Conference to tackle 'water wars' issues

That glass of water you're sipping isn't all yours. On Tuesday, more than 300 researchers, agency and industry officials take a hard look at how it will be shared.

The S.C. Water Resources Conference takes place in North Charleston, a two-day focus on state "water war" issues surrounding a shrinking supply of water for the Southeast, as well as ways to allocate and conserve that supply. It's one more gulp of the throat-tightening concept that there soon won't be enough water for utilities, industries and consumers to keep drawing it at will.

The increasing thirst for water in the rapidly developing region, exacerbated by what one state board member characterized as a 10-year drought cycle, already has led to the state filing a U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit against North Carolina and an attempt to regulate withdrawals from state waterways that lobbyists stalled in the legislature last session.

The conference, which is planned as an annual event, is one more move to prepare for the day when drawing water will be licensed like catching fish.

Read more in tomorrow's editions of The Post and Courier.