Let's take Colorado as an example. It's because the water lands there and flows through into the Colorado River and on down to California. There's a treaty amon

Let's take Colorado as an example. It's because the water lands there and flows through into the Colorado River and on down to California. There's a treaty among all the states the Colorado River flows through governing water distribution (hint: California gets priority, and there's more water in the treaty than the river). So all that water is not just governed by local law but by interstate treaty. And, frankly, such laws are necessary in many more places than have them. I until recently lived on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Plenty of water, right? Except if you drew down the aquifers too far, the sea would leach in and there goes your fresh water supply. They're currently fighting it out about how much population increase they can support and still have water, how much of the island needs to be left as or put into wetland and forest that efficiently captures water into the aquifers... And on the mainland on both sides of Puget Sound, the water supply is snow melt. If you didn't get enough snow in the winter, you're looking at shortages in the summer. This is going to get worse over the next few decades most likely, alongside an increasing population.