Water level at Hoover Dam by Kevin Anderson, Some Rights Reserved
The economy is without a doubt the most important issue on American voters' minds this election, with 58% of people polled saying that it's their top concern, according to a CNN poll. The next most important issue, healthcare, is tied with terrorism at 13%. Only 9% of those polled consider the war in Iraq as their biggest concern. The global financial crisis has pushed all other issues off of the agenda, including issues such as climate change and the environment.
Here in the West, water is a huge environmental and economic issue. Driving over Hoover Dam today, you can see how low Lake Mead is after an historic drought. After posting this picture, I was asked via Twitter:
Are the white marks normal water level or high?
The white marks are where the water stood just eight years ago, after dropping from a record high in 1985. Western states fight over water rights because here it is an economic issue, and while not a national issue, water is playing a role in this election.
Runaway growth in Nevada, Arizona and across the arid West are stressing scarce water resources. Use of water in the Colorado River, which flows into Lake Mead, is governed by a multi-state Colorado Compact. The compact was negotiated in 1922, and it's a politically sensitive issue. John McCain's state of Arizona never liked the compact and didn't ratify it until 1944. The League of Conservation Voters is running an anti-McCain ad in Colorado saying that he wants to take the state's water.
It's not an issue that gets much attention in the eastern US where water is more plentiful, but the drought this decade could be another threat to the economies of western states. An article in National Geographic earlier this year asked:
The American West was won by water management. What happens when there's no water left to manage?
Michael E. Campana, the director of Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University, says that people aren't considering what will happen if the West dries further and water supplies are depleted. Writing in January of this year, he said:
If Dust Bowl conditions afflict the Southwest, the dislocation they cause could make the 1930s Dust Bowl seem like a leisurely Sunday drive. Yet more people keep coming - the Las Vegas area is still growing each month by about 5,000 people.
Right now everyone is focused on the economic crisis, but here in the West, there is another crisis, water. The economy will recover at some point, but lack of water could remake the American West again.
