Water is essential to all life, yet access to it is neither universal nor equitable. According to the UN World Water Development Report 2023, roughly two billion people worldwide lack safely managed drinking water, and demand continues to intensify as populations grow, climates shift, and industries expand (UNESCO, “Imminent Risk of a Global Water Crisis,” 22 Mar. 2023). In Away, Grandin Stone’s realization that water is “more valuable than oil or gas” (306) anchors the novel’s central conspiracy, but the real-world conflicts over who controls water and who suffers without it are no less dramatic than the fiction Freeman constructs.

Legal frameworks governing water vary widely, and disputes over ownership are frequent and contentious. In many jurisdictions, water rights are tied to land ownership or historical usage, creating systems that privilege established stakeholders. The Swiss-based multinational Nestlé, for example, drew sustained public criticism for extracting hundreds of millions of gallons from Michigan’s aquifers under permits costing minimal fees, even as residents of nearby Flint faced a lead-contaminated public water supply beginning in 2014 (Chappell, Bill. “Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite 80K+ Public Comments Against It,” NPR, 3 Apr. 2018). The juxtaposition highlighted a stark inequity: A corporation could commodify water for profit while communities of color struggled for safe drinking water. This dynamic mirrors the novel’s portrayal of powerful conspirators who exploit Colorado’s resources while displaced evacuees remain powerless and deprived of information.

Agriculture and luxury development further strain limited supplies. According to 2025 data, crop irrigation was the largest category of water withdrawal in the contiguous United States between 2010 and 2020 (Medalie, Laura et al., “Water Use Across the Conterminous United States, Water Years 2010–20,” U.S. Geological Survey, 15 Jan. 2025). Meanwhile, an investigation by the Arizona Republic found that Arizona’s golf courses have collectively failed to reduce water consumption over two decades, with many repeatedly exceeding state allotments without serious consequence (Fabok, Balint. “Arizona Golf Courses Use More Water Than They’re Supposed To,” Arizona Republic, 1 Aug. 2022). During droughts, rationing measures often fall hardest on low-income households, while wealthier residents may simply absorb fines for exceeding limits, as a Washington Post report on California’s Rancho Santa Fe community illustrated during the state’s severe 2015 drought (Kuznia, Rob. “Rich Californians Balk at Limits,” Washington Post, 13 Jun. 2015). Freeman captures this class disparity through Grandin’s family, whose ranch suffers as fields go dry and livestock perish, while those orchestrating the evacuation scheme profit from redirecting water to serve California’s political and economic interests.

Indigenous communities have long been at the forefront of water protection. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s 2016 resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, organized under the Lakota rallying cry “Mni Wiconi” (“Water Is Life”), grew into the largest Indigenous protest movement of the 21st century, drawing global attention to the threats that fossil fuel infrastructure poses to waterways and treaty rights. More recently, the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence has introduced new pressures: A 2023 study from researchers estimated that training GPT-3 alone could evaporate roughly 700,000 liters of clean freshwater for data center cooling (Li, Pengfei et al., “Making AI Less ‘Thirsty,’” arXiv, 6 Apr. 2023).

These tensions converge most visibly in the American West, where the Colorado River, which supplies water to roughly 40 million people across seven states and Mexico, has experienced severe depletion. Lake Mead and Lake Powell, reservoirs that supply water to millions, have fallen to critically low levels. This triggered the first-ever federal shortage declarations on the Colorado River in 2022, which have escalated to emergency releases from upstream reservoirs in 2026 as the seven basin states remain unable to agree on how to share an increasingly diminished supply (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, “Reclamation Acts to Protect Colorado River System,” 17 Apr. 2026). Freeman transposes this crisis onto her fictional Eldorado River, whose diversion by corrupt officials parallels real struggles over allocation, sovereignty, and survival. Ashanti’s observation that “stealing water is stealing the source of ourselves” (411) distills a truth that communities across the West confront daily: When water becomes a commodity controlled by the powerful, the most vulnerable lose not just a resource but the foundation of their lives.