HOW SHORT IS THE WATER?

It is funny because the railroads, decimated between the twin mills of government meddling and union featherbedding, unable to provide efficient (and mostly not even inefficient) passenger service, or to prevent trains being derailed from decrepit tracks, or to provide sufficient rolling stock for a coal boom, if there were one¾these railroads are hardly without problems, and the country's water resources would not seem to be the most pressing of them.

It is ironic because the railroads themselves, in their time, were opposed, harassed and blocked by those who had a stake in the previous mode of transportation¾stage coaches and canal barges. Perhaps one day freight by airship will be viable, and pipeline lobbies will suddenly grow deeply concerned about the finite extent of the sky.

It is false for several reasons. First, if there were not enough water, it could be piped back to the originating end of the line. Second, if you have enough energy, you can get enough water¾by distillation of salt water, if need be. And third, there is enough water¾an unpopular statement in the West, but that's what we understand from the geologists' publications below. It is not abundant, nor is it cheap to supply, but at a price, there's enough. (The latter statement is, of course, a tautology: there is, enough for those who can pay that price. Like all resources, water is scarce; and the price mechanism rations it.)