reason urban developments are so sparse and widely-separated west of the Rockies is that there's simply insufficient water, rights are held under Spanish-derived law (seniority), and those senior rights are held, many by large West Coast cities, most especially Los Angeles.
Climate changes across that entire region will have a profound impact on coastal dwellers, even if sea-level rise is modest and coastal climates are largely unchanged. Simply because that's not where the water is coming from.
(Northern California's water largely comes from Sierra Nevada snowpack (San Francisco, Central Valley), or local reservoirs (mostly coastal counties). Santa Barbara similarly relies on local sources, largely Lake Cachuma, a reservoir in the Santa Ynez Valley. Supplies can dip parlously low in drought years. <https://www.countyofsb.org/2795/Reservoirs>).
The water compacts between states are the responsibility of the federal government, but water rights (i.e. landowners' right to access ground water and sometimes river water) are state matters.