[pavel_lishin]

But they have been buying the bootstraps. They were buying water from the town, and they were perfectly aware that it wasn't something the town was obligated to provide.

The problem seems to be that the townsfolk want to water their lawn:

> “These men were brought in because I had put them on a water restriction schedule,” Pacheco said in an interview. “They are upset they can’t water their lawns while people can’t have water to actually live.”

They're not completely cut off; they just have to significantly further to purchase their water, and some of them do:

> Some are driving two hours to Pueblo to buy water. Many have been getting water in the town of Blanca, where officials offered — only as an emergency solution until the end of August — to let people fill up water tanks from a hose connected to a fire hydrant.

I don't think this is a situation where we're laughing at people who are in the Find Out phase.

[mothballed]

Many people haul water in Colorado because the bootstrapping method of drilling your own well is now heavily restricted, and of course the same people stopping you from drilling the well (government) is happy to monopolize and sell you the water.

Meanwhile you can use percussion drilling to drill a well of virtually arbitrary depth, at very little cost, as was done by the Chinese for thousands of years to depths well below 500ft with not much more than bamboo and rocks.