Book Review #5: The World's Water

The World’s Water:  The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources (2008-2009)

By Peter H. Gleick

After reading so many books by journalists and economist, it was a bit startling but also refreshing to read a book by a scientist.  There is a very interesting chapter on urban water use in the United States.  However, what I found most useful were the charts in the data section of the book that gave a country-by-country break down, by region, of everything from annual renewable water resources to percentage of the population with access to sanitation.  What I learned about Colombia is organized in the chart below. 

Country	Colombia
Total renewable freshwater supply	2132 km3/yr
Fraction of population with access to improved drinking water (urban)	1970 88 1975 86 1980 93 1985 100 1990 87 1994 88 2000 98 2002 99 2004 99
Fraction of population with access to improved drinking water (rural)	1970 28 1975 33 1980 73 1985 76 1990 82 1994 48 2000 73 2002 71 2004 71
Fraction of population with access to improved drinking water (total)	1970 63 1975 64 1980 86 1985 1990 86 1994 76 2000 91 2002 92 2004 93
Fraction of population with access to improved sanitation (urban)	1970 75 1975 73 1980 93 1985 96 1990 84 1994 76 2000 97 2002 96 2004 96
Fraction of population with access to improved sanitation (rural)	1970 8 1975 13 1980 4 1985 13 1990 18 1994 33 2000 51 2002 54 2004 54
Fraction of population with access to improved sanitation (total)	1970 47 1975 48 1980 61 1985 1990 64 1994 63 2000 85 2002 86 2004 86

Book Review #4: When the Rivers Run Dry

When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century (2007)   

By Fred Pearce

Pearce’s work illustrates how localized water tragedies and successes further the global water debate and how solutions to water problems and conflicts depend on geography, geopolitical atmospheres and relationships between global industry, national government and community organizers.  Essentially this book is a cross between ethnography, a novel and a newspaper.  It is a text that takes a reader to every corner of the earth to explore and understand the breadth and complexity of water issues.  Pearce traveled from Hover Dam to the Yellow River and everyplace in between to understand how river ecosystems work when they are allowed to run wild and how dams impact those ecosystems.  This work led him to write about industrial pollution of rivers and ground water, international conflict regarding water, urban development and water treatment, and arsenic and fluoride poisoning in disenfranchised villages. 

When the Rivers Run Dry is griping because Pearce weaves the stories that he uncovers into a web of ideas that leaves his reader with an enhanced understanding of the urgency with which water issues must be addressed.  Additionally, Pearce employs the wisdom of water experts from every governmental, international and non-profit organization that has a hand in water policy, development, management and treatment. 

 Pearce is informed and unpretentious when he offers his rational for writing this book.  He informs his reader of how much water it takes to grow some of the world’s most popular foods.  It takes 130 gallons of water to grow a pound of wheat, 650 gallons for a pound of cheddar cheese and 3000 gallons for a quarter pound of hamburger.  “I figure that as a typical meat-eating, beer-swilling, milk-guzzling Westerner, I consume as much as a hundred times my own weight in water everyday.  Hats off, then, to my vegetarian daughter, who gets by with about half of that” (ch. 1, para. 7).  What he makes clear is that the current state of the global economy as it relates to water is unsustainable.  Globally land is desertifying, aquifers are being diminished and rivers are literally running dry.  Yet, countries with very little water to waste are exporting water hungry crops, low yield crops like alfalfa and cotton.  

To combat this, Pearce suggests that farmers be taught how to make wastewater irrigation safe and that all new homes in Los Angeles be required to harvest rainwater.  If everyone in Los Angeles harvested rainwater, he argues, more than 50% of the cities water needs would be met (right now they are piping in water from hundreds of miles away).  He also suggests that small water projects and recharge ponds used hundreds of years ago be employed to recharge aquifers, particularly in rural areas.  He warns against moving toward desalination, reservoir building and expensive infrastructure projects because he believes they are counter productive and outdated, especially in developing countries.

When the Rivers Run Dry is the most informed, well-written, reasonable and holistic book I have read in my water journey thus far.  If you only read one book about water I would highly recommend choosing this one.  If you are on your own water journey this is the book to start with. If you are a filmmaker you better snatch this one up before someone else beats you to the punch.   

