- The main story is about water scarcity and its impact on the American West, specifically the Colorado River.
- The Colorado River is experiencing record-breaking drought and its water levels are at an all-time low.
- The water shortage has led to the death of multiple people and the discovery of human remains in Lake Mead.
- Despite the water crisis, there are plans to build luxury homes and surfing lagoons in the California desert.
- The management of the Colorado River is based on a 1922 agreement called the Colorado River Compact, which allocated more water than actually exists.
- The compact excluded Mexico and did not address the water needs of Native American tribes.
- Agriculture uses 70% of the Colorado River water and farmers are incentivized to use their water allocation to the maximum.
- The shrinking Colorado River is causing increased reliance on groundwater as a water source.

- Groundwater is a vital resource that takes thousands of years to accumulate but can be depleted quickly
- Arizona has no laws protecting groundwater usage, leading to a free-for-all situation
- Large farming operations in California have caused severe consequences by pumping groundwater
- The depletion of groundwater affects shallow household wells, causing them to go dry
- Las Vegas has implemented water conservation measures, serving as a model for other places
- Utah has high water consumption and is pursuing a billion-dollar pipeline despite a lack of surplus water
- Acknowledging the long-term drying of the American West and incentivizing water conservation is crucial
- Magical thinking and unrealistic solutions to water scarcity have been common throughout history.

- States need to work together to reduce water usage
- Arizona changed their rules to allow for more conservation
- California passed a law to control groundwater pumping
- Government gave Colorado River states 60 days to create an emergency plan to cut water usage
- If no plan is made, the agency will make the cuts itself
- We need to prepare for a drier future in the American West
- Prayer cannot solve the drought problem
- Humans need to act like rational adults and conserve water

- The text discusses the water scarcity crisis in the American West, particularly the Colorado River.
- The Colorado River is facing severe drought and its water levels are at a historic low.
- The water shortage has resulted in fatalities and the discovery of human remains in Lake Mead.
- Despite the crisis, plans are underway to build luxury homes and surfing lagoons in the California desert.
- The management of the Colorado River is based on an outdated agreement that allocated more water than actually exists.
- The agreement excluded Mexico and neglected the water needs of Native American tribes.
- Agriculture accounts for 70% of the river's water usage, leading to increased reliance on groundwater.
- Groundwater depletion is a significant concern as it takes thousands of years to replenish.
- Arizona lacks laws to protect groundwater usage, resulting in unregulated consumption.
- Large farming operations in California have caused severe consequences by depleting groundwater.
- Las Vegas has implemented water conservation measures, serving as an example for other regions.
- Utah has high water consumption and is pursuing a costly pipeline despite water scarcity.
- Collaboration between states is necessary to reduce water usage.
- Arizona and California have made changes to promote water conservation.
- The government has given Colorado River states 60 days to create an emergency plan for water usage reduction.
- If no plan is created, the agency will implement cuts itself.
- It is crucial to acknowledge the long-term drying of the American West and incentivize water conservation.
- Unrealistic solutions and magical thinking have been historically common in addressing water scarcity.
- Preparation for a drier future in the American West is necessary.
- Prayer alone cannot solve the drought problem; humans must act rationally and conserve water.

John Oliver discusses the water shortage in the American west, how it’s already impacting the people who live there, and what God has to say about it. 

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-♪ ♪ -♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ -♪♪ Here we are.

It is not just the 1 thing that your house plant needed that you couldn't even provide, it's also the engine that once powered this classic toy.

Just hook up to a hose and look, a new fun game.

You never know what the water wiggle will do next.

You'll never know what it'll do next, except kill some people, because that's what the water wiggle did.

It killed multiple people, and it was recalled.

That's right, we are less than 2 minutes into this piece, and I've already hit you with a trademark John Oliver sad fact.

Now, water is obviously vital to all life on Earth.

Our bodies are essentially bags of bones and meat suspended in water, but already 3.6 billion people, nearly half the world's population, live in areas that suffer water scarcity at least 1 month each year.

