Felicia Marcus on the West’s water problems:
The problem with vast water negotiations like the Colorado River Compact, said Marcus, the Stanford water policy expert, is that every entity, from governments down to people watering their lawns, come to expect the current amount of available water — even if that availability is an outlier or set to change. “Farmers can’t expect that they can plant whatever they want or not expect water to be expensive,” she said. “Urban areas need to get way more efficient, people need to ditch way more lawns.”
From the same article: “Everyone knows the red alert is ringing, and we’ve known this is coming for a long time.”
Is it really true that “every entity” has unrealistic expectations about water availability and simultaneously “everyone” knows a downward adjustment is coming?