Documentary Review #3: Flow

Flow: How did a Handful of Corporations Steal Our Water (2007)

 

In Bolivia one in 10 children will die before the age of 5 due to water related illness.  Up to 7 million people a year worldwide get sick from drinking tap water and this film predicts that 40% of stomach flu cases come from drinking tap water. 

However, Flow demonstrates that turning to bottled water is not a good alternative either.  Currently, Americans spend 10.8 billion dollars a year on bottled water (a 100 billion dollars a year worldwide) but the bottled water market is poorly regulated and independent researchers are finding that bottled water contains the same agricultural pesticides and urban contaminants as tap water. 

The most frightening chemical found in drinking water is Atrazine, a Swiss manufactured pesticide and weed killer that is banned in the European Union but legal in the United States.  It is the most common contaminate found in surface water and ground water in the U.S, according to this film.  It has also been linked to ovarian cancer, low sperm counts, prostate cancer and breast cancer but the Environmental Protection Agency (at the time this film was relaeased) saw no need to follow the EU’s lead.

Although Flow touches on many of the same issues as Blue Gold and the current literature, it is unique in its focus on water degradation from agriculture and urban development.  This film looks at rather convincing correlations between specific changes in water quality and cancer and infertility rates.  Because 70% of the world’s fresh water supply is currently used for crop irrigation and because most of those crops use large amounts of chemical pesticides, Salina focuses much of her attention on how water policy specific to agriculture causes the over consumption and rapid degradation of water. 

This film also sheds light on how rapid urbanization, at rates not seen since the industrial revolution, in combination with lagging infrastructure and sanitation regulation are the cause of quality of life issues all over the world. This is due both to degradation of water from pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and other man made chemicals as well as the inability to treat water for these contaminates.

Flow suggests grassroots advocacy and community owned and operated treatment plants as a way to prevent a handful of companies from having sole ownership of the world’s drinking water.  The most interesting narrative of unconventional solutions was about water treatment with UV rays.  With this method of water treatment (scientifically similar to SODIS) Ashok Gadgil claims he can lower the cost of water per person in a community to $2 per year.  Flow reminds us that there are cheap alternatives to desalination and pressurized piping that work for poor and rural communities.  Affordable approaches like these seem even more appealing when we are reminded that the UN predicts that it would take a 30 billion dollar a year effort to provide safe, clean drinking water to every human on the planet.

Documentary Review #2: Blue Gold

  Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008)
Sam Bozzo

The visual, audio and auditory stimulation offered in the first ten seconds of this documentary set the tone for the rest of the film.  The narrator begins with the following commentary in a deep, growling voice:

This is not a film about saving the environment.  It’s a film about saving ourselves.   Because whatever one’s environmental, political, or religious opinions, whatever one’s race, sex or economic standing, whomever of us goes without water for a week, cries blood. 

He then goes on to tell the story of Pablo Valencia’s, who was stranded in the dessert for many days without water and who wrote about what it is like to begin to die of thirst.  Bozzo uses just the right amount of base drum pounding music in sync with screeching violins to make the viewer quite sure that at any moment the world will implode on itself for lack of justice in the water sector.  What do we have to fear in the coming decade according to Bozzo and his team of water rights activists?  Desertification, war, and ultimately, the collapse of our civilization.

In addition to the overly dramatic introduction and the scare tactic statements made throughout the film, Bozzo also spent far too much time developing conspiracy theories about corrupt politicians and evil corporations.  Because of this, many of the unbiased but equally convincing facts about the global water crisis are lost. 

Although his tactics were a bit over the top, the information Bozzo shares in this film helps his audience begin to make the connection between water and environmental issues, international corporate greed, social justice and human rights. 

One of the most interesting parts of the film outlines potential solutions to address water consumption and pollution issues.  He suggests that water holding and catchments structures be built near streams and rivers to help replenish groundwater.  In urban areas porous walkways and roads made from permeable concrete alternatives, as well as the building of green spaces like parks, can help recharge aquifers.  Another interesting idea, and one that has already been executed in Bolinas, California, is only allowing development that is sustainable within the limits of the area’s watershed. 

This film is quotable for those who are already convinced that private corporations are evil and that all things eventually end in the collapse of civilization.  However, it sadly misses the mark in an informed and intelligent conversation about how best to tackle global water issues.  

