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http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-make-a-desert-bloom-1444169349

How to Make a Desert BloomThe British believed that Palestine could hold no more than two million people without going thirsty. There are now more than 12 million.

The summer of 2015 will be remembered as the season when water—or the lack thereof—finally broke through into Americans’ political consciousness. Devastating droughts in the American West and predictions of worse to come have created a sense of crisis with no obvious solutions. And the problem isn’t just domestic: From Brazil to South Africa, water shortages are a growing cause of economic stress and social upheaval.

One of the few places where we might look for solutions is a country with seemingly insurmountable water problems: Israel. Since its founding in 1948, Israel, which is 60% desert, has become a water superpower. This is the unlikely story recounted by Seth M. Siegel in his insightful “Let There Be Water.” He argues that Israel’s example of making the desert bloom through a mixture of grit, smart regulation, technology and free-market incentives can offer a model for the rest of the world.

Jewish inventiveness was born of political necessity. In the 1930s, most of the water in what was then known as Palestine came from shallow wells, and the infrastructure didn’t exist to connect the country’s disparate regions, which have wildly varying climates. There was water in the far north, but the Jewish population was concentrated around Tel Aviv, in the middle of the country. In the south lay the Negev Desert, which appeared “inhospitable to human habitation, a wasteland,” Mr. Siegel writes. British colonial officials believed that Palestine could hold no more than two million people without going thirsty—there are now more than 12 million Jews and Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea—and the British White Paper of 1939 sought “to choke off Jewish immigration to Palestine” by limiting the number of new arrivals and claiming that the land simply could not support more inhabitants.

ENLARGE

Zionist leaders dreamed up Israel’s elaborate water system to prove the Brits wrong. For them, the Negev was a land of possibility. As Mr. Siegel writes, David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel’s first prime minister, “saw himself in a race against time to establish facts on the ground that would justify a recommendation by the UN commissioners to grant the desert territory to the new Jewish state.”

Under British law, the Jewish pioneers were barred from establishing new settlements or farms. But the Zionists found a loophole: An earlier Ottoman law held that “no structure with a roof” could be demolished by the government. So under the cover of darkness, on the night after Yom Kippur in 1946, they set up 11 new farms in the northern part of the Negev and began drilling for water. They found it at one of the sites, and because of a metal shortage, recycled pipes that the British had used to put out fires during the Blitz to transport the water to the others. “The discarded British pipes first used to frustrate Hitler’s effort to terrorize the people of London now served to undermine British efforts to stymie Jewish settlement construction,” writes Mr. Siegel.

The strategy paid off: The United Nations 1947 partition plan granted the Negev to the Zionists. Notwithstanding British protestations, U.N. investigators were persuaded that “the Land of Israel could have water resources nearly triple the proven amount then on hand.”

Water remained a top priority for the new country’s leaders, who took an “all of the above” approach over the decades that followed. In 1955, Israel established the Yarkon-Negev pipeline, the state’s first major water-development project, which carried water from Tel Aviv’s Yarkon River to the Negev and brought “fifty thousand acres of desert land . . . under cultivation.” Four years later, the government passed a law, which made all water resources “public property subject to control of the State”—a policy that has held to this day. In June 1964, the National Water Carrier—a vast system of pipes, tunnels reservoirs and distribution networks—unified the state. It wasn’t cheap: “On a per capita basis, adjusted for inflation, Israel spent six times more building the National Water Carrier than the US did building the Panama Canal.” That same year, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol met with President Lyndon Johnson about desalination during Israel’s first official state visit to America.

Today desalinated water provides “the equivalent of ninety-four percent of Israel’s household water.” Israel Desalination Enterprises—initially a government creation, now a private venture—has also helped develop the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, in Carlsbad, Calif., as well as major projects in China and India. Israel recycles about 85% of its sewage. Incredibly, entrepreneurs have discovered how to make money out of sewage by selling skimmed-off oil for reprocessing in industrial applications.

It’s an inspiring story, to be sure, but I’m a bit more skeptical than Mr. Siegel about its value as a model for other countries. Water is socialized in Israel, and the government allocates it “according to what is seen as the highest, best use.” Laws from the 1950s prohibit drilling or diversion of water without a permit and require farmers to obtain licenses if their herding animals were to cross a waterway on their own property. These regulations are more draconian than the U.S.’s Clean Water Act, and, while seemingly workable in Israel, would get in the way of efficiency and innovation elsewhere. Mr. Siegel also puts too much faith in regulators and municipal utilities, which he believes do a better job managing water than local politicians. At least politicians can be held accountable at the ballot box.

For a sense of what too much government regulation can do, look to California, where regulators beholden to the environmental lobby have stymied new projects and prioritized fish protection over public welfare. These days, residents in some rural areas are relying on portable showers and bottled water. The California State Water Project has cut off farmers from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. And in July, new rules were issued limiting lawn space on new homes. “Let There Be Water” is an instructive reminder that climate and geography don’t control a state’s destiny. Nature, as it turns out, is not as important as government nurture.