A major challenge in maintaining water quality was not even known until the 1970’s. The chemical pollution is leaking from landfills and toxic waste dumps into our aquifers which is where most of the population in the U.S. gets their fresh water from. A major challenge in maintaining water quantity is constant population growth. This is especially a challenge for cities that are already scarce on water like Phoenix or Los Angeles. This causes the cities to look elsewhere for water and at times change the flow or create dams.

Water quantity and the challenges it presents to maintain it affects the management of the resource and presents many factors like social, ethical, and political. A political factor in maintaining water quantity is if a state should be able to tap into another states river. For example, according to Dole (2015) Los Angeles had to tap into the Colorado River because of its growing demand for water in the city. Many of the states were against this and there is a political fight to this day still. A social factor of water quantity is the issue of owns the water on the land. In the west when one buys a property with a creek, you cannot use that creek for irrigation. In other states the water is sold when the land is sold. This leads to an ethical issue that water is a natural resource and therefore every human should have the right to it even if they cannot pay for it. Water is needed for survival and if you do not supply the water in which you own and that individual dies of dehydration then did you not just commit murder?

References:

Dale, L. (2015). Environmental policy (second Ed.). Bridgepoint Education