Justin Fox, Columnist

Greedy Environment Steals California's Water

Blame the rivers the state decided not to dam.

May 5, 2015 at 9:19 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

Look at how much water the environment wastes!
Photographer: Blaine Harden/The Washington Post/Getty Image

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There’s this thing called “the environment,” and it’s using up as much as half of California’s scarce water. Pretty greedy, huh?

This is one way to interpret the California Department of Water Resources’ data1430854747687 on how water is used in the state. Here’s the breakdown on average water use from 2001 through 2010: