Water rights are going to be increasingly important as time goes on, and those rights might prevent certain areas from collecting rainwater and runoff.
This, and some of those areas will be less likely to stay that way; flooding one year, drought the next. If it were consistently one way, it'd be easier to adjust.
As do I. Droughts are still going to be a problem in the future if nothing changes and the next time one hits it might be much worse. Having good rainfall for a year or two unfortunately just lets people brush off the problems we may face.
I do remember that, but it was a temporary problem.
E.g. right now at least my part of the Midwest is suffering from 3 years of drought, and we haven't had even 1 inch total of rain this spring since snow stopped. Save during the fat years, consume during the lean years and all that.
Another factor to consider is that there may also be significant infrastructure upgrades required to support the increase in population, and costs might increase dramatically when you consider increased water usage in an already drought stricken region.
The aquifer under the plains states is expected to be depleted in the next 30 years due mostly to heavy agricultural use. So this could lead to additional restrictions or true rationing.
I would also be genuinely curious whether the water usage numbers have reduced as the east cost (the majority of the population) has been impacted by long droughts since that research.
Long term ramifications I'm sure of. Long term harmful ramifications? I doubt it. That water has to go somewhere, whether it's captured in the ground or evaporates in the skies, the machinery of nature will keep ticking :)
Dams and reservoirs. They'll have to capture more precipitation and store it in liquid rather than solid form. Obviously that will have environmental consequences as well.
Typically water delivery is done to several 'tiers' of customers, where the top tier is consumers. Farmers sit below that and industry below that. This sort of thing will have massive effect, especially if it lasts longer than a few days or weeks, at some point vegetation will die off, cattle will die and people will start moving.
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