As water in the West becomes increasingly scarce, improving water efficiency is seen as a crucial way to stretch the available supply. But a major new water-conservation project on the U.S.-Mexico border shows that efficiency can, paradoxically, make things worse for the environment and vulnerable human populations.
The All-American Canal, which supplies Colorado River water to farmers in California's Imperial Valley, leaks some 22 billion gallons of water per year — enough for about half a million southern Californians. Now, the San Diego County Water Authority and the state of California are funding a major project to make the canal watertight and redirect the conserved water to San Diego residents.
But the water that currently seeps out of the canal sustains wetlands, hundreds of farms, and more than a million people across the border, in the Mexicali Valley. The canal-lining project would cut off that water and create a permanent drought in the valley, depriving residents of drinking water, potentially setting off a wave of immigration by displaced farm workers, and destroying a crucial link in the Pacific Flyway.
Join Matt Jenkins, correspondent for High Country News, 2006 recipient of the Risser Prize and a Bill Lane Center Western Enterprise Reporting Fellow, to discuss this paradox and broader questions of water rights and border politics.