The Western US is in the midst of yet another dangerous dry spell. The drought has been building over the past year, and since November, a greater stretch of the West has been in the most severe category of drought than at any time in the 20 years that the National Drought Mitigation Center has been keeping records.

Western states are already facing water shortages, and with the National Weather Service projectingthat the dry stretch will continue, the problems that accompany droughts are likely to pile up heading into this summer.

Ryan Jensen saw the impacts of California’s last major drought firsthand while working for the Community Water Center in the San Joaquin Valley. When residential wells ran dry, students had to shower in their school locker rooms. To keep toilets running, some rural households relied on hoses slung over fences from their neighbors.

With groundwater depleted by that drought, which only ended in 2017, and ongoing overuse of water on farms,families have had to dig deeper wells, which can be prohibitively expensive.

“For some folks, the last drought never really […]