I’m always stunned that water technology hasn’t grown more sophisticated, that we haven’t figured out a better way–or several. What economics are working against securing our most necessary solution? The opening of Karen DeYoung’s recent Washington Post report about the fears U.S. Intelligence experts have about water access being used as a weapon:

“Fresh-water shortages and more droughts and floods will increase the likelihood that water will be used as a weapon between states or to further terrorist aims in key strategic areas, including the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, a U.S. intelligence assessment released Thursday said.

Although ‘water-related state conflict’ is unlikely in the next 10 years, the assessment said, continued shortages after that might begin to affect U.S. national security interests.

The assessment is drawn from a classified National Intelligence Estimate distributed to policymakers in October. Although the unclassified version does not mention problems in specific countries, it describes “strategically important water basins” tied to rivers in several regions. These include the Nile, which runs through 10 countries in central and northeastern Africa before traveling through Egypt into the Mediterranean Sea; the Tigris-Euphrates in Turkey, Syria and Iraq; the Jordan, long the subject of dispute among Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians; and the Indus, whose catchment area includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Tibet.

‘As water problems become more acute, the likelihood . . . is that states will use them as leverage,’ said a senior U.S. intelligence official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. As the midpoint of the century nears, he said, there is an increasing likelihood that water will be ‘potentially used as a weapon, where one state denies access to another.'”

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“Either you bring the water to L.A., or you bring L.A. to the water”:

Read also:

• Joan Didion 1977 essay about L.A.’s chronic water scarcity.