And while this is clearly becoming a problem everywhere, tonight, we're gonna focus on the American West, where the last several decades have seen a record-breaking drought.

The Southwest is actually going through its driest 22-year period since 800 A.D.

That is as far back as the data goes, which is already pretty startling, partly because I cannot believe that someone back then was even keeping drought records.

It was probably the ninth century version of me, some lanky nearsighted dweeb who squealed, I'll be the official drought daddy!

♪ And this drought has had massive impact on the Colorado River in particular, which is a key source of water for most of the Southwestern states.

Twenty-two years of drought combined with exploding populations in Colorado and throughout the Southwest, have led to record low levels at both Lake Powell in Utah and Lake Mead outside Las Vegas, where an expanding white ring of mineral deposits is probably the most visual evidence of the river's decline.

The situation along the Colorado River is dire, and I'm not sure it's going to get better, ever.

That is a bleak thing to hear an environmental expert say.

Water levels in Lake Mead have now fallen so much that you may have seen authorities have found human remains there twice in just 1 week.

Which really freaked me out until I remembered that I dumped that hitchhiker in Lake Mojave, not Lake Mead, so I'm good.

And while you would like to think a situation this dire would cause people to be more mindful of our water usage, instead, we're seeing stories like this.

Right now, it's an empty plot of land covered with brush.

But if developer Regent Properties gets the go-ahead, the open desert will be transformed into this, the $750 million Thermal Beach Club.

Under the current plan, the developer wants to build 326 luxury homes here at the site, all surrounding a 20-acre surfing lagoon.

That's right, a 20-acre surfing lagoon in the middle of the California desert.

1 of at least 4 new surf lagoons proposed out there.

I'm honestly surprised they didn't go even further.

Not only do we have surfing lagoons, we also have a wall of constantly flushing toilets, a hose that runs all day in the middle of a concrete parking lot, and of course, Wet Frank, a man that we pay to dump buckets of water on himself all day.

And while development like that is obviously not ideal, it is depressingly consistent with our approach to Water Out West, because it has been a history of denial and wishful thinking, especially around the Colorado River, that is now crashing into harsh reality.

So tonight, let's take a look at our water shortage, how it's been impacted by the choices that we've made, and what we can do about it.

And let's start with how the Colorado River is managed, because a lot of the problems that we're seeing today can be traced back to decisions that were made a century ago.

This precious resource is allocated based on a 1922 agreement called the Colorado River Compact.

Once the river basin states agreed on their fair shares, they each established a seniority system.

7 states got together and carved up all the water in the river.

Essentially, letting people lay claim to it through a complex system of calling dibs.

And look, I've got no problem with dibs in principle.

It's a great way to figure out who gets the last slice of pizza, or the pink starbursts, or the cutest baby at the hospital.

I don't care if he gave birth to her, I call dibs, that 1 is mine.

But it is a weird way to divide up something as important as water.

The Colorado River Compact serves as the foundation for what is known as the law of the river, which sounds less like a set of water management agreements and more like an animated buddy cop movie starring a trout and a bear voiced by 2 actors who are both wildly anti-Semitic.

But there were a few major problems with how the compact was set up right from the start.

First, Mexico wasn't included, and even though it is today, the river essentially runs dry by the time it gets across the border.

And the compact also didn't specifically address the water needs of the more than 2 dozen Native American tribes who depend on the river, which is pretty shitty, especially as those tribes do have the most senior water rights, given that they were, in a very real sense, here first.

But even so, tribes have had to struggle to get those water rights actually quantified on paper, and even then, to get the infrastructure they need in order to access it.

And for many tribes, those fights are still happening.

But it wasn't just about who the compact left out.

Another key flaw was that right from the start, it allocated more water than actually existed.

Water supplies are measured in acre feet, and the compact divided up rights to 15 million acre feet of water, even though the river only carries around 12 to 13 million.

And to be clear, they knew this was a problem at the time.

The explorer and scientist John Wesley Powell warned in 1893, there is not sufficient water to supply these lands.

