Living with Water Scarcity
by David Zetland, 2014

Living with Water Scarcity gives an economical evaluation of the state of water in the U.S. and abroad. The premise of the book is that water should be treated as a valued, scarce commodity. In reality, consumers are given poor incentives toward the limited use of water and social planners/politicians often poorly allocate water when faced with varied water demands from households, businesses, farmers, and the ecosystem. The book asks plentiful questions about the treatment and allocation of water and suggests answering the questions economically.

I was hoping to like the book more than I did. The first few chapters, on personal, household economics, read well. However, the second half of the book, about the public allocation of water flows, became both whiny and preachy. Whiny in that it complains of corrupt politicians and lazy government water managers. Preachy in that it speaks of the effect of mismanagement of ecosystems in light of climate change. There were also a stream of stick figure illustrations throughout that made the book seem amateur and sarcastic. I think the topic of water economics is of value, but I hope that there are better books out there to learn of the subject. If still interested, the book can be downloaded in .pdf form for free from http://livingwithwaterscarcity.com/.