Book Review #3: Water for Sale

Water for Sale:  How Business and the Market Can Resolve the World’s Water Crisis (2005)

By Fredrick Segerfeldt

Unlike Hoffmann’s cold analysis of investment opportunities in the water industry in Planet Water, Segerfeldt offers a logical and impassioned argument for developing countries to find a balance between private water management and government regulation.  He argues that the best way to address unequal access to water is to allow more private involvement in the water and sanitation sector because businesses that specialize in water can get water to poor people quickly, efficiently, inexpensively and at a higher quality.  

Segerfeldt believes that the commodification of water will benefit big business as well as the poorest sectors of society.  “[T]he starting point in this discussion are the billion or more [people] who at present have no mains water supply and who pay heavily for their water in both money and time”  (ch. 6, para. 41).  He contests that in developing countries, the most disenfranchised communities are often not connected to water mains and pay much more for water delivered in bottles or tankers then those connected to a tap.  In Haiti, he explains, “people with mains water supply pay $1 per m³, whereas those lacking a main water connection pay $10 for the same amount.  So the poor of Port-au-Prince would benefit from a price rise, even if water were made as much as nine times more expensive” (Ch. 6, para. 27).  Therefore, he suggests, private companies can enter into a system, invest in an expansion of current infrastructure (and consequently raise the price of water), turn a profit and benefit poor populations. 

Segerfeldt recognizes that companies will only be inclined to connect more communities to main water if they can also turn a profit.  Therefore, he suggests that while being allowed to make money from providing water to poor communities companies must be incentivized to reach those communities most in need.  The most effective way of doing this, he argues, is through a voucher program.  In countries where water and sanitation are publicly owned, water is often heavily subsidized.  Therefore, when private companies take over, there can often be a rapid increase in the price of water. Segerfeldt suggests that this be combated by distributing vouchers that entitle a countries poorest people to a certain amount of free water, after which they would pay for water at cost. He argues that this would provide those most in need while also encouraging conservation and producing lower consumption rates.

Regardless of if one agrees with Segerfeldt in principal, he makes a solid case for privatization in the water sector because he argues that a move in this direction will help address the human rights and social justice issues in the global water debate as outlined by the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.  However, what Segerfeldt proposes for developing a balance between government regulation and private involvement depend on a country’s ability to enforce the laws it writes.   Can this occur when this means a country must regulate multinational corporations whose quarterly gross earnings might be hundreds of times greater than the country’s yearly budget?

Book Review #2: Cadillac Desert

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition (1993)

By Marc Reisner

All current writers of water have clearly read and religiously cite Reisner’s now classic work, first published in 1986. Reisner began writing this book in 1978 and for several years pieced together the hundred year legal, social and political history of the government agency responsible for transforming hundreds of thousands of bodies of water from rivers and wetlands to reservoirs and lakes. The Bureau of Reclamation “would build the highest and largest dams in the world on rivers few believed could be controlled” and invested ghastly amounts of tax payer money into converting the American West from an expansive dessert to the heart of America’s agriculture industry.

Reisner begins his retelling of the development of the American West in 1539 with the failed Spanish conquest by Don Francisco Vazquez de Coronado of the barren lands we now call California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas. In the early 1800s the same land was explored by Lewis and Clark and then by pioneers during the gold rush. The general consensus was if you could survive the trek through hell, you might strike it rich in San Francisco (Los Angeles, however, was stunted in its growth primarily because of a severe lack of water).

The vast piece of land between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast remained an abandoned death trap Brigham Young and his followers discovered the secret to transforming the dessert into lush agriculturally viable land with masterful irrigation techniques. Then, in 1902 “the United States launched its own irrigation program, based on Mormon experience, guided by Mormon laws” and with it the Bureau of Reclamation came into its golden years.

Reisner’s extraordinarily detailed retelling of this history reads like a 608 page script from a Spanish telenovela where the agents of The Bureau of Reclamation play the villains in bed with big corporations and big agriculture and the victims are represented by small farmers, failed dam flood victims and people displaced by the building of methane burping reservoirs. It is hard to stomach when one realizes this is not only non-fiction but also the impeccably detailed political history of one of the richest, most powerful and developed countries in the world.

What’s worse is the effect this political history reeked havoc on the rest of the worlds water policies. Resiner laments, “When archaeologist from some other planet sift through the bleached bones of our civilization, they may well conclude that our temples were damns. Imponderably massive, constructed with exquisite care, our damns will outlast anything else we have built- skyscrapers, cathedrals, bridges, even nuclear power plants. When forests push through the rotting streets of New York and the Empire State Building is a crumbling hulk, Hover Dam will sit astride the Colorado River much as it does today, intact, formidable, serene” (Ch 3, para 1).