Just 10 years ago, in a major study by the federal government, states forced the modelers to add so-called magic water.

Extra water that existed in the computer model only, which is just absurd!

And not only because magic water sounds like a euphemism for urine used exclusively by Bjork.

But it takes forever to get out of this schwan.

-♪ ♪ -♪ And I do get why states might want to pretend there is more water than there is, because they want continued growth and economic development, and nobody wants to be the bad guy pointing out the fundamental problem with that.

Just listen to a reporter pressing a representative of Southern Nevada's water authority on how they can justify growth in the face of looming water scarcity.

I mean, you can't just keep expanding the population size with a dwindling water supply.

I mean, that really kind of goes back to Manifest Destiny.

It goes back to sort of this American dream.

You're going to continue to see people moving to the desert southwest.

So, from our perspective as water managers, it is up to us to make sure that we're able to meet the demands of our community, regardless of what our numbers might be.

So there is a lot there, including the phrase, manifest destiny, which, as we all know, only has good connotations.

You know, like a self-published book about my struggle, or I really want to impress Jodie Foster, or hello, my name is Ted Cruz.

But again, you can understand why he feels the need to respond that way.

Nobody wants to be the 1 having to deliver bad news.

But the immovable fact is, cities in the desert can't grow without limits, and hard sacrifices will have to be made.

Which brings us to another fundamental tension here, specifically between farmers and cities.

Because farmers and ranchers were out West much earlier than most American cities were established, meaning they have senior water rights, and they use them.

Agriculture uses about 70 percent of the Colorado River water.

And look, obviously, agriculture needs water.

And no 1 wants a situation where we create food shortages, but it is worth knowing, in some places, farmers are incentivized to use their allocation to a truly nonsensical degree.

Many states along the river have rules promising to confiscate water rights if water users don't maximize their use.

Just listen to this farmer in Arizona explaining why he chose to grow a particularly water-intensive crop.

You gotta keep farming it to keep the water, and that's why I was mainly doing it, was to hang onto the water.

Okay, first, I don't know who was filming him there, but that camera is simply too close.

But second, he farmed alfalfa just so he could hold onto his water rights, which feels ridiculous.

The only more absurd way he could have used that water in that field is if he'd also planted wet Frank.

So for all those reasons, many related to the compact's original over-allocation, the Colorado River is shrinking.

But what that is leading to now is water uses increasingly turning to another major water source, ground water.

Now, ground water is exactly what it sounds like.

It slowly collects in aquifers beneath the Earth's surface, accumulating when rain, snow melt, and other natural water sources seep into the ground.

But importantly, some of these aquifers took thousands, if not millions, of years to fill.

So if we pump them dry, they're not coming back any time soon.

But that's not always reflected in our policies.

In 80% of the state, there are no laws protecting how much water is taken from the ground.

And when you have no limits, it is unsurprisingly a free-for-all.

Over the past 5 years, farmlands have increased by almost a third in Arizona.

The number of wells has risen from 43 to 123 in Wilcox alone.

All they have to do is buy the land to have access to as much free water as they want.

They could drill a well every 10 foot all around this place, no limit.

Partly because drilling that many wells means they're going to pump a ton of groundwater out, and also because if your dog is trying to tell you that Timmy has stuck down a well, which well, Rusty?

Big farming operations have long been pumping groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley in California, and it has had some pretty severe consequences.

When this much water is pumped out of the aquifer below ground, the clay between the pockets of water collapses, and the ground starts to deflate like a leaky air mattress.

The sinking is buckling the walls of irrigation canals, damaging pipes, creating giant sinkholes, and cracking homes.

This bridge has dropped so much, the water will soon flow over it instead of under it.

Yeah, it's true, and this is not a new problem.

A scientist in California once marked just how much the land had sunk from 1925 to 1977 on a telephone pole, and that is a startling drop.

Although if you didn't know what that was measuring, you would be pretty confused.

It looks like someone's measuring the shrinking height of an elderly giant with osteoporosis.

