A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The western United States is known for big water struggles. States and cities have to negotiate how to reduce consumption and distribute that water. Now, with climate change and years of drought, the water wars are definitely heating up, and they also could be spreading all the way to the Midwest and Great Plains. Here's Harvest Public Media's Kate Grumke.
KATE GRUMKE, BYLINE: On the ground in St Louis, it's not always obvious how reliant people can be on a river basin for drinking water. But from the air, it's clear.
UNIDENTIFIED PILOT: Alpha 2B (ph).
GRUMKE: On a flight with the environmental organization LightHawk, a volunteer pilot traced the final few miles of the Missouri River as it dumps into the Mississippi just north of St. Louis. Here, these rivers are lined with farms, power plants and cities full of people drinking the water. The Missouri is the largest source of drinking water for places like St. Louis and Kansas City. Outside the region, there are others putting proverbial straws into the river.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Reliable water supplies for drinking water and industrial uses in central North Dakota and the Red River Valley can be scarce, especially under drought conditions. Yet, the Missouri River presents an abundant resource.
GRUMKE: This promotional video details construction that's already underway on a pipeline that will move Missouri River water further into North Dakota. Earlier, Missouri tried unsuccessfully to block part of the project with a lawsuit. Duane DeKrey, a former North Dakota state lawmaker, says that wasn't a surprise.
DUANE DEKREY: That's a phrase in the North Dakota Legislature is whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting.
GRUMKE: DeKrey is also co-leading the effort to build the so-called Red River project pipeline. He and some other North Dakotans think lawsuits from downriver states are only going to become more common. Missouri's politicians are gearing up for that fight. This year, a bill blocking the export of water from Missouri passed one chamber of the state legislature. Next year, it could have an even better chance of becoming law. Burke Griggs is a law professor at Washburn University in Kansas. He says proposed legislation like that is a classic first step in a water dispute. Nearly a decade ago, he represented Kansas before the U.S. Supreme Court in a water case against Nebraska.
BURKE GRIGGS: If I were in charge of the water resources of states like Missouri or Iowa, Michigan and so forth, I would start paying a lot of attention to the ways in which these water disputes have been resolved farther west.
GRUMKE: Out west, Griggs says there are a lot of interstate agreements on how to share water, called compacts. There are just a few in the Midwest, like the compact, which, for the most part, bans the diversion of water outside the basin of the Great Lakes. And at a recent meeting of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, mayors in the Central U.S. called for solutions to the region's water issues. Sharon Weston Broome is the mayor-president of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
SHARON WESTON BROOME: We are advocating for policies that will secure our drinking water, reduce pollution and enhance the long-term health of the river.
GRUMKE: That includes green infrastructure like wetlands to prevent drought and floods, a sort of reckoning that may also lead to how best to share waterways and prevent water wars as climate change and drought threatens a precious resource.
For NPR News, I'm Kate Grumke in St. Louis.
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