Book Review #1: Planet Water

Planet Water: Investing in the World’s Most Valuable Resource (2009)

By Steve Hoffmann

The United Nations reports that 4,500 children die each day of preventable waterborne diseases as a result of poor drinking water quality and lack of sanitation services. Statistics like these drive the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) that aims to reduce the number of people without access to clean water in half by 2015. According to Hoffman, these are also the kind of statistics that should tickle investors interest in the soon to be ridiculously profitable world of water. Hoffman scoffs at the dated simplicity of Smith’s diamond-water paradox that asks, “Why is it that diamonds, which have limited practical use, command a higher price than water, which is a prerequisite for life?” Hoffman argues that this paradox and the economics theory of marginal utility will be far less applicable to water as it becomes further commoditized and less readily available. The price of water (which is artificially low now and has been historically due to government subsidies) will rise due to global quantity and quality issues. He reminds investors, “there are no substitutes for water” (Introduction, para 11).


Hoffmann is fully informed on all things water. In a demonstration of his knowledge of water science, he explains how a single water molecule is formed and what chemical bonds are responsible for its unique properties and describes how properties like water’s polarity, high surface tension and specific heat directly translate into investment opportunities.
Hoffman is less convincing in his analysis of how social, political and geographic variables can influence water politics. Hoffman makes wide, sweeping statements like, “the lack of water, of acceptable quality and in sufficient quantity, is a major factor in poverty, food insecurity, human disease, economic development, and, ultimately, geopolitical conflict (Ch. 1, para. 16). Although eloquently written, Hoffman never really does more than recognize the connection between water business and quality of life issues or quote from statistics generated by diplomatic and not-for-profit organizations.


This is not to say that Hoffman is unconcerned with the human condition. He simply sees him ideas about water as far more practical, realistic and sustainable than your average headline-seeking activist, blinded by principal. “If water is vital and, as such, a public good, then the implication is that governments must intervene to provide equitable distribution. However, if it is truly a commodity, the implication is that market forces alone can readily provide optimal allocation (Ch. 3. Para. 1). Hoffman falls into the camp of the latter.


Hoffman’s writing is concise and informative and only occasionally dry. He does, however, offer a cold analysis of money-making ventures that directly impact the quality of life of some of the planet’s poorest people. For a reader with the ability to separate the human aspect from Hoffmann’s suggested investments, this book has the potential to inform water-novice investors on how to make heaps of money in the fast growing industry of water. However, he leaves his socially conscious reader always waiting for an explanation on how investments, in what Hoffmann sees as the most valuable of commodity, will be socially beneficial in ways that could help thwart the preventable deaths of 4,500 children each day.

Documentary #1: Gasland Trailer

The water debate is often framed in the historical context of the oil and gas debate. Water is even referred to as "blue gold" and the "oil of the twenty-first century". I do not think the people who coined these metaphoric terms  had anything like this in mind. This is the trailer for the 2010 documentary, Gasland.

Here is the description of the film if you are interested. I will be watching it as soon as I can get my hands on it in Colombia.

GASLAND - (2010) Directed by Josh Fox. Winner of Special Jury Prize - Best US Documentary Feature - Sundance 2010. Screening at Cannes 2010.
 
It is happening all across America and now in Europe and Africa as well - rural landowners wake up one day to find a lucrative offer from a multinational energy conglomerate wanting to lease their property. The Reason? In America, the company hopes to tap into a huge natural gas reservoir dubbed the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Halliburton developed a way to get the gas out of the ground—a hydraulic drilling process called fracking—and suddenly America finds itself on the precipice of becoming an energy superpower.
But what comes out of the ground with that natural gas? How does it affect our air and drinking water?

GASLAND is a powerful personal documentary that confronts these questions with spirit, strength, and a sense of humor. When filmmaker Josh Fox receives his cash offer in the mail, he travels across 32 states to meet other rural residents on the front lines of fracking. He discovers toxic streams, ruined aquifers, dying livestock, brutal illnesses, and kitchen sinks that burst into flame. He learns that all water is connected and perhaps some things are more valuable than money.