--LAUGHTER --But in recent years, As large farming operations have drilled deeper and sucked up more water, there have been escalating impacts for these shallower wells that families use.

Last year in California, nearly a thousand shallow household wells went dry.

And for anyone who has ever lost 1, it can be a real burden.

This is where we catch our water so we can flush toilets.

Get up in the morning, take 2 bottles of rainwater, put it in the coffee pot.

My fiancée will come in, she'll help me wash my hands, And then we'll take this water, recycle it, put it in a bucket out there until it gets enough till we can flush the toilet.

Well, usually, we have to go into town to 1 of my friends' house.

And if I can't go to my friend's house, You'll see

some guys that there's ads even on Craigslist to be able to take a shower 5 bucks take a shower that kind

of stuff That's what kind of place it is around here

Wow Using Craigslist to take a shower that is Legitimately horrifying.

even write an ad for that without it sounding suspicious?

34-year-old adult non-creep looking for fellow non-creepy adult to allow me to use their shower.

There's a water shortage, and I genuinely just want to get washed.

I will happily pay 5 American dollars for the shower.

You can't watch, you can't tape it, you can't be weird.

I'm just gonna come into your house, hand you a 5 dollar bill, get in the shower, wash my hair and body as quickly as possible, and then leave, all while making the least amount of eye contact possible.

Ideally, you'll forget this whole thing ever happened.

I don't like the way any of this is sounding, so I'm just gonna stay dirty forever.

Please do not contact me with unsolicited services or offers.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about groundwater is that it's not totally independent of surface water at all.

These are often part of 1 intertwined hydrological system, so when you pump groundwater, it can ultimately dry up rivers.

The connection between groundwater and surface water is 1 of those alarming connections that we just choose to forget.

You know, like the 1 between Elizabeth Moss and Scientology.

It's so much easier just not to really think about it.

So, to recap, For decades now, we've been using more water than the Colorado River has, even as we have rapidly depleted critical groundwater supplies.

And when it comes to responding to this crisis, places have gone in very different directions.

1 of the best actors, and you are not going to believe this, is actually Las Vegas.

Which I know automatically feels weird, because when you think of Vegas, you probably think of it as a place that uses water for things like this.

There's just a lovely waterfalls and the trickling fountain.

to appreciate the heat -♪ You've got to appreciate the heat -♪ Because

-♪ This way I mean, Honestly, I feel genuinely bad for that fountain.

No drop of water ever dreamed of 1 day being forced to dance to the Friends theme for a bunch of drunk Vegas tourists.

No 1 told them life was gonna be this way.

But the thing is, despite looking extremely wasteful, The Bellagio's Fountain actually isn't.

It uses water that's too salty to drink, and annually only uses as much water as would irrigate just 8 acres of alfalfa.

And that is just 1 tiny way that the people of Vegas have learned to conserve water.

They've also banned new lawns and ornamental grass there, which should save about 10 billion gallons a year.

And overall, even though the population of the Vegas metro area grew by 34 percent between 2002 and 2013, its use of Colorado river water actually dropped by over a quarter.

So Vegas could actually be something of a model for other places when it comes to water conservation and literally nothing else.

But unfortunately, not everywhere is taking it that seriously, with the worst example being Utah.

Home of both the Utah Jazz and their mascot, Jazz Bear, who answers the question, what if Wiley Coyote was a jock who also wanted to murder me in my sleep?

--CROWD LAUGHS- Utah's residents use the most water of any western state, and nowhere is this more true than St.

George, which has become 1 of the fastest growing metro areas in the country, with per person water consumption among the highest.

George have very cheap water rates, Their county, which is in the desert, remember, has at least a dozen golf courses, including these.

And golf courses use a shit ton of water.

They are pretty much the dumbest possible thing to put into the middle of the desert, other than, of course, Burning Man.

And while Utah has recently passed some new laws encouraging conservation, they've also been pursuing a billion-dollar pipeline to bring in what some in Utah insist is additional surplus water from Lake Powell, a surplus that anyone who so much as looks at that lake would know simply does not exist.

