There's plenty of water. It's just often in the wrong place.
Years ago, 60's and 70's I believe, Phoenix (Salt River Project) began buying out cotton farms. Cotton is water hungry and they grew a fair amount of it in the desert, of all places. Money was put away by SRP (customers) and the cotton farms were bought out while studies were done that showed there was surface water, as opposed to ground water, in Arizona to provide for about 20 million people, it just had to be brought to the right place. Here in Nevada we have the same problem, as the area grew we needed to manage our water far better than we did 10 or 15 years ago, and move water to where it's needed.
Someone mentioned Tucson above, as I recall they are or were a model of water conservation for metropolitan areas. I believe Vegas used much of their data as they worked through their conservation plan. I certainly don't know, but I'd guess they waited too long to solve a problem long in the making in S.A., as opposed to catastrophic weather changes being the cause of this crisis. As was expressed above, I can't imagine a city of that size getting their water in gallon jugs. Prohibition on steroids...my heart goes out to them.
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