America’s long complacency about its water supply is being eroded not just by crises like Flint, Michigan’s lead-poisoned pipes, but by a growing realization that, as clean water becomes scarcer, especially in the West, it can’t remain so cheap. In Texas, the Great Plains and California, groundwater is disappearing. More than 40 million people now live in drought-affected areas in the 11 Western states, where more than half the land is officially designated “abnormally dry.” The real problem in a larger sense isn’t a lack of water—the oceans are full of it.