And I know that that seems wildly irresponsible on Utah's part, and that is because it is.

Though to be fair, it is still not the worst idea they've had, because Just watch this video from the governor of Utah in response to drought conditions there just last year.

That's why I'm asking Utahns of all faiths to join me in a weekend of prayer, June 4th through the 6th.

By praying collaboratively and collectively, asking God or whatever higher power you believe in for more rain,

may be able to escape the deadliest aspects of the continuing drought.

You know Utah is desperate when they ask all faiths to join in a prayer.

I'm asking Utahns of all faiths, whether that's the Mormon 1 or 1 of the many wrong ones, to collectively pray to the Christian God and the false deities the rest of you worship, for more rain so that we can solve this crisis before those of you who have not accepted Jesus Christ into your heart burn in the fires of eternal hell.

Well, we can start by acknowledging some uncomfortable truths.

First, states like Utah are not going to be able to use the full amount of water that they think they're entitled to, primarily because that full amount never actually existed in the first place.

No state can continue using water the way they've gotten used to.

Experts suggest it might help actually not to use the word drought at all anymore, which sounds temporary, and instead use the term aridification as a better way to describe what might be a long-term drying of the American West.

So, we need to be incentivizing conservation and water efficiency, especially when it comes to agriculture, and stop with our magical thinking toward water, which has been depressingly common throughout history.

During a drought In the 90s, city officials in Ventura, California, decided to study the possibility of hauling icebergs from the polar caps and planting them off the county shores.

1 proponent even suggested we'd have to wrap the iceberg with a diaper to collect the melting iceberg water.

More recently, Arizona passed a resolution to study building a pipeline from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River.

And if you've ever seen a map of the United States, you may have noticed that the Mississippi River is all the way over here, and Arizona is all the way over here.

So to do that, you need a pipeline that's over a thousand miles long.

And the only way that idea could get any dumber is if the pipeline was also somehow wrapped in a diaper.

Don't worry, everyone, Chase is on the case.

The fact is, states need to start working together to cut back on their collective water use, and some have tried small steps.

In Arizona, home, remember, to our close-up alfalfa farmer, they recently changed their use-it-or-lose-it rules to allow for more conservation.

And in California, in 2014, they passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act to try and bring groundwater pumping under control.

But it is just not enough, and that may well be why.

Something very big happened just a week ago.

Because the government dropped a bombshell on the Colorado River states, telling them they have 60 days to create an emergency plan to stop using between 2 and 4000000 acre-feet of water in the next year, which is a massive amount.

Or, the agency will use its emergency authority to make the cuts itself.

That is a drastic move, but we are in a drastic situation.

So let's hope those states get to work in the next 2 months and come up with a decent plan, because we desperately need to prepare for a much drier future in the American West.

Because it is imperative that we learn from our past mistakes.

And for anyone who still thinks that this is something we can just pray our way out of, I actually have a special message from a very special guest.

I know I don't often do this, but I just wanted to appear in person to make 1 thing perfectly clear.

You can't pray your way out of a drought.

It's not my fault you wasted it building surfing lagoons and golf courses in the middle of a fucking desert.

So, no, I will not be answering your prayer for rain.

For the record, I've only ever, ever answered 1 prayer.

Little Timmy Pendleton wanted a Hess truck for his birthday in 1986.

The kid just really seemed to want that truck, and, you know, maybe I felt bad about killing both his parents with that tornado.

There's so many things I'd rather talk about to you than your stupid, stupid water usage.

The point is, I want humans of all faiths to come together and act like rational fucking adults when it comes to water use.

Heed my words, my children, and conserve the once bountiful gifts of rivers and lakes which I created for

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What are the different types of syntax found in Water: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)?

 evaluate how textual features and authorial choices shape meaning in Water: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

What are examples of specific language features found in Water: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)?

What are examples of specific authorial language choices found in Water: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)?

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Water: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)