The American West did not suddenly run out of water, the crisis built slowly. Around 2000, a prolonged drought began spreading across the region, with dry conditions returning year after year and leaving less moisture in the ground. Reservoirs fell, vegetation struggled and the effects of each dry season began adding to the losses of the one before it. As reported in the World Economic Forum, by 2021, what had started as a long dry spell had become the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years, according to climate records reconstructed from tree rings. The prolonged conditions also placed growing pressure on farms, forests, wildlife and communities already adapting to increasingly limited water supplies. But there was another factor making the drought harder to escape.
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