Report highlights how communities hardest hit by climate change can build resilient water systems

Irritatingly written article, statements of the obvious dressed up in extra verbiage. Besides, unlike the eye-catching headline, the central cause as stated in the article is not modern climate change, but has more historical roots.

We had a house in Ibiza, Spain, with no running water, but the roof was designed with a slope to collect rainwater and send it down into the cisterna underneath. We lived with it, and I do not remember anyone complaining. "Technology like rainwater harvesting" ...indeed!

The article mentions a reservation in Arizona as being short of water.

Last year a private consortium offered to deliver desalinated water from Mexico's Sea of Cortes to Southwest Arizona. The private company would pay all construction costs, but asked that the people of Arizona agree to buy the water at top rates. The plan is more complicated than what I have stated here, but that is the essence of the matter. The government of Arizona turned them down. It would be possible to get the water cheaper if the people of Arizona took out bonds and paid for the desalination and delivery infrastructure themselves, but while that would make the water cheaper in the long run, the up front costs would be higher.

The American southwest is chronically short of water, and the cost of desalinated water has come way down. It is time for some bold thinking and